WASHINGTON, 13 April 2003 — The United States began to downscale its military presence in the Gulf yesterday as President George W. Bush welcomed the demise of Saddam Hussein’s “regime of fear.”

The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its battle group of naval escorts have left the Gulf as part of a progressive US naval withdrawal from the region, US Vice Admiral Timothy Keating said from Bahrain.

“Air targets are decreasing as the campaign reaches a certain phase of completion. It is likely that we will be able to pull some assets, and not just naval assets, air force, marines and army assets out of the theatre,” Keating said.

While the aircraft carrier Nimitz moved in from the Gulf of Oman, its sister ships the Kitty Hawk, Constellation, and Theodore Roosevelt and their respective battle groups may also leave the region shortly in a gradual scaling down of forces, he added.

The US military deployed five of its aircraft carriers for the war against Iraq, three in the Gulf and two in the Mediterranean.

They and their accompanying naval escorts have launched more than 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles and provided the base for more than 7,000 sorties by US and British warplanes during the conflict.

Amid scheduled antiwar protests, US President George W. Bush welcomed the downfall of the Iraqi leader.

“As Saddam’s regime of fear is brought to an end, the people of Iraq are revealing the true hopes they have always held,” Bush said in his weekly radio address to the nation.

“As people throughout Iraq celebrate the arrival of freedom, America celebrates with them. We know that freedom is the gift of God to all mankind, and we rejoice when others can share it,” he said.

Bush’s comments came as Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old US private dramatically rescued from Iraqi captivity last week, was flown home to the United States from the US air base at Ramstein, Germany.

She and some 50 other wounded US troops on board a C-17 military transport aircraft were due later to arrive at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.

Meanwhile, lead elements of the 30,000-strong 4th Infantry Division, described as the most modern in the US Army, have moved into Iraq from Kuwait, US officials said yesterday.

“Lead elements of the 4th Infantry Division are moving ... on the ground,” spokesman Capt. Frank Thorp told reporters at Central Command forward headquarters in Qatar.

He declined to specify how much of the division, which Washington originally hoped would launch a northern front in Iraq from Turkey, were on the move or where they were heading.

Some analysts have speculated that the 4th Infantry could race up the country to capture Tikrit, the Iraqis’ last major stronghold and the hometown of ousted President Saddam Hussein.

Alternatively, other US units already in the country could be sent to Tikrit and the 4th Infantry Division could be used to replace them both in Baghdad and other areas where there are stubborn pockets of Iraqi resistance and civil unrest. “They could do numerous things. The 4th Infantry Division on the battlefield gives ... the ground commander many options as to what they can do,” Thorp said. “It’s the most modern division we have in the United States army.”

The 4th Infantry Division has some 175 Bradley fighting vehicles and around 150 M1-A1 Abrams tanks equipped with top of the range electronic technology that will be tested in combat for the first time in Iraq. It also has an aviation brigade with Apache and Black Hawk helicopters and an artillery brigade.

The division was not used in Afghanistan but its fast-moving tanks make it ideal for crossing the flat terrain of Iraq at high speed. “They have the latest tanks. They’ve got much better digital equipment in there to scope out the battle field,” said Larry Korb, a former assistant defense secretary.

The division, based at Fort Hood in Texas, has been unloading its equipment in Kuwait for the past two weeks after its plans to enter Iraq from the north were dashed before the war by a Turkish parliamentary vote rejecting a US request. Its absence from the battlefield in the early days of the US-led invasion of Iraq had prompted criticism that the Pentagon had fielded too thin a force, leaving supply lines vulnerable in the south and only special forces with Kurdish militia operating in the north.