War Simulation in Qatar Another Signal to Iraq

DOHA, Qatar — DOHA, Qatar -- As Baghdad sought Saturday to defuse the threat against it, the commander of U.S. military forces in the region took center stage in a high-tech war room in this tiny Persian Gulf nation and launched the first phase of electronic war games that include a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Seated at a command table before a 25-foot-square battlefield screen in Qatar's Camp As Sayliyah, Army Gen. Tommy Franks and more than 200 members of his staff finalized an array of U.S. military scenarios that will be part of the command-and-control exercise, which formally begins here Monday.

Dubbed Internal Look, it is the first such exercise staged outside the U.S. -- and within the boundaries of some of the most strategic real estate in Franks' U.S. Central Command, which covers 25 nations.

Run from sophisticated war-fighting headquarters inside a well-fortified, 262-acre military camp in the Qatari desert, the weeklong war games underscore the new importance of this nation, which has a population of 750,000 and is located about 650 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The timing of the computer-assisted command drill, coupled with separate, continuing live-fire exercises by the U.S. Army near the Iraqi border in northern Kuwait, appeared to ratchet up the United States' military pressure on Iraq as the two countries approach a possible showdown over United Nations inspections for weapons of mass destruction.

Internal Look itself involves no troop movements. It is designed to test the U.S. military's ability to command, control and communicate among all four U.S. armed services now deployed throughout the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and Southwest and Central Asia.

"There are no moving troops, just moving electrons -- a lot of electrons," said one Central Command officer here. "There is a whole plethora of contingencies that CENTCOM has to plan for."

Franks has made no public statements or appearances since he landed here in the Qatari capital from his command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., on Friday. He headed straight to the secretive military base that houses the new mobile command post -- several dozen prefab buildings and tents bristling with high-tech American gear.

In opening Saturday's session, called the "Rock Drill," Franks stressed the important roles of troop readiness, flexibility in planning and leading-edge technology on the modern battlefield, according to Jim Wilkinson, director of strategic communications for Central Command. But military and political analysts stressed that the symbolism of the exercise is not the what of it but the where.