WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates Sunday said Democrats are using the deployment frequency issue as a "back-door effort" to speed troop reductions in Iraq.
Democratic lawmakers are considering legislation that would give troops more time to rest and recuperate between deployments. But Gates said on "Fox News Sunday" he would recommend President George W. Bush veto such a bill because it would create "force management problems that would be extremely difficult" and possibly put troops in greater danger.
"I think it's really pretty much a back-door effort to get the president to accelerate the drawdown so that it's an automatic kind of thing, rather than based on conditions in Iraq ...," said Gates, who has indicated troop levels in Iraq could be brought down to 100,000 by the end of 2008 if conditions improve.
Gates said he doesn't think U.S. forces should be used in neighboring Iran to curb the alleged influx of supplies to Iraqi insurgents.
"I think that the general view is we can manage this problem through better operations inside Iraq and on the border with Iran, that we can take care of the Iranian threat, or deal with the Iranian threat inside the borders of Iraq," he said. "Don't need to go across the border into Iran."
