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Politics

President to expand size of military

By Washington Post
Published December 20, 2006

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that he plans to expand the size of the U.S. military to meet the challenges of a long-term global war against terrorists, a response to warnings that sustained deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the armed forces to near the breaking point.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Bush said he has instructed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to prepare a plan to increase ground forces. Bush gave no estimates about how many troops may be added.

Bush is rethinking his strategy in Iraq and considering, among other options, a short-term surge in troop levels to try to secure violence-torn Baghdad. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are resisting the idea during internal debates in part out of the conviction that it will further strain the forces.

A substantial military expansion will take years. But it would begin to address the growing alarm among commanders about the state of the armed forces. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, warned Congress last week that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of today's war-zone rotations. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said on Face the Nation on Sunday that "the active Army is about broken."

The Army already has temporarily increased its size from 482,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 to 507,000 today and soon to 512,000. But the Army wants to make that 30,000-soldier increase permanent and then expand by at least 7,000 per year. The Army estimates that every 10,000 additional soldiers will cost about $1.2-billion a year.

The incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee spoke out Tuesday for increasing the size of the Army and Marines, noting that their leaders describe the services as stretched and strained. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said "I think we have to ... strengthen the forces. I think that will be a major part of our work."

In describing his decision Tuesday, Bush tied it to the broader struggle against Islamic extremists around the world rather than Iraq. "It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace," he said.

[Last modified December 20, 2006, 01:11:47]