Deployment

WASHINGTON -- Army combat troops are likely to have to go back to Iraq after less than a year at home if the Bush administration decides to maintain higher troop levels through early next year, the general responsible for preparing forces for overseas deployment said yesterday. Gen. Lance L. Smith, an Air Force officer who leads the Joint Forces Command, said "there is a high possibility" that one to three Army combat brigades would have to be sent back to Iraq less than a year after returning home from their previous deployment.

TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE of favorable developments in Bosnia, the administration is dribbling out acknowledgment that the U.S. troop presence there will extend well beyond the Dec. LTC 20 withdrawal deadline promised by President Clinton.This can hardly come as a surprise to anyone paying close attention to the situation. It has long been apparent that the Clinton timetable was too optimistic, that Bosnia could plunge back into war and our NATO allies would pull out entirely if the United States ended its military commitment.

CLARIFICATIONThe report on how to support military families during peacekeeping deployments that University of Maryland military sociologist Mady Segal is helping write is being co-authored by D. Bruce Bell, a research scientist at the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and Mary L. Stevens, a graduate student at the University of Maryland and a research assistant at the Army Research Institute.In a report being rushed to the desks of U.S. military commanders before thousands of troops are deployed to Bosnia, two sociologists at the University of Maryland suggest that the armed services improve communication lines between peacekeeping soldiers stationed overseas and their families and create an 800 telephone number for rumor control.

WASHINGTON -- In an important victory for President Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole grudgingly expressed support yesterday for the president's plan to send American troops into Bosnia to enforce a peace agreement.The decision by Mr. Dole, the leading Republican presidential candidate and a frequent critic of Mr. Clinton on foreign policy, effectively split the Republican majority in Congress. It came even as the administration disclosed new, higher estimates of the number of troops that will be involved in the mission and its cost.

WASHINGTON -- Looking at the quickie polls taken after President Clinton's speech on sending American troops to Bosnia, the equally quickie reading is that he is only inviting big political trouble on the eve of his campaign for re-election.Telephone surveys of 500-plus voters by two of the major networks found they clearly opposed the deployment -- by 58 percent to 33 (CBS News) and by 57-39 (ABC News). A third poll of 632 voters, by the Gallup organization for CNN and USA Today, turned up 46 percent approval to 40 against, but 52 percent said they didn't think American interests were at stake in Bosnia and that the United States doesn't need to send troops there to maintain leadership in world affairs.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- This was a deployment -- Hollywood style. Citizen-soldiers outfitted in camouflage-green fatigues, flak jackets and Kevlar helmets, and bearing M-16 A-2 semi-automatic rifles, raced through a parking area crammed with tanks, trucks and Humvees while being tailed by more than 50 television, radio and newspaper reporters.Without even leaving their armory compound, the California National Guard managed to act out a demonstration of force yesterday.It was a performance with a purpose: To deter those who might take to the streets and stage another riot in the wake of the jury's impending verdict in the Rodney G. King civil rights trial.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- In a push to finalize an agreement on deploying an international police force in Haiti, envoys of the Clinton administration and the United Nations arrived here yesterday for talks with the country's military leaders.For two weeks, diplomats have described the planned deployment of about 500 foreign police officers in Haiti as a crucial final element in reaching a negotiated settlement to this country's political crisis, which began with a violent coup against the elected president, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in September 1991.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Two months after the Paris peace agreement on Cambodia, the relatively slow pace of deployment of U.N. peacekeeping troops is creating a sense of instability in the country, and there are fears that this could lead to upheaval, according to Cambodian officials and Western diplomats.Although a cease-fire has been largely honored by the four factions in Cambodia's civil war, guerrilla leaders admit that their troops are increasingly hard to discipline and that banditry in the countryside has escalated sharply.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Two months after the Paris peace agreement on Cambodia, the relatively slow pace of deployment of U.N. peacekeeping troops is creating a sense of instability in the country, and there are fears that this could lead to upheaval, according to Cambodian officials and Western diplomats.Although a cease-fire has been largely honored by the four factions in Cambodia's civil war, guerrilla leaders admit that their troops are increasingly hard to discipline and that banditry in the countryside has escalated sharply.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- United Nations officials said yesterday that they reached a "momentous" agreement with a key Somali warlord allowing the deployment of up to 500 armed foreign troops to protect relief shipments coming into the port of Mogadishu.Plagued by violence and looting, the port is a troublesome bottleneck for emergency food and medical supplies for Somalia's more than 6 million people, as many as 4.5 million of whom face famine after years of civil war and drought.The agreement with Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, a rebel commander who exerts control over the portion of Mogadishu that includes the port, the international airport and many storage depots, was announced here by Mohammed Sahnoun, special representative for Somalia of U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

WASHINGTON -President Barack Obama ordered his first major deployment of U.S. combat troops yesterday, sending 17,000 more soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan for what he described as an urgent bid to stabilize a deteriorating and neglected country. The deployment marks a sizable intensification of the war effort and a new commitment of U.S. resources to the Afghanistan campaign. In a statement announcing the troop increase, Obama directed veiled criticism at the Bush administration, noting that the request for the troops from Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, had been pending for months.

The war in Iraq hasn't been a topic of conversation in many American homes for some time now. For most, a crippled economy, declining home values, job security and shrinking retirement savings are the more urgent concerns of the day. There are few reasons to talk about the Iraq conflict except to perhaps wager a guess on which of the two presidential candidates would best resolve the U.S. involvement there. But the deployment of U.S. soldiers, reservists and national guardsmen to Iraq or Afghanistan remains steady, as 50 families gathered this weekend in Glen Burnie know all too well.

In the past week, the Eutsler family has celebrated a year's worth of holidays. They decorated a Christmas tree, nestled Easter eggs in their garden and cooked a full Thanksgiving feast. They hung decorations for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day alongside birthday banners. And the boys - ages 3 and 5 - gave their dad a present for each occasion they were celebrating. "I wanted Jeff to have every holiday he'll miss," Lori Eutsler said tearfully. "We crammed a lot into one week." Her husband, Jeff Eutsler, is a captain in the Army Reserve's 1398th Deployment Support Brigade - a transportation unit that left yesterday for a month of training in Indiana before beginning a yearlong deployment to Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon alerted about 40,000 active-duty and National Guard soldiers yesterday that they will be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the fall, a sign that the military expects hard fighting to continue through late next year. The new orders will maintain the overall strength in Iraq at 15 combat brigades, about 130,000 troops, for next year. That is approximately the number of troops deployed in Iraq before President Bush ordered 25,000 additional troops deployed in January 2007.

An announcement from President Bush that we will not return to 12-month tours until after the summer will do nothing to relieve the burden of those currently deployed for 15 months - some of whom will not return home until summer 2009. Almost half of the active-duty Army's front-line units are currently deployed for 15 months. Three of these units are on their fourth tour. Almost all have served at least twice. This is the group of soldiers that has borne an immense, disproportionate burden from our wars.

They are in a no-win position. The Army is not big enough to support the surge, deal with Afghanistan and give people a minimum amount of time at home."

A soldier off to war, saying goodbye to a sweetheart, is a picture as old as time, a familiar tableau of sorrow and longing, with the worst of possibilities unspoken. At Fort Meade yesterday, the scene played out dozens of times, as 157 soldiers from the Army's 400th Military Police Battalion prepared for their deployment to an internment facility in what Army brass would describe only as "Southwest Asia" - a euphemism for Iraq or Afghanistan. For Jamie Potchak, the 21-year-old girlfriend of Pfc. Matthew Montag, who is also 21 and enlisted two years ago, the parting was wrenching, although she managed a bright smile.

Another wave of hundreds of Maryland's citizen-soldiers bade farewell to loved ones yesterday, bound for training and then deployment in Iraq for the next year. The send-off of 640 state National Guardsmen represents about half of the roughly 1,300 called up last month for combat duty overseas. The mobilization order roughly quadruples the number of guardsmen from the state who will be deployed overseas. The deployment is drawn from the Guard's famed 1st Battalion, 175th Infantry Regiment, one of the oldest regiments in the Army.

Some smiled, giddily waving American flags and offering up rose-cheeked babies to kiss goodbye. Others wore faces of fear, disappointed, if not angry, that the war in Iraq was now calling up one of their own. Despite political divisions in an increasingly polarized war, families and loved ones of 140 departing citizen soldiers from Maryland united yesterday in an emotional farewell in a Pikesville armory. The guardsmen heading toward Iraq this day were drawn from the 58th Infantry Brigade Combat Team's headquarters unit, the first wave in what will become the state's largest overseas deployment since World War II. By the end of June, 1,300 soldiers from the Maryland Guard will have left for a yearlong combat tour.

Congressman Tom Lantos, who is a member of the delegation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led to Syria, put the mission clearly when he said: "We have an alternative, Democratic foreign policy." Democrats can have any foreign policy they want - if and when they are elected to the White House. Until Ms. Pelosi came along, it was understood by all that we had only one president at a time and - like him or not - he alone had the constitutional authority to speak for this country to foreign nations, especially in wartime.