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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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