Lawrence DiRita, the defense department's chief spokesman, said it was "entirely possible" commanders would want to boost the force in Iraq beyond its current level of 140,000.

"And I guess the thinking at the moment is, if we did need more and it was based on rotations, how would that work?" he said.

"And what would the impact be on units that might wind up getting extended a week or two beyond their one year?"

DiRita denied, however, that the reassessment of force levels was prompted by a surge in suicide bombings that have killed more than 200 civilians in Iraq over the past week.

"That's not a good way to determine how good or bad things are, by how many things are exploding," he told reporters.

"It's a bigger, sort of expansive understanding of where do we have forces that are particularly capable and where do we want to bolster those forces," he said.

Planners are looking at extending the tours of some units to avoid situations in which they would be handing over their duties to inexperienced relief units during the election period, he said.

Commanders have warned of escalating violence ahead of the October 15 referendum on Iraq's bitterly contested constitution, which is supposed to be followed by national elections on December 15.

Pentagon officials indicated in August that US force levels in Iraq could go up to as high as 160,000 during the election period.

But Lieutenant General John Vines, the number two commander in Iraq, on September 2 told reporters that more Iraqi security forces were trained and ready for this election than the last. He said 140,000 US troops was "about right."

Those forces include two battalions of the 82nd Airborne Division that were ordered deployed to Iraq last month for four months to help beef up security for the elections.

Vines spoke as the US military at home was swinging into action in response to Hurricane Katrina amid intense criticism of the slow federal response to the disaster in New Orleans and the gulf coast.

The numbers of US troops deployed for the Katrina disaster duty has since begun to come down. From a high of 72,000, they were down to 54,000 on Monday, Pentagon officials said.

DiRita insisted, however, that there was no connection between US force levels in Iraq and the US Gulf coast.

"I haven't heard a single - and I've seen a lot of them - briefing in which the footprint in Iraq-Afghanistan has (had any repercussions on) the footprint in the Gulf coast," he said.

The disaster has raised deep questions about whether the protracted war in Iraq has strained the US military's ability to respond to crises elsewhere.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier this month said American forces could "fully prosecute the global war on terror while responding to this unprecedented humanitarian crisis here at home."

"We can and will do both," he said.

Rumsfeld has since ordered a study of the lessons learned from Katrina that will consider, among other things, a greatly expanded military role in domestic disasters of that magnitude.

"I think one of the principle lessons is that in a disaster of a certain scale, there is no other department of government that can provide the resources and the planning and the advanced thinking than this department," DiRita said.

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