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President discloses order given to Pentagon to plan for expansion of Army, Marine Corps.
By Peter Baker
The Washington Post
Wednesday 20 December 2006
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President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said
he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global
struggle against terrorists.
As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to
describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The
assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're
winning."
In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to develop a plan to increase the
troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple
deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point. "We need to reset our
military," said Bush, whose administration had opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer.
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