Troop strength in Iraq to expand to 150,000

By Tom Bowman
The Baltimore Sun

JIM MACMILLAN / ASSOCIATED PRESS A U.S. soldier returns fire after his patrol was ambushed in Mosul, Iraq, yesterday. One soldier was shot in the leg.

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Army Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday that the increase from the current 138,000 troops would mainly provide security for Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January and "keep up the pressure on the insurgency since the Fallujah operation."

Most of the increase in the troop count will come from extending deployments of units already there as others arrive. That will keep some soldiers in Iraq for combat tours of 14 months, beyond the yearlong mission that most troops are told to expect, Pentagon officials said. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, requested the additional troops, which were approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, officials said.

Rodriguez, the operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials planned to reduce the number of U.S. forces back to 138,000 by the end of March, depending on the security situation. But hopes for reducing the number of troops have been continually dashed over the past year. When Baghdad fell in April 2003, some Pentagon officials were privately estimating 30,000 U.S. troops on the ground by the end of that summer, but the ever-growing insurgency disrupted those plans.

With yesterday's announcement, 10,400 soldiers and Marines will receive extensions for as long as two months, while 1,500 soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division will, in coming weeks, be sent to Iraq for about 120 days to support security during the election period.

The addition of U.S. troops to provide security for the elections was expected, but the numbers unveiled yesterday were higher than officials had been estimating. Two weeks ago, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, said he expected about 5,000 troops would be kept in Iraq during the election period.

Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, had said weeks ago that he would need more troops in Iraq for the elections but that they should be Iraqis or contributed by other nations. The Bush administration has been unable to persuade U.S. allies beyond the 28 with troops in Iraq to send any, however.

At the same time, the number of countries willing to keep troops in Iraq has declined. Honduras, New Zealand, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Spain and Thailand have left; Hungary is pulling out by March and Poland is considering reducing or ending its commitment of 2,500 troops.

And while about 115,000 Iraqi security forces have been organized and trained, their performance has been shaky for the most part.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a former officer in the 82nd Airborne, said the extensions and additional troops announced yesterday showed the Pentagon was finally confronting "the reality of Iraq."

"You need more troops, well-trained troops," Reed said in an interview, estimating that as many as 300,000 U.S. troops were necessary to provide security in Iraq.
 
That figure echoes the estimate of the former Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, who in the weeks before the war told Congress it would take "several hundred thousand" troops for postwar security operations in Iraq.

Both Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, publicly challenged that number, with Wolfowitz terming Shinseki's estimate "wildly off the mark."

There are 20,000 to 24,000 other foreign troops in Iraq deployed as part of the U.S.-led coalition.

Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told Congress that about 145,000 Iraqi forces would be trained and equipped by the January election. But yesterday, Rodriguez placed the number at 125,000.

The U.S. troops whose extensions were announced yesterday include 4,400 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, which is based in Hawaii and was to return in January after a year in Iraq. Now they are to return home in March.

Another 3,500 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division of Fort Hood, Texas, will be extended for two months, until March, when they will have served 14 months in Iraq.

Some 2,300 Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit — whose troops are from Okinawa, Hawaii and California — will now return in February or March instead of January.

Finally, 160 soldiers from the Germany-based 66th Transportation Company, now in Kuwait, will remain for 14 months and return in March.

The additional troops are being sent from Fort Bragg, N.C. The 1,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division are scheduled to stay in Baghdad for 120 days, officials said.

Asked yesterday how he expected the extensions to affect morale, Rodriguez said, "The soldiers and their family members understand the importance of this."

Lawrence Korb, who was assistant secretary of defense for manpower in the Reagan administration, said the tour extensions could come back to haunt the Army when soldiers in the affected units have to decide whether to re-enlist.

"This is the worst way to do it (increase the force), because by not putting enough troops in there and extending the people who are already there, you really demoralize people, particularly around the holidays," Korb said.

Congress recently approved an increase of 20,000 troops in the Army's mandated size of 482,000. The Bush administration already had increased the size of the service beyond that number using emergency powers, but has resisted a permanent increase.

Additional background information from Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times .