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Edited on Tue Sep-11-07 08:46 PM by kenny blankenship
it doesn't say which units will come home without being replaced. I don't see what all the fuss is about: the numbers HAVE to come down Spring-Summer of 08. This is not news. Unless the Army were to pull out of Korea or unless it suddenly began to induct tens of thousands of new recruits above its prevailing levels of recruitment, they ALWAYS had to bring the number of troops in Iraq back to the pre-Surge level. I've said this many times before so I'm sure there are people who're getting even more tired of hearing me repeat this view than I am repeating it. The "Surge" was always a temporary tactic only, not permanent--as implied in the very name "Surge". As even proponents who welcomed the Surge plan admitted when it was originally announced, this tactic can only last about one and a half rotations, i.e. 15 months at most. There simply isn't manpower in the Army and Marines to keep 160,000 men in Iraq on a constant basis, AND cover our other commitments around the world, AND allow for normal troop rotations. Levels go up for a while then levels will go down. The Surge was created by extending tours of some units keeping them in Iraq longer and sending their replacement units in early. But you can't keep extending a tour of duty indefinitely. Units overdue for rotation home have to be allowed to leave Iraq to spend time home for some months before being sent back again. (If they stopped troop rotations out of the combat theater altogether there would probably be mutinies in the Army within about a year. The men and the officers simply won't put up with "for the duration" deployments in Iraq) So, with some accounting practices borrowed from Enron they achieved a temporary increase in manpower of about 30,000 soldiers. Now they're talking about "withdrawing" 30,000 from the total Surge level of 160,000. 30,000 in, 30,000 out: it's not a coincidence. And neither is it a voluntary withdrawal--presumably made possible because things in Iraq are going so swell now!--though they might like to portray it that way. The reduction HAS TO HAPPEN. It has to happen regardless of whether things go well in Iraq or not, whether there is an election season here or not. It means nothing, so naturally the Bushlers will try to load it with significance:oh see things are going so great in Iraq we can bring people home now, etc.
SO the Surge will come to its inevitable end, and when it does Iraq will almost certainly still be a genocidal shithole, completely resistant to our foreign policy objectives.
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