Troop Surge Numbers Could Double
Defense Tech | Noah Shachtman| February 01, 2007
President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would “surge” an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, in a last, grand push to quell the violence in Baghdad and in Anbar Province. But a new study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be as high as 48,000 – more than double the number the President initially said.
That’s because the combat units that President Bush wants to send into hostile areas need to be backed up by support troops, “including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services,” the CBO notes:
Over the past few years , DoD?s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops.
All i know is,my brother is leaving for that fucking rat hole saturday…and I wish he wasn’t.I’ve got a bad feeling about this time(he’s been there once already).
[quote]grnhd wrote:
All i know is,my brother is leaving for that fucking rat hole saturday…and I wish he wasn’t.I’ve got a bad feeling about this time(he’s been there once already).[/quote]
Make sure you tell him how we can’t win over there, and his service is pointless no matter what because the war is unpopular.
[quote]Cunnivore wrote:
Make sure you tell him how we can’t win over there, and his service is pointless no matter what because the war is unpopular.[/quote]
Unless he’s a complete dipshit like yourself, I’m sure he’s already well aware of that.
Who the fuck is Howard Zinn? Is he the liberal equivalent of your idol, the fascist cunt?
20,000 troops is not a “surge”. It’s well within the bounds of the troop levels we’ve had in Iraq all along. It’s just a stall for time so Bush can pass the mess off onto the next president.
The reason that it’s 20,000+ troops, is that’s all we currently have on hand and available. Impressive strategy by the leadership, eh?
There is still no plan for how to bring Iraq together. All Bush is doing is reacting. He has no clue on what positive steps to take.
[quote]Brad61 wrote:
20,000 troops is not a “surge”. It’s well within the bounds of the troop levels we’ve had in Iraq all along. It’s just a stall for time so Bush can pass the mess off onto the next president.
The reason that it’s 20,000+ troops, is that’s all we currently have on hand and available. Impressive strategy by the leadership, eh?
There is still no plan for how to bring Iraq together. All Bush is doing is reacting. He has no clue on what positive steps to take.[/quote]
I believe the object is to focus the additional 21,000 on Baghdad. That would be significant.
Yep, President Bush makes all the plans all by himself. You, with your 24-hour access to CNN, moveon.org, the New York Times and NPR know more about the situation than the President, the JCS, and the CIA ever will. YOU should run for President. I’m sure you will fix everything.
You people don’t even give the man a chance to complete his sentences before you start criticizing.
Here’s the liberal gameplan: group huddle you go left, you go way left, and whatever the President says, we say “no way”. Ready, break.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Because many on the Left don’t want to win…?
What exactly is the definition of a “win”?
[/quote]
Win- to acheive victory or first in a competition. I try to think of it as the opposite of losing.
An example would be- Florida kicked OSU’s ass in the BCS championship. Florida won the game, they are the winner. Get it now! We have already won in many ways over there(getting rid of a genecidal lunatic, instilling a democratic government, and giving them freedom). Now we have to finish the job by securing the area.
In Iraq, the gameplan is to have a stable and secure country, once we achieve that, it will be a win for the U.S. as well as the non-insurgent Iraqi civilians, they will be the real winners. With all the opposition we have in this war that is purely for politcal purposes. Our soldiers are risking their lives over there everyday. We are not leaving until we “win”, Bush(like him or hate him) is not going to leave until it is stable) the soldiers need support not opposition for what they are doing. You see, opposition emboldens the enemy and gives the insurgents hope. If we could all put aside political differences we could get this over with, but the dems are scared if Bush wins this war it will be a political disaster for them. Unfortunately we have a liberal media influence too, the soldiers are fighting more than just insurgents because of this. Why don’t you drop your political agenda and support OUR troops not weaken them so we can win this thing, please, America needs you, the troops need you! Just forget the politics and support our guys, they are good guys, I had the privilege of serving with them and they are willing to die for your right to oppose them, so why not help them out. They are there trying to help those people, at least support them and don’t give the enemy hope. I this is hard for you to understand, but it is true, I was there. You may not support what the war stands for(I understand that), but while my brothers are over there please support them.
It’s amazing how the liberal media shoots down helicopters, bombs civilian targets and operates sectarian death squads that make neighborhoods uninhabitable. Talk about the power of the press!
Hate to break it to you folks on the right, but we’re 1,300 days past “Mission Accomplished” and the place is a mess. Blame the “liberal media” all you want; the turd is in the Bush Admin’s pocket. They blew it, big time, and we’ll be paying for it for a couple of decades.
We can’t go back and fix the mistakes that doomed this effort from the beginning. I hope the new focus on genuine counterinsurgency is effective, but a “win” is out of the question. We have only a range of bad scenarios and our best hope is a “soft partition” and containing the mess in Iraq.
Third person conjugation of the verbto beused in this context as a copula to connect the subject with its predicate–in this case the phrase the definition of a win. Grammatically complex but effective. Many other languages don’t utilize this nuance.
[quote]jumper wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Because many on the Left don’t want to win…?
What exactly is the definition of a “win”?
Win- to acheive victory or first in a competition. I try to think of it as the opposite of losing.
An example would be- Florida kicked OSU’s ass in the BCS championship. Florida won the game, they are the winner. Get it now! We have already won in many ways over there(getting rid of a genecidal lunatic, instilling a democratic government, and giving them freedom). Now we have to finish the job by securing the area.
In Iraq, the gameplan is to have a stable and secure country, once we achieve that, it will be a win for the U.S. as well as the non-insurgent Iraqi civilians, they will be the real winners. With all the opposition we have in this war that is purely for politcal purposes. Our soldiers are risking their lives over there everyday. We are not leaving until we “win”, Bush(like him or hate him) is not going to leave until it is stable) the soldiers need support not opposition for what they are doing. You see, opposition emboldens the enemy and gives the insurgents hope. If we could all put aside political differences we could get this over with, but the dems are scared if Bush wins this war it will be a political disaster for them. Unfortunately we have a liberal media influence too, the soldiers are fighting more than just insurgents because of this. Why don’t you drop your political agenda and support OUR troops not weaken them so we can win this thing, please, America needs you, the troops need you! Just forget the politics and support our guys, they are good guys, I had the privilege of serving with them and they are willing to die for your right to oppose them, so why not help them out. They are there trying to help those people, at least support them and don’t give the enemy hope. I this is hard for you to understand, but it is true, I was there. You may not support what the war stands for(I understand that), but while my brothers are over there please support them.
[/quote]
The liberal media was actually responsible for the partition and genocide in Bosnia as well. It’s a common misconception that it was caused by a millennium old sectarian divide unleashed by the collapse of a despotic regime and stoked by the search for new (or previously somewhat dormant) identities after the decline of imposed nationalism.