Posted on 01/09/2007 12:27:58 PM PST by areafiftyone
WASHINGTON - A first wave of additional U.S. troops will go into Iraq before the end of the month under President Bush's new plan, a senior defense official said Tuesday.
Up to 20,000 troops will be put on alert and be prepared to deploy under the president's plan, but the increase in forces on the ground will be gradual, said the official, who requested anonymity because the plans have not yet been announced.
Moving first would be the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, which is in Kuwait and poised to deploy quickly into Iraq.
Hubby likes to drive over jellyfish on the beach just to hear them explode. I thought it was gross.........until my nephew was stung by one.
Don't need 'em if they would have done the job right the first time.
We don't have that ability any longer.
I don't know if you noticed, but the Iraqi's have a sovereign government. They won't let us lean too hard on Sadr, and if we could, it would mean taking on a lot more then just the Sadr Army.
What we have been trying to do is train up enough Iraqi's to do the job, but there in a monkey wrench in that idea. The newly trained Army units are balking at going against Sadr. They won't deploy. They don't want civil war with their own kind, the Shia.
This has led to the only other logical conclusion, that we need to beef up in Baghdad. We can take some actions against Sadr as long as we are doing the same to the Sunni in this confined region, and hopefully this will lead to a quelling of the stuff going on in the South. The Brits are no longer actively engaging there. We are alone in this.
Nothing is going to work without Baghdad. We need security in Baghdad and we can do this with a few added troops, and will never exceed our high point of 160,000. I doubt we will need more than 10, 000 trigger pullers with 10 more in support staff.
This is still less than we had during the invasion and I think it will be no longer than 18 months.
Sadr has so much public support that he may as well be the Grand Mullah. We have to be very careful in taking him down or we will be forced to get out. He has to come along voluntarily so he can bring his supporters with him, and we have to establish that some of his people are criminals and have broken the Iraqi law. It is the only way to skin this cat and it can be done in Sadr City in several months time, and with his approval, tacit or otherwise..
Sadr needs to move into the Green Zone and be a political leader for all this to work out. He and the rest of the tribal leaders.
Security is the prize that can make this work, and we must provide it. They expect us to do so.
Well thought. Well said. I don't necessarily agree but I thank you just the same. I have something to consider.
Prayers for our troops and their families!!
The PEOPLE elected him to make decisions. Not to govern by poll numbers.
I was shocked to learn how limited our troops are. Just read this today in the NY Post. Quote from a NYC firefighter who recently returned from Iraq:
BRAVEST ADVICE
....There are seven different levels you have to think through before you can fire your weapon - and that's under battlefield conditions.
"Our military can't fire their weapons on the enemy. We virtually can only return fire when we see someone shooting at us, and that may be too late. That's not how you fight a war."......
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01092007/news/columnists/bravest_advice_columnists_steve_dunleavy.htm
Op-ed from McCain (in today's NYPost, from the Washington Post) tells why we need more than 20,000. Commanders in Iraq told him they would need five brigades in Baghdad and one or two in Anbar province. A brigade being 3,500 to 5,000, that would mean a minimum of 21,000 to 35,000. "The Right Way to Surge" is the title in the NYPost but it doesn't seem to be on their website.
Know I'll be able to put the entire speech transcript up by tomorrow.
As long as we're going to increase the number of troops, why not go big? The anti-war crowd is going to complain if Bush puts five more in, so he might as well do it right.
"And liberal heads are exploding by the boatload"
Not our problem. Let 'em explode. None of those people are interested in fighting Islamic terrorists anyway, regardless of what they say.
Yes, it is. Thank you for snagging my attention to this article. I have loved ones in the 82nd. :)
Military at Bragg were thrilled by the President's visit! So thrilled, even I couldn't snag a ticket/pass to see him. Wah.
Lol....we would have lost more you moron.
WE ALL HOPE SO.
:-) I appreciated the conversation. I am a optimist in most cases, so I am telling you how I think they are thinking, and how, under the best conditions that this can all work out.
But your tag line also indicates that you too are a optimist, because you believe the disease of Islam can be treated.
I'm not so sure about that. I was.....then I was not, then i thought maybe, and now I'm pretty much convinced that what we are doing in Iraq is it. The last chance we will get because it is the only chance we will ever have of starting a political change within a region and subsequently a religion. Iraq was/is the home of Islam. It could be the home of a new dynamic within the religion and a moderating force.
If Iraq fails and becomes a haven like Lebanon for guerrilla warfare insurgents, we will be forced to treat the disease like any other disease, and that is to destroy it by the most efficient means possible. Since this disease infects the patient, and is transmitted to the children and anyone it makes contact with, we are talking about genocide.
That is what we will be forced to do. But I don't know that we will be able to do it, tactically, or morally.
I think we will balk, and we will lose the war within 50-75 years if Iraq fails.
I don't think our people have the stomach for this fight, and when they finally do, it will be too late. We are a nation of pansy's, in regard to bloody fighting. The liberal mindset of love and peace in our time has infected two generations of Americans hoping for change and a third generation is being indoctrinated. They are so wrong.....
So I'm not always a optimist, but more of a realist in regard to Islam.
So, you're gonna go in, too, right? It really warms my heart to see so many upstanding FReepers willing to commit, disrupt, and possibly destroy so many lives due to little more than satisfying their own vanity. These Soldiers and Marines are not chess pieces to be used for amusement, and make no mistake--we are dying over here every single day for these idiotic, ungrateful, dirty SOBs who hate us anyway.
Everyone seems to think that the chaos that is occurring over here is due to our failure as a military and/or country. It's not. It is a failure of the worthless Iraqi population and government to actually cooperate to build their nation. They truly expect us to do it (those who care) or they just view all of us as invaders and infidels to be killed.
Meanwhile a large number of U.S. Soldiers, hampered by complicated, limited Rules of Engagement, drive all over this city, essentially doing nothing more than waiting for their turn to get blown up. Idiots on this site who act like a troop surge will drive the Mahdi Army and whatever other dozens of similar factions out and into Iran need to wake up and smell the chai. These people can melt right back into the population practically at will. You almost never know who you're dealing with until they start shooting at you. No amount of troops will change that. What makes it even harder is that those not actively fighting us will passively do so by harboring and protecting the insurgents/terrorists and won't help us in finding them or their weapons.
But, hey, let's not reality get in the way of a good fantasy, right? Let's be hard! Let's throw a whole extra division on the ground! Even though there are limited logistics for the units already here, who cares? WWII Soldiers had it much worse, right? This is a completely different war in a completely different time against a completely different enemy, but we can still draw inferences from those wars because we don't understand the depravity of the current enemy.
In case you can't tell, I'm really, really, really tired of the gung ho BS on this site from folks who very clearly haven't been over here, lost friends to these IEDs and random shootings, been out on long operations, detained terrorists, then nearly drowned in the bureaucracy involved in processing them, which often results in those terrorists being released again. Very few of you have any damned clue what you're talking about, and all you can do is talk big about it, while me and those like me actually have to execute.
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