U.S. Calls Up Combat Division

The U.S. has called up more than 11,000 infantry soldiers - including their tanks and attack helicopters to the Gulf. This will be the first full deployment of a U.S. combat division in the region since the Gulf War.

According to CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan, they will join some 4,000 troops already on the ground in Kuwait and will add to the 60,000 U.S. personnel in various places around the Gulf.

The buildup comes as Iraq is suggesting further talks with the U.N.

Hans Blix, the Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector, has reportedly accepted an invitation to return to Baghdad personally before making any final decision on Iraq's cooperation.

Cowan reports the inspector's next report is due at the UN by the end of this month, although they say it may take them until early summer before they really complete their work.

But just in case the US isn't willing to wait that long, many families here have already started stockpiling food, prepraring for the worst, even in the face of what today, seemed like a pretty good day.

Meanwhile, another allied airstrike occurred inside Iraq's southern no-fly zone.

The U.S. military says American and British warplanes attacked an Iraqi mobile radar system Wednesday when it entered the zone.

The official Iraqi News Agency says the planes attacked "civil and service installations," killing one civilian and wounding two others. There's no word of casualties from Central Command. Iraq routinely accuses the allied pilots of attacking civilian targets.

U.N. arms experts inspected four government and commercial sites in and around Baghdad on Wednesday, taking no time off for New Year's Day - much to the annoyance of a manager of a truck repair shop who complained he had to host the inspectors on an official holiday.

A U.N. statement said the sites inspected included a missile maintenance facility, a brewery and Baghdad's 7UP soft drink bottling plant. It did not explain what interest the inspectors had in beer or bottling plants.

Also Wednesday, Iraq's official media renewed its warning for Washington not to attack Iraq. The army newspaper Al-Qadissiya said Washington was only contemplating an invasion — which was sure to meet defeat — because it does not understand "the Iraqi character, nor the intimate deep relationship between it and the land of Iraq."

U.S. and British warplanes attacked an Iraqi radar system Wednesday after it entered the southern no-fly zone, the U.S. military said in a statement.

The radar near al-Qurnah, about 240 miles southeast of Baghdad, was a threat to coalition aircraft, the U.S. Central Command said in a statement on its Web site.

The official Iraqi News Agency said the planes attacked civilian installations, killing one person and wounding two others. The U.S. statement made no mention of casualties.

The inspectors made a first visit to the al-Magd company, which repairs heavy trucks, in Baghdad and a return visit to the Al-Harith workshop, 28 miles north of the capital, which does maintenance work on aging Soviet-designed SA-2, SA-3 and SA-6 anti-aircraft missile systems.

The U.N. statement said the al-Harith facility contained electronics equipment and corrosion-resistant materials. At the al-Magd company, assistant director Khudeir Abbas told reporters the visit to his workshop lasted about an hour and described the inspectors' conduct as "very professional."

Abbas, however, made clear he was unhappy about the visit taking place on New Year's Day. "Today is an official holiday and the beginning of the new year, yet we were forced to receive them," he said.

So far, the U.N. inspectors are not known to have had any problems gaining access to Iraqi sites where they are searching for evidence that President Saddam Hussein's regime still has — or is trying to develop — chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

But this is the third time Iraqi officials have complained about the inspectors' methods. Last Thursday, Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, chief liaison to the U.N. arms experts, said the inspectors were not coordinating well with their Iraqi counterparts, sometimes calling at 6 a.m. to arrange visits that day. Later he complained that some inspectors upset managers at one inspection site by not explaining why they were conducting a search.

U.N. Security Council resolution 1441, which sent the inspectors back to Iraq last month four years after the U.N. inspection program broke down, guarantees the arms experts unfettered access to any facility without advance notice.

The United States has warned that any obstacles to the inspection could be considered a "material breach" of the resolution, opening the way for a military campaign to disarm Iraq. U.N. resolutions first demanded that Iraq eliminate its weapons of mass destruction in 1990 after its invasion of Kuwait.

In its New Year's Day editorial, the official daily Al-Jumhuriya said that Iraqis remained united under Saddam's leadership in 2003 and were ready to defeat "any unjust aggression that might be launched by the bullies of the U.S. administration."

The army newspaper Al-Qadissiya also said an invading force would meet a "bitter end," pointing out that the United States had been defeated in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia and "even in Afghanistan." despite its technological superiority.

It said the United States found itself in losing situations because it did not fully understand the psychology of other nations.

"This means that America, which claims it knows the world countries more than they know themselves, is like a blind old woman who does not know where her legs are taking her and in which pit she will fall," the newspaper said.