US army extends Iraq duty for 4,000

from ap/yahoo: The Army is stretched so thin by the war in
Iraq that it is again extending the combat tours of thousands of soldiers beyond the promised 12 months — the second such move since August...

"The Army is coming to the end of its rope in Iraq," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a private research group. "It simply does not have enough active-duty military personnel to sustain the current level of effort." ...

The tour extension affects between 3,500 and 4,000 soldiers in the brigade, officials said. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because the Pentagon had yet to make an announcement.