WASHINGTON, 17 February 2007 — On the same day Defense Secretary Robert Gates told journalists that the US had no intention to attack Iran, the outgoing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, told senators that the increase of 17,500 Army combat troops in Iraq represents the “tip of the iceberg” and will erode the army’s readiness to respond to other world contingencies.

“For the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran,” Gates said Thursday at a Pentagon news conference. “We are not planning a war with Iran.”

Acknowledging that decisions of the final deployment numbers has yet been made, Schoomaker said US commanders in Iraq have requested an additional 2,500 soldiers to serve as embedded trainers, or MiTTs “Military Transition Teams” to serve as embedded trainers for Iraqi forces, and 5,000 to 6,000 additional soldiers could be needed to provide logistical and other support to the five army combat brigades heading to Baghdad.

“We are having to go to some extraordinary measures to ensure we can respond,” he told members of the Senate Armed Service Committee, adding that even he could not guarantee the combat units would receive all the translators, civil affairs soldiers and other support troops they request. “We are continuing today to get requests for forces that continue to stress us.”

But, even if the US were to carry out a significant troop reduction in Iraq, Schoomaker said he would advise going ahead with the army’s plan for a permanent increase of 65,000 active-duty soldiers by 2013. “The army’s too small for the century we’re in,” he said.

In one of this last congressional testimonies as army chief, Schoomaker said he had voiced his concerns in advance about President Bush’s plan to increase troops in Iraq because it would further deplete army units at home.

“We laid out...exactly what the risks are in terms of other contingencies... to include my concerns about the lack of adequate dwell time,” he said, referring to amount of time active-duty soldiers now spend at home — about a year — before redeployed for another 12-month rotation. Schoomaker also said that his army combat brigades at home in the US are generally unready to deploy.

“I am not satisfied with the readiness of our non-deployed forces,” Schoomaker told senators, adding that the increased demands in Iraq and Afghanistan “aggravate that” and increase his concern. “We are in a dangerous period.”

Rumsfeld Still Has an Office at Pentagon

As to the whereabouts of those Defense officials who got us into the Iraq war — some are having a hard time leaving the Pentagon.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, Pentagon officials told reporters.

The Pentagon lists Rumsfeld as a “nonpaid consultant,” a status he needs in order to review secret and top-secret documents.

Rumsfeld and his aides, who include close adviser Stephen Cambone — a fierce advocate of the Iraq war and the chief planner of questionable interrogation tactics at military and CIA detention sites around the world — are sifting through the thousands of pages of documents generated during his tenure.

The Pentagon official told reporters that former secretaries are entitled to a transition office to sort papers.

But the transition office has raised some eyebrows inside the Pentagon; some question the size of the staff, which includes two military officers and two enlisted men. They question why the sorting could not have been done from the time Rumsfeld resigned Nov. 8 to when he left the building Dec. 18.

Douglas Feith Fired From Teaching Job

And what about Douglas Feith, the former top Pentagon official involved in planning the Iraq war? As Undersecretary of Defense, his office asserted that there were links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, which differed from the findings of the CIA and other agencies.

Feith was hired by a Defense Department graduate school for military officers and diplomats, the National Defense University, and given a four-year contract for half a million dollars, according to Pentagon records.

The hiring of Feith — who is still under intense scrutiny for his involvement in making the case for the Iraq invasion — was never made public.

Feith’s contract, however, was terminated several months later, the New York Times reports, adding that he is now teaching at Georgetown University, where he graduated from law school.