WASHINGTON — As prospects fade for U.S. force reductions in Iraq, Army and Marine commanders have been stepping up their warnings that the pace of troop deployments is increasingly straining the military and threatening to cause long-term damage.
According to Pentagon officials, senior officers in the Army and Marine Corps in recent weeks have begun warning that without a reduction in Iraq, the present schedule of combat tours would be difficult to sustain without an increase in the number of forces.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday September 24, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 43 words Type of Material: Correction
Troop deployment: An article in Thursday's Section A about U.S. troop levels in Iraq said that the Army National Guard currently had only one unit in Iraq. Actually, the National Guard has one combat brigade in Iraq, along with many other smaller units.
Army officials had been counting on a gradual drawdown in Iraq starting later this year and accelerating over the following 12 months.
But the rising violence in Baghdad forced the Pentagon to shelve those plans at the end of July, and Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, acknowledged publicly Tuesday that force levels would remain around the current 145,000 through spring.
One senior Pentagon official involved in long-term planning said the concerns had reached such a level that top Army leaders broached the issue of changing deployment rules to allow for more frequent call-ups of National Guard and Reserve units to relieve pressure on the active duty Army.
Because the Army relied heavily on the Guard and Reserve early in the war, many units have hit legal deployment limits, which allow for two years overseas out of every five. But without a change in those rules to allow more frequent Guard deployments, the Army would be forced to consider a push for an expansion of its active duty force, which stands at 504,000, the official said.
"You can start seeing the [effect of deployments] on the leadership of the active force," the official said, referring to limits on the use of Guard and Reserve troops. "That's the stress that we're having right now on this force."
Although most of the concerns regarding strains on the Marines and Army have been aired privately in the Pentagon, Abizaid told a group of military reporters this week that it would be difficult to find additional troops to send to Iraq to deal with insurgent violence in western Anbar province.
The Marine Corps has expressed less alarm about the high rate of deployments. Still, Defense officials said that in internal meetings, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the Corps' commandant, had begun discussing his need to focus on force levels out of concern that "significant personnel issues" could develop.
