Last week Pentagon officials announced they would mobilize as many as 6,500 troops from the Army's Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), a deep and rarely tapped reservoir of human resources, to meet the military's manpower needs in Iraq and around the world.

"We are stretched but we have what we need," said Lt. General Frank Hagenbeck, the Army's personnel chief, recently, dismissing the idea of a manpower crisis in the Army.

The mobilization of IRR troops is not itself a cause for alarm: as the Pentagon says, that's what they're there for. But the use of IRR troops is not the only special measure the Pentagon has used to meet its many current needs:

• Several thousand troops will be redeployed to Iraq from their longstanding assignment in South Korea;
• The Army has massively extended "stop-loss" orders mandating soldiers to stay on duty beyond their service obligations;
• The Pentagon has decided to send into combat the elite training force used to prepare combat units for deployment.

The U.S. military has not faced as intense a set of demands since the Vietnam War. At the same time, most reasonable people-regardless of their position on the Iraq war-agree that we should leave Iraq in the best possible condition and acknowledge that this would require a significant investment in security.

So why is it that the White House, supported by Republicans in Congress, still refuses to talk straight with the American public on its estimated troop needs for Iraq?

On Wednesday night, the Senate passed President Bush's defense package, rejecting a plan by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) to require the Administration to give a best estimate of troop levels in Iraq by the end of 2005 .

The Senate's version of the bill authorizes $447 billion in defense expenditures for FY2005, including $25 billion specifically for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given the financial costs to American taxpayers and the emotional costs for the families of soldiers, the Bush Administration should offer its best guess at how many troops we will keep in Iraq, and for how long.

Before the war, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz insisted the U.S. would only need 100,000 troops in immediate post-war Iraq. More than a year after President Bush declared an end to major hostilities, there are more than 130,000 troops in Iraq and no indication from the administration what the future needs might be.

The lack of openness around military planning, especially as it affects the morale of soldiers and their families, threatens to further undermine force strength and readiness.

How?

Consider a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Harvard University, and the Washington Post . The group polled Army spouses on their attitudes about the effect of Army service on family life, and found that three out of four Army spouses predicted the Army would have a problem recruiting and retaining soldiers given the demanding deployments and uncertainty for military families in the post-9/11 world.

In a Stars & Stripes poll of soldiers on the ground in Iraq last summer, roughly half those surveyed said they did not plan to re-enlist when their current service obligation expires .

The reliance on stop-loss orders has generated a well-publicized catalogue of heart-wrenching stories of long-deployed moms and dads getting pulled involuntarily back into action hours before going home.

The Bush Administration is making extremely heavy demands on soldiers and their families without being up-front about long-term expectations. Both active and reserve units have been pushed to the breaking point and deserve on honest answer from the White House on what kinds of demands they'll be facing in the next 12-24 months.