Fort Leavenworth ? The senior ranking member of the Armed Forces and principal military adviser to the president says one of his major missions is to relieve stress of multiple deployments by members of the armed services.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen spoke Tuesday at Fort Leavenworth to several hundred U.S. Army officers in the fort’s Command and General Staff College.

Mullen, who was sworn in as the 17th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 1, briefly emphasized his military strategy of “Reset, Reconstitute and Revitalize” for the current wars in the Middle East.

Mullen focused on the need to improve the morale of the 340,000 active duty soldiers, as well as members of the National Guard and Army Reservists for whom he said he feels directly responsible.

“We need to figure out how to relieve stress on the fort,” Mullen said. “You will see that to the highest degree that is possible, given the deployment actualities we’re experiencing.”

When he served in Vietnam, Mullen said, he saw firsthand that long detachments and overexerting troops could lead to a breakdown in the military system.

“We’ve got to get out of the 15-month deployment and 12-month rotation as quickly as we can,” Mullen said.

During a question-and-answer session with officers, one asked how receptive officials in Washington had been to financial demands of the war in Iraq.

“There’s a widely held view that we’ll be engaged in constant (conflict) for the foreseeable future,” Mullen said. “: I’m very mindful of responsible use of the taxpayer dollar. : We’ve got to be smart about where the resources go and what they do.”

Mullen stressed the need for nonmilitary options in Iraq, Afghanistan and other international areas of concern.

“The military cannot do everything,” Mullen said. “Security is a necessary but not sufficient solution to the problems we’re involved in right now.”

He emphasized the need to improve overseas programs such as the United States Agency for International Development, a government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide, which Mullen said has lagged during the past 10 or 15 years.

And it’s important, he said, to recognize that the current state of war is much more complicated than issues in just Iraq and Afghanistan. He pointed to “strong, sometimes extreme rhetoric” in countries such as Lebanon and Iran that are suspected of harboring terrorists. But he said, “I’m not a proponent of military action in Iran.”

He said his top priority as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is “developing a military strategy for the entire Middle East – not just Iraq and Afghanistan.”