For the first time since the war in Iraq began more than three years ago, President Bush acknowledged that the U.S. is "not winning." On Tuesday, just weeks after the Iraq Study Group provided recommendations for a troop drawdown in Iraq over the next two years, Bush asked new Defense Secretary Robert Gates to investigate the possibility of sending 15,000-30,000 more Army and Marine troops to Iraq for a short deployment to deal with the bloody insurgency.

A U.S. Army spokesperson acknowledged she is not sure where the additional troops will come from. With the Army barely meeting or missing its recruiting goal over the past three years, Major Anne Edgecomb said the recruitment of tens of thousands of additional troops could be a difficult task, but one that is not likely to require the reinstatement of a draft.

On Tuesday, Bush told The Washington Post that he plans to increase the size of the "stressed" troops in Iraq. In a striking reversal from his pre-midterm election assertion, "Absolutely, we're winning" in Iraq, he told the paper, "We're not winning, we're not losing."

The decision to possibly seek more troops — spurred by warnings from the Pentagon that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the military too thin — was made because the armed forces need to be "reset," Bush said. The administration had rejected calls to increase troop levels in Iraq as recently as this summer and top generals have resisted the call, fearing that it would not help. Officials told the Post that the new Bush plan calls for an increase of as many as 70,000 additional troops to the U.S.'s permanent active-duty military. The president would not give specifics on the how many fresh troops he is seeking to send to Iraq, and experts said the military expansion could take years and have no immediate effect on the war in Iraq.

"I talked about this to Secretary Gates, and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea," Bush told the Post, linking his about-face to the broader struggle against Islamic extremists around the world. "It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace."

Rejecting a recent claim by his former secretary of state, Colin Powell, that "the active Army is about broken," Bush described the armed forces as "stressed" and challenged Republicans and Democrats in Congress to work with the administration "to assure our military and the American people that we will position our military so that it is ready and able to stay engaged in a long war."

Expanding the military would add an extra 50 percent to the costs of the war originally projected for 2007, with a draft request for an additional $100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan being prepped to add to the $70 billion already approved for this fiscal year. The additional $100 billion would bring overall spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other terrorism-related operations since the September 11, 2001, attacks to $600 billion, according to the Post, surpassing the inflation-adjusted cost of $549 billion for the Vietnam War.

In the face of continued calls by Democrats to begin the drawdown of troops from Iraq, Bush has said that he will rely only on the voices of the commanders on the ground in Iraq to make his decisions. But, as pointed out by an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Bush's plan to possibly send more troops is actually at odds with recent comments by several senior members of the military.

Last week, Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker and other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Bush they were skeptical about the idea of sending more U.S. ground troops into Iraq and The New York Times reported that recently departed Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, the second-highest-ranking American officer in Iraq, "has resisted a troop increase." Additionally, Central Command leader General John Abizaid has said increasing troop strength, especially in Baghdad, could be a mistake, eliciting fears that it could ratchet up tensions between warring Sunnis and Shia.

In a press conference on Wednesday (December 20), Bush labeled a question about his decision to possibly seek more troops and overrule his military commanders on the ground as a "dangerous hypothetical," explaining that he's gathering recommendations from Gates, military commanders, diplomats and Iraqis before announcing his decision, which is expected in early 2007. He stressed that additional troops would be sent only if they were deployed for a specific mission.

According to Major Edgecomb, there are several methods the armed services could potentially tap to meet the president's stated goals of increasing the size of the military, but at this point it's unknown what those techniques might be. "One thing we could discuss is taking some reserve and National Guard soldiers and see if any of them would like to voluntarily be transferred to active duty," Edgecomb said. Another is offering more robust financial incentives to potential recruits, such as more money for college. The problem, she said, is that given the slim margins by which the Army has met or missed its goals the past few years, recruiting tens of thousands of additional soldiers could be a difficult task.

With no draft in place, the Army has been actively recruiting new members to keep its troop levels at around 508,000, Edgecomb explained. In 2006, the goal was 80,000 recruits, which was exceeded by 635, but in 2005 that goal was missed by almost 7,000 recruits. "If they're barely meeting their goal, how do we get another 10,000 or so a year?" she asked. "That's something the Army is working on to figure out." The Army had already planned to increase its permanent force to around 514,000 in 2007.

According to the Post, every additional 10,000 soldiers would cost about $1.2 billion a year, and given how long it takes to recruit and train troops, the effects of the increase could not be felt until at least 2008. Schoomaker told the Times that the fastest the Army could probably grow is by 6,000-7,000 soldiers per year. The move also runs counter to the ideology espoused by ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who pushed for a smaller, more mobile armed forces employing technology to fight on several fronts, though Bush stressed on Wednesday that he was not rejecting Rumsfeld's philosophy. Earlier this month, the Iraq Study Group recommended taking steps toward bringing home a large percentage of American troops by spring 2008 (see "Iraq Study Group Calls For End Of U.S. Combat Role By 2008").