[CTRL] Fwd: Perpetual War Means Indefinite Tours of Duty
-Caveat Lector- Begin forwarded message: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: April 13, 2007 8:17:28 PM PDT To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Perpetual War Means Indefinite Tours of Duty Sure Bush KNEW -- just as he knew the surge of 21,000 troops would actually involve twice that number. Call it what he may, this is truly an ESCALATION planned to go on well into 2008, right up to the election. And our troops shouldn't expect to hold the Administration to its word. I predict that, after 15 months, their tours will by unfortunate necessity have to be extended another 3 months ... and then another 3months ... Bush knew/didn't know about longer troop tours? Frank James April 13, 2007 http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2007/04/ bush_knew_yet_d.html What did President Bush know about the troop tour extensions and when did he know it? was the question at yesterday's White House press briefing. The question pertained to Wednesday's announcement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that tours for active-duty soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan were being extended to up to 15 months from 12 months. A reporter noted that just the day before Gates's announcment, the president said during an appearance at an American Legion post that if congressional Democrats didn't send him an acceptable war spending bill soon, troop stays in the war zones could be lengthened. The reporter asked White House spokeswoman Dana Perino if the president was being forthright when he warned that congressional Democrats might cause longer troop tours when he must've known that his own Defense Secretary would soon be announcing that the administration would be itself extending those tours. Perino's answer, put politely, strained credulity. It was also downright confusing. And it didn't really answer what was a fairly simple question. She said she wasn't sure the commander-in-chief knew at the time of the American Legion speech Tuesday that the next day his own defense secretary would be announcing longer tours for troops in theater. But when pressed by the reporter who asked skeptically how the president could not know about such a major policy change she said that the president was aware that Gates was working on a way to deal with the manpower issue related to the surge. Then she reverted to talking points about the need for giving troops more certainty etc. So according to Perino, the president didn't know and knew at the same time. And he was straightforward on Tuesday when he blamed Democrats for potentially extending the tours but didn't mention that his administration would be definitely stretching those same duty tours. One possible reason the president didn't mention the tour extensions was because the troops and military families hadn't been told and he wanted them to hear it from their commanders first. At his Wednesday press conference, in fact, Gates said he was angry because someone in the Pentagon had leaked the information about tour extensions before the combatant commanders could tell their troops. So this could explain why the president didn't mention it at his American Legion appearance Tuesday. Still, the question remains of how he could blame Democrats for possibly lengthening tours when he was about to do the same. The tour extensions have also been in the works for some time as Army Dep. Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. James Lovelace, told reporters at yesterday's Pentagon briefing. REPORTER: Yeah. Yes, sir, I believe you mentioned that you faced this challenge even prior to the plus-up. Can you run us through when you decided that -- or when you first gave consideration to this idea beyond just the individual unit extensions and decided to go with the blanket extension plan. GEN. LOVELACE: What we're referring to in this incident is, is that basically we knew that the demand or requirements that were coming out of CENTCOM, we saw this -- have been seeing this. We manage the force on a quarterly basis, I mean, we look at this in a very dedicated way on a quarterly basis. So -- and we assess then what is the requirement that's coming out of theater. So we began at that time to see, as the demand was exceeding the supply, then what we were going to need to do was either extend or break dwell. And that's why then we knew going in that what we would need to do is how do we preserve the integrity of what was the 12 months back at home station. And so we saw that and have seen that as we were walking into this position for the plus-up. Cut through all the arcane military talk and it appears the Pentagon knew even before the surge or plus-up was announced that it was going to have to extend Army tours for active-duty troops. That indicates that the Pentagon knew sometime last year about the extensions. Here's
[CTRL] Fwd: Perpetual War
-Caveat Lector- www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=""ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om ---BeginMessage--- -Caveat Lector- 9.11.01: TWO YEARS LATER Terror: A question of when, not if 'Perpetual war' -- a grim new reality of American life, experts agree James Sterngold San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, September 7, 2003 Two years after a handful of Middle Eastern terrorists commandeered four airliners and shattered America's sense of invulnerability, the government is still groping to respond to a largely unseen enemy known for unflinching ruthlessness, patience and inventiveness. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reduced two of the largest buildings on Earth to dust, killed more than 3,000 people and mobilized the nation like no event since Pearl Harbor. But despite two lightning wars, won convincingly, one of the largest-ever reorganizations of the federal government, a rewriting of criminal laws, the detention of hundreds of suspects and the expenditure of billions of dollars on homeland security, the country is, many terrorism experts say, little safer today than it was two years ago. "We know we will be hit again and hard, and that some attacks will succeed, " said Brian Jenkins, a former special operations soldier and a terrorism expert and government adviser for 30 years. "We know that if they had the capability to kill tens of thousands of people, they would. There are no self- imposed restraints. These guys cannot be deterred." Further, the experts argue, this vulnerability will last for decades. Success will have to be measured not by elimination of the threats, which most experts now regard as impossible, but by resilience after the inevitable strikes occur. That will require a fundamental shift in the national mind-set and a lowering of expectations that, experts warn, national leaders have yet to articulate. "There is still a fervent desire by Americans to see 9/11 as a one-time anomaly, that all this inconvenience will end, that the Bush administration will announce that we have captured Osama bin Laden and it's over," said Jenkins, a senior adviser at the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica. "That's not going to happen. The terrorists have been able to create a perpetual war." He added, "We view war as a finite undertaking. Our opponent considers it a condition." America's leaders should use this anniversary to start preparing for even deeper and more far-reaching changes in how the new threats must be confronted, and their likely toll, said Anthony Cordesman, a former government official and now a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "You can't eliminate the cause and eliminate the war," he said. "It took us half a century to win the Cold War. This will take another 50 years. It will be a war of constant change. The threat will keep changing, and we will have to keep changing in response. I think we are in the very early years of something where you do not know what to expect." Michael Cherkasky, the chief executive of Kroll Inc., a leading security and investigations concern and an adviser to the American military in Iraq, said he believes the Homeland Security Department's failure to prepare Americans for the new kind of demands of this unconventional war have increased the country's vulnerability, in part because a new terrorist strike might have even graver repercussions for national morale. "What people need to realize is that you can arrest all the al Qaeda leaders you want, but two or three or four people can still cause catastrophic damage," said Cherkasky, whose recent book, "Forewarned," describes missed warnings and harshly criticizes what he describes as the government's badly misguided responses to the threat. "The real issue is not prevention. "This is our children's war," he added. "That's why I'm so concerned. The job is virtually undoable." Even
