ARMY TIMES: MORE BUSH LIES; TRUE "SURGE" MAY REACH 50,000, LAST UP TO A YEAR, TRIPLE COSTS
A new congressional report says the increase of 21,500 combat troops for Iraq proposed by the Bush administrastino could result in up to 50,000 troops actually being deployed to the region.
The report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office bases that projection on the fact that the Bush plan is unclear about whether the 21,500 troops needed to quell violence are all combat troops or if that number already includes support forces.
"Over the past few yars, DoD's practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops," says the five-page report requested by Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., the House Budget Committee chairman, and Rep. Ike skelton, D-Mo, the House Armed Services Committee chairman.
Spratt, the budget committee chairman and the second-ranking Democrat on the armed services committee, notes that about $379 billion already has been spent on the war in Iraq and a request for an additional $100 billion is expected next week.
"An average of 170,000 military personnel has been maintained in the Iraq theater of operations, and this high deployment level has taken a toll," he said, noting that last year, the Defense Department cut troops' time at home between deployment from two years to one so it could have enough people to deploy.
Spratt said the report raises the question of whether even one year at home between deployments can be guaranteed. "The Pentagon will probabl y have to relax 'dwell-time' standards even more," Spratt said, using the military phrase to describe time at home between deployments.
Skelton said the report "appears to conflict with the estimate given by the chief of staff of the Army in his testimony. We will want to carefully investigate just how big the president's troop increase really is. Is it 21,500 troops, or is it really closer to 33,000 or 43,000?"
...Under the administration's plan, the force increase--already underway--will reach its peak in May. The plan calls for a three-month buildup with a similarly gradual decline when the mission is done. The report does not try to estimate how long the mission might last...
--"CBO: Iraq Surge Could Actually Total 50,000," Rich Maze, Army Times, February 2, 2007
President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would "surge" an additonal 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...more than double what the president initially said, and triple the cost.
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, military police, communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services," the CBO notes.
...According to the study, the costs for the "surge" would also be dramatically different than the president has said. The White House estimated a troop escalation would require about $5.6 billion in additinoal funding for the rest of fiscal year 2007...But that figure appears to be dramatically underestimated. The CBO now believes," that costs would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment."
--BREAKING: Double the Troops in "Surge" (updated), defensetech.com, February 2, 2007
Leading members of Congress expressed dismay yesterday at both the cost of the increase and indications that the overall size of the new troop commitment will be more substantial than orginally thought.
...Representative Martin T. Meehan, a Democrat of Lowell who chairs a subcommittee on oversight and investigations looking into the handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, added that the report underscored the need for robust congressional oversight of the administration's Iraq strategy.
--"Support Needs Could Double 'Surge' Forces; Report Pegs Cost at up to $27b," Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, February 2, 2007
I am so angry as I type these words that my hands are shaking; I didn't even bother to compose it offline the way I normally do, so that I could check over my spelling and typos more easily.
I should have paid closer attention; should have been wise to the lying ways of this administration by now, their clever twisting of terminology and use of "code-words" that could be caught by their right-wing constituency.
But this, apparently, caught US ALL by surprise.
When Bush talked about 21,500 "combat troops," everybody automatically assumed that would be the breadth and extent of the so-called "surge," and that was bad enough. But we weren't paying close enough attention to the use of that little word COMBAT.
Turns out a realistic assessment of that number turns up a gigantic glaring discrepency between just how many of those troops are going to be COMBAT. If they are ALL combat--then more support will be needed--much more. And if they are composed of combat as well as support, then the true number of combat forces will be much, much lower, which will put them in even greater danger on the streets of Baghdad and Ramadi.
So, what's Bush going to do now? Shake his head and look befuddled and say, Why, yes, of course we will need support, but you needn't worry your pretty little heads about that important national security stuff.
Or maybe he'll say, Well, don't worry! This surge won't REQUIRE that many support troops!
Which means that they will be understaffed and dependent upon overstressed support personnel in the field already to handle the overflow that more than 20,000 extra troops require. Initial reports are already coming in from officers on the ground that they are woefully unprepared, in terms of supply lines, for additional American troops, much less the Iraqi troops that are supposed to be coming as well.
Or maybe he'll say, Hey, no problem! We'll let Blackwater take care of all that support stuff. They've done a heckuva job already in Iraq!
Or maybe he'll do what he normally does when his lies are confronted by truth: ignore the truth and attack the truth-tellers.
Oh, and don't overlook that little caveat that the troops will remain "until the mission is accomplished."
According to The Liar in Chief, that mission was accomplished in May of 2003. Who knows when it really WILL be?
In order for the military to meet this terrible strain, one of its tactics will be to deploy troops to the war twice as fast, which will cut into their training and destroy more military marriages. That's not to mention those deploying months ahead of schedule and being required to stay months past their home due-dates.
This is criminal.
Meanwhile, over on FOX news, in an unrelated matter...The administration claims about how Iranians were behind the horrible attack on the soldiers who were surprised by Iraqis dressed in U.S. Army uniforms--who made it through all the Iraqi security check points and went on to kidnap four U.S. Army officers, handcuff them, and shoot them in the head--well, that claim is beginning to wear thin as well, know why?
Because it looks as if IRAQI ARMY GENERALS MAY HAVE BEEN BEHIND THE ATTACK.
Investigation ongoing, of course. Who knows what the hell the truth is.
Oh, and the two outstanding embedded New York Times staffers--reporter Damien Cave and Gettyimages photographer Robert Nickelsberg, who did the wrenching story of the Army sergeant who was killed, most likely, by careless fire from Iraqi Army troops in a joint operation in Baghdad, the ones I quoted in "Getting Out of a Deathtrap," from the NYT article, "Man Down: When One Bullet Changes Everything,"--know what happened to those guys?
They were yanked out of the field by the Army and their embed status was suspended.
There is such a top-down aversion to telling the truth in this lying administration that we should just assume, from now on, that especially in matters of this war in Iraq, anything coming out of the White House related to it is a LIE.
THEY LIE. OUR TROOPS DIE.
At least now, with the Democrats in Congress, there will be at long last, accountability. No more covering up of their lies by a rubber-stamp, groveling Republican Congress.
Whether the media will more aggressively pursue the truth remains to be seen.
As of this morning, I had to read about it in the Army Times.
The report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office bases that projection on the fact that the Bush plan is unclear about whether the 21,500 troops needed to quell violence are all combat troops or if that number already includes support forces.
"Over the past few yars, DoD's practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops," says the five-page report requested by Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., the House Budget Committee chairman, and Rep. Ike skelton, D-Mo, the House Armed Services Committee chairman.
Spratt, the budget committee chairman and the second-ranking Democrat on the armed services committee, notes that about $379 billion already has been spent on the war in Iraq and a request for an additional $100 billion is expected next week.
"An average of 170,000 military personnel has been maintained in the Iraq theater of operations, and this high deployment level has taken a toll," he said, noting that last year, the Defense Department cut troops' time at home between deployment from two years to one so it could have enough people to deploy.
Spratt said the report raises the question of whether even one year at home between deployments can be guaranteed. "The Pentagon will probabl y have to relax 'dwell-time' standards even more," Spratt said, using the military phrase to describe time at home between deployments.
Skelton said the report "appears to conflict with the estimate given by the chief of staff of the Army in his testimony. We will want to carefully investigate just how big the president's troop increase really is. Is it 21,500 troops, or is it really closer to 33,000 or 43,000?"
...Under the administration's plan, the force increase--already underway--will reach its peak in May. The plan calls for a three-month buildup with a similarly gradual decline when the mission is done. The report does not try to estimate how long the mission might last...
--"CBO: Iraq Surge Could Actually Total 50,000," Rich Maze, Army Times, February 2, 2007
President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would "surge" an additonal 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...more than double what the president initially said, and triple the cost.
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, military police, communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services," the CBO notes.
...According to the study, the costs for the "surge" would also be dramatically different than the president has said. The White House estimated a troop escalation would require about $5.6 billion in additinoal funding for the rest of fiscal year 2007...But that figure appears to be dramatically underestimated. The CBO now believes," that costs would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment."
--BREAKING: Double the Troops in "Surge" (updated), defensetech.com, February 2, 2007
Leading members of Congress expressed dismay yesterday at both the cost of the increase and indications that the overall size of the new troop commitment will be more substantial than orginally thought.
...Representative Martin T. Meehan, a Democrat of Lowell who chairs a subcommittee on oversight and investigations looking into the handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, added that the report underscored the need for robust congressional oversight of the administration's Iraq strategy.
--"Support Needs Could Double 'Surge' Forces; Report Pegs Cost at up to $27b," Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, February 2, 2007
I am so angry as I type these words that my hands are shaking; I didn't even bother to compose it offline the way I normally do, so that I could check over my spelling and typos more easily.
I should have paid closer attention; should have been wise to the lying ways of this administration by now, their clever twisting of terminology and use of "code-words" that could be caught by their right-wing constituency.
But this, apparently, caught US ALL by surprise.
When Bush talked about 21,500 "combat troops," everybody automatically assumed that would be the breadth and extent of the so-called "surge," and that was bad enough. But we weren't paying close enough attention to the use of that little word COMBAT.
Turns out a realistic assessment of that number turns up a gigantic glaring discrepency between just how many of those troops are going to be COMBAT. If they are ALL combat--then more support will be needed--much more. And if they are composed of combat as well as support, then the true number of combat forces will be much, much lower, which will put them in even greater danger on the streets of Baghdad and Ramadi.
So, what's Bush going to do now? Shake his head and look befuddled and say, Why, yes, of course we will need support, but you needn't worry your pretty little heads about that important national security stuff.
Or maybe he'll say, Well, don't worry! This surge won't REQUIRE that many support troops!
Which means that they will be understaffed and dependent upon overstressed support personnel in the field already to handle the overflow that more than 20,000 extra troops require. Initial reports are already coming in from officers on the ground that they are woefully unprepared, in terms of supply lines, for additional American troops, much less the Iraqi troops that are supposed to be coming as well.
Or maybe he'll say, Hey, no problem! We'll let Blackwater take care of all that support stuff. They've done a heckuva job already in Iraq!
Or maybe he'll do what he normally does when his lies are confronted by truth: ignore the truth and attack the truth-tellers.
Oh, and don't overlook that little caveat that the troops will remain "until the mission is accomplished."
According to The Liar in Chief, that mission was accomplished in May of 2003. Who knows when it really WILL be?
In order for the military to meet this terrible strain, one of its tactics will be to deploy troops to the war twice as fast, which will cut into their training and destroy more military marriages. That's not to mention those deploying months ahead of schedule and being required to stay months past their home due-dates.
This is criminal.
Meanwhile, over on FOX news, in an unrelated matter...The administration claims about how Iranians were behind the horrible attack on the soldiers who were surprised by Iraqis dressed in U.S. Army uniforms--who made it through all the Iraqi security check points and went on to kidnap four U.S. Army officers, handcuff them, and shoot them in the head--well, that claim is beginning to wear thin as well, know why?
Because it looks as if IRAQI ARMY GENERALS MAY HAVE BEEN BEHIND THE ATTACK.
Investigation ongoing, of course. Who knows what the hell the truth is.
Oh, and the two outstanding embedded New York Times staffers--reporter Damien Cave and Gettyimages photographer Robert Nickelsberg, who did the wrenching story of the Army sergeant who was killed, most likely, by careless fire from Iraqi Army troops in a joint operation in Baghdad, the ones I quoted in "Getting Out of a Deathtrap," from the NYT article, "Man Down: When One Bullet Changes Everything,"--know what happened to those guys?
They were yanked out of the field by the Army and their embed status was suspended.
There is such a top-down aversion to telling the truth in this lying administration that we should just assume, from now on, that especially in matters of this war in Iraq, anything coming out of the White House related to it is a LIE.
THEY LIE. OUR TROOPS DIE.
At least now, with the Democrats in Congress, there will be at long last, accountability. No more covering up of their lies by a rubber-stamp, groveling Republican Congress.
Whether the media will more aggressively pursue the truth remains to be seen.
As of this morning, I had to read about it in the Army Times.
posted by Deanie Mills at 8:22 AM
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