Grind of insurgency eroding U.S. military

Robert Burns
Associated Press
9 January 2005

WASHINGTON -- The strain of fighting an insurgency war in Iraq, on a scale not foreseen even a year ago and with no end in sight, is taking a startling toll on the U.S. military. The U.S. death count is rising by 70 or more each month, adding to the more than 1,330 deaths already recorded. Costs of the occupation and rebuilding are also escalating--at more than $1 billion a week, with the total now exceeding $100 billion.

While Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remains focused on his exit strategy of training Iraqis for security units so U.S. troops can return home, even he has recently used the term "bleak" to describe the situation. Rumsfeld says he remains convinced that the only way out is to exercise patience and fortitude while a reliable Iraqi security force is developed. In echoing him, U.S. military commanders in Iraq make almost daily pronouncements of optimism that the tide is beginning to turn against the insurgents.

Indeed, Iraqi security forces are growing in numbers and U.S. troops continue to kill or capture combatants, destroy uncovered weapons caches and support the country's rebuilding efforts. The administration has said it hopes the Jan. 30 election will mark a turning point for the better. Yet, the Pentagon is so strapped to sustain a force of 150,000 troops in Iraq that some senior Army leaders are worried that the war--combined with the conflict in Afghanistan--is wearing out their squads and other units.

The question is being raised: How does the military retain an all-volunteer force at the current level of U.S. commitment overseas?

One way, a senior Army official suggested, would be to spend an additional $3 billion a year to expand the Army by 30,000 soldiers. Another way would be to loosen restrictions on the use of the National Guard and Reserve units, so those soldiers could be called to active duty for more than 24 months. In putting together a force to rotate into Iraq starting this summer--the fourth rotation since the war began in 2003--the Army found itself with a smaller proportion of National Guard members and reservists available because there just were not enough left. "We've tapped 'em out," the senior Army official said last week, speaking on condition of anonymity because the manpower question has not been settled within the Pentagon.

The Army has about 135,000 soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait, and the official said that for planning purposes the service is figuring it will have to maintain that level for four or five more years. That is in addition to the Army's many other obligations, including deterring war on the Korean Peninsula and peacekeeping roles in the Balkans.

And there is the war in Afghanistan, now heading toward its fourth year.

When President Bush made the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein's government in March 2003, battlefield success came so quickly that military planners foresaw withdrawing 50,000 U.S. troops within weeks, with even more coming home in the fall of 2003. Instead, the size of the U.S. force has grown and now stands at the highest level of the entire war.

Among the indicators of how troubled the situation appears:

- Despite a long and determined effort to build a competent Iraqi security force that could take over from the U.S. troops, the Iraqi force is only half the size that U.S. commanders consider is needed to do the job.

- Even after an offensive in November against insurgents in Fallujah, rebels remain capable of killing U.S. troops and Iraqi police and soldiers in Baghdad, Mosul and elsewhere almost daily. A roadside bomb killed seven U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Thursday. On Friday, a police captain was killed in a drive-by shooting in Abu Ghraib west of the capital, and gunmen shot to death a police officer walking near his house in Mosul.

- A U.S. military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, said Friday the worst may be yet to come. "I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections," he said. "A year ago you didn't see these kinds of horrific things."

Copyright c 2005, Chicago Tribune

------------------------------------------------------
Citation: Robert Burns, "Grind of insurgency eroding U.S. military," Associated Press, 9 January 2005; Original URL: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0501090305jan09,1,741531.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=2&cset=true