Feel that quagmire slowly oozing up around your legs? More soldiers sent to Iraq Nam means more dead soldiers.

Rumsfeld Says Iraq May Need a Larger Force
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, July 13 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that the United States might need to send additional troops to Iraq to quell an increasingly well-organized guerrilla resistance, and warned that more American soldiers would die in attacks this summer.

Mr. Rumsfeld also said for the first time that the attacks against American troops by remnants of Saddam Hussein's security forces, fedayeen fighters and Iraqi prisoners released before the war, were being coordinated at least regionally and possibly nationally.

Mr. Rumsfeld and his top aides had expressed optimism in recent weeks that American troop levels in Iraq could begin to decline as additional allied ground forces arrived later this summer and more newly trained Iraqi police officers took up positions around the country.

But the increasing frequency and sophistication of the attacks against American forces and Iraqis helping them have stirred alarm among American officials and caused commanders and Mr. Rumsfeld to rethink force levels.

"It seems to me that the numbers of U.S. forces are unlikely to go up," he said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." "Now, could they? You bet. If they're needed, they will be there..."




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