The Pentagon has ordered a comprehensive review of its Iraq strategy in the face of mounting casualties and an increasing strain on the United States army and its reserve ranks, it was reported on Friday.
A retired four-star general, Gary Luck, is due to arrive in Iraq next week to conduct an ”open-ended” rethink of tactics, troop levels and the training of Iraqi forces, reflecting growing concern in Washington over the resilience of the Iraqi insurgency.
”He will have a very wide canvas to draw on,” Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon spokesperson, told journalists. General Luck is due to report to the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, within a month.
”We’ve always known the insurgents were going to do everything they can to disrupt the elections, and that is going to continue through the elections, and even if the elections are successful, it is going to go through to the spring,” said Robert Killebrew, a retired army colonel and counter-insurgency specialist.
President Bush said on Friday: ”What you’re beginning to see is an assessment of how to make sure our policy dovetails with the elections in the post-election period
”And that’s precisely why the assessment team is going to Iraq: to make sure that, at this historic moment in the history of Iraq, there is a focused, determined strategy to help the new government to stand up the forces necessary to defend themselves.”
Three weeks before the Iraqi elections, the commander of US ground forces, Lieutenant General Thomas Metz, conceded that significant areas in four of the country’s 18 provinces, Baghdad, Anbar, Nineveh and Salahadin — all Sunni areas — were not secure enough to hold a vote.
A senior US officer in Baghdad warned on Friday that the violence could worsen dramatically, with the possibility of ”spectacular” attacks in the days before the election.
Brigadier General Erv Lessel was quoted by Associated Press as saying: ”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.”
One of the key issues General Luck will address is the training of Iraqi forces. They represent the key to the US exit strategy, but their numbers and performance so far have disappointed some American commanders. Just over 120 000 Iraqi troops and police have been trained. The target is 273 000.
Colonel Killebrew expressed concern at the Iraqi troops’ lack of modern equipment. ”We are putting an enormous strain on the fledgling Iraqi military,” he said. ”I don’t worry much about their training, but I do fear the things that the Iraqi army urgently needs have become mired in the procurement business.”
But Rumsfeld voiced confidence in the fledgling force. ”They have a counter-terrorist unit that has been extremely successful and the numbers keep growing,” he said on Friday.
”And despite the fact that they’ve taken some heavy losses … And yet, people are in line, ready to volunteer to participate in it. And I think over time, there is no solution other than having the Iraqi security forces be responsible for Iraq’s security.”
The US has 150 000 soldiers in Iraq, but if the insurgency continues with its current ferocity and the embryonic Iraqi forces continue to be overwhelmed by the scale of war, it will be hard to scale down its presence. Yet such high troop levels will be almost impossible to sustain without significant changes in policy.
One of the options being contemplated by the Pentagon is a permanent boost in the size of the army of 30 000 soldiers. The defence department is also considering longer and more frequent tours of duty for the national guard, a militia force under the control of state governments, and the army reserve, a 200 000-strong force of part-time soldiers.
Currently guardsmen and reservists can be called up for further service of two years. Changes under consideration would allow the Pentagon to draft them for two-year tours of duty at a time, with no limit on the total.
But stretching the reserve units yet further could worsen already poor morale. All the national guard’s combat brigades have now been used in Iraq, and recruitment is sharply down. – Guardian Unlimited Â