Congress gave him that authority after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"One effect of global war on terror has been a significant increase in operational tempo and in an increased demand on the force," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "If the war on terror demands it, we will not hesitate to increase force levels even more, using those emergency authorities provided by Congress."

In making these comments, Rumsfeld jumped into what is becoming a major national debate on how big the U.S. armed forces should be. Some lawmakers argue that with its mission of fighting terrorism--its first broad new task since the end of the Cold War--the military should be significantly expanded.

Rumsfeld, however, has suggested that if the military is "transformed" into a lighter, quicker force capable of rapidly striking anywhere in the world, as he has been pushing for, the military may not have to get bigger. In his comments Wednesday, Rumsfeld insisted that the 33,000-troop increase is temporary, and that an increase in on-the-ground military capability is needed more than additional troops.

But the Defense Department is also reporting the first signs of a long-dreaded falloff in recruitment for the Army Reserve, which, along with the National Guard, soon will account for more than 40 percent of U.S. troop strength in Iraq.

"There is no question that the Army is stressed," Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee last month.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, former Assistant Defense Secretary Lawrence Korb and other experts have called for 40,000 more troops to be raised for the Army, the equivalent of two divisions.

The Army has 489,000 active duty personnel. The U.S. military consists of 1.4 million active-duty service members, plus about 1.2 million members of the Guard and Reserves.

If pressure grows to expand the military for the long term, President Bush could have a political problem. He could face stressed military personnel and their families, dropping enlistment and the need to increase the military to maintain global commitments.

The Pentagon has just begun a large troop rotation in Iraq that will return four combat-weary divisions to the U.S. and replace them with three fresh divisions plus an array of smaller units.

The emergency increase of 33,000 troops, which Schoomaker predicted could last four or five years, is intended to ease the strains of the huge rotation and maintaining Iraq security, as well as to assist in Rumsfeld's plan to transform the military from a heavily equipped, Cold War force to a lighter, more flexible one.

The Pentagon already has instituted "stop-loss" and "stop-move" orders to maintain U.S. troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan. A "stop-loss" order prevents troops from retiring or leaving the service at the end of their enlistments, while "stop-move" holds them overseas beyond the original end of their tours.

About 40,000 servicemen and women have been affected by the "stop-loss" and "stop-move" orders. Of these, about 16,000 are Reservists.

The 350,000-member Army National Guard and 205,000-strong Army Reserve are bearing the biggest burden of the shortage, enduring deployments of a year or more.

A year ago, 79,000 Guard and Reserve members were on active duty. Now, nine months after Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq, 190,000 are.

"We have employers who are losing valuable employees to active duty," said Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) of the House Armed Services Committee. "We have a reliance in our communities for firemen and police . . . who are no longer there."

"I'm full of anxiety about this," added Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.), a Marine Corps veteran. "What are we expecting out of these folks? It's almost worse than Vietnam."

For months, the Pentagon has been reporting that the regular Army and the Reserves have been meeting 100 percent of their recruitment and retention goals, but Schoomaker noted a recent exception.

He said retention goals in the Army Reserve for midcareerists were missed by 6 percent last year.

Last year, 16 percent of the National Guard who have served long deployments elected not to re-enlist. A recent National Guard Bureau survey of 5,000 Guardsmen and women from 15 states predicted that this figure would soon rise to 20 to 22 percent a year.

Rumsfeld has blamed the problem on a system instituted toward the end of the Vietnam War, when the nation went to an all-volunteer military. To keep active-duty troop requirements down, many military mission specialties were assigned to the Reserves, where they could be staffed by part-time volunteer troops who would be called up only for a major war.

These ranged from air-refueling tanker crews to psychological warfare operatives. They also have included military police, civil administration experts and specialists who have proved crucial to the Iraq occupation effort.

The Pentagon's troop increase plan calls for increasing the number of Reserve- and Guard-enhanced brigades to 22 from 15 now. Though regular active-duty Army divisions would remain at 10, the number of individual brigades would rise to 48 from 33.

For years, Pentagon policy has been to maintain a military capable of fighting two medium-size regional conflicts simultaneously. But the struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan have exhausted so many resources that experts doubt the U.S. could handle another war.

Upheavals and possible civil wars involving Islamic radicals in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, for example, would place significant new demands on American armed forces, especially if Bush pursues his policy of taking unilateral, pre-emptive military action when U.S. national security is threatened, they say.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently noted that the 125,000 troops in Iraq and the 13,000 in Afghanistan are just part of current U.S. troop commitments.

More than 2,000 military personnel are guarding detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; more than a thousand are participating in Joint Task Force Horn of Africa; nearly 3,500 are involved with stabilization efforts in the Balkans; and 1,500 are stationed in Central and South America for anti-drug operations.

In addition, there are more than 74,000 American military personnel in Germany, as well as about 13,000 in Italy, 11,000 in Britain, 40,000 in Japan and more than 41,000 in Korea.

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