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03-08-2007, 18:07 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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Burgomaster
Join Date: 08-02-03
Location: Minneapolis
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Gates: 2,200 More Troops to Iraq
Looks like the surge is getting a bit more of a boost. Does this foreshadow even larger increases in US troops numbers on the ground in Iraq?
Quote:
U.S. Sending 2,200 More Troops to Iraq, Gates Says
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 7, 2007 – The United States will send another 2,200 troops into Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today.
Gates and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the troops would be in addition to the 21,500 troops that are going into the country as part of the surge. Gates made the announcement during a news roundtable here.
The cost of deploying the additional troops has not been figured into the fiscal 2007 emergency supplemental-funding request, the secretary said.
“What has happened is that subsequent to the submission of the supplemental, we sent a new commander to Iraq,” Gates said. “And he has come back with a request for an additional couple of thousand people to help oversee detainees.”
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, anticipates that, as additional U.S. and Iraqi brigades join the Baghdad security plan, there will be an increase in the number of detainees, Gates said.
“He wants more military police to help with that,” the secretary said. “That's a new requirement by a new commander subsequent to the submission of the supplemental to the Congress.”
Petraeus has made other personnel requests that have not yet been approved, Gates said. “They have not been reviewed and a recommendation made by the Joint Staff, and we will look at those going forward,” he said.
The numbers are not large, the secretary added.
At this early stage in the Baghdad security plan, the operative phrase is, “So far, so good,” Gates said.
The Iraqis are meeting the goals they set for themselves. Almost all of the personnel from the three additional brigades the Iraqis promised have arrived in the capital, Pentagon officials said. In addition, political leaders have stayed out of operations like the joint Iraqi-U.S. operation in Sadr City.
Both Gates and Pace stressed that operations are very early, but there has been progress. “The murders between Sunni and Shiia are down,” the chairman said. “The numbers of bombs that have gone off killing large numbers … has gone up.”
Those facts show that the Iraqi people want to stop killing each other “but that the al Qaeda wants to find ways to get them to start killing each other again,” Pace said.
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Source: AFIS
__________________
The Buck Stops Here
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03-09-2007, 12:46 PM
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#2 (permalink)
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Postmaster General
Military Professional
Join Date: 08-20-03
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Quote:
New U.S. Commander in Iraq Won’t Rule Out Need for Added Troops
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: March 9, 2007
BAGHDAD, March 8 — The new American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, warned Thursday that American troops here faced a long road ahead and left open the possibility of calling in even more soldiers as he described the difficult task of calming the country.
In a broad review of the challenges he faces, General Petraeus suggested the need to be open to working with some of the groups at the center of Iraq’s security struggle. He said the future of the Mahdi Army, the ubiquitous Shiite militia that has fought battles with United States troops, should be left up to Iraqi leaders and noted that many countries had “auxiliary police.” He also suggested that political dialogue with some Sunni militants and Sunni leaders was crucial to finding a solution for problems that military action alone would never be able to fix.
General Petraeus repeatedly stressed the long-term nature of the troop increase, but his assertions about the need for open-endedness in the American commitment came as Congressional Democrats in Washington worked toward a fixed date for withdrawal.
He said there were no “looming” requests for additional troops and that he had not yet taken a position on an assessment by the second-ranking commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, that the greatly enlarged American force remain until February 2008.
But he added, “If you’re going to achieve the kinds of effects that we probably need, it would need to be sustained certainly for some time well beyond the summer.”
Military officials in Iraq have indicated that they would need a large American troop presence for at least a year and probably far longer to achieve lasting stability. For now, Congress seems persuaded to give General Petraeus’s strategy a year to yield results, setting the summer of 2008 as a deadline for the return of all troops.
General Petraeus’s open-ended strategy appeared to be an effort to avoid a repeat of the pattern that has doomed past American efforts to halt the insurgency. In hot spots including Tal Afar and Diyala, United States soldiers have cracked down on insurgents and then reduced the American presence only to see insurgents retake old ground.
In his first extended public comments since taking over one month ago, General Petraeus, 54, cited a handful of early favorable indicators since American and Iraqi forces began sweeping through militia- and insurgent-dominated neighborhoods and building new outposts as part of a Baghdad security plan widely seen as a last-ditch effort to stave off civil war.
“While too early to discern significant trends, there have been a few encouraging signs,” General Petraeus said. “Sectarian killings, for example, have been lower in Baghdad over the past several weeks than in the previous month.” He also said that fewer families were being forced out of homes by sectarian gangs and that troops had uncovered significant illegal stashes of bombs and weapons.
But he emphasized that successes had come with devastating setbacks. “Schools, health clinics and marketplaces have all been attacked,” he said. “Car bombs have targeted hundreds of innocent Iraqis,” including worshipers in Habbaniya and college students in Baghdad.
He also underscored how crucial it would be to prevent the insurgents and death squad members who are believed to have fled Baghdad from exporting violence to nearby areas — like attacks in Hilla on Tuesday that killed more than 100 Shiite religious pilgrims — and to block efforts by insurgents forced to abandon Baghdad from returning.
“Anyone who knows about securing Baghdad knows that you must also secure the Baghdad belts, in other words, the areas that surround Baghdad,” he said. One especially violent area, Diyala Province, is “very likely” to get more troops, he said. More American soldiers have been killed already in Diyala this year than in all of 2006 — 29 in 2007 and 20 in 2006, according to icasualties.org.
The first two additional brigades coming to Iraq will work in Baghdad; military officials say a large number of troops in the remaining three brigades may have to patrol areas just outside the capital.
General Petraeus repeated observations by previous commanders that there is “no military solution” to Iraq’s grave problems. The only long-run success, he said, will come after “reconciling differences with some of those who have felt that the new Iraq did not have a place for them.”
According to one government official, some coalition and Iraqi officials have been holding talks with some Sunni insurgent groups who reject the more extremist approaches of groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
Similarly, General Petraeus appeared to take a softer line on the Mahdi militia led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, saying that many coalition countries had a “variety of auxiliary police” but that Iraqi leaders must ultimately decide the Mahdi militia’s fate.
The challenge, he said, “has been to determine how do you incorporate those who want to serve in a positive way, as neighborhood watches, let’s say, but unarmed in our own communities, but without turning into something much more than that.” With barely a third of the additional American and Iraqi troops on the ground, the new security plan is only beginning to take effect. The troops are in the initial phase of clearing out insurgent bases and taking up residence in neighborhoods. Later phases will involve building trust with the communities so that the Iraqi government can undertake the repairs to infrastructure and the job creation programs that the architects of the troop increase believe are critical to the project’s success.
Nonetheless for Iraqis living in Baghdad there already are some perceptible differences. Checkpoints, manned by Iraqi military or police, have sprung up all over the city and security officers appear to be more systematic in determining which cars to pull over and which to let go.
In several neighborhoods, most notably Sadr City, the joint American and Iraqi forces have begun to set up operating bases from which they plan to conduct foot patrols and re-establish links with the community to improve intelligence.
This is a reversal of the past practice of keeping American troops on large bases except for periodic drives through the neighborhoods or combat missions against suspected militants. Larger neighborhoods, like Sadr City, will eventually have several small, joint bases, though for the moment only a couple are in place.
Foot patrols, long viewed as too dangerous for American soldiers to undertake on a regular basis, have begun again even in some of the most violent Sunni neighborhoods as a part of the counterinsurgency effort.
The effect on violence in Baghdad is hard to judge, but on a daily basis it appears that the police have found fewer victims of sectarian violence in the city’s empty lots and back alleys, according to reports from the Interior Ministry.
General Petraeus also noted that United States troops working with their Iraqi counterparts had tried to improve security at markets, which are especially vulnerable to suicide bombings, and had been sweeping through neighborhoods and arresting people they believed were violent militants or criminals.
While military officials point to positive signs emerging from the three-week-old effort, the United States cannot point to any Arab-dominated region in Iraq where it has completely vanquished the indigenous insurgency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/wo..._r=2&ref=world
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The rationale for the new policy.
It appears that things are looking up finally!
It is a good sign.
__________________
"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."
I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
HAKUNA MATATA
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03-09-2007, 18:23 PM
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#3 (permalink)
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Burgomaster
Join Date: 08-02-03
Location: Minneapolis
Country:
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Georgia to increase force to 2,000
Georgia is sending more troops to Iraq as well:
Quote:
Georgia to increase Iraq force to 2,000 - Defense Ministry
RIA Novosti
09/03/2007 15:04 TBILISI, March 9 (RIA Novosti) - Georgia's military contingent in Iraq is expected to increase to about 2,000, the first deputy defense minister said Friday.
"Consultations are ongoing, and a decision will be made soon," Levan Nikoleishvili said, adding US-trained infantry battalions will be sent to Iraq.
Georgia currently has 850 servicemen in Iraq.
But Georgi Targamadze, chairman of the parliamentary Defense and Security committee, said Georgian troops serving in Iraq will be about 2,400.
Nikoleishvili also said Georgia will send a peacekeeping contingent to Afghanistan as part of the international force and is currently negotiating with several countries to achieve this.
He said negotiations are ongoing with Germany, France and Latvia, among others.
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