Powell Says U.S. Army `About Broken' Because of Iraq (Update1)
By Paul Basken and Nadine Elsibai
Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said the U.S. Army is ``about broken'' from the Iraq conflict and cast doubt on whether the military could or should boost the number of troops in the country.
``There really are no additional troops'' to send, Powell said on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program. ``The current active Army is not large enough and the Marine Corps is not large enough for the kinds of missions they are being asked to perform.''
Powell, 69, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War and the nation's chief foreign policy official during President George W. Bush's first term, said the war has made the U.S. ``a little less safe'' because it has limited the military's ability to respond to another crisis.
The U.S. is at a crossroads in Iraq as Bush reviews assessments from outside experts and administration advisers in preparation for announcing his next steps in Iraq after the first of the year.
Among the options the president is considering is sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops to Iraq temporarily, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported last week, citing unidentified administration officials. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona has been the leading congressional advocate for such an increase, saying the U.S. never committed enough troops to the war to accomplish the mission.
Tried Before
``We have tried this surge of troops over the summer'' and it didn't work, Powell said, referring to an operation in which the U.S. shifted more troops into Baghdad to help local forces break a cycle of attacks and reprisals between Sunni and Shiite Muslim factions. The U.S. military has acknowledged that effort wasn't successful as bombings and other violence in the capital continues.
Additions to the 140,000 U.S. military personnel now in Iraq would have to be created by extending duty tours for some soldiers and Marines already there or accelerating the arrival of forces scheduled to go, Powell said. He said he agreed with General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, who told lawmakers last week that the Iraq war has strained the military's ability to wage the global war on terrorism.
Spreading Problem
``All of my contacts within the Army suggest that the Army has a serious problem in the active force, and it's a problem that will spread into the Guard and Reserves,'' Powell said.
Any proposal to add forces should be made with a ``clear'' mission outlined and a definite schedule for how long they will be there, Powell said. The U.S. military can't quell the sectarian violence in the country, a task that must be accomplished by the Iraqis, he said.
Powell said the bipartisan Iraq Study Group was correct in its assessment that the situation in Iraq is ``grave and deteriorating.'' The independent commission said the U.S. should set a goal of pulling back most combat troops by early 2008 and focus on training Iraqi police and military forces.
One of those recommending a troop increase to the president is retired Army General Jack Keane. He said on ABC's ``This Week'' program that an additional 25,000 American forces should be sent to the Iraqi capital. Another 10,000 are needed in the Anbar province, another hotspot of sectarian fighting, he said.
The buildup would give Iraqi leaders the time needed to devise a political and economic solution to the sectarian conflict, Keane said. Completing the military mission would take about a year, he said.
`Protection Force'
``Our problem in the past, in Fallujah, in Samarra, twice in Baghdad, has always been the same,'' Keane said. ``We've ran the insurgents out, and we never put the protection force in to secure the people.''
A political leader of Iraq's minority Sunni population, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, said his country's security forces are incapable of protecting civilians in Baghdad from militia groups without more U.S. help.
``Iraqi troops, across the board, they are insufficient, incompetent, and many of them are corrupted,'' Hashemi, who met with Bush at the White House last week, said on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program.
He faulted the U.S. for disbanding the Iraqi Army after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003.
In the latest violence, more than 25 Iraqi Red Crescent aid agency workers were abducted today from their Baghdad office by a gang of 50 gunmen wearing police uniforms, Agence France- Presse reported. In addition, the U.S. announced that three soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb near Baghdad yesterday.
Congressional Divide
Two senior U.S. Senate Democrats indicated their party is divided on the idea of temporarily dispatching more troops.
Nevada Senator Harry Reid, due to become majority leader next month, said on ABC's ``This Week'' program he would support a surge of American forces for two or three months as part of a larger plan to withdraw combat troops by 2008. Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a separate interview on ``Fox News Sunday'' that such a proposal would be rejected in Congress and at the Defense Department.
``If the commanders on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we'll go along with that,'' Reid said. Kennedy said ``there is going to be opposition to that'' among members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and military leaders at the Pentagon.
Democrats won control of Congress in last month's midterm elections in part because of public dissatisfaction with Bush's handling of the war. More than half of Americans want to set a schedule to withdraw all troops, a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll found. By 62 percent to 35 percent, Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of the war, the Dec. 8-11 survey found. |
