Pentagon expects to call up more reserve troops for Iraq

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is drawing up plans to mobilize more National Guard and Reserve forces for duty in Iraq, in the expectation that too few international troops will be available by early next year, officials said Thursday.

The additional reservists have not been notified because Pentagon planners have yet to decide which units to call on, and there remains a chance that international troops can be used instead.

The extra forces -- which could turn out to be a mixture of international troops, active-duty U.S. Marines and National Guard and Reserve soldiers -- are to replace active-duty units due to return home.

"There are combat support and combat service support units in the reserve component that probably have not been notified yet," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"They will be notified in plenty of time to give them all the notification they need and all the training," he added.

Some members of Congress said it was time to bring home some Guard and Reserve units already in Iraq.

Lawmakers concerned

"I'm getting uneasy on how much we're calling on our Guard and Reserve units," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. "You have to have some sort of rotation scheme for the men or women that are over there that's a limit to how long they'll stay. Then you have to bring in other people, other divisions or other National Guard or whatever."

A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, "If we don't ease the burden on the Guard and Reserves, we're going to have retention problems."

A survey of U.S. troops in Iraq, meanwhile, found that one-third described their morale as low and half did not plan to re-enlist -- findings that led Pentagon leaders to say Thursday they are closely watching for such problems. Asked about the report, Rumsfeld and Myers said there are initial indications in only one area -- the Army Reserve -- that recruiting or re-enlistments could be suffering.

Myers also disclosed that the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, with about 2,200 Marines aboard the USS Peleliu, went ashore in southern Iraq to assist a campaign to halt the smuggling of oil and fuel.

The anti-smuggling effort, called "Operation Sweeney," has resulted in the arrests of about 75 people and the seizure of 20 full barges, 15 empty barges, eight oil boats, 36 petroleum tankers and nine pickup trucks containing fuel and 10 fuel pumps, Myers said.

Few other details were available.

Myers also provided the first public confirmation that U.S. forces captured Aso Hawleri, a leading figure in the Kurdish-Islamic extremist group Ansar al-Islam, which U.S. officials say has ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network. Myers said Hawleri was captured near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Myers described Hawleri as the second- or third-ranking member of Ansar al-Islam. He said the group "clearly is supported to some degree" by al-Qaida in terms of financing or perhaps weaponry. He predicted the capture would produce "very valuable intelligence not only on their efforts but who else is involved and where they're doing it and any relationship to past attacks (on U.S. forces in Iraq) that they might have been involved in."