troop levels

Isn't that what they say about the war in Iraq? I guess the bloody part is right:

A car bomb killed 33 people in northern Iraq on Sunday, security officials said, hours before U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad to assess recent security gains and discuss troop levels.

A U.S. military spokesman said the blast occurred near an Iraqi army checkpoint in the town of Balad. Iraqi Colonel Hamadi Atshan said the bomb hit a checkpoint run by Sunni Arab volunteers who have joined U.S. forces to fight al Qaeda.

The war goes on, just as the spin does. And now that McCain has Kristol advising him, you can bet they will be ready to launch attacks on half the world and give us more Iraqs. Isn't the GOP great?

But the commanders want until next year for the "surge" to work:

The Pentagon announced yesterday that 35,000 soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq in August as replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there until at least the end of this year.

U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working.

Iraq is getting worse by the day and they are starting to give up on these little "rosie" assessments we have become use to hearing. Here is the latest news from the Pentagon:

The U.S. military will likely maintain the current force levels of more than 140,000 troops in Iraq through next spring, the top US. commander in the Middle East said Tuesday.

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the current number of troops "are prudent force levels" that are achieving the needed military effect.

His comments came as U.S. political leaders continue to face declining public support for the war in Iraq, as they head into the coming Congressional elections.

Late last year, military leaders had said they hoped to reduce troop levels to about 100,000 by the end of this year. But Abizaid said Tuesday that the rising sectarian violence and slow progress of the Iraqi government made that impossible.

CNN also reported this morning that actually bringing in more troops hasn't been ruled out.

So this brings us to the main question - if Iraq is such a "central front" in this war on terror, that is crucial to our survival, then why in the hell don't we have double the number of troops in the area trying to secure and win this battle? Either it is not the central front OR our commander in chief is failing even worse than we thought. Actually - I think both apply to this question.

Bush is out in full force doing his cowboy talk against other countries:

"If the Iranians are trying to influence the outcome of the political process, or the outcome of the security situation there, we're letting them know our displeasure," Bush said. "Our call is for those in the neighborhood to allow Iraq to develop a democracy, and that includes our call to Iran as well as to Syria."

So in the last week we have had harsh words with Syrian, Iran, China and North Korea. If Bush is looking to start world war 3, he is on the right course. Scary part is we are not able to handle world war 3 and doing this talk in our weakened state is putting more Americans at risk.

If we ignore all of Bush's problems here at home. Forget about Katrina, wiretapping, the CIA leak, the Dubai ports deal, cooked intelligence, everything and just focused on his foreign policy and diplomacy then we should still have enough to impeach him. He is constantly putting America in harms way by his "tough talk" and lack of diplomacy.

Something Bush should consider is the fact that maybe Iraq is wanting the help of Iran and Syria. Polls over there show an overwhelming number of Iraqi's and their parliament want us out now. Also a majority of Iraqi's support attacks on our troops. This is alarming news and should be looked at carefully. That can lead one to believe more so that Iraq is looking to an ally in their neighbors to the west and east.

It is also scary when you think about the state of our military. Our troop levels are way down and what we do have is tied up in Iraq. Going to war with Iran is most likely enough to cause the United States to reinstate the draft.

Today was a day of great spin by our own Secretary of Defense, Donald
Rumsfeld. In an interview with Meet the Press, host Tim Russert fired away some
hard questions. The secretary seemed to be coming up with answers rather
quickly, but if you listen closely you can hear how his own spin was catching
him.

The first point I would like to make involves the number of trained Iraqi
forces. This issue was brought up in a Senate hearing last week and Secretary
Rumsfeld had his answer ready to go. It seems there has been mixed signals on
the number of combat ready troops and if the Pentagon has been lying to Congress
on the actual numbers. Secretary Rumsfeld tried clearing that up by stating in
the hearing that the number of security forces include police, border patrol,
anti-terrorist groups and military and is well noted in his briefings that the
total number does not reflect solely upon Iraqi troop levels. Now read this part
of what was asked on Meet the Press:

From the MSNBC Transcript of the show:

MR. RUSSERT: But if we only have three Iraqi battalions that are fully combat
ready and we need 107 for us to, in fact, have our exit strategy of bringing our
troops home, we are in for a very long haul.

SEC'Y RUMSFELD: Well, we're going to have, I think something in the
neighborhood 200,000 in October, people in security forces when the constitution
and the elections take place.

There you can see where the Secretary, either by means of creating a spin or
by accident switched the question from a number of troops to a number of
security forces. This is something that he says causes continue problems, yet he
is making the mistake himself.