Iraq surge plan may require more than double the troops Bush cited

The Pentagon will need to send as many as 48,000 troops to Iraq to implement President Bush's new Iraq strategy, at an estimated cost of $20 billion to $27 billion for a year-long deployment, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released Thursday.

Dispatching that many troops would more than double the number of ground forces Bush cited when he announced a buildup of combat forces in Iraq last month, a realization that brought reactions of shock and anger from Democratic lawmakers. The president specifically said he would dispatch 21,500 more combat troops from the Army and Marine Corps to Iraq in coming months.

In its analysis, CBO noted that the president did not mention the number of support personnel the Pentagon customarily sends with any deployment of combat brigades.

"Thus far, the Department of Defense (DOD) has identified only combat units for deployment," said CBO in a letter to House Budget Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and other lawmakers. "However, U.S. military operations also require substantial support forces, including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence medical, and other services."

CBO acknowledged that Army and Defense officials have signaled "that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate."

But the letter added: "CBO expects that, even if the additional [combat] brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel."

CBO's conclusions appear to be at odds with statements made Jan. 23 by Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker, who told the House Armed Services Committee that he did not anticipate needing additional support troops in Iraq. The service's reconfigured combat brigades, he said, have four support battalions embedded inside them.

"So it appears right now in our planning that the combat support/combat service support base that we've got set in Iraq is sufficient to support the five additional brigades that are coming," Schoomaker said.

A Defense Department spokesman said officials had just received the CBO analysis and did not have any immediate comment. Efforts to obtain comment from the Army were unsuccessful.

Nonetheless, the CBO analysis upset Spratt, Skelton and House Armed Services Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Martin Meehan, D-Mass., all of whom requested the study. All three criticized the administration for failing to accurately portray both the costs and the amount of troops needed for its so-called surge plan.

"I am disturbed that the administration's figures may not be fully accounting for what a true force increase will entail," Skelton said in a statement. "If combat troops are deployed, their support needs must not be shortchanged."

House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee Chairman Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, complained the administration "has yet to level" with the public. The need for more than 21,500 troops "is not what the American people were told; we can count and nobody is in the mood to parse words when the lives of Americans are hanging in the balance -- now more lives than before," he said in a statement.

"If this report is correct, it means there will be a much bigger and more detrimental impact on readiness than we previously knew," Ortiz added.

CBO analysts said they used the current ratio of combat support troops to combat troops that now exists in Iraq to calculate the need for 28,000 support troops if 20,000 combat troops are deployed under Bush's plan. Sending a total of 48,000 troops would cost $27 billion for a year-long deployment, plus take three months to send them into Iraq and three months to pull them out, CBO said.

The budget analysts also devised a cost estimate for sending only 15,000 more support personnel along with the 20,000 combat troops, pegging it at $20 billion for the same 18-month deployment cycle.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ted Stroup, a former Army personnel chief who now is a vice president at the Association of the United States Army, said augmenting the combat brigades by an additional 28,000 support personnel "sounds about right," based on historical assumptions. But Stroup questioned whether the Army has enough soldiers in its current force to send the needed support personnel to Iraq.

"The fact of the matter is I don't know if the troops are there or not," he said.