The Washington Post
By Thomas W. Lippman

The countdown to war with Iraq is in its final hours. U.S. troops in the Middle East began their final preparations for combat this morning and some convoys began to roll northward across Kuwait.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hunkered down, defying President Bush's demand that he leave the country by 8 p.m. tonight, and the White House warned Americans to expect U.S. casualties.

"Americans ought to be prepared for loss of life," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said after Bush met with his military and national security advisers this morning. "Americans ought to be prepared for the importance of disarming Saddam Hussein to protect the peace."

In compliance with a resolution authorizing war that Congress passed last year, Bush sent to lawmakers on Tuesday night a letter explaining his rationale for sending troops into combat. The terse two-paragraph letter said further efforts to resolve the confrontation peacefully would neither "adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" nor result in Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions demanding disarmament.

Throughout this morning, reports from journalists in Kuwait and aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf signaled that combat will begin at or soon after the deadline, which falls at 4 a.m. Thursday Iraq time. In one unit, soldiers lined up at phone booths to make their last calls home. Aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, combat pilots and their support crews were told to sleep during the day so they would be ready for action tonight, the Associated Press reported. A contingent of the 407th Forward Support Battalion of the 82d Airborne Division broke camp in a convoy of 70 trucks and Humvees. U.S. and British armored vehicles rolled into the demilitarized zone between Kuwait and Iraq. Only the possibility that fierce sandstorms might impede visibility and prevent helicopter flights could cause a delay, the reports said.

The weather "will slow things down somewhat, but our soldiers will get everything done in the end," Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, told reporters.

Aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, the commander of the huge armada massed against Iraq promised 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 eye-watering speed, persistence, agility and lethality," Vice Adm. Timothy Keating said, according to the AP.

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."

In Bahrain, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa said his country was ready to offer sanctuary to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to avert a U.S.-led war, Bahrain's official BNA news agency reported.

"The Bahraini ruler said Bahrain . . . is ready to host Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if he wants to reside there with all dignity," BNA said.

But Hussein has repeatedly rejected suggestions or pleas that he step down for the sake of peace, and all official commentary from Baghdad today continued the tone of defiance and determination to resist invasion.

Iraq's rubber-stamp parliament, at a special session, rejected the U.S. ultimatum and reaffirmed support for Saddam. The idea that he would flee into exile "is absolutely unthinkable," said Speaker Saadoon Hammadi.

Streets in the Iraqi capital, fortified by trenches and sandbags, streets were quieter than usual, with light traffic and some shops shuttered. The government ordered residents to stack wood and oil barrels to be set afire in hopes of concealing targets from bombardment.

But many Iraqis have opted to flee Baghdad and other cities that might be targets of U.S. airstrikes or cruise missiles. Long convoys of cars and tractors took to the highways, and television cameras caught a crowd running in pursuit of what was said to be the last bus leaving Baghdad. At one point, a report swept through Baghdad that Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, a longtime Saddam Hussein loyalist and spokesman, had fled the country, but U.S. officials said that was not the case.

Throughout the Middle East, international airlines curtailed schedules and stopped flying to some destinations in anticipation of the outbreak of war.