US planners worry about soldier replacements

Faced with the problem of protecting upcoming elections and securing former insurgent strongholds, a US military spokesperson told NBC news, "It will need between 10,000 and 11,000 more troops in Iraq."

The purported increase will bring the total number of US forces in Iraq to 150,000.

As a result many soldiers and marines who were scheduled to leave Iraq this month will have to stay longer, while other troops will be sent to Iraq earlier than scheduled.

The military also reports on the difficulties these 10,000 new troops are likely to face protecting all 9,000 polling places in Iraq.

However, US Army General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command and the top solider in Iraq and Afghanistan, denied that US forces are stretched too thin around the world, and warned countries like Iran and North Korea not to think they could take advantage of the situation.

But other media sources said that, "army and marine commanders already have used up most of their bag of tricks to find troops for the usual rotations to Iraq".

Gulf News has learned that the army seems hard-pressed to find enough officers for staff jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan and will double the length of their tours in those countries from 179 days at present to a full 12 months.

Other extraordinary steps ordered or under consideration include pulling officers out of military schools or delaying entry into such programmes.

They could also curtail family oriented programmes such as the one that allows soldiers to extend their tours at a stateside base so their children can finish their senior year in high school.

The army is struggling to fill hundreds of staff jobs for majors and lieutenant colonels in war zone headquarters and in the past month began stripping majors and lieutenant colonels from their Pentagon billets and ordering them to Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to Pentagon sources, those enlisted in the army, including those who are in non-combat jobs, are slated to receive new kind of training. This suggests that the idea of a non-combat job is no longer relevant in the kind of wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the new recruits, they were expected to be trained to learn an army trade, to make important contributions to "reconstruction" while keeping a safe distance from enemy lines.

Upon deployment however, "they were learning to avoid landmines, survive an ambush and spot roadside bombs disguised as cans of Coke," according to the source.

Retired Army General Randall L. Rigby, a former deputy commandant in charge of training, described the recruits as having to go "from being a high school kid to a soldier on the ground in Iraq, and if they get ambushed, they have to know hand-to-hand combat." He added, "The old chestnut that only the infantry takes the blows is gone."

One of the biggest problems the military faces is how to keep enough soldiers in places like Fallujah in order "to prevent insurgents from coming back," while still pressuring them in other places in Iraq.

There is also some confusion over the number of daily attacks since US troops entered Fallujah, with interim Prime Minister Eyad Allawi saying the attacks have dropped to about 50 a day, while US military sources acknowledge that such attacks have doubled to more than 100 a day.