The Bush Administration Plan For Iraq Will Call For Troop Increase

Despite overwhelming public opposition, George W. Bush will make a major announcement in the next few days, describing his plan to send thousands of troops to Iraq. The plan will call for an increase of up to 10,000 troops, most going to Baghdad. An additional 10,000 will stay in the region....either in Iraq or Kuwait. The increase will take several months to complete. Some reports indicate that the plan will take 18 months.... Will Americans have 18 months of patience?
It appears that Bush has shuffled his management team around (changing Generals and advisors) to put people in place who will tell Bush & Co. what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

Without a more comprehensive plan, I don't think the troop surge will work. First of all, 10,000 or 20,000 is not enough troops to really be effective. The U.S. simply does not have enough troops available for this task. And the troops that are there are worn out. Many have had 3 or 4 rotations, putting a serious strain on their families.

Part of the plan calls for the additional troops to be exposed more than usual....placed in harms way right in the cities and neighborhoods where the insurgents live. This may end badly for the U.S. military. Additional troops placed in this kind of urban warfare environment will only provide insurgents with more targets to attack. This in turn will only result in higher numbers of casualties (on all sides). And all of this is the result of the neo-cons...first of all lying to get us into this mess and then not sending enough troops to do the job properly (if there is a right way to rape and pillage another country). We originally should have had AT LEAST 300,000 troops, and they should have gone house to house back in 2003 and confiscated all weapons. In addition, the borders of Iraq should have been sealed off immediately. Instead (this was one of the biggest blunders of all) the U.S. told the Iraqi military to go home and dissolve into the population and then they allowed them to keep their weapons. Add a little religious extremism and sectarian violence to that volatile mix, and you end up with an impossible situation for U.S. troops to deal with.

Only a comprehensive plan can save Iraq (if it can be saved at all). There must be a political component....and Iraqis have to deal with that themselves for the most part. There must be negotiations with the various militant groups (but with the hanging of Hussein.... the White House seems to have screwed that option up). The clowns in the White House always seem to sabotage themselves.... they are so incompetent that it almost looks like they are doing this on purpose. Hmmm I don't see how they can be that stupid by accident. It's unbelievable.

There must also be an economic component. Unemployment in Iraq is running at approximately 70-80%. I don't think most Americans are even aware of this or can even comprehend what the hell this means. In a situation like that.... if i'm a man trying to support a wife and children, and there are no legitimate jobs, but one of the militias or insurgent groups has a job opening... that's an easy decision. I'm going to join one of the militant groups. Or if I am offered a job as a bomb maker, smuggler, or spy....i'll take one of those jobs. Sometimes, a man may be forced to join one of these groups. A man will always act in his own personal/economic interests and in the interest of his wife and children....especially in a traditional society like Iraq where the man is often the sole provider. So the economic situation must be dealt with. Iraqis must also get economic support from the UN, so that families there can survive without taking shady jobs that are tearing the country apart.

There must also be a social and cultural/religious component as well. There must be a process of religious and political reconciliation. The U.S. has allowed foreign fighters to ignite a civil war that the U.S. no longer has any control over, and never really had control over. An effort must be made to seal the borders and to kick foreign troublemakers out.

But the actions of the U.S. & it's puppets in Iraq have run counter to many of these things.... such as the killing of Hussein so soon (or allowing it at all). This only fuels the sectarian violence, and the Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops.

There must be a security component.
All weapons must be seized and destroyed. And there must be a renewed effort to get the bad seeds out of the Iraqi police and Army (an almost impossible task). At the same time, there must be an effort to train more Iraqis. The insurgents, the militias and probably the Iranians have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces. Some of the death squads are part of the police and Army. How do you fix that problem? That situation is a disaster. If the Iraqi security forces cannot be trusted, then I don't see much hope for the situation. Border guards must be paid a good salary.....more than what they can earn from being bribed...so the foreign troublemakers cannot flow in and out so easily.

Even if all of these things were done....and if all of the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group were accepted.....even after all of that.... there is only a 50-50 chance that the Iraq adventure will have a decent outcome.

I personally believe that the Bush administration has no intentions of leaving Iraq. Bush wants to have SOME kind of legacy. If that means more U.S. and Iraqi deaths, then this is something that Bush & Co. is willing to accept. The Bush crew wants to hold out long enough to pass this mess off to the next President... (Republican or Democrat), so that if it fails after he leaves, he will be able to say that it was not his fault and it didn't fail on his watch... it failed on someone else's watch.

A troop surge without a real plan will= failure....just like most of the other policies from the Bush Administration.

The Democrats have set this up to be their first battle as the leaders of the new Congress. They have sent a letter to Bush urging him to reconsider his plans for a troop increase.
But will they cut funding? No. Absolutely not. They can't be seen as not supporting the troops once they have been ordered to battle. But they can hold the executive branch accountable by giving them all kinds of hell.... strong oversight..... hearings....etc.