News analysis: Iraq war straining military, funds

WASHINGTON - The strain of fighting a counter-insurgency war in Iraq, on a scale not foreseen even a year ago and with no end in sight, is taking a startling toll on the American military.

The U.S. death count is rising - at least 1,350 in all, rising by 70 or more each month.

Costs are escalating - more than $1 billion a week, with the total now exceeding $100 billion.

And while Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a chief architect of the war, remains focused on his exit strategy - training Iraqis to provide their own defense, enabling U.S. troops to begin leaving - even he has recently used the term "bleak" to describe the situation.

Rumsfeld says he remains convinced that the only way out is to exercise patience and fortitude while a reliable Iraqi security force is developed. And U.S. military commanders in Iraq make almost daily pronouncements of optimism that the tide is beginning to turn against the insurgents.

Indeed, the Iraqi security forces are growing, in numbers at least, and U.S. forces continue to kill and capture insurgents, uncover and destroy arms caches and support the country's rebuilding. The administration hopes the Jan. 30 elections will mark a turning point for the better.

Yet, the Pentagon is so strapped to sustain a force of 150,000 troops in Iraq that some senior Army leaders are worried that the war - combined with the conflict in Afghanistan - is wearing out their soldiers.

The question is being raised: How does the military retain an all-volunteer force at the current level of U.S. commitment overseas?

One way, a senior Army official suggested, would be to spend an additional $3 billion a year to expand the Army by 30,000 soldiers. Another way would be to loosen restrictions on the use of the National Guard and Reserve, so they could be called to active duty for more than 24 total months of service, which is now the limit.

In putting together a force to rotate into Iraq starting this summer - the fourth rotation since the war began - the Army found itself with a smaller proportion of Guard and Reserves available because there just weren't enough left.

"We've tapped 'em out," the Army official said Thursday, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the manpower question has not been settled within the Pentagon.

The Army has about 135,000 soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait, and the official said that for planning purposes the service is figuring it will have to maintain that level for another four or five years. That's an astounding level of commitment, considering that the Army has many other obligations, including deterring war on the Korean peninsula and keeping peace in the Balkans.

And there is the "other" war - the one in Afghanistan, now in its fourth year.

When President Bush made the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein's government in March 2003, battlefield success came so quickly that military planners foresaw withdrawing 50,000 U.S. troops within weeks, with even more coming home in the fall of 2003. Instead, the size of the U.S. force there has actually grown and now stands at the highest level of the entire war.

Among the indicators of how deeply troubled the situation appears:

• Despite a long and determined effort to build a competent Iraqi security force that could take over for the U.S. troops, that linchpin of Rumsfeld's exit strategy is, at best, inching ahead. The Iraqi force is only half the size that U.S. commanders believe is needed to do the job.

• Despite a successful offensive in November against the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the rebels remain capable of killing U.S. troops and Iraqi police and soldiers in Baghdad, Mosul and elsewhere almost daily. A roadside bomb killed seven U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Thursday. On Friday, a police captain was killed in a drive-by shooting in Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, and gunmen shot to death a policeman walking near his house in Mosul.

• A U.S. military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, said Friday the worst may be yet to come. "I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections," Lessel said. "A year ago you didn't see these kinds of horrific things."