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U.S. Starts Drawing Plans to Cut Its Troops in Iraq
WASHINGTON, July 7 - With an interim Iraqi government now in place, the Pentagon is beginning long-range planning on how to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq, senior military officials said Wednesday.Pentagon officials have previously said that about 135,000 troops would stay in Iraq through 2005. But the military's Joint Staff is working on detailed plans to reduce that number by 2006, on the assumption that Iraqi Army and other security forces will be ready to take on more responsibility by then, officials said. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, the top operations officer for the Joint Staff, Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz of the Air Force, signaled that this thinking was well under way. When asked about planning for the size of the American force that will move into Iraq for yearlong assignments beginning in late 2005 and early 2006, he declined to give troop figures but said, "There is a significant planning effort that will wrap up later this summer." A senior defense official said later that the Joint Staff was developing options for a smaller force in Iraq, proposals that would be consistent with the goal of Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander in the Middle East, to reduce the American military presence in Iraq over time. Some officials said those options revolved around 100,000 troops, or fewer, but troop levels could increase if security in Iraq worsened. The continued American presence is a sore spot for the new Iraqi government as it seeks to establish credibility with the Iraqi people. And reducing it would lessen the strains placed on the United States Army by troop commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. For the first time, General Schwartz outlined the Pentagon's strategy for how Iraqi national guard and army forces could gradually replace American troops around the country, starting in the relatively stable north where he said security patrols would soon be conducted exclusively by Iraqi forces. In parts of the country where the insurgency is still fierce, American forces will remain in strength and conduct patrols on their own or with Iraqi troops. "The bottom line is, is that this will be done incrementally and it will be done in locations around Iraq where transitions can occur and the Iraqi security forces can be successful," said General Schwartz, who said that as Iraqi forces proved they could secure a region, American forces there would move to more restive areas. "We will cascade American forces from those locations to places where they can be better utilized," General Schwartz said. "And ultimately, naturally, we'll reduce the force structure in Iraq." How long American forces stay in Iraq and in what numbers will be driven by security conditions on the ground and how quickly Iraqi security forces establish themselves, senior military officers here and in Iraq said. The United States Army, which is providing the bulk of the troops in Iraq, is preparing worst-case contingency plans to keep troop numbers at their current levels of 135,000 to 140,000 for the next several years, if necessary. "We've got plans to do that for as long as it takes because this will be event-driven, not time-driven," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer'' on PBS on July 1. General Schwartz said Wednesday that, based on the experience of training indigenous forces in Afghanistan, it would be "several years" before Iraq would develop a full complement of security forces. But with one of the Army's most highly regarded officers, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, now overseeing the training and equipping of Iraqi forces, and a new four-star American commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., on the ground, military officials are expressing guarded confidence that American troop levels in Iraq may actually begin to decline rather than increase, as they have steadily over the last year. General Abizaid is expected to wait until at least September to give his assessment on whether troop levels can be adjusted up or down. Posted by: Steve White 2004-07-08 |
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