General Cody: 15-month tours to apply to deployments through Summer, 2008

Above: A paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne Division rests after eight hours of clearing houses in Had Maksar last week.

U.S. soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan will be facing the extended 15-month deployments until at least next June, a top Army commander said Tuesday.

Commanders are assessing the situation on the ground now, but Gen. Richard Cody, the Army Vice Chief of Staff, said it will take until at least June to shrink average deployments back to 12 months while maintaining the 158,000 troops now deployed in the region.

"It's going to take a while to get off the 15 months," he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday.

He faced questions at every meeting with troops and commanders about the extended deployments and sought to reassure them it was a temporary measure designed to get enough soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan while giving them at least a year to rest and train between deployments.

"It was supposed to be interim and is not and will not be permanent," he said in a meeting with leaders of the 4th Infantry Division, which is preparing to return to Iraq late this year.

Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune

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