Navy commander assures fast war

ABOARD THE USS KITTY HAWK -- The commander of the huge naval armada massed against Iraq promised Wednesday that a U.S.-led air campaign against Iraq would be the fastest and most powerful ever unleashed.

"The campaign will be unlike any we have seen in the history of warfare, with breathtaking precision, almost eyewatering speed, persistence, agility and lethality," Vice Adm. Timothy Keating said.

during a visit to the USS Kitty Hawk in the north Persian Gulf.

Keating visited all three U.S. carriers in the Gulf, speaking with their admirals and sharing morale-boosting words with sailors, pilots and air crews. The visit to the Kitty Hawk came less than 16 hours before President Bush's deadline for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war.

Keating, the permanent commander of the Navy's Gulf-based 5th Fleet, will assume command of five aircraft carrier battle groups with more than 350 warplanes and hundreds of cruise missiles if there's a war in Iraq.

Officials in Washington have promised an air campaign so intense it would "shock and awe" Iraq defenders. Keating said top officials had spent the last year working on Iraq war plans.

Keating told about 2,000 sailors gathered in the Kitty Hawk's hanger bay that he couldn't say for sure if or when a war would start, although he expected the crew would be called on "probably in the very short term."

He said he had been holding teleconference meetings with Gen. Tommy Franks, the top U.S. commander for any war in Iraq, almost every day. In their next talk, Keating said, he would have one message for Franks: "The men and women of the Kitty Hawk battle group are by-God ready."

The sailors responded with cheers and applause.

Keating said a key element of the U.S. plan was minimizing the number of civilian casualties

"Our country's leadership and leaders from all the coalition have insisted that the plan that we may execute reduces to an absolute minimum, if not eliminates, noncombatant casualties," Keating told reporters after addressing the sailors.

Asked if no civilian casualties was a realistic goal, Keating said: "We are going to ... work hard to reduce and eliminate noncombatant casualties, but that is really Saddam's issue."

Keating, who is based in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, visited the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Constellation before the Kitty Hawk.

Each ship has more than 70 warplanes that are likely to be used in any air campaign against Iraq.

Two other carriers, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Harry S. Truman, are in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Dozens of support ships, including guided missiles destroyers and cruisers, fill out a huge naval armada within striking distance of Iraq.