WASHINGTON (AP) – The strain of fighting a counter-insurgency war in Iraq, on a scale not foreseen even a year ago and with no end in sight, is taking a startling toll on the American military.

The U.S. death count is rising – at least 1,350 in all, rising by 70 or more each month.

Costs are escalating – more than $1 billion a week, with the total now exceeding $100 billion.

And while Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a chief architect of the war, remains focused on his exit strategy – training Iraqis to provide their own defense, enabling U.S. troops to begin leaving – even he has recently used the term “bleak” to describe the situation.

Rumsfeld says he remains convinced that the only way out is to exercise patience and fortitude while a reliable Iraqi security force is developed. And U.S. military commanders in Iraq make almost daily pronouncements of optimism that the tide is beginning to turn against the insurgents.

Indeed, the Iraqi security forces are growing, in numbers at least, and U.S. forces continue to kill and capture insurgents, uncover and destroy arms caches and support the country’s rebuilding. The administration hopes the Jan. 30 elections will mark a turning point for the better.

Yet, the Pentagon is so strapped to sustain a force of 150,000 troops in Iraq that some senior Army leaders are worried that the war – combined with the conflict in Afghanistan – is wearing out their soldiers.

The Army has about 135,000 soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait, and the official said that for planning purposes the service is figuring it will have to maintain that level for another four or five years.

And there is the “other” war – the one in Afghanistan, now in its fourth year.

Among the indicators of how deeply troubled the situation appears:

• Despite a long and determined effort to build a competent Iraqi security force that could take over for the U.S. troops, that linchpin of Rumsfeld’s exit strategy is, at best, inching ahead. The Iraqi force is only half the size that U.S. commanders believe is needed to do the job.

• Despite a successful offensive in November against the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the rebels remain capable of killing U.S. troops and Iraqi police and soldiers in Baghdad, Mosul and elsewhere almost daily. A roadside bomb killed seven U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Thursday. On Friday, a police captain was killed in a drive-by shooting in Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, and gunmen shot to death a policeman walking near his house in Mosul.

• A U.S. military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, said Friday the worst may be yet to come. “I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections,” Lessel said. “A year ago you didn’t see these kinds of horrific things.”

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