Administration Pressed to Increase Troop Strength in Iraq
Pressure Coming From Republican and Democratic Congressional Leaders
By Robin Wright and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 6, 2004; 4:06 PM
The Bush administration is coming under intensified pressure from both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders to boost U.S. troop strength in Iraq and win wider international support to handle what is widely viewed as a deteriorating security situation there.
Faced with the prospect that U.S. troops could have to fight on two fronts against Sunni Muslim insurgents and followers of a Shiite religious firebrand, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that commanders in Iraq would get additional troops if they requested them. He said Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command and the overall commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, regularly reviews force requirements with his generals in Iraq.
"They are the ones whose advice we follow on these things," Rumsfeld said at an appearance in Norfolk with the secretary general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. "They will decide what they need, and they will get what they need."
But Rumsfeld said that to date, there has been "no change" in plans for troop deployment. He said that the number deployed now, about 135,000, is unusually high because some are arriving and some are leaving, creating a temporary overlap. The military is using "the excess," but the deployment level is still set for about 115,000, he said.
A senior military officer said Pentagon planning currently is limited to repositioning U.S. forces already in the region and does not involve dispatching more troops from the United States, Washington Post staff writers Bradley Graham and Robin Wright reported in today's editions.
With fresh U.S. military units still pouring into Iraq as part of a rotation begun earlier this year, officials noted that the number of troops in the country is higher than it has been in months.
Pentagon officials rejected suggestions that the military situation in Iraq was tumbling into deeper crisis, although several acknowledged that the militancy by Moqtada Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, and his militia, the Mahdi Army, posed a particularly worrisome development.
At his appearance in Norfolk, Rumsfeld said it was possible that NATO, which has 6,500 troops in Afghanistan in a peacekeeping role, could deploy forces to Iraq to help out there as well. He said he would be "delighted to see" NATO play a larger role in both countries.
Rumsfeld's remarks came after senators from both parties called on the Pentagon yesterday to ensure that there are enough troops in Iraq to ensure that the United States can transfer political power to Iraqis by June 30 as scheduled and create conditions for the entry of NATO forces.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned yesterday that the United States is now "dangerously close" to losing control on the ground in Iraq.
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