Memo: Drastic Troop Cuts Eyed

(CBS/AP)  According to a leaked British defense memo, the Pentagon is considering drastically reducing the number of forces in Iraq early next year, reports CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier.

The memo, marked "Secret — U.K. Eyes Only," and signed by Britain's Defense Secretary John Reid, says "emerging U.S. plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," which would see the multinational force cut from 176,000 to 66,000.

However, Dozier reports that coalition commanders on the ground are more cautious. The memo adds that they fear Iraqi troops will still be too green to keep the violence under control.

Pentagon planning appears driven by a looming numbers crunch with falling recruiting numbers meaning there's not enough new blood, Dozier added.

The memo also shows Britain is considering scaling back its troop presence from 8,500 to 3,000 by the middle of 2006, saving nearly $1 billion annually.

In other recent developments :

U.S. soldiers killed 14 insurgents in two days of fighting in a strategic northern city, the American military said Monday. Soldiers of the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment killed four insurgents in a gunbattle Sunday, and 10 more were killed Monday as fighting raged in Tal Afar, 260 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. command reported. American troops suffered no casualties, the statement said.

However, insurgents bloodied an Iraqi force in Khalis, 45 miles north of Baghdad. Guerrillas firing mortars, machine guns and semiautomatic weapons stormed an Iraqi checkpoint about 5 a.m., killing eight Iraqi soldiers, Khalis police chief Col. Mahdi Saleh said. About 90 minutes later, a car bomb exploded a few miles away as an Iraqi army patrol passed, killing two soldiers, Saleh said. Two soldiers and three civilians were wounded in the attacks.

Six civilians were also killed in the Tal Afar fighting and 22 were wounded, according to the city police chief, Brig. Gen. Najim Abdullah al-Jubouri. Some of the wounded were hospital workers, officials said.

An influential Sunni clerical organization accused Iraqi security forces of detaining, torturing and killing 10 Sunnis in Baghdad. Government officials had no comment, but a doctor at Yarmouk hospital confirmed receiving the bodies, which he said showed signs of abuse. The Association of Muslim Scholars said members of an Interior Ministry commando brigade detained the men Sunday as they visited relatives in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula. However, the doctor said one of the men was killed and the other nine detained after the troops came under fire Sunday in Shula.

Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment directly on a leaked British military assessment that raises the possibility of drastically cutting British troop strength in Iraq by the end of next year as well as sharply cutting the overall number of U.S. and allied troops by the middle of next year to 66,000.

"It's not for me to speculate on when there might be a reduction in U.S. forces," he said, adding that U.S. officials have said repeatedly for months that their goal is to begin reductions in 2006 if conditions permit.

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