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According to The Wall Street Journal, President Obama has taken a pass on granting auto parts suppliers’ request for $10 billion in aid, leaving the financially-strapped companies to seek succor from Congress instead.

While the president’s administration says it will keep a wary eye on the state of the industry, no more federal aid appears to be in the cards. As quoted in the WSJ, Neil De Koker, president and CEO of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association says that he thinks the government won’t financially intervene further “unless we see chaos or a disorderly situation arising where have assembly-line shutdown due to lack of ability to get parts or stuff like that, then we would relook at this situation…”

While the industry’s highest-profile bankruptcy have undoubtedly been that of General Motors and Chrysler, major suppliers like Karmann, Visteon and Metaldyne have also filed in recent months, and industry watchdogs see the potential for many more red ink stained white flags to be erected before the industry’s economy recovers.

[Source: The Wall Street Journal | Image: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty]

WASHINGTON – Based on what appears to be a successful test of an atomic bomb more powerful than the one North Korea detonated in 2006, former U.S. government and independent analysts say the North’s technical skills are improving slightly.

Of greater concern, according to national security adviser James L. Jones, is the possibility that North Korea could sell or share its nuclear technology with others. He would not say whether the U.S. intelligence community judged the test to be a significant step forward.

“The fact that they have this kind of technology and are obviously willing to export it is very troubling,” Jones told reporters Tuesday.

The U.S. government remains officially mum on technical details about the underground blast that took place Monday in North Korea. It could be days or weeks before radioactive gases from the underground test are detected and analyzed by U.S. and allied intelligence.

North Korea appears to be marginally closer to having both a nuclear warhead and the means of delivering it to the United States or U.S. allies in the Pacific. In April, Pyongyang launched a long-range missile in what represented a modest improvement over earlier missile tests. The government reported launching a series of short-range missiles on Tuesday.

The nuclear test proves that North Korea’s basic warhead design works, said Charles Vick, a missile expert with Global Security.org. The next challenge is reducing its weight by about half, and then integrating the warhead onto a missile.

North Korea has said it has begun harvesting plutonium from spent fuel rods at its main nuclear plant to build up its atomic arsenal. It is thought to have enough weaponized plutonium to make more than a half-dozen atomic bombs.

In its official announcement of the test, North Korea said the explosion was larger than its 2006 test. Publicly available information supports that.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded a seismic event — equivalent to an earthquake with a roughly 4.6 on the Richter scale — near the test site. The 2006 test registered roughly 4.1, according to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arms control group.

Martin Kalinowski, a Hamburg University professor, says that corresponds to an explosive yield of about 3 to 8 kilotons of TNT, with a yield most likely of 4 kilotons.

That would be considerably higher than the half-kiloton yield in 2006. One kiloton is the equivalent of exploding 1,000 tons of TNT. For comparison, the U.S. nuclear bombs detonated in Japan during World War II ranged between 15 to 21 kilotons.

Jeffrey Lewis, director of nuclear strategy initiative at the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington, cautioned that “it’s really hard to know what the yield actually is.” He said it might be as low as 1.5 kilotons.

Lewis described the range as “somewhere between what you wouldn’t want dropped on your neighborhood, but it’s nowhere near what was dropped on Hiroshima.”

Discussions about yield and capability are somewhat beside the point, he added. The fact that North Korea has a weapon, and its intentions for it are unclear, are the true concerns.

“What’s frightening is that they have a nuclear weapon, the uncertainty that comes from having a nuclear weapon, not the capability itself,” said Lewis.

North Korea’s nuclear test forced the Pentagon to scrap much of its planning for a meeting Saturday in Singapore among Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.

“Undoubtedly, the developments in North Korea over the weekend will be a focus of that conversation,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters. He said it was believed to be the first discussion among the three nations’ defense chiefs.

___

Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lara Jakes contributed to this report.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Superman swooped in just in time.

Dwight Howard scored 10 points in overtime and the Orlando Magic, raining down 3-pointers like a Florida thunderstorm, withstood 44 points and a last-second shot by LeBron James for a 116-114 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday night to take a 3-1 lead in the Eastern Conference finals.

Howard finished with 27 points, 14 rebounds and again made his free throws — 7 of 9 — for the resilient Magic, who made a team record 17 3-pointers — 11 after halftime.

Orlando can earn its first trip to the NBA finals since 1995 with a win in Game 5 on Thursday night in Cleveland.

Rafer Alston added 26 points and Rashard Lewis and Mickael Pietrus had 17 each for the Magic.

James was spectacular again, adding 12 rebounds and seven assists, but he had eight turnovers for the Cavs, whose season of seasons is slipping away.

“I had to get myself going. My teammates found me in the right place to score and I kept scoring,” Howard said of his overtime effort that included three dunks, a tip-in and two free throws. “I hate losing, especially on my home floor. We kept fighting for the win.”

LOS ANGELES – Elizabeth Taylor says she’s home from the hospital and “feeling great.”

The 77-year-old actress sent a tweet to her fans on the Twitter micro-blogging site Tuesday, announcing she was home after a hospital stay. She thanked them “for all the love and support.”

Publicist Dick Guttman said Taylor was admitted Friday to an undisclosed hospital “for a routine visit.”

Taylor, an avid Twitter user, had sent a tweet Friday asking a friend to get her puppy past hospital security.

NEW YORK – The future of Chrysler hangs in the balance as it heads to court Wednesday to ask a bankruptcy judge for permission to sell the bulk of its assets to a group headed by Italy’s Fiat in hopes of saving itself from liquidation.

Attorneys for Chrysler LLC maintain that the deal with Fiat Group SpA is the company’s only hope to avoid being sold off piece by piece, but the agreement remains controversial with more than 100 objections to the sale filed by the automaker’s dealers, bondholders, former employees and others.

However, if the deal doesn’t close by June 15, Fiat could back out.

Also Wednesday, fellow U.S.-based automaker General Motors Corp. is set to announce the results of a debt swap offer that could decide whether it can restructure out of court or will follow its Auburn Hills, Mich.-based rival into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Detroit-based GM gave the holders of some $27 billion of its bonds until midnight Tuesday to exchange their debt for a 10 percent stake in a new GM, and said it will announce the results Wednesday morning. If bondholders representing 90 percent of GM’s unsecured debt — about $24 billion — didn’t agree to the exchange, GM has said it will file for bankruptcy protection. Bondholders have balked at the proposal from the start, saying it gives them too small a stake for the amount they are owed.

Automakers worldwide are struggling as the global recession has reduced demand for new vehicles. But GM and Chrysler have been particularly hobbled by promises to cover the health and pension costs of tens of thousands of unionized retirees — along with recent record-high gasoline prices that reduced demand for their low-mileage trucks and SUVs.

On Tuesday, Chrysler avoided a possible roadblock to its sale when a U.S. district judge ruled that a legal review of its bankruptcy proceedings wasn’t needed before the sale hearing could take place.

Judge Thomas Griesa denied a withdrawal motion from attorneys representing a pair of Indiana state pension funds and a state construction fund. The funds had argued that a review was needed because of the unprecedented involvement of the Treasury Department in the case and its use of federal bailout funds for bankruptcy financing.

Chrysler released a statement late Tuesday saying that it was pleased with Griesa’s decision and looked forward to Wednesday’s hearing in bankruptcy court.

Last week, attorneys for the funds asked U.S. Judge Arthur Gonzalez, the bankruptcy judge overseeing Chrysler’s case, to postpone the sale hearing in order to give the district court time to rule, but that motion was denied.

Chrysler attorney Thomas Cullen said during Tuesday’s hearing that the agreement with Fiat represents the best deal Chrysler could get to save itself, noting that the company also looked to other automakers and its lenders for help but didn’t get any.

“The government was our bank of last resort,” Cullen said. “We desperately, desperately needed that financing or we would have needed to liquidate.”

The funds also have filed a motion objecting to the sale, saying it puts the interests of other parties ahead of those of the funds and other secured debt holders.

Glenn Kurtz, an attorney for the funds, accused the government of trying to unfairly speed Chrysler through the bankruptcy process, pushing aside the rights of bondholders.

“The rule of law should apply even if there are adverse social consequences,” Kurtz told the court.

When Chrysler filed for bankruptcy on April 30, the government estimated the company would exit bankruptcy in 30 to 60 days. The automaker is nearing the end of the process and is expected to emerge from court protection closer to the 30-day timetable, said a person familiar with the matter. The person was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Griesa noted that the funds will have the right to appeal Gonzalez’s ruling on the sale motion if they don’t like it. Kurtz said after Tuesday’s hearing that he fully expects the sale motion to end up in district court.

The three funds, which include the Indiana State Teachers retirement Fund and Indiana State Police Pension Trust, along with the Indiana Major Moves Construction Fund, hold a combined $42.5 million of the total $6.9 billion in secured debt. They bought the bonds in July 2008 and paid 43 cents on the dollar, Kurtz told the court.

In the days leading up to its Chapter 11 filing, Chrysler reached an agreement with the majority of its bondholders in which they would receive a combined $2 billion in a deal worth 29 cents on the dollar. But some of the bondholders, including a group represented by Kurtz’s firm White & Case, refused to support it, saying that as secured lenders they deserved more.

On the day Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection, President Barack Obama singled out the lenders group as a reason why Chrysler was forced to file for bankruptcy protection, saying that they were seeking an “unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.”

The group later dissolved after its members decided that it had become too small to be effective.

It’s doubtful that GM will have any more luck in dealing with its bondholders.

A committee representing GM’s biggest bondholders — mostly big banks and other institutional investors — has opposed that automaker’s debt-for-equity swap from the start. Smaller, “retail” bondholders — individual investors like retirees and families — have also railed against the terms of the exchange.

NEW YORK – The world’s swine flu death toll reached 100 as two more New Yorkers died while infected with a virus that has sickened more than 12,000 people.

The deaths of 83 people in Mexico, 14 in the United States, two in Canada and one in Costa Rica have now been linked to swine flu. But WHO’s flu chief said the virus hadn’t yet reached the level of pandemic and said a global outbreak designation would change little about how governments are already responding.

“We are comfortable that countries are doing the kinds of public health actions that they need to be taking right now,” Keiji Fukuda said Tuesday during a press conference.

Governments continued to take steps to try to limit the virus’ spread.

In Australia, about 2,000 passengers from a cruise ship that docked in Sydney were advised to quarantine themselves for a week after at least nine cases of swine flu were confirmed on board. The passengers disembarked Monday after nine days cruising the Great Barrier Reef.

Singapore’s health ministry said it was searching for passengers on a flight from New York after a 22-year-old woman on the plane came down with the country’s first case of swine flu.

In Chile, health authorities were keeping a 38-year-old woman in isolation with severe symptoms. Health authorities in Panama reported three new cases Tuesday, for a total of 79.

According to WHO’s current pandemic criteria, the world is now in phase 5, meaning a global outbreak is imminent. To reach phase 6, the highest level, the agency’s current definition requires established spread of the disease in a region beyond North America.

Fukuda said other countries would have to report big outbreaks similar to those seen in Mexico and the U.S. before WHO raises its pandemic alert. More than half of the swine flu cases are in the U.S.

Twenty schools reopened Tuesday in New York City, including one whose assistant principal was the first person in New York City to die of swine flu. But five more schools were closed, and the confirmation that two people who died Friday had swine flu brings the number of deaths possibly caused by the virus to four.

“Our hearts go out to their families,” Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said.

The outbreak began more than a month ago when hundreds of students at St. Francis Preparatory School in the Fresh Meadows section of Queens became sick.

The four known victims also had other underlying health conditions, Frieden said.

The two people whose deaths were disclosed Tuesday were a 41-year-old Queens woman and a 34-year-old Brooklyn man. Lab results confirmed that they had swine flu, but the exact cause of their deaths will be determined by autopsies, Frieden said.

Meanwhile, the Queens school whose assistant principal became the first New Yorker to die of swine flu again bustled with activity Tuesday.

The Susan B. Anthony Intermediate School, Intermediate School 238, was among 20 schools or programs that reopened after being shuttered as a precaution amid the city’s 330 confirmed cases of swine flu.

“We just want to keep things moving,” said principal Joseph Gates as he helped load two buses of students headed for a school trip to Washington, D.C.

Mitchell Wiener, I.S. 238’s assistant principal, died May 17. A woman in her 50s died Saturday. The names of the swine flu victims other than Wiener have not been released.

___

Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

World Health Organization, http://www.who.int

NEW ULM, Minn. – A 13-year-old cancer patient is preparing for chemotherapy after a legal fight to treat him naturally and a tense six days when the boy and his mother left the state in violation of a court order.

Daniel Hauser’s parents agreed Tuesday to let him receive chemotherapy for a growing tumor caused by Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was scheduled to be examined Wednesday by a pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota and receive a round of chemo Thursday.

In exchange for agreeing to the hospital treatment, a judge allowed Colleen and Anthony Hauser to keep custody of their son.

An attorney for family services in southern Minnesota’s Brown County opposed handing custody back, citing the mother’s run from the law with her son in tow.

The family prefers natural healing practices suggested by a religious group called the Nemenhah Band, which says it follows American Indian beliefs.

Tom Sinas, lawyer for the guardian ad litem, questioned how effective the medical treatment would be if Daniel’s parents weren’t encouraging their son to believe in it.

“Danny Hauser needs support from people who aren’t going to be telling him his chemotherapy is poisoning him, that it’s going to take his life,” Sinas said.

But Judge John Rodenberg said he felt the best place for Daniel was with his parents at their farm near Sleepy Eye, as long as he could trust they’d go along with an oncologist’s recommendation that Daniel undergo at least five chemotherapy sessions.

Rodenberg separately asked both parents if they agreed to let Daniel undergo chemotherapy, and both said yes.

“Do you think this is necessary to save his life?” Rodenberg asked a visibly emotional Colleen Hauser during a Tuesday hearing.

“Yes, I do,” she replied.

Later in the hearing, Rodenberg said, “I’m taking you at your word. We’re starting over right now.”

Daniel and Colleen returned to Minnesota on Monday after almost a week on the run, during which they traveled to southern California. Authorities believed they may have been heading to Mexico to seek alternative cancer treatment. But instead, the pair contacted an attorney who helped arrange a flight home on a jet chartered by Asgaard Media, a film and TV production company based in Corona, Calif.

Alan Pezzuto, president and CEO of Asgaard Media, said the company has no plans to profit from the Hauser’s story.

“It is not business project, it’s a personal project,” he said.

In exchange for having charges dropped against Colleen Hauser, the family agreed to let an oncologist examine Daniel. Monday’s exam showed a tumor in Daniel’s chest has grown larger than it was when he was first diagnosed with Hodgkin’s in January.

The tumor is “now protruding outside Daniel’s chest wall,” according to the report by Dr. Michael Richards. “There is further compression of the airway, making the initiation of standard chemotherapy imperative this week.”

Doctors have said that because Daniel’s tumor responded well to one round of chemotherapy in February, it’s likely chemotherapy will be successful again. Doctors won’t know for certain until they try another round. If the tumor has become resistant to chemo, a stronger dose or different treatment plan might be needed.

Doctors have also said that starting and stopping chemotherapy, or getting the treatment on a pared-down schedule as the Hausers had proposed, could make a tumor resistant.

James Olson, the Brown County prosecutor, said social workers at Children’s Hospital told him that as recently as Monday the Hausers were still saying they didn’t want chemotherapy. The family and their lawyers didn’t say what was behind their apparent change of heart.

The Hausers did not return several phone messages left at their home Tuesday. After the hearing, family attorney Calvin Johnson, and Daniel’s court-appointed attorney Philip Elbert, said no one in the family nor the attorneys themselves would speak to the media.

Olson said he was not convinced the family would stick to the treatment plan.

“I am concerned that if Danny doesn’t like the second round of chemotherapy he’s going to say, ‘I’m going to run away again,’ and we’re going to be right back where we started,” Olson said. “These folks have had a history of changing their minds.”

But Tom Hagen, an attorney for the Hausers, said the family was committed to Daniel’s health.

Hodgkin’s lymphoma has a 90 percent cure rate in children if treated with chemotherapy and radiation, but doctors said Daniel was likely to die without those treatments.

WASHINGTON – Based on what appears to be a successful test of an atomic bomb more powerful than the one North Korea detonated in 2006, former U.S. government and independent analysts say the North’s technical skills are improving slightly.

Of greater concern, according to national security adviser James L. Jones, is the possibility that North Korea could sell or share its nuclear technology with others. He would not say whether the U.S. intelligence community judged the test to be a significant step forward.

“The fact that they have this kind of technology and are obviously willing to export it is very troubling,” Jones told reporters Tuesday.

The U.S. government remains officially mum on technical details about the underground blast that took place Monday in North Korea. It could be days or weeks before radioactive gases from the underground test are detected and analyzed by U.S. and allied intelligence.

North Korea appears to be marginally closer to having both a nuclear warhead and the means of delivering it to the United States or U.S. allies in the Pacific. In April, Pyongyang launched a long-range missile in what represented a modest improvement over earlier missile tests. The government reported launching a series of short-range missiles on Tuesday.

The nuclear test proves that North Korea’s basic warhead design works, said Charles Vick, a missile expert with Global Security.org. The next challenge is reducing its weight by about half, and then integrating the warhead onto a missile.

North Korea has said it has begun harvesting plutonium from spent fuel rods at its main nuclear plant to build up its atomic arsenal. It is thought to have enough weaponized plutonium to make more than a half-dozen atomic bombs.

In its official announcement of the test, North Korea said the explosion was larger than its 2006 test. Publicly available information supports that.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded a seismic event — equivalent to an earthquake with a roughly 4.6 on the Richter scale — near the test site. The 2006 test registered roughly 4.1, according to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arms control group.

Martin Kalinowski, a Hamburg University professor, says that corresponds to an explosive yield of about 3 to 8 kilotons of TNT, with a yield most likely of 4 kilotons.

That would be considerably higher than the half-kiloton yield in 2006. One kiloton is the equivalent of exploding 1,000 tons of TNT. For comparison, the U.S. nuclear bombs detonated in Japan during World War II ranged between 15 to 21 kilotons.

Jeffrey Lewis, director of nuclear strategy initiative at the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington, cautioned that “it’s really hard to know what the yield actually is.” He said it might be as low as 1.5 kilotons.

Lewis described the range as “somewhere between what you wouldn’t want dropped on your neighborhood, but it’s nowhere near what was dropped on Hiroshima.”

Discussions about yield and capability are somewhat beside the point, he added. The fact that North Korea has a weapon, and its intentions for it are unclear, are the true concerns.

“What’s frightening is that they have a nuclear weapon, the uncertainty that comes from having a nuclear weapon, not the capability itself,” said Lewis.

North Korea’s nuclear test forced the Pentagon to scrap much of its planning for a meeting Saturday in Singapore among Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.

“Undoubtedly, the developments in North Korea over the weekend will be a focus of that conversation,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters. He said it was believed to be the first discussion among the three nations’ defense chiefs.

___

Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lara Jakes contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – The United States could have fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade, the top Army officer said, even though a signed agreement requires all U.S. forces to be out of Iraq by 2012.

Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff, said Tuesday his planning envisions combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade as part of a sustained U.S. commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.

“Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction,” Casey said. “They fundamentally will change how the Army works.”

He spoke at an invitation-only briefing to a dozen journalists and policy analysts from Washington-based think-tanks.

Casey’s calculations about force levels are related to his attempt to ease the brutal deployment calendar that he said would “bring the Army to its knees.”

Casey would not specify how combat units would be divided between Iraq and Afghanistan. He said U.S. ground commander Gen. Ray Odierno is leading a study to determine how far U.S. forces could be cut back in Iraq and still be effective. Casey said his comments about the long war in Iraq were not meant to conflict with administration policies.

President Barack Obama plans to bring U.S. combat forces home from Iraq in 2010, and the United States and Iraq have agreed that all U.S. forces would leave by 2012. Although several senior U.S. officials have suggested Iraq could request an extension, the legal agreement the two countries signed last year would have to be amended for any significant U.S. presence to remain.

As recently as February, Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeated U.S. commitment to the agreement worked out with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

“Under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011,” Gates said during an address at Camp Lejeune. “We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned.”

The United States has about 139,000 troops in Iraq and 52,000 in Afghanistan.

Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq war as quickly as possible and refocusing U.S. resources on what he called the more important fight in Afghanistan.

That will not mean a major influx of U.S. fighting forces on the model of the Iraq “surge,” however. Obama has agreed to send about 21,000 combat forces and trainers to Afghanistan this year. Combined with additional forces approved before President George W. Bush left office, the United States is expected to have about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of this year. That’s about double the total at the end of 2008, but Obama’s top military and civilian advisers have indicated the total is unlikely to grow much beyond that.

Casey said several times that he wasn’t the person making policy, but the military was preparing to have a fighting force deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come. Casey said his planning envisions 10 combat brigades plus command and support forces committed to the two wars.

When asked whether the Army had any measurement for knowing how big it should be, Casey responded, “How about the reality scenario?”

The reality scenario, he said, must take into account that “we’re going to have 10 Army and Marine units deployed for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Casey stressed that the United States must be ready to take on sustained fights in the Middle East while meeting its other commitments.

He reiterated statements made by civilian and military leaders that the situation in Afghanistan would get worse before it gets better. “There’s going to be a big fight in the south,” he said.

Casey added that training of local police and military in Afghanistan was at least a couple years behind the pace in Iraq, and it would be months before the U.S. deployed enough trainers. There’s a steeper curve before training could be effective in Afghanistan, requiring three to five years before Afghanis could reach the “tipping point” of control.

He also said the U.S. had to be careful about what assets get deployed to Afghanistan. “Anything you put in there would be in there for a decade.”

As Army chief of staff, Casey is primarily responsible for assembling the manpower and determining assignments. He insisted the Army’s 1.1-million size was sufficient even to handle the extended Mideast conflicts.

“We ought to build a pretty effective Army with 1.1 million strength,” Casey said. He also noted that the Army’s budget had grown to $220 billion from $68 billion before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

He said the Army is two-thirds of the way through a complete overhaul from the Cold War-era force built around tanks and artillery to today’s terrorist-driven realities. The Army has become more versatile and quicker by switching from division-led units to brigade-level command.

Casey said the Army has moved from 15-month battlefield deployments to 12 months. His goal is to move rotations by 2011 to one year in the battlefield and two years out for regular Army troops and one year in the battlefield and three years out for reserves. He called the current one-year-in-one-year-out cycle “unsustainable.”

WASHINGTON – The United States could have fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade, the top Army officer said, even though a signed agreement requires all U.S. forces to be out of Iraq by 2012.

Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff, said Tuesday his planning envisions combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade as part of a sustained U.S. commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.

“Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction,” Casey said. “They fundamentally will change how the Army works.”

He spoke at an invitation-only briefing to a dozen journalists and policy analysts from Washington-based think-tanks.

Casey’s calculations about force levels are related to his attempt to ease the brutal deployment calendar that he said would “bring the Army to its knees.”

Casey would not specify how combat units would be divided between Iraq and Afghanistan. He said U.S. ground commander Gen. Ray Odierno is leading a study to determine how far U.S. forces could be cut back in Iraq and still be effective. Casey said his comments about the long war in Iraq were not meant to conflict with administration policies.

President Barack Obama plans to bring U.S. combat forces home from Iraq in 2010, and the United States and Iraq have agreed that all U.S. forces would leave by 2012. Although several senior U.S. officials have suggested Iraq could request an extension, the legal agreement the two countries signed last year would have to be amended for any significant U.S. presence to remain.

As recently as February, Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeated U.S. commitment to the agreement worked out with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

“Under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011,” Gates said during an address at Camp Lejeune. “We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned.”

The United States has about 139,000 troops in Iraq and 52,000 in Afghanistan.

Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq war as quickly as possible and refocusing U.S. resources on what he called the more important fight in Afghanistan.

That will not mean a major influx of U.S. fighting forces on the model of the Iraq “surge,” however. Obama has agreed to send about 21,000 combat forces and trainers to Afghanistan this year. Combined with additional forces approved before President George W. Bush left office, the United States is expected to have about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of this year. That’s about double the total at the end of 2008, but Obama’s top military and civilian advisers have indicated the total is unlikely to grow much beyond that.

Casey said several times that he wasn’t the person making policy, but the military was preparing to have a fighting force deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come. Casey said his planning envisions 10 combat brigades plus command and support forces committed to the two wars.

When asked whether the Army had any measurement for knowing how big it should be, Casey responded, “How about the reality scenario?”

The reality scenario, he said, must take into account that “we’re going to have 10 Army and Marine units deployed for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Casey stressed that the United States must be ready to take on sustained fights in the Middle East while meeting its other commitments.

He reiterated statements made by civilian and military leaders that the situation in Afghanistan would get worse before it gets better. “There’s going to be a big fight in the south,” he said.

Casey added that training of local police and military in Afghanistan was at least a couple years behind the pace in Iraq, and it would be months before the U.S. deployed enough trainers. There’s a steeper curve before training could be effective in Afghanistan, requiring three to five years before Afghanis could reach the “tipping point” of control.

He also said the U.S. had to be careful about what assets get deployed to Afghanistan. “Anything you put in there would be in there for a decade.”

As Army chief of staff, Casey is primarily responsible for assembling the manpower and determining assignments. He insisted the Army’s 1.1-million size was sufficient even to handle the extended Mideast conflicts.

“We ought to build a pretty effective Army with 1.1 million strength,” Casey said. He also noted that the Army’s budget had grown to $220 billion from $68 billion before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

He said the Army is two-thirds of the way through a complete overhaul from the Cold War-era force built around tanks and artillery to today’s terrorist-driven realities. The Army has become more versatile and quicker by switching from division-led units to brigade-level command.

Casey said the Army has moved from 15-month battlefield deployments to 12 months. His goal is to move rotations by 2011 to one year in the battlefield and two years out for regular Army troops and one year in the battlefield and three years out for reserves. He called the current one-year-in-one-year-out cycle “unsustainable.”