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Leaders express concern about
possible new/earlier troop deployments. The Army's National Guard and Reserve are bracing for possible new and
accelerated call-ups, spurred by high demand for U.S. troops in Iraq, that
leaders caution could undermine the citizen-soldier force as it struggles to
rebuild. Two Army National Guard combat brigades with about 7,000 troops have been identified recently
in classified rotational plans for possible special deployment to Iraq,
according to senior Army and Pentagon officials, who asked that the specific
units not be named. One brigade could be diverted to Iraq next year from
another assignment, and the other could be sent there in 2008, a year ahead of
schedule. Next year, the number of Army Guard soldiers providing security in Iraq
will surge to more than 6,000 in about 50 companies, compared with 20 companies
2 years ago, Guard officials said. "We thought we'd see a downturn in
operational tempo, but that hasn't happened," said one official. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/04/AR2006110401160.html War simulation in 1999 pointed
out Iraq invasion problems, estimated 400,000 troops needed “A series of secret US war games in 1999 showed that an
invasion and post-war administration of Iraq would require 400,000 troops,
nearly 3 times the number there now. And even then, the games showed, the
country still had a chance of dissolving into chaos.
In the
simulation, called Desert Crossing, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence
participants concluded the high troop levels would be needed to keep order,
seal borders and take care of other security needs. The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information
Act request by George Washington University's National Security Archive, an
independent research institute and library. "The conventional wisdom is
the US mistake in Iraq was not enough troops," said Thomas Blanton, the archive's
director. "But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended
up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground." http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/04/war.games.ap/index.html Just more evidence of Bush43 ignoring sound advice, belatedly revealed
by a no longer compliant or subservient media. Too bad they weren’t before. Air Force seeks $50
BN emergency funds: needs help transporting dead and wounded US soldiers. The US Air Force is asking the Pentagon's
leadership for a staggering $50 billion in emergency funding for fiscal 2007 -
an amount equal to nearly half its annual budget, defense analyst Loren
Thompson of the Lexington Institute said on Tuesday. The request is expected to draw criticism on Capitol Hill, where
lawmakers are increasingly worried about the huge sums being sought "off
budget" to fund wars, escaping the more rigorous congressional oversight
of regular budgets. Another
source familiar with the AF plans said the extra funds would help pay to
transport growing numbers of U.S. soldiers being killed and wounded in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Thompson, who has close ties to US military officials, said the big
funding request was fueled by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. England
told the services in a October 25 memo to include the "longer war on
terror," not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in their emergency
requests. "This amount of money is so much bigger than the Air Force would
normally request ... it hints at a basic breakdown in the process for planning
and funding war costs," said Thompson. He said the AF had identified $30
VN just in past war-related costs that were not approved by the Pentagon. The Air
Force's proposed emergency budget is nearly half the $105.9 billion it requested as its total base budget
for fiscal year 2007, which began on October 1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103100621_pf.html Military charts movement of
conflict in Iraq toward chaos The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate
an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing
of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a
concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad. In fashioning the index, the military is weighing factors like the
ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and
political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the
enemy’s fighting strength and the control of territory. The conclusions the
Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a
copy of the slide that was obtained by The NYT. The slide shows Iraq as moving
sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a
point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.”
As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward
the far right of the chart.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01military.html Congress orders Iraq auditor to
close his office. “An
obscure provision in a military authorization bill to close the inspector
general’s office in Iraq has generated outrage among lawmakers. Investigations led by Republican lawyer
Stuart W. Bowen Jr. have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery
and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by
well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the
military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to
Iraqi security forces.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03reconstruct.html Who is responsible for inserting that obscure provision into the
military bill? Conflict of Interest: Experts
critical of Secret Defense Budgets (black
budgets) The federal government is expected to spend more than $30
billion this fiscal year on secret defense and intelligence programs, many
labeled by code words and known only to select lawmakers and staffers. "It
should not be permissible to receive lobbying funds from black budget
recipients. That would single-handedly eliminate the questions in the Gibbons
case," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government
Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Nov-02-Thu-2006/news/10580655.html Army finds 7
incorrect death reports, including Pat Tillman’s. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061030/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/casualty_review US troops killed in
Iraq during October reached 103 over the last
weekend. CSM’s Peter Grier tries to clarify Why such high troop losses in October? "The White House, as well as some
experts outside the government, say al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups
deliberately are trying to inflict more casualties to influence next week's
midterm elections and break American will. . . ."Others say the rising
toll is not so much the result of a deliberate decision by US adversaries as it
is the cost of moving more U.S. troops into Baghdad in recent weeks in an
attempt to more fully control the capital city. "'The
October boost in U.S. casualties was almost inevitable the moment the US
attempted to stiffen and replace Iraqi forces in an essentially hopeless
mission,' writes
Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, in his most recent analysis of Iraq.
None of the data that are available ... show any radical rise in
violence that can be tied to the American election, to some massive offensive
to try to influence its outcome, or to some campaign in October that is tied to
domestic American politics," writes Cordesman.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1101/p03s01-woiq.html So the safest place in Iraq is inside the Green Zone (most of the time)
or one of the giant US bases on the borders. ALSO Bechtel
is withdrawing from Iraq: it lost 52 workers in 3 years http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/01/MNGMIM3RAG1.DTL Kroll Security is
pulling its paramilitary bodyguards out of Afghanistan and Iraq after 4 of its contractors were killed (remember
that court ruling that allowed civil suits by survivors to sue these private
mercenary groups?) http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061101/FREE/61101008/1048/newsletter01 Veterans for Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org/ Vote Vets http://www.votevets.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=54 |
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