WASHINGTON — The burden of fighting the war in Iraq increasingly will fall upon America’s citizen-soldiers under a Pentagon plan announced Thursday. The plan is expected to mobilize up to 43,000 part-time reservists in the coming months, roughly doubling their share in a U.S. force whose overall size will shrink next spring.
The second phase of the U.S. occupation will see the 130,000 U.S. troops there now coming home, with 105,000 others sent to replace them by May, according to the Pentagon. The planned reduction comes as attacks on American forces have been growing in intensity and sophistication.
With the Army stretched thin and foreign nations rejecting U.S. pleas to send troops to Iraq, the Pentagon must turn to National Guard and reserve units to pick up the slack, despite worries from congressional leaders that the part-time units are strained and that recruitment and re-enlistment will suffer.
By May, reservists in Iraq will increase to 39,000 from the current 28,000, growing to 40 percent of the force. By then, 66,000 active-duty troops are expected to be in Iraq, down from 102,000 now.
In addition, the Pentagon expects to send two successive groups of 20,000 from the 1st Marine Division for seven-month rotations in western Iraq, giving them peacekeeping and stabilization duties far different from the Marines’ usual mission of seizing and holding territory.
Pentagon leaders said they had little choice but to step up the use of reserve components in the face of continued violence in Iraq and a broader war against terror around the globe.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war. This is not peacetime," Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz said of the new deployment program.
The planned reduction in U.S. forces is based in part on the belief that Iraqi security forces — now numbering 118,000, up from 85,000 just last week — can take over security duties.
That view has come under fire from Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam veteran who sits on the Armed Services Committee and who said this week that the United States should send 10,000 to 15,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq to help with intelligence-gathering and pre-emptive raids to stop attacks on U.S. forces.
"There is no doubt the problem is getting worse rather than better, so to announce we’re going to reduce our troop level in the coming months is the wrong signal to send to the bad people," McCain said Thursday.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
