Pentagon alerts 35,000 soldiers for Iraq deployment

Kim Gamel
HERALD-LEADER WIRE SERVICES

The Pentagon said yesterday that it had informed an additional 35,000 soldiers that they were likely to be heading to Iraq by December, a move that would allow the Army to maintain heightened American troop levels into next year.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the decision to alert the 10 Army brigades scheduled to deploy between August and December did not mean that the Bush administration had decided to extend the current reinforcement, a buildup of 30,000 troops that is expected to be completed in June. A decision on that issue will be made in September, officials said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other officials have made clear that reversing the American troop buildup was among the steps that could be taken by the end of the summer if Iraq’s government failed to make progress on legislation aimed at achieving reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Arabs. Overall American force levels in Iraq will reach close to 160,000 when all the additional units ordered to Iraq by President Bush arrive this summer.

Whitman said a reduction of that force later this year remained a possibility. The Pentagon “has been very clear that a decision about the duration of the surge will depend on conditions on the ground,” he said. The 10 brigades identified by the Pentagon yesterday include the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Brigades of the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky.

In Iraq yesterday, a suicide car bomber sent a fireball through a crowded market in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, killing at least 16 people and threatening to further stoke sectarian tensions in relatively peaceful areas south of Baghdad.

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