Screwing Reserve & Guard Units... And Our Own National Security

National Guard May Undertake Iraq Duty Early

It just isn't fair, right or even safe for our nation to be rotating reserve and NG troops back into combat zones in this manner. One has to ask whether this 14,000 is part of the 21,000 troop surge that is really going to be about 41,000 when all is said and done????

The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.

National Guard officials told state commanders in Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio last month that while a final decision had not been made, units from their states that had done previous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan could be designated to return to Iraq next year between January and June, the officials said.

The unit from Oklahoma, a combat brigade with one battalion currently in Afghanistan, had not been scheduled to go back to Iraq until 2010, and brigades from the other three states not until 2009. Each brigade has about 3,500 soldiers.

The accelerated timetable illustrates the cascading effect that the White House plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq by more than 21,000 is putting on the entire Army and in particular on Reserve forces, which officers predicted would face severe challenges in recruiting, training and equipping their forces.

It also highlights the political risks of the White House’s Iraq strategy. Sending large numbers of reservists to Iraq in the middle of next year’s election campaign could drive up casualties among part-time soldiers in communities where support for the administration’s approach in Iraq is already tenuous, according to opinion polls.

Then again, how many more of our troops are going to be needed now that Britain and Denmark are pulling out of the "coalition" and withdrawing their troops. Indeed, Tony Blair recently said at a press conference on the issues that many of the claims by the Bush administration regarding the affairs in Iraq are not quite the way the Brits assess the situation. In fact, this initial pullout of 1600 is only the beginning of the withdrawal process for UK forces. Then again, since the UK only has some 7,000 troops in boots on the ground in Iraq, were they really doing anything of importance or effect? Will the Bush gang call for even more troops to counter these withdrawals?

Britain to Trim Iraq Force by 1,600 in Coming Months

Prime Minister Tony Blair announced Wednesday that up to 1,600 of the roughly 7,100 British troops in southern Iraq would begin to withdraw in coming months, a sharp contrast to the continuing American troop buildup in Baghdad.

The British withdrawal was more modest than government ministers had suggested in recent weeks, and Mr. Blair offered no clear timetable for the drawdown, during which Iraqi forces will take over some of the responsibility for patrolling Basra and the surrounding area.

The announcement was made after months of public criticism of Mr. Blair’s government over a war that has become increasingly unpopular at home. At the same time, senior British commanders have complained that their forces are stretched thin by their twin deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and military analysts have said a reduction in the Basra force could free troops to meet growing responsibilities in Afghanistan.

A British opposition politician, Sir Menzies Campbell, said the move would leave Iraq far from being the “beacon of democracy” that Mr. Blair had once promised. And in his speech on Wednesday, the prime minister acknowledged that conditions in southern Iraq were not what he had hoped.

“What all this means is not that Basra is how we want it to be,” Mr. Blair said, “but it does mean that the next chapter in Basra’s history can be written by Iraqis.”

The city, he said, “is still a difficult and dangerous place.” But he drew a clear distinction between the perils facing British forces in southern Iraq and conditions for American troops farther north.

The “situation in Basra is very different from Baghdad,” he told Parliament, because there was no Sunni insurgency there, little sectarian violence and “no Al Qaeda base,” while “an orgy of terrorism” had been unleashed on Baghdad. Even so, he said, British troops, whom he described as “brave beyond belief,” were regularly coming under fire in southern Iraq.

Word of the planned withdrawal received widespread publication here on Tuesday, and the White House released a kind of public blessing of the idea then, saying it pointed to increased stability in the south.

On Wednesday, Bush administration officials reiterated that the announcement of the British withdrawal had been expected for months, and they played down the potential security risks of having fewer troops in and around Basra.

“This moderate reduction that the British are doing is possible because they have been able to achieve success in Basra,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. He acknowledged that attacks in the city had actually increased over the last year but said a withdrawal was possible because the British had handed over responsibility for security to Iraqi security forces. British troops would continue to patrol near Iraq’s border with Iran, he said.

Another senior Defense Department official said that, if security conditions deteriorated in the south, American commanders might need to send in their own forces to help remaining British units and Iraqi troops. He noted that the United States also usually keeps reserve forces nearby in Kuwait that could be sent into Iraq as well.