U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace said Sunday that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase next year, not decrease, if the insurgency continues.
In Iraq, bloodshed claimed at least 18 lives across the country, including two U.S. and five Iraqi soldiers killed by bombings in Baghdad.
Pace’s remarks, on Fox News Sunday, suggested that the Pentagon’s plan to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, announced Friday by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, depended on several variables.
Pace, like Rumsfeld, said the military and the Bush administration have no target for how many troops to keep in Iraq now that the Dec. 15 general elections are over.
Instead, Pace said, military commanders will continue to monitor the Pentagon’s “off-ramps and on-ramps [into Iraq] based on what we have on the ground.” The four-star Marine general said any decisions to withdraw or deploy more forces will depend mostly on whether the insurgency continues to launch deadly attacks against U.S. forces and the fledgling government.
“So if things go the way we expect them to, as more Iraqi units stand up, we’ll be able to bring our troops down and turn over that territory to the Iraqis,” Pace said on the talk show.
“But on the other hand, the enemy has a vote in this, and if they were to cause some kind of problems that required more troops, then we would do exactly what we’ve done in the past, which is give the commanders on the ground what they need. And in that case, you could see troop level go up a little bit to handle that problem.”
The U.S. command reported two American soldiers were killed by bombs Sunday, bringing the U.S. death toll in Iraq to 2,168, according to an Associated Press count. No other details were immediately released.
A suicide car bomber slammed into two Iraqi army vehicles in central Baghdad, killing five soldiers and wounding seven police and civilians, police Maj. Mohammed Younis said. A second suicide car bomb targeting Iraqi police in Baghdad wounded four officers.
Bombings and gun attacks killed at least 11 more people in the capital, Kirkuk, Mosul and Jbala, authorities said.
