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Casey: Move to shorter tours has to happen

The Army’s chief of staff reiterated his commitment to shortening combat tours in Iraq to 12 months to a Senate panel Wednesday, stressing that current 15-month deployments are “just not sustainable.”

Echoing comments he made Tuesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. George Casey told Appropriations Committee members the Army is out of balance from more than six years of war and back-to-back deployments.

Casey told lawmakers that the service hopes to begin restoring that balance in July when he expects the demand for forces to decrease.

“That has to happen,” he said Wednesday at a fiscal 2009 budget overview hearing on Capital Hill. “Soldiers and leaders need to see that over time they won’t be deploying for 15 months and home for 12.”

Casey, who was the top U.S. commander in Iraq before taking the chief of staff job last spring, told lawmakers that cutting the time soldiers spend in combat is an integral part of reducing the stress on the force.

He said he anticipates the service can cut combat tours from 15 months to 12 months this summer, as long as the president reduces the number of active-duty Army brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan to 15 units by July, as planned.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., criticized Casey, asking him if out of balance is really a “softer euphemism for a much more serious problem,” referring to public comments from recently retired senior Army commanders that paint a grim picture of Army readiness.

Casey quickly disagreed.

“This is not a broken Army. … Now, are we where we want to be? No. And we fully acknowledge that,” Casey said.

“Our soldiers are deploying too frequently, and we can’t sustain that. It’s impacting on their families; it’s impacting on their mental health — we just can’t keep going at the rate we are going.”

Casey said the Army can begin to address these challenges if Congress approves the $141 billion request for the Army in the president’s proposed budget for fiscal 2009.

“If we get the resources in a timely, predictable fashion, we believe we can fix ourselves over the next three to four years.”

Members of the committee also pressed Casey and Army Secretary Peter Geren on what the Army is doing about the war’s effect on soldiers and their families’ mental health.

“I really worry about them recovering,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. “With all due respect, general, reset sounds like a button that you push and all is OK. When they come back, their lives have changed. Their spouse has changed. They have changed. Their children have changed.”

She added that she was concerned that funding for these efforts are “Spartan” and that “understanding of the problem is skimpy.”

Casey said that he and Geren “recognize the pressures and the stresses that these repeated deployments place on the families.”

“We have put our money where our mouth is and doubled the amount of money that we are putting toward soldier and family programs,” Casey said.

Several committee members also expressed concern about oversight of large government contracting firms that the Army depends on to provide services to deployed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Geren assured lawmakers that the Army has begun taking steps to ensure the Army has more oversight over the contracting firms such as standing up a contracting command that will be run by a two-star general. Geren also said that promotion boards are being instructed to look at contracting experience when considering officers for promotion.