police forces

Think back to the surge debate last month. The Republicans took to the floor of the House and stood tight with talking points in hand. They had their little "war" room set-up to counter any Democratic argument and acted like they knew all the inside mumblings of the execution of the surge. One of those big talking points was "give the President the 6 months he needs to make the plan work".

Well we are now over a month into the plan and we heard this week that the surge could now take over a year. If that isn't enough, now we got the number of troops being needed for this "surge" being increased by almost 50%:

President Bush asked Congress on Saturday for $3.2 billion to pay for 8,200 more U.S. troops needed in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of the 21,500-troop buildup he announced in January.

Bush wants Congress to fund 3,500 new U.S. troops to expand training of local police and army units in Afghanistan. The money also would pay for the estimated 3,500 existing U.S. troops he already announced would be staying longer in the region to counter an anticipated Taliban offensive in Afghanistan this spring.

In Iraq, most of the additional troops would help with the latest Baghdad security plan, which is getting under way in the capital. The money would pay for 2,400 combat support troops, 2,200 military police forces and 129 troops for reconstruction teams.

So did Bush try to sugar coat his surge number when he addressed the nation in January? We hear that this surge is working so great, so why do we need such a drastic increase only a short time into it?

Our military is already broken. We are not able to handle any situations that come up. This isn't some left-wing conspiracy; it is the realization of many on the left and right as well as military leaders. So how does Bush respond? He tries to further the damage he has done to our once mighty force.

And by terrorist #1 I mean Joe Lieberman. He is trying to hijack the Democrat's majority by threatening to switch sides if the Democrats try to restrict funds to the war. Well the Democratic leadership in the Senate is going a step further. They are now working on legislation to re-examine the 2002 authorization to go to war:

Determined to challenge President Bush, Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to limit the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq, effectively revoking the broad authority Congress granted in 2002, officials said Thursday.

While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity, and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.

As I said in my earlier post - good riddance Joe. If the Republicans want to filibuster everything then we don't need the majority. Actually this could become a blessing to the Democrats in 2008. Let the Republicans regain control of the Senate this year and screw it up even more and we got a new campaign motto in 2008. Hey - we only need to pick up 1 seat, and considering most seats up are Republicans we should have no problem with that.

Around the blogosphere Taylor, Howie, Jane, Chris and Nichole all weight in on this.

While we got the administration denying any chance of Iraq heading towards a civil war, even the US envoy is warning of the threat of a "wider war". From today's L.A. Times:

The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war if America pulled out of the country too soon.

In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.

Meanwhile the New York Times is reporting that the U.S. forces are working to try and reduce the Shiite domination in the Iraqi security forces.

As the threat of full-scale sectarian strife looms, the American military is scrambling to try to weed out ethnic or religious partisans from the Iraqi security forces.

The United States faces the possibility that it has been arming one side in a prospective civil war. Early on, Americans ceded operational control of the police to the Iraqi government. Now, the police forces are overseen at the highest levels by religious Shiite parties with militias, and reports of uniformed death squads have risen sharply in the past year.