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thedrifter
04-09-07, 09:19 AM
Pace: U.S. ultimately would win on second front
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : April 16, 2007

U.S. forces have “enormous power and capacity” despite the demands of the war in Iraq and could defeat any potential enemy, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said April 5.

“There’s zero doubt about the outcome,” Marine Gen. Peter Pace said at a Pentagon news conference with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “It would simply take us longer than we would like.”

Pace acknowledged that the war’s demands, with units spending a year or less back home before being redeployed, mean that troops get “well trained” for the war but do not get trained to the “full spectrum” of possible situations elsewhere while deployed.

“You do forfeit some of the kind of training you would like to do just to have a little bit more readiness in case something happens that you’re not expecting,” Pace said.

U.S. forces would prevail in such a case because they have “enormous residual capacity” of about 2 million nondeployed active and reserve troops, he said, echoing earlier testimony to Congress. Even though it would take longer to remobilize, train and deploy reserve forces, he said, “We have the vast power of our ... Navy and our Air Force still available to take on any potential foes.”
Reaching back

But because so many precision intelligence and weapons delivery systems are committed overseas, he said, “You would potentially increase the number of casualties on both sides and the amount of damage done on both sides. ... You may end up using more ‘dumb’ bombs, for example, to get the job done.”

Pace said some Army units are not undergoing predeployment training at Fort Irwin, Calif., home of the National Training Center. But he said units headed to the war get “properly trained” for their wartime missions at their home bases and that commanders must certify their units’ state of readiness to their chain of command before they deploy.

Two of the five brigade combat teams that make up the administration’s ongoing “surge” into Iraq — the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division — did not travel to the NTC for predeployment training but did or will receive home-station training by NTC trainers, according to Army spokesman Lt. Col. Carl Ey.

“Every single unit that goes to the war gets an NTC cadre-trained rotation,” Ey said, calling them “full-mission training exercises.”

Gates said the surge is on track with previous plans to deploy about one brigade combat team per month. He said the department had looked at “whether we could accelerate that process” and concluded that was not possible because “we want to make sure that every single one of those brigades is adequately trained before they actually enter Iraq.”

Another factor, he said, was that most equipment moves by sea, “and it’s 30 days no matter how much of a hurry you’re in.”

The third of the five brigade combat teams, the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, is moving into Baghdad and the next two are due in mid-April and mid-May, Pace said. The surge operation, aimed primarily at pacifying Baghdad, will be in full swing by early June, he said.

Ellie