Posted on: Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Relief in the works for troops in Iraq
Advertiser Staff and News Services
U.S. Army leaders are preparing to announce as early as today a plan to start relieving exhausted troops in Iraq with thousands of soldiers from U.S.-based units and an additional 10,000 National Guard members who will be called to active duty.
A brigade of the 25th Infantry Division (Light) may serve a tour in Afghanistan at year's end, but Schofield Barracks officials yesterday said no deployment orders have been received for either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu, said military planners may be hesitant to commit soldiers from the 25th to Iraq because it might send the wrong message about a Korean commitment.
The Hawai'i-based division is a backup force for a North Korean contingency. Two brigades at Schofield were among a handful that the Pentagon recently said could be deployed to Iraq.
"I don't think the 25th gets a total free pass because of Korea — nor do I think they'll be needed for Korea, since I don't see us going down that path," Cossa said. "I would think that probably an argument is made somewhere that these guys should be the last to go because of their earmark status. But if I were them, I'd be studying Arabic on the weekends."
The deployments to be announced today will be part of a detailed, two-year plan to ensure that units in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries where the United States has peacekeeping forces are rotated home after one year.
Military informants told Knight Ridder News Service that acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane will designate both active-duty and Army National Guard units to be placed on the list to deploy to Iraq. The informants spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The plan will require the call-up of two specially trained "enhanced brigades" of the Army National Guard for one-year tours in Iraq, in addition to three active-duty brigades also destined for Iraq as replacements. The 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, will play a key part in Keane's rotation and assignment plans.
There are 15 enhanced brigades nationwide capable of deploying within 90 days of activation, including the 29th Separate Infantry Brigade of the Hawai'i Army National Guard.
About 2,100 Hawai'i-based soldiers, 90 percent of them part-timers, are part of the unit, which also draws elements from California, Oregon and Minnesota.
Hawai'i National Guard spokesman Maj. Chuck Anthony said yesterday that no "warning order" has been received of a call-up. More than 50 mostly citizen soldiers from Company B, 193rd Aviation, of the Hawai'i Army National Guard recently were tapped for duty in Afghanistan.
The force rotation would be designed so that units in Iraq would know who is destined to replace them and, more importantly, when.
There are more than 200,000 National Guard and reserve troops of all services on active duty out of a total part-time force of 900,000. These fresh call-ups of two 5,000-man brigades could put additional pressures on the National Guard, which is under increasing strain from longer and more frequent tours of active service.
The three active-duty brigades likely to be tapped for Iraq duty this year are a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., a new experimental Stryker armored vehicle-equipped brigade of the 2nd Division based at Fort Lewis, Wash., and a brigade of the 1st Armored Division based at Fort Riley, Kan.
The scramble to find replacement units for Iraq duty is stark evidence of how thin the 480,000-strong American Army is stretched. Of its 33 active-duty brigades, 21 are deployed overseas: 16 in Iraq, two in Afghanistan, two in South Korea and one in Bosnia. All but three of the rest either are preparing for one of those missions, recovering and retraining after one of those missions, or held in reserve.
In addition to units tapped for Iraq assignments, a brigade of the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., is rotating to Afghanistan shortly to replace a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division.
The military informants said Keane's announcements would be detailed and were intended to provide the forces that Gen. John Abizaid of the U.S. Central Command needs to continue progress toward reconstruction in Iraq.
They also will buy "time for building up the coalition forces and standing up the Iraqi police and army," one military official said. "We have a two-year window to fix Iraq. This plan addresses that reality."
Advertiser staff writer William Cole contributed information on Hawai'i units. Knight Ridder News Service correspondent Joseph Galloway contributed from Washington.
