Word: 101st
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Christman, Shalikashvili and other military experts proposed some reasonable parameters for a new force. First, it would have to augment the current troop levels. The purpose would be to free up units like the 101st Airborne, now nation building in northern Iraq, for combat. "We don't have enough troops to do what needs to be done now," Shalikashvili told me. Second, these would have to be real soldiers, mentally tough, physically fit and combat ready. "Any peaceful checkpoint can become a battlefield in a heartbeat," said retired Major General Bill Nash, who commanded U.S. troops in Bosnia. There...
...Christman, Shalikashvili and other military experts proposed some reasonable parameters for a new force. First, it would have to augment the current troop levels. The purpose would be to free up units like the 101st Airborne, now nation building in northern Iraq, for combat. "We don't have enough troops to do what needs to be done now," Shalikashvili told me. Second, these would have to be real soldiers, mentally tough, physically fit and combat ready. "Any peaceful checkpoint can become a battlefield in a heartbeat," said retired Major General Bill Nash, who commanded U.S. troops in Bosnia. There...
...dying at a slower rate, soldiers say the unpredictability and ever-changing face of the enemy make life in Iraq as dangerous as ever. "Every time you do a knock and search, it's a combat operation," says Colonel Christopher Pease, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade. "You don't know where or when you're going to be shot...
...sign that the resistance is hardening: the assaults, says a senior military official, "are increasing in sophistication." He cites more frequent use of improvised explosive devices as well as standoff weapons like mortars. "They've been getting more and more organized," says Sergeant Joseph Teague of the 101st Airborne, whose platoon patrols the town of Ba'aj, southwest of Mosul. Teague has been ambushed twice in the past two weeks. "In the last two attacks," he says, "they've shot at us from all sides...
...Army today is married with children and all-volunteer. The long deployments are stressing marriages and families to the breaking point, and most active-duty personnel have skills valued in the civilian world, as the recruiting posters promise. Holly Petraeus, wife of Major General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne, told Senate lawmakers that her husband had been away from home for 16 of the past 24 months. "In recent years the Army has downsized while adding on more and more overseas missions," she said. "Families will not be willing to go it alone forever, with little relief...