Not enough U.S. troops to fight insurgents: senator

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-biden08.html
Not enough U.S. troops to fight insurgents: senator

August 8, 2005

BY JAMES TYSON Advertisement


The United States doesn't have enough military forces in Iraq to quell the
insurgency and only about 3,000 Iraqi troops are reliable in combat without
significant American support, Sen. Joseph Biden said Sunday.

After a week in which 32 U.S. military personnel were killed in fighting,
Biden, the senior Demo-crat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said
the forces deployed in Iraq are insufficient to drive insurgents from their
strongholds and stabilize the territory.

''We don't have enough troops,'' Biden, of Delaware, said on ''Fox News
Sunday." ''We haven't had it from two years ago, a year ago, six months
ago.''

Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations panel,
said the roadside bombings and guerrilla attacks by insurgents are
''confounding'' the United States and Iraqi military, though training of
Iraqi forces is proceeding.

More than 1,820 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq since the March 2003
invasion, and the Aug. 15 deadline for the drafting of a constitution may
increase pressure on the United States to come up with a timetable for
withdrawing.

The commander of American forces in the Middle East told Pentagon officials
that the United States may cut its force in Iraq by 20,000 to 30,000 by
early next year, the New York Times reported Sunday, citing unnamed senior
military officers and Defense Department officials. The United States now
has about 138,000 troops in the country.

Rice espouses political defeat



The U.S. must defeat Iraq's insurgents with more than just firepower,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Time
magazine. ''If you think about how to defeat an insurgency, you defeat it
not just militarily but politically.''

As the Iraq government strengthens and ''Iraqis every day accept the
political process as their future,'' the insurgents will increasingly be
''isolated from the population and they become nothing but a destructive
force,'' Rice told Time, says a report in its Aug. 15 issue.

President Bush repeated last week that U.S. troops won't withdraw until
Iraq's police and military forces are able to secure the country.

Among Iraq's army, ''fewer than 3,000 are able to take over totally without
U.S. support,'' said Biden, who has visited Iraq five times and in the past
has criticized the Defense Department for sending too few troops into the
country. ''There are then another 25,000 to 30,000 that with significant
U.S. support are able to do very useful things.''

Marathon talks on constitution



Meanwhile insurgent violence aimed at derailing Iraq's political efforts
killed three more American servicemen and at least 13 Iraqi civilians and
government employees across the country.

With only a week until the deadline for a new constitution, Iraqi political
leaders launched marathon negotiations Sunday seeking to overcome
formidable obstacles blocking agreement on the draft.

President Jalal Talabani, who hosted a first round, expressed optimism that
leaders from the Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish communities could reach
agreement by the Aug. 15 deadline.

But participants said meeting produced no breakthroughs.

Boomberg News with AP contributing

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