4/13/04 John Hendren, The Oregonian, Options limited, but more soldiers needed
The thinly stretched Army likely will have to answer the call, as Iraqi forces disappoint
WASHINGTON -- As his troops regrouped after the deadliest week since the fall of Baghdad, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq acknowledged Monday what many critics have been saying for months: The U.S.-led force needs more troops.
An expected deployment of thousands more troops for duty in Iraq answers congressional calls for backup and comes as administration officials work to prevent allies from following Spain's planned withdrawal of its forces.
But the request Monday also revealed the Pentagon's lack of options for finding reinforcements. Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of the Central Command, called Iraqi security forces a "great disappointment." As a result, most of the new troops are almost certain to come from the thinly stretched U.S. Army.
The request for more soldiers is likely to bolster critics who have accused the president's team of underestimating the amount of American blood and money needed to successfully occupy Iraq.
Abizaid asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the equivalent of two brigades, or 7,000 to 10,000 troops -- "if not more." The request came less than a week after military officials began extending the one-year tours of an unspecified number of the roughly 20,000 troops who were preparing to leave Iraq.
U.S. officials had hoped to draw down the troop number to 110,000 this spring as the coalition prepares to hand over authority to a still-unnamed interim Iraqi government June 30. Instead, the Pentagon is planning to have as many as 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq if the new units arrive soon, or 120,000 if the soldiers now pulling extended duties are allowed to leave in a few months, defense officials said.
Either the Joint Chiefs of Staff or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could substantially alter Abizaid's request.
Abizaid has a reputation within the Pentagon as a straight-shooter, but some observers were betting on further increases.
"If Abizaid says he needs two brigades, one can be certain that that's the very minimum he needs, given the reluctance by him and other commanders to acknowledge that they need any more troops at all," said former Ambassador James Dobbins, who supervised peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia and now works for the Rand Corp.
U.S. military strategists had planned to replace forces gradually -- and replace them with Iraqis. But during the attacks by Shiite militia members in the central Iraqi cities of Najaf and Nasiriyah and Baghdad and attacks by Sunni guerrillas in Fallujah and Ramadi to the west, Iraqi forces often failed, and in some cases defected, Abizaid told reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference.
Some critics said adding troops reverses the model outlined by Secretary of State Colin Powell when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Enter a conflict with overwhelming force and then slowly draw down.
The U.S. force in Iraq peaked during the invasion last year at roughly 155,000. And despite the addition of approximately 200,000 Iraqi police, army and other security troops since then, the U.S. number has dropped by only 25,000. Current and former Army officials note that when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki warned Congress before the war that 225,000 U.S. troops then poised around the Persian Gulf to attack would be needed for years, Pentagon officials called the number wildly inaccurate.
"This is what Shinseki was talking about, this is what everybody's been talking about," retired Maj. Gen. William Nash said. "The failure to do it right at the beginning means that we're going to have to do it at the end with a lot of deaths and a lot of trouble and it's going to be much harder now. The insurgents are building momentum."
On Capitol Hill, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and a chorus of Democrats and Republicans have called for more troops.
But there are few easy options for doing so. The number of non-U.S. troops, currently 24,000, is unlikely to increase soon. Like Spain, some NATO members are waiting for a possible new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq before committing troops. They also want to complete more of their mission in Afghanistan.
And the recent performance of Iraqi troops is forcing a Pentagon reassessment of those forces as options.
That leaves the U.S. Army, which has nearly 1 million soldiers overall, including National Guard and Reserve troops. But many already have been put on active duty, and lengthy tours strain the system by putting retention and recruitment at risk.
At that, the 10 regular Army divisions, about 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers each, have troops tied up in South Korea, Bosnia, Japan and Afghanistan, and all have sent troops to Iraq.
In the United States, the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division has served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Fort Drum, N.Y.-based 10th Mountain Division is on its second tour in Afghanistan.
As commanders cast about for fresh troops, one option is to send back a brigade from the 3rd Infantry Division, which led the siege of Baghdad last year, sooner than its expected deployment early next year. The 82nd Airborne Division, too, always has one brigade ready for rapid deployment and could leave its base at Fort Bragg, N.C., within days.
The numerically smaller Marines could add some troops. A combination of an Army division and a Marine regimental combat team is most likely, Nash said.
But the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 1st Marine Division, which joined the 3rd Infantry Division on the road to Baghdad, is in its second tour and taking some of the heaviest casualties of U.S. troops in Fallujah.
Nonetheless, increasing the U.S. presence has a distinct downside, some analysts said.
"The last thing we need in Iraq is more troops," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., public policy group. "The U.S. troop presence is part of the reason we have a problem. We've gotten to the point after a year where the Iraqis just resent having troops in all their towns."
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Posted by rowan at April 13, 2004 9:13 AM