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| Iraqi forces to be doubled in size within a year
BAGHDAD, Sept 5 (AFP) - The US-led coalition plans to nearly double the size of the Iraqi security forces, senior US officials said here Friday. The increase is planned within the next year to counter threats posed by Baathists and foreign terrorists now operating inside the country. BizVantage – Personalized business, investment or technology Intelligence: the ultimate advantage. Paul Bremer, the US overseer in Iraq, announced the new goals after a day with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visiting troops in Tikrit and Mosul. Bremer told reporters: "It would be realistic to say in a year we would have 90,000 to 100,000 Iraqis" under arms. That would include a 15,000-member army, as many as 25,000 border guards, and a police force that would fall just short of 75,000, he said at a press conference with Rumsfeld and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US commander in Iraq. At present, there are about 55,000 Iraqis in the security forces, mainly the police. The move to rapidly put an Iraqi face on what until now has been a US-dominated post-war occupation has come amid growing alarm in the United States over steadily rising US casualties, bombings and a sense of slipping control over the country. During his stops around the country, Rumsfeld highlighted the progress that has been made and bristled at suggestions he was painting too rosy a picture of the situation here. "To constantly suggest there are rose-colored glasses where everything is going well is just utter nonsense," he said. Sanchez said attacks around the country have gone down slightly to around 14 or 15 a day, but he said the nature of the threat was not one that required more US forces on the ground. "I don't need any more forces here. There is no tactical threat, there is no strategic or operational threats to the coalition, to Americans," he said. "One battalion of combat power, either coalition elements or United States forces can accomplish, can meet any threat that may surface in the coming months," he said. Sanchez said it was not known who carried out last month's car bomings at the Jordanian embassy, UN headquarters in Baghdad, and at a Shiite shrine in the southern city of Najaf. But he viewed the attacks, which have left key leaders and scores of others dead, as "a natural evolution of the threats that we are facing over time." "Increasingly the threat has been getting a little bit more sophisticated over time," he said, adding that foreign terrorists could be working with remnants of the Baathist regime. The Lebanese Hezbollah were among the foreign groups now operating inside the country, Sanchez told reporters later. He suggested that the improvised explosive devices that have been used in many of the more recent attacks reflect the skills and tactics brought in by foreign terrorist groups. "This is the most difficult intelligence target there is in the world," Bremer said. "But as we get Iraqis more and more involved in the police, the army, civil defense, the border patrols, we are going to find much more actionable intelligence being brought in," he said. "Because these terorists being brought in, the al-Qaeda front, are not Iraqis they are foreiGners," he said. Sanchez said a reflection of the progress is that Iraqis are coming forward with more tip-offs. In the US Army's 4th Infantry Divisions area around Tikrit, he said there have been cases where Iraqis have killed people they suspect of attacking US forces. "They dropped the bodies off in front so we would find them," he said. Rumsfeld visited the 4th Infantry Division's headquarters in Tikrit, ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's hometown and a focus of the resistance to the occupation. "We think Saddam Hussein is in the AOR (area of responsibility), moving around constantly in the area," the division's commander, Major General Ray Odierno, told reporters traveling with Rumsfeld. "This is his support structure." He said his forces have conducted 1,000 raids, methodically taking down the mid-level Baathists who are leading the resistance in the so-called Sunni triangle that ranges from Baghdad to Tikrit. Rumsfeld also flew by helicopter north to Mosul, where Major General David Petraeus showed him the site, once a mansion but now a vacant lot, where Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were killed in July. Everywhere he went, he stressed the gains made since early April when Saddam was ousted. "What you're doing -- know it's important. Know it issucceeding, and it is still succeeding," he told troops of the 4th Infantry Division. jmm/ps Iraq-US
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