Should US draw down troops in Iraq?

"Our goal is to increasingly shift the responsibility for Iraqi security to the Iraqis themselves, as is already happening at a pace exceeding by far any recent past experience," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday. He said 85,000 Iraqi security personnel, including police and border guards, now work along with 24,000 non-US foreign troops.

Rotations will be driven by military commanders' assessment of security on the ground rather than a strict timeline, Mr. Rumsfeld stressed. However, many factors are pushing the Pentagon to stay on schedule: low morale among many troops and rising public pressure to bring them home, as well as the complex logistics of deployment and the limited replacements available.

"We've made a commitment to the American service member that he is going to be here for one year.... And that's what we are going to live up to," General Sanchez said earlier this month.

With almost half of its combat units in Iraq, the Army's active-duty component alone cannot sustain current force levels past March if it limits tours to a year and maintains a 3-to-1 ratio of deployed to nondeployed troops, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report.

Congress has moved recently to boost the Army's ranks. The Senate passed an amendment to the Iraq supplemental funding bill last week that would increase the Army's total manpower, or "end strength," by 10,000. Legislation also passed the House in May that would add 6,000 new positions for high-priority shortfalls in the military as a whole.

Rumsfeld, however, has opposed the Army increase as too costly, and noted that new troops would not be ready for two years.

To meet immediate demands, the Pentagon has mobilized three Army National Guard brigades and plans to call up Reserve support units in coming weeks. It is also considering new Marine Corps deployments, breaking with the past decade's reliance on the Army for peacekeeping and stabilization missions. The rotation will change the mix of US ground forces, with mobile infantry in Humvees and light armored vehicles increasingly replacing tanks and other heavy armored units, commanders say.

Foreign-troop contributions to Iraq could grow with passage of a UN resolution calling for financial and military support of reconstruction. However, a new multinational division may not materialize in time to replace the 101st Airborne, set to leave northern Iraq in February or March.

Meanwhile, handing over security duties to Iraqis following minimal training is risky, experts say. "I'm not sure there's a comfort level across the board that [Iraqi security forces] are ready yet. [US commanders] on the ground are skeptical," says Gordon Rudd, a military historian who returned from Iraq in August after working there for the US-led coalition.

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