General Calvin Waller may have been uncertain whether all American troops will be ready when the Persian Gulf deadline passes this week, but TIME's small journalistic army is fully prepared. The deadline makes this a "weird" conflict, remarks chief of correspondents John F. Stacks. "Other wars developed by accretion or else suddenly, like Pearl Harbor. This long period of getting ready is nerve-racking." But at least it allowed Stacks time to deploy his forces.
From the Cairo bureau, Dean Fischer has been posted to the Saudi Arabia theater. Also on hand last week were Pentagon correspondent Bruce van Voorst, editor at large Strobe Talbott and Lebanon stringer Lara Marlowe. Moving in shortly will be Cairo-based William Dowell and Scott MacLeod, who was in Iraq with Stacks as of last week. MacLeod, an expert on the Palestinian issue, went north from Johannesburg to help out in the Middle East last month.
Both Rome correspondents have moved out, bureau chief Robert T. Zintl to Turkey and James Wilde, who has previously covered wars in Vietnam and Africa, to Jordan. Vienna-based John Borrell, who in the mid-1980s reported extensively on the conflict in Lebanon, is in Syria, while stringer Aileen Keating is on duty at the important listening post of Bahrain. The four-member Jerusalem staff is on full alert. Washington's David Aikman, who has been monitoring diplomatic angles in several nations, will be holding the fort in Cairo. His Washington colleague Dick Thompson and photographers Dennis Brack and Kenneth Jarecke are relying on telephone beepers, awaiting the any-moment summons to a C-141 military press plane bound for a gulf war.
TIME's photography field team includes Rudi Frey and Christopher Morris in Saudi Arabia, Barry Iverson in Amman, Tom Hartwell standing by in Cairo and Francoise DeMulder in Baghdad. Frey, a man of many skills, is doing double duty as a liaison with the military command and coping with the headaches of transmitting pictures. A high-tech air war could jam normal telecommunications and force reporters to switch from laptop computers to typewriters. Seven chemical-warfare protective outfits, purchased in London, are available for those who will be assigned to go into combat zones. "This is the first time I have ever asked anybody to go and cover a war," says a sober Stacks, who feels "a responsibility for the people." Nothing would please us more than to find that these elaborate preparations are unnecessary.