Regardless of what they call it, a troop increase is coming

U.S. Troops May Face Extended Iraq Tours -Pentagon
Wed Apr 7, 2004 06:03 PM ET
By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some U.S. troops due to return home soon from battle-torn Iraq may have to stay beyond their promised one-year tours of duty, Pentagon leaders said on Wednesday. But they denied the military situation was out of control.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers said fierce new fighting in Iraq that has left 35 U.S. and allied troops dead in three days was expected ahead of the June 30 turnover of power to an interim Iraqi government.

"The answer is no," Rumsfeld said when pressed at a news conference on whether a sudden two-front war that U.S.-led forces are fighting with Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim militants meant that the military situation was out of control.

"Relatively small numbers of people" are causing the violence in Iraq, he said.

"You have a mixture of a small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness. And it's a serious problem. And the problem's being worked."

But Rumsfeld and Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated that some of the 135,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq may be kept there beyond their planned one-year tours of duty scheduled to end soon.

The Pentagon is near the end of a massive rotation of weary troops home from Iraq and fresh ones into the country under a plan that originally was designed to leave about 115,000 in Iraq beginning this summer.

"Because we're in the midst of a major troop rotation, we have a planned increase in the number of U.S. troops in the Centcom (Central Command) area of responsibility and, indeed, in Iraq," Rumsfeld said.

"We're taking advantage of that increase, and we will likely be managing the pace of the redeployments to allow those seasoned troops with experience and relationships with the local populations to see the current situation through," he said.


Rummy said there were "only" a couple of thousand insurgents out of a population of 25 million.

Haiti had "only" a couple of hundred insurgents out of a population of 7,100,000.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on April 7, 2004 - 7:43pm :: News