Bloomberg September 24, 2004
Rumsfeld Says Troop Level Adequate for Current, Future Missions
By Tony Capaccio
Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the U.S. has sufficient troops to handle its current missions in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as others that may arise.
Rumsfeld's remark follows a Pentagon study cited in Congress yesterday concluding that U.S. forces could be spread too thin, leaving the U.S. unable to respond to future crises.
``I am not concerned,'' said Rumsfeld. While nothing in the study was ``novel or new,'' the issue ``is an important subject that it's our responsibility to think about and plan for.''
U.S. forces in Iraq are battling to help the interim government regain control of cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi ahead of planned elections in January. The U.S. has 1.4 million troops, of which 230,000 are serving abroad, including about 138,000 in Iraq and 17,000 in Afghanistan. That includes the biggest callup of Reserve and National Guard troops since the Vietnam War.
President George W. Bush, who has faced criticism by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry over his handling of the war in Iraq, also is confronting potential crises in Iran and North Korea. Both countries are pursuing nuclear weapons, the Bush administration says.
``We have the capabilities of fulfilling the missions that the United States military is called upon to perform and likely to be called upon to perform,'' Rumsfeld said today.
The Pentagon study, by the Defense Science Board, is ongoing. At a hearing yesterday of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, quoted excerpts from the report taken from Inside the Pentagon, a trade publication on the military.
`Startling Conclusion'
The report reached ``a very startling conclusion -- inadequate numbers of troops,'' Reed said.
Even if the U.S. took steps to better prepare conventional combat troops for peacekeeping, nation-building and operations that stabilize a nation's political situation, the strain on the military will continue to grow if the U.S. undertakes missions every two years, the assessment said, according to Reed.
``They conclude by saying anything started wrong tends to continue wrong,'' Reed said.
``If everything we recommend is implemented over the next five years but we continue our current foreign policy of military expeditions every two years, we will begin two more stabilization operations without sufficient preparation or resources,'' the science board report said, according to Reed.
Reed is the foremost congressional supporter of increasing the Army by about 20,000, a move that is pending in the fiscal 2005 version of the defense budget that authorizes military programs.
Incomplete Picture
Rumsfeld said the study was a ``good piece of work'' that he's sharing with military chiefs worldwide. It represents an incomplete picture, however, of the Pentagon's attempts to lessen the stress on the force and rearrange it for future missions, Rumsfeld said.
The Army has about 495,000 active-duty troops. That includes 10,000 added under Rumsfeld's directive to increase the force by 30,000 through 2007. There are at least three initiatives in Congress that could make this temporary increase permanent.
The U.S. plans to keep at least 138,000 troops in Iraq through 2005. A plan to cut the force to between 105,000 and 115,000 troops after political power was turned over to an interim Iraqi government June 30 was scrapped in the face of renewed insurgencies.
The military's moves to reorder itself to create more deployable units are part of an effort to free up more resources while avoiding the politically unpalatable options, said John Pike, a defense analyst at Globalsecurity.org.
``They'll do whatever it takes to avoid a draft,'' Pike said. ``That's why this is an important question.''
© Copyright 2004, Bloomberg L.P.
