Fester's Place

Bush and Troops in Iraq

Recently, President Bush said that if need be he would order more troops to Iraq. Hesoid at Counterspin is confused, asking "where are the troops coming from?"

That is a good question but I have to defend Bush by saying that there are troops available for deployment by mid-spring of next year if we relax a couple of assumptions. Here are the assumptions:
1) The United States wants to maintain something vaguely resembling a strategic reserve (right now it looks like the 2cd and 3rd Marine Divisions are providing that reserve, this is 3 strong brigades and 2 weak brigades).

2) The United States wants to have a combat effective and experienced army in 2005/2006 time frame.

3) The United States wants to have a functional reserve system in 2005/2006.

If you relax any of these assumptions you can free up a couple of brigades. Relaxing the first gives us five brigades of medium infantry. If we do not care what the regular Army looks like in 2005 then extending tours of duties for the soldiers already in Iraq and shortening the reconstitution times for units that have come home will create additional deployable brigade months. Finally there are ten uncommitted Enhanced Seperate Brigades in the National Guard that are not yet on the deployment list to Iraq. If need be, they could be removed from the homeland security and strategic reserve missions that they are currently filling and sent to Iraq in the next 9 months.

So Bush is telling the truth if you are willing to relax certain unstated assumptions.

Labels: iraq

posted by fester @ 08:00