Stretching The Troops In Iraq

The army has spent much of the past several months, in the words of a senior Army officer, "looking under rocks for every spare soldier" to send to Iraq. It took formal action last week to stretch its troop strength as far as possible. According to the so-called stop-loss order, soldiers will be kept in uniform for an extra three months before and after their units' one-year stint in Iraq or Afghanistan. By unilaterally extending their enlistments by as much as 18 months, the policy will force tens of thousands of soldiers to put personal plans on hold. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry calls it a "back-door draft."

The Army has already taken several steps to stretch the strapped forces. It has kept units in Iraq beyond the one year that the Army originally pledged that they would be there and has tapped into the ranks of reservists and retirees to bulk up the overall Army force from 480,000 to 640,000. Now it wants to send crack units from California's National Training Center and Louisiana's Joint Readiness Training Center to Iraq, which some fear could hurt prewar training at home.

But will these measures be enough to avoid sending still more troops to Iraq? The official line is yes, but privately many senior officers are dubious. "We don't have a strategic reserve anywhere in Iraq," frets a Central Command officer, referring to a lack of U.S. reinforcements in that country. A briefing delivered recently to top U.S. military officers in Iraq put it bluntly: "Inadequate forces if situation deteriorates." U.S. commanders say that if things go south, they can get reinforcements from U.S. bases. "We've got enough here for the 90% probability," a senior Army officer in Baghdad says. It's the other 10% that's keeping some U.S. officers up nights.

--By Mark Thompson