Top Marine cites training needs (cites Iraq strain)

Source: Associated Press

MANAMA, Bahrain - The strains of fighting in Iraq have forced the Marine Corps to forego training in jungle warfare and other skills that are the traditional backbone of the Corps, the Marines' top general said Wednesday.

"We're not training for the other kinds" of combat that could arise at short notice, Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, told a group of Marines at the U.S. naval headquarters for the Persian Gulf.

"We are the nation's shock troops," he said, stressing that Marines have to be prepared to make amphibious landings and conduct operations that require training they are not getting now because Marine infantry and air units returning from Iraq have time only to get ready for their next tour of duty there.

"We've simply got to get back some of those skills," like firing artillery, he said.

Conway stopped in Bahrain before heading to Iraq to visit some of the 25,000 Marines in Anbar province, the predominantly Sunni Arab region that runs west from Baghdad to its borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

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