Expansion of corps possible

The Marine Corps may need to increase in size to sustain deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan without sacrificing needed training or putting undue stress on the corps, its new commandant said Wednesday.

At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Gen. James Conway also said that it could take years to adequately train and equip Iraqi security forces -- longer, perhaps, “than the timeline that we probably feel

“This is tough work, it doesn’t happen overnight,” and the American people need to be patient, he said.

On the plus side, he said Marines he had talked to recently were encouraged by the progress they were seeing among Iraqi forces.

The pace of Marine rotations -- seven months in Iraq and seven to nine months at home -- is limiting other types of training that units can receive and could eventually prompt Marines to leave the service, Conway said.

“There is stress on the individual Marines that is increasing, and there is stress on the institution to do what we are required to do, pretty much by law, for the nation,” he said.

The goal, he said, is for units to spend twice the length of time at home as is spent on deployment.

However, Conway would not rule out extending the Iraq tours for some units if needed for a short time. Marines make up about 23,000 of the 141,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Several Army units have been extended for several months, but the corps has done that rarely, and the extensions have been for weeks rather than months.

There are two ways to deal with the stress on the Marines, Conway said. “One is reducing the requirement, the other is potentially growing the force for what we call the long war.”

The corps has about 180,000 active-duty Marines.

Last week, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said about 2,200 troops were headed to volatile Al Anbar province in western Iraq in a short-term effort to shore up U.S. combat power there.