U.S. military testing exit routes for a full withdrawal from Iraq

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military is shipping battlefield equipment through Jordan and Kuwait to test possible exit routes in advance of a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, military officials said.

The convoys - carrying armored vehicles, weapons, and other items - mark the Pentagon's first steps in confronting the complex logistics of transporting the huge arsenal stockpiled in Iraq over nearly six years.

It's also part of a wider assessment, ordered by U.S. Central Command, to decide what items the military can transfer, donate, sell, or toss away once a full-scale withdrawal is under way, Marine Corps and Army officials told the Associated Press.

"Because they are starting to see a potential reduction of forces, they are looking to get more stuff out," Terry Moores, the deputy assistant chief of staff for logistics for Marine Corps Central Command, said yesterday.

"We started slow," Moores said, but he added, "it's picked up speed" in recent months.

The Iraqi-U.S. security pact, which took effect Jan. 1, calls for American troops to leave Iraqi cities by June 30 and pull out of the country by 2012 - a timeline that could speed up if President Obama keeps a campaign promise to have troops out of Iraq within 16 months of his taking office.

The biggest obstacle is the task of moving tens of thousands of personnel and millions of tons of equipment out of Iraq, according to congressional testimony this month from a managing director of the independent Government Accountability Office.

The U.S. brought most of its material in through Kuwait for the 2003 Iraq invasion. There are more than 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

"The capacity of facilities in Kuwait and other neighboring countries may limit the speed at which equipment and material can be moved out of Iraq," a GAO report said.

It recommended looking at multiple routes - through Jordan, Kuwait, and Turkey. The United States has already built bridge overpasses for heavy tanks on the road between the Iraqi border and the Turkish Mediterranean ports of Iskenderun and Mersin.

The Marines have made 17 shipments of vehicles and weapons - totaling 20,000 items - through Jordan's Aqaba port, using contractors to haul the items to commercial container ships or U.S. Navy ships, Moores said in a telephone interview from Bahrain, the base of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

Jordanian leaders "have already said that if we are willing to move more through Jordan as we draw down, they are willing" to allow it, Moores said.

Though Jordan has close ties to Washington, popular sentiment has been solidly against the war in Iraq.

The Army has also shipped hundreds of armored and nonarmored vehicles to Kuwait, said Army. Col. Ed Dorman, who works on logistics and supply for Multi-National Corps Iraq.

The equipment has been returned to bases in Kuwait or the United States, he said.

Much of the Army equipment being moved is material no longer used, such as older mine-resistant vehicles - known as MRAPs - that can be used for training.

"You don't take everything out," Moores said, adding that some items, such as food, water, barricades, and sandbags, may be left.

A gym, a barbershop, and planters of plastic flowers: Welcome to the new Abu Ghraib prison.

The notorious lockup west of Baghdad where U.S. military guards once humiliated and allegedly tortured Iraqi prisoners has reopened with fresh paint and a new name - Baghdad Central Prison.

Mohammed al-Zeidi, the assistant director of the Iraqi Rehabilitation Department, said the prison would be run to international standards. "We turned it into something like a resort, not prison," he told reporters at the facility.

- Associated Press

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