-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 a transcript of the exchange:
REPORTER: Dana, on the supplemental, on Tuesday the president said
that because the Democrats have not gotten this to him yet, quote,
"The failure to fund our troops will mean some of our military
families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the
frontlines; others could see their loved ones headed back to war
sooner."
Why did the president mention this the day before his own Pentagon
is going to announce that actually those loved ones are going to
stay in harm's way longer? And he clearly had to know that this
policy was going to take place, that the deployments were going to
be stretched from 12 months to 15 months. So why did he tell the
American Legion that people are going to be staying in Iraq longer
because of the Democrats, when his own Pentagon, 24 hours later,
was going to keep people there longer?
PERINO: Well, one, I don't know if the president knew about the
meeting -- remember, yesterday morning is when Secretary Gates came
and talked to the president.
But also, Secretary Gates was talking about a longer-term policy to
make sure that the dwell times are going to be long enough so that
we can keep our troops refreshed and get them time with their
family. The long-term goal, ultimate goal is to have our active
duty one year deployed with two years off; and then for reservists,
one year on and five years off.
We have never said that if we got the money immediately, tomorrow,
that folks would be able to have just a 12-year (sic\month)
deployment and a 12-year (sic\month) dwell time.
Every day that we don't get the money is one that, as Secretary
Gates and General Pace have said, creates problems in terms of the
training. And so by piecemeal, you see some troops have been there
for 16 months, and that's what we're trying to avoid.
REPORTER: Is that really the first time the president would have
heard -- it's a pretty big policy to keep people in Iraq three
months longer --
MS. PERINO: No, I think that we've known for a while --
REPORTER: He just heard about it yesterday morning?
MS. PERINO: I think -- no. And I think we've known for a while that
Secretary Gates was trying to figure out a way to make sure that we
can alleviate this problem of having longer deployments or troops
being deployed for a longer period of time. And one of the things
that he did yesterday was to say that we need more certainty for
the troops. And I talked to the president about that this morning,
that having more certainty for our military families to plan ahead
is something that is probably priceless. I can't imagine what it's
like for a youngster when three months seems likes five years that
their parent isn't going to be home.
So the point was that the end strength of the Army and of the
Marines is going to be expanded.
But until we get there, there are going to be these 15 -- what
Secretary Gates wanted to do was to give people more time to plan.
Because what's been happening is that you have people out there for
12 months, and then you extend them by another month and another
month and another month. And that's quite disruptive to the troops
and the families.
REPORTER: But if the president really wants certainty for the
families, he had an opportunity before the American Legion, a
highly respected veterans organization, to say, you know what; for
certainty's sake, for these families, tomorrow we're going to
announce a pretty big change; they're going to stay in harm's way
longer. Why wasn't he straightforward with the American Legion
about his own policy?
MS. PERINO: Well, I think the president was absolutely
straightforward. And remember, I don't -- I know that Secretary
Gates came and talked to the president yesterday morning, so that
speech you're talking about was last Tuesday. We've known for a
while that we were going to have to --
REPORTER (Off mike) -- the speech?
MS. PERINO: Yes.
REPORTER: Two days ago?
MS. PERINO: Right.
REPORTER: So the president didn't know about his own policy until
when?
MS. PERINO: I am not aware the president knew that there was going
to be -- that Secretary Gates had come to any decisions. But we did
know that people one, needed more certainty, because that had been
a complaint, and that's one that we had heard about. And two, we
need to make sure that we can get the money for the troops so that
the readiness issue, the training issue -- because if the troops
here can't be trained, which is one of the issues that Gates and
Pace said is a problem of not having the money now, if they can't
be trained then you can't get fresh troops out in the field, and
that means that the people who are there have to stay longer. And
so I guess the way I would put it is that it gets better than it
would otherwise be if we get the money today, and it gets worse
than it would otherwise be if we don't.
------------------
Former commander backs
return of military draft
By Mark St.Clair, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, April 14, 2007
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=45085
A former commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq said this
week it might be time for the United States to bring back the
military draft.
On Monday, retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste told News 10NBC in
Rochester, N.Y., that in order to “win the peace” in Iraq, current
troop levels there would need to be nearly doubled to 300,000,
adding that to make numbers like that possible, a military draft
might need to be considered. The draft was last used in the U.S. in
1973.
“We’ve had generations of Americans now who have not served their
country, they don’t know what the word means,” Batiste told News
10NBC. “And I’m here to tell you that’s probably not a healthy
situation.”
It’s not the first time that Batiste, who left active duty in
November 2005, has given his opinions on the U.S. involvement in
Iraq. Batiste was one of several former generals who gained
prominence as outspoken critics of former Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld.
In April of last year, Batiste wrote a commentary for The
Washington Post titled “A Case for Accountability,” saying “We took
down a regime but failed to provide the resources to build the
peace (in Iraq). The shortage of troops never allowed commanders on
the ground to deal properly with the insurgency and the unexpected.
What could have been a deliberate victory is now a long, protracted
challenge.”
During 2004, Batiste led the Big Red One on its last major
deployment before moving from Leighton Barracks in Würzburg,
Germany, to Fort Riley, Kan., last July.
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