The US military will likely extend tours of some units in Iraq and deploy others with less than a year at home to train if the surge continues into early next year, a senior US commander said Wednesday.
General Lance Smith said it will be "very difficult" to sustain a beefed up force in Iraq with five additional US combat brigades into early 2008, as US commanders in Iraq have suggested may be necessary.
"If we're going to last past the summer I think we would at least have to look at some extensions," said Smith, who commands the Norfolk, Virginia-based US Forces Command.
Smith told defense reporters it was too early to say how long the extra forces will be required in Iraq, but his command has to plan to provide troops in a worst case situation.
He said a major constraint is the army's goal that troops have at least a year at home to train, reequip and rest between yearlong deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.
The army, which refers to the pause as "dwell time," worries that anything less will erode the readiness of deploying units and run down a force that is already stretched to the breaking point.
"I would say there is a high possibility we would break some dwell for some small number of units -- not a large (number), may be one, maybe three, I don't know -- if we extended into February," he said.
Currently, there are 142,000 troops in Iraq. Only two of a promised five additional US combat brigades have arrived in country, with the other three due by the end of May.
US military commanders have reported a fall-off in sectarian violence but Baghdad continues to be rocked by deadly suicide bombings.
