Digging In For A Fight

• Share

(6 of 6)

The Pentagon can handle its immediate needs by delaying the rotations of soldiers who were supposed to be home by now and sending back to Iraq ahead of schedule those who have already gone home. But the admission that in the end more troops may be needed for a longer time than anyone had planned put some basic military issues on the table. Democratic Senator Joseph Biden and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel raised the possibility that a volunteer military may not be sufficient going forward. Pentagon officials remain opposed to restoring the draft, abolished in 1973, confident that an older and more experienced enlisted force performs better than younger, revolving-door draftees. "I don't know anyone in the Executive Branch of the government who believes that it would be appropriate or necessary to reinstitute the draft," Rumsfeld said. Churning military manpower through a draft, he has long argued, yields less experienced soldiers at a higher cost.

For now, Pentagon officials say they are still meeting their manpower targets. In the Army Reserve, for instance, a 7% shortfall in re-enlistments was offset by an excess of new recruits. Still, the demands on soldiers and their families are being felt in communities all across the country, and members of Congress were hearing about it from their constituents during recess. "Iraq was the No. 1 issue on people's minds," says Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins. Her state has the third highest rate of deployed National Guard members and reserves in the country. One reserve unit, the 94th Military Police Company, has been deployed overseas on active duty for 2 1/2 of the past four years. The reservists were finally scheduled to come home on Easter weekend, but their tour was extended three months. "To make matters worse," Collins says, "they literally were on a bus on their way to the plane that was going to take them back to the U.S." when orders came to turn around and return to their base camp. "This war feels very close and very personal to those of us in Maine," she says. "It doesn't feel distant."

--Reported by Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington and Andrew Lee Butters, Simon Robinson and Paul Quinn-Judge/Baghdad, with other bureaus