Posted on 03/10/2007 7:35:26 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
ANCHORENA PARK, Uruguay, March 10 -- President Bush approved 8,200 more U.S. troops for Iraq and Afghanistan on top of reinforcements already ordered to those two countries, the White House said Saturday, move that comes amid a fiery debate in Washington over the Iraq war.
The president agreed to send 4,700 troops to Iraq in addition to the 21,500 he ordered to go in January, mainly to provide support for those combat forces and to handle more anticipated Iraqi prisoners. He decided to send a 3,500-member brigade to Afghanistan to accelerate training of local forces, doubling his previous troop increase to fight a resurgent Taliban.
Officials had foreshadowed the additional forces for Iraq in recent days, the latest troop increase in Afghanistan had not been known and will bring U.S. forces there to all-time high. The deployments underscore the challenges facing the United States in both countries and further stretch an already strained military. In Iraq particularly, the moves could fuel suspicions that a troop increase initially described as a temporary "surge" may grow larger and last longer than predicted.
Bush did not comment on his decision during second day of a six-day Latin America tour. But aides released a letter he signed Friday night aboard Air Force One as he flew to Uruguay from Brazil, asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for $3.2 billion in emergency funding to pay for the additional units. He proposed cuts in other spending to offset the cost.
"This revised request would better align resources based on the assessment of military commanders to achieve the goal of establishing Iraq and Afghanistan as democratic and secure nations that are free of terrorism," Bush said in the letter.
The president's decision came as congressional Democrats are struggling to find a way to reverse direction in Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
That's not someone playing with bubble-wrap you hear. Those are little heads popping over at Kos and DU
Are the troops going to Iraq for Iraq, or for Iran?
Debka is reporting that US aircraft are arriving in Qatar and Bahrain, and the Iranians are now on a nationwide anti-aircraft alert.
If we do have that Iranian general and he is spilling his guts out, the Iranian command and general staff will be pooping themselves. Any number of their sneaky attacks and counter-attacks could be so compromised that they would be utterly useless.
For our part, I hope we are contacting Iranian generals like we contacted Iraqi generals before the big push. I imagine that a handful of them at least are really wishing that they were sipping pina coladas with CIA agents in Miami Beach or wherever, too.
Oh, my. Interesting times. We shall see.
Good for him....he is so good at ignoring the dems' crap.
Pelosi will have a fit on tv tomorrow with botox liquid popping out of her face.
I know we don't have enough soldiers in the US to to pull it off, but I've always maintained that they should increase by 50,000 each time. I really believe there would be far fewer casualties with more troops to watch each other's back. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that more young people enlist and we can grow our military, as Gates has suggested.
We should be occupying Iraq with 300,000 troops at least. The blame goes to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who wanted to do the war on the cheap.
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