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Black Elk · Guest

Posted on Thu, Mar. 08, 2007

Surge to involve more troops, last longer

By Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The expansion of U.S. military operations in Iraq will
involve more troops than what President Bush announced in January and is
likely to last well into 2008, recent statements from U.S. officials in
Washington and the top military commander in Iraq indicate.

Gen. David Petraeus, who assumed command of coalition troops in Iraq a month
ago, has received permission to send 2,200 military police to Iraq. That's
in addition to the 21,500 soldiers and Marines that Bush said would be sent
to Iraq to pacify Baghdad and confront Sunni insurgents in Anbar province.

In addition, as many as 7,000 more troops are likely to be sent to Iraq to
provide support for the originally announced 21,500 troops, Deputy Secretary
of Defense Gordon England told a congressional committee earlier this week.

Petraeus, in his first news conference since assuming command, on Thursday
defended the increase in manpower, saying the need for additional forces in
Iraq was "always anticipated" and was the natural result of the decision to
send in the 21,500 combat troops.

"What we did was, we focused the combat formations," Petraeus said. "And
what has been asked for, subsequent to the combat formations, is the typical
enablers that go with combat formations."

Among those, Petraeus said, are "additional aviation assets, additional
military police, additional military intelligence - the whole gamut of
enablers."

Petraeus also confirmed a report from The New York Times that he and the No.
2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, had discussed
maintaining higher troop levels until at least February of next year, though
he said no decision has been made.

"I don't know that you would call that yet a `recommendation,'" Petraeus
said. But he said he'd asked Odierno to start drafting options "because it
is something that we would like to be considering early, rather than as the
decision starts to stare us in the face."

Less than two months ago, Petraeus' predecessor in Iraq, Gen. George Casey,
said that a troop withdrawal could begin as early as this fall.

The likelihood that more U.S. troops will be dispatched to Iraq and kept
there at least into 2008 is all but certain to intensify debate in
Washington over the expansion of the U.S. presence. On Thursday, Democrats
in Congress said they would introduce legislation that would require U.S.
troops to be out of Iraq by the fall of 2008.

In announcing the original troop increase in a nationally televised speech
on Jan. 10, Bush made no mention of the possibility of sending additional
troops later. But Petraeus said Thursday that he'd been told since he first
began discussing the commander's job in Iraq that he could request more
troops if he felt they were needed.

"When I sat down with the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs before taking the job - and reaffirmed very recently by the
chairman - they have said when you determine additional requirements, tell
us," he said. "My job is to understand the mission very clearly, make sure
we have the same understanding of it and then to request the forces that we
need to perform that mission."

It was unclear how many more troops might be sent to Iraq. At a news
conference in Washington on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
said Petraeus had made additional troop requests that were being considered.

Petraeus offered no specifics on Thursday, but he said he had no plans now
to request more than what he'd already asked for.

He also indicated that less violence in Iraq wouldn't necessarily lead to
his recommending that troops be withdrawn.

"You could ask that you increase them, actually, for good reasons, as well
as, perhaps, not good reasons," Petraeus said. "One would be to reinforce
success."

Petraeus added that an increased U.S. troop presence wouldn't be limited to
Baghdad and Anbar, and that a priority area for additional troops would be
Diyala province. Sunni insurgents have been mounting a fierce campaign for
months against both government forces and Shiite militias in the province,
which is northeast of Baghdad. Petraeus didn't say where the additional
troops would come from.

"Obviously I'm not going to tell you specifically when, where and all the
rest of that because we'd like to have that as a surprise to some folks who
are there," Petraeus said.

Diyala has been the scene of some of the most brutal violence in the last
year by Sunni insurgents affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq. That trend
continued Thursday with gunmen killing an elderly woman and her two sons,
shooting a police officer and killing a man taken from a bus. Police
reported finding a severed head northwest of Baqouba, the province's
capital.

The violence was in sharp contrast to the peace that reigned in Baghdad,
where police reported no deaths related to sectarian violence and, for the
first time in months, reported no unidentified corpses turning up on city
streets.

Violence also appeared to have dropped against Shiite pilgrims marching to
the city of Karbala. At least 167 pilgrims have died in attacks since
Monday, but there were no reports of deaths Thursday.

More than 4 million pilgrims are expected in Karbala by Saturday, when
they'll mark the 40th day after the massacre in the 7th century of the
Prophet Muhammad's grandson.

Members of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr, could be seen along the road to Karbala from Hilla, where
at least 123 pilgrims died in a suicide bombing Tuesday, and Najaf.

The militiamen wore their black uniforms but were unarmed as they stopped
cars and searched them.

"The government's response after terrorists shoot at marching pilgrims
should be burning the homes to the ground with everything inside, destroying
them and turning them into an icon for the martyrs," said Mohammed Ali
al-Moussawi, a Mahdi Army commander. "Everyone who shoots at a pilgrim or an
innocent should be executed immediately with no investigation."

A roundup of violence in Iraq is posted daily at www.mcclatchydc.com. Click
on "Iraq war coverage."

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