- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
Pentagon has found that Iraqi insurgents can conduct up to 60 strikes a
day and occasionally more, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
said on Thursday.
-
- "We've tracked the number of attacks per day and
what they can do is 50 to 60 attacks that they are able to conduct countrywide,
with spikes. And that seems to be their capacity," Air Force Gen.
Richard Myers told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
-
- Myers, who testified with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
characterized the insurgency fighting some 150,000 U.S. forces in Iraq
as "a limited capacity."
-
- He said it was difficult to determine the number of insurgents
in Iraq because "they don't have a central organization ... so as
you pick up insurgents and you debrief them and you find what they have
in their rooms and on their computers, you don't find the wiring diagram."
-
- Rumsfeld on Wednesday told a House of Representatives
committee he did not "have a lot of confidence" in the CIA and
Defense Intelligence Agency estimates on the number of insurgents, which
are classified.
-
- Lawmakers have been pressing the Pentagon to provide
more information on the type of insurgency U.S. forces have been fighting
in Iraq since the U.S.-led March 2003 invasion.
-
- "Shouldn't the American people also know the size
and shape and nature of the enemy that we're facing, since it's their sons
and daughters who are going to serve?" Arizona Republican Sen. John
McCain said.
-
- "It would be nice to have a hard number, but my
fear is that the number would change from week to week," Rumsfeld
responded. "They're not static. The numbers change," he said,
declining to publicly answer lawmakers who asked him the numerical strength
of the insurgency.
-
- Myers said he believed the number of "hard core"
insurgents that "are going to have to be captured or killed"
was a small percentage of the insurgency.
-
- Myers also told the committee that some Army reserve
units are not at desirable readiness because of equipment shortages as
some units leave their gear in Iraq.
-
- "It does create a shortage back here. And we know
we have shortages we have to fill," Myers said. "So there'll
be time when units are below the desired levels of readiness."
-
- He said the $82 billion emergency spending bill the Bush
administration is seeking mostly for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
was "crucial" to filling the shortages.
-
- Myers also said he felt the administration's proposed
increase in cash payments to families of U.S. forces killed in combat should
be applied more broadly.
-
- "I think a death gratuity that applies to all service
members is preferable to one that's targeted just to those that might be
in a combat zone," Myers said. "You go where they send you. And
it's happenstance that you're in a combat zone or you're at home.
-
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