AS THE OCCUPATION PHASE ENDS:

US Gen Abizaid Sees Shift In US Troops' Role In Iraq (Dow Jones, 12/07/04)

U.S. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, raised the possibility Monday that U.S. forces in Iraq could start to be reshaped as early as next year to reduce the number of combat troops and concentrate on the development of Iraqi security forces, the Washington Post reported in its Tuesday editions.

Abizaid declined in an interview to set a timetable for the shift, saying it would depend on the outcome of national elections in January and evidence that Iraqi forces could assume a greater share of combat operations against the country's entrenched insurgency, the report said.

Other senior U.S. officers who elaborated on the plan said the change wouldn't necessarily lead initially to an overall decrease in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq but could eventually facilitate a lower troop level, the report said.

Abizaid said the reshaping of the force would make combat operations by U.S. and other foreign troops "secondary to the training effort," the Post reported. That would mean, among other changes, "more embedded trainers" and possibly a larger number of Special Operations forces in place of conventional ones, he said, according to the Post report.

Higher troop levels are a provocation and a selling point for the insurgency--the fewer the better.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 7, 2004 7:33 AM