- WASHINGTON -- The United
States military is to cut troop strengths in Iraq by a fifth, from 130,000
to 105,000, as commanders begin the largest rotation of men and equipment
in American history.
-
- The reduction in overall troop numbers did not signal
a lessening of US military might in the country, a senior military officer
said. Instead, Pentagon chiefs would be consolidating assets scattered
across the Gulf inside Iraq itself.
-
- Heavy infantry and Marines will replace armoured units
that have until now provided the firepower to take on a conventionally
armed enemy.
-
- "While there may be a reduction in the numbers,
it's not a reduction in our capability," the officer said.
-
- The next few months before the transfer of sovereignty
planned for July 1 will see a huge influx of Marines and part-time soldiers
from the reserves and National Guard units, equipped with lightly armoured
infantry vehicles.
-
- The rotation of that many men and machines is the largest
such movement any US military commander can recall, dwarfing even the troop
rotations of the Second World War.
-
- The rotation will also be the largest and most perilous
deployment faced by reservists - weekend warriors from America's heartlands
- since the Vietnam War.
-
- The driving philosophy is to bring more sensitivity and
responsiveness to the problem of fighting the insurgency centred on the
Sunni triangle near Baghdad, while winning hearts and minds elsewhere in
the country, as the interim government takes charge.
-
- To that end, the US military presence in Baghdad itself
is about to be dramatically scaled back.
-
- The expectation is that after "Operation Iraqi Freedom
2" is in place, the coalition forces will be better poised to fight
a series of smaller, sharper engagements with elusive attackers.
-
- Marine commanders have already vowed to show more subtlety
than the regular army units they will replace, publicly disparaging such
tactics as calling in air strikes.
-
- Reserve units, though usually older, less fit and less
experienced than regular troops, are thought to bring other skills to bear
from their civilian lives, where many are policemen, teachers, firemen
and the like.
-
- Unspoken, behind all the military changes, is the political
need to avoid US casualties - which crossed the 500 dead mark (including
combat casualties and accidents) at the weekend.
-
- Senior officials planning George W Bush's re-election
campaign admit that US death tolls remain the yardstick by which ordinary
Americans judge the success of events in Iraq.
-
- The President, in his annual State of the Union Address
tomorrow, will say the invasion of Iraq has made America safer, pointing
to the recent decision of Libya to abandon banned weapons programmes, but
warn that much remains to be done to make the US safe.
-
- The most visible changes in Iraq will see the removal
of most heavy armoured units, equipped with the tanks and howitzers used
to win wars against other armies, but of far less use in the complex operations
of an occupation.
-
- The number of Apache attack helicopters is to drop from
150 to 100, while the number of Hawk helicopters is to shrink from 350
to 200.
-
- Pilots have had to adjust their tactics in Iraq in response
to the growing sophistication of insurgent attacks against helicopters.
The attacks, involving rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder launched
ground-to-air missiles, have downed nine military helicopters since Oct
25, killing 49 soldiers.
-
- Much of the reduction in troops will be seen in the north
of Iraq, where Kurdish militia serve as coalition allies. The number of
troops in the north will drop from 19,000 to 9,500.
-
- A senior military officer said reductions were possible
because "frankly we don't see a regeneration of [the enemy's] offensive
capability any time soon".
-
- US officials in Baghdad said the number of attacks on
coalition forces had fallen sharply since November.
-
- In Basra yesterday, two British soldiers escaped serious
injury when a roadside bomb detonated beside their vehicle while they were
on a routine mission. They suffered minor injuries and are back on duty.
-
- Last night, 13 people were injured, one seriously, in
a bomb blast near a religious site in the Shi'ite city of Karbala in central
Iraq.
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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