Army Chief Calls for Troop Increase
Associated Press | December 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - As President George W. Bush weighs new strategies for Iraq, the Army's top general warned Thursday that his force "will break" without thousands more active duty troops and greater use of the reserves.
Noting the strain put on the Army by operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the fight against terrorism, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said he wants to increase his half-million-member force beyond the 30,000 troops already added in recent years.
Though he did not give an exact number, the Army chief of staff said it would take significant time and commitment by the nation, noting some 6,000 to 7,000 soldiers could be added per year.
Officials also need greater authority to tap into the National Guard and Reserve, long ago set up as a strategic reserve but now needed as an integral part of the nation's deployed forces, Schoomaker told a congressional commission studying possible changes in those two forces.
"Over the last five years, the sustained strategic demand ... is placing a strain on the Army's all-volunteer force," Schoomaker told the commission.
"At this pace ... we will break the active component" unless reserves can be called up more, Schoomaker said.
Schoomaker's comments come as Bush reviews options for the foundering Iraq war, including suggestions he send more U.S. troops to the increasingly violent country and accelerate the training of Iraq's own security forces.
Schoomaker spoke to the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves National, a panel of 13 that is doing a yearlong review of how the nation should be using the National Guard and Reserves and whether the units are properly trained and equipped for their changing roles on the home front and the front lines abroad.
Pentagon policy says officials can deploy reserves for 24 months, which official have been interpreting as a total of 24 months. But some say it should be reinterpreted as 24 consecutive months, which would allow them to deploy troops for two years, bring them home for a while, then send them out for another two years.
As for changes in the active duty force, Congress after the start of the war on terror approved a temporary increase of 30,000 troops on a temporary basis. That boosted the authorized size of the Army to 512,000 from a previously approved 482,000 soldiers.
Schoomaker testified Thursday after Bush held three days of urgent meetings with top generals and other advisers. Over that time, Bush gathered advice from former and current commanders, including those in Iraq, as well as chiefs of the military services and other top Pentagon leaders.
He even heard from outside advisers who suggested he remove Marine Gen. Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to an official familiar with the meeting who asked not to be named because the discussions were private.
But Bush made it clear he will not map out a new war strategy until his new defense secretary, Robert Gates, has taken over and offered his counsel. And that new plan, he said, will not include giving up.
"The stakes are too high and the consequences too grave to turn Iraq over to extremists who want to do the American people and the Iraqi people harm," Bush said Wednesday, after a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gates.
There are competing schools of thought inside the military and the administration on whether a short-term increase in U.S. troop strength in Iraq - possibly in the range of 20,000 - would be enough to quell the sectarian warfare in Baghdad.
Some generals believe it would be too little, too late, in a war that already has claimed more than 2,900 U.S. lives.
Bush's very public effort to recalibrate the war effort comes with growing public pressure generated by the November elections that put Democrats in control of Congress and led to Rumsfeld's ouster.
The president said he would present his plans for a "new way forward" in Iraq early next year, while continuing to support the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose ability to forge a viable governing coalition is questioned privately by some administration officials.
None of his comments sounded like a prelude to withdrawing substantial number of U.S. troops over the coming year, as was recommended by the Iraqi Study Group, a bipartisan commission that studied war options since March.
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