Joseph L. Galloway
is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist.
One of America's preeminent war correspondents,
with more than four decades as a reporter
and writer, he recently concluded an assignment
as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell
at the State Department.
Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent
22 years as a foreign and war correspondent
and bureau chief for United Press International,
and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and
senior writer for U.S. News & World Report
magazine. His overseas postings include tours
in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore
and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow
in the former Soviet Union. During the course
of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served
four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam
and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War
and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert
Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division
(Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway "The
finest combat correspondent of our generation
-- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."
WASHINGTON - A senior Army leader says the coming third rotation of U.S. military forces into Iraq has begun, with called-up Army National Guard units deploying to the war zone over the next three months and regular Army forces beginning to shift in to replace other units in December.
The Army official, who asked that his name not be used, said the rotation was being phased so it stretches out over four to five months. He said that schedule meets the tactical requirements of U.S. Central Command.
He denied that any plan was afoot to bunch up the rotating American units around the January election date in Iraq as an easy way of greatly increasing the number of U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq at that particularly dangerous moment.
"With the rapidly growing number of Iraqi security forces plus American and coalition troops and the Iraqi police, they believe they will have enough forces on the ground for the Iraqi election," he said.
The Army official said it was clear that the "inner sanctuaries" in towns like Fallujah and Ramadi would have to be eliminated to make progress in Iraq. He added that there are three levels that an insurgency exhibits, and two of them are present in Iraq: A Level One insurgency in the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad, where American forces patrol but are subject to sniping and rocket and improvised explosive devices; and a Level Two insurgency in Fallujah, where the enemy has established an inner sanctuary and is operating at a much higher level of sophistication and resistance.
Level Three is where the enemy is able to mass for large attacks. That has not been achieved in Iraq and won't be as long as American military forces are on the ground, he said.
The Army official told me that in his view there were three centers of gravity in this conflict:
The Iraqi people
The American people
The all-volunteer U.S. Army
He told me that the Army was doing very well despite the pressures of repeated deployments since late in 2001. As proof he cited how Maj. Gen. William Webster, commanding general of the Iraq-bound 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., "blew right through his re-enlistment goals." He said Webster re-enlisted 387 soldiers of the division in a mass ceremony recently.
"We have raised our retention goals in the Army and then we exceeded them," he said. "We have met our active Army recruiting goals of 77,500 this year and the quality of the new enlistees is better than it was in 2003."
He said first surveys indicate that better retention can be attributed to better leadership across the board from captain through colonel, and "this generation of young soldiers absolutely understands the mission in the Global War on Terrorism and the American people are supporting them."
Asked if there was urgent need for a permanent increase in the Army's total strength, he answered: "Ask me that question in Fiscal 2006. We will know then whether we are going to need more troops."
Right now, he said, the Army is busy growing by 30,000 over this three-year period, adding and training 10,000 new soldiers in each of the years from 2004 through 2006. That increase is presently listed as a temporary three-year increase, intended to give Army leadership time to implement a re-balancing and re-basing of forces - bringing two divisions home from Europe and changing basing in the Pacific as well.
The 30,000 additional soldiers will be used to create 10 new maneuver brigades, increasing Army strength from 33 to 43 brigades. Meanwhile, a major restructuring of the Army National Guard and Army Reserves is also under way, taking down a number of "excess" artillery units and creating in their place more military police, civil affairs and psychological operations units.
The Army leader told me that once all these moves have been completed "we may actually be able to give back 10,000 to 15,000 spaces." He noted that at present the nation has on duty 500,000 active Army soldiers plus 130,000 National Guard and Army Reservists who have been deployed, for a total of 630,000 full-time soldiers.
