upport troops -- including helicopter crews, supply units, military police and headquarters staff -- will still be needed when the additional combat units return home, said Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In particular, U.S. troops are still needed to guard Iraqi prisons, he said.
"The transfer of responsibility for detention operations has not progressed as rapidly as we would like to the Iraqis, so there's a need to have that force sustained, as well," Ham said.
President Bush ordered nearly 30,000 additional troops to Iraq in January 2007 to pacify Baghdad and its surrounding provinces. When the last of the five Army combat brigades
and two Marine battalions ordered in as part of that campaign leave Iraq by July, 140,000 troops will remain -- about 8,000 more than the 132,000 U.S. troops stationed there
before the surge, Ham told reporters at the Pentagon.
"This will be very much conditions-based, but that's our projection as of today," he said.
He said top U.S. commanders are debating whether to make further withdrawals after July. The U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is scheduled to issue another
report on the progress of the war in April, and Ham said it would be "premature" to discuss further withdrawals now.
