The U.S. military is reportedly examining ways in which it could increase its troop presence in Iraq to more than 140,000 until at least the spring of 2007, according to Pentagon officials. Anonymous Pentagon officials told the Washington Times newspaper that instead of planning to withdraw 30,000 soldiers and Marines this year, the Army and Marine Corps are developing plans to keep 40,000 troops above its baseline of 100,000 in Iraq during the next year. Under the current deployment cycle, in which troops deploy to Iraq for about a year and then return to the United States, the number of troops was to drop to 100,000 by next year, according to government projections. Now, however, the Army is considering diverting troops from Alaska and Kuwait to add to the Iraq deployment, the newspaper said. The Defense Department may accelerate the pace of deployments, or it may mean looking at calling up additional units, the paper quotes a Pentagon official as saying. The Pentagon is expected to wait until November, after the upcoming congressional elections, to identify which unit will go to Iraq next year, and to announce its longer-term solution to boost deployments. The move to increase troop numbers will be met with criticism not only by critics of the war, but also by military analysts, who worry that the U.S. army is now nearly stressed to the breaking point. The Times also said the constant battle conditions and harsh climate conditions of Iraq is ruining U.S. tanks and armored vehicles, as well as other equipment at such a fast pace that the Army has neither the money nor the industrial base to replace them. As a result, non-deployed combat brigades are experiencing low readiness ratings due mostly to a lack of usable weapons and equipment.
