US may increase Iraq force by delaying departures

Washington, July 27: The US military, faced with unrelenting violence in Baghdad, may boost its force in Iraq by delaying the scheduled departure of some troops involved in routine rotations, officials said on Wednesday.

As has been done periodically during the 3-year-old war, the military would temporarily increase the size of the US force by extending the overlap between newly arriving units and those leaving.

One defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been announced, said the idea would be to create ''a momentary overlap of at least a brigade'' -- meaning roughly 3,500 troops. Another official said the increase might be ''from the low 3,000s to the high 4,000s.'' This was the latest indication that any significant cut in the US force of about 130,000 in Iraq may be unlikely in the immediate future.

President George W. Bush said on Tuesday at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that more US and Iraqi troops would be deployed in Baghdad from other parts of Iraq to try to curb sectarian violence in the capital amid concern that the country is sliding toward civil war.

US Army units generally serve one-year tours in Iraq, and Marine Corps units generally serve seven-month stints.

But at key times in the war -- for example during Iraqi elections in 2005 and during the return of sovereignty in 2004 -- the Pentagon has delayed the departure of thousands of troops to beef up the American presence temporarily.

''We've got units constantly flowing in and out,'' one official said.

Another official said there was concern over keeping troops, facing stress and peril, longer than they had expected.

''It's always painful to try to tell a unit they are staying longer than they were supposed to stay,'' this official said.

War Support Eroding

Opinion polls show eroding U.S. public support for the war and Bush's handling of it as congressional elections approach in November. The U.S. military death toll in the war, which began in March 2003, stood at 2,565 on Wednesday, with 19,157 wounded, the Pentagon said.

Soldiers from an Army brigade from Fort Lewis in Washington state have begun arriving in Iraq, and soldiers from another Army brigade based in Germany are due soon, officials said. In May, the military put on hold the Germany-based brigade's deployment to Iraq amid talk of cutting the U.S. force, but earlier this month it was given the order to deploy.

Army Gen. George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, last month expressed confidence that the military would be able to cut the size of the U.S. force there over the rest of the year. Defense officials months ago had said one option was to drop to about 100,000 troops.

But Bush, Casey and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have emphasized that reductions in the US force depended on the security situation in Iraq and the development of US-trained Iraqi government security forces.

Reuters

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