BTW the 21, 000 or more Iraq surge soldiers

[undergroundpanther]

Probably won't get armored vehicles..Where is that HUGE amount of money in the budget for the pentagon that's been so much for so long.. what is it being spent on?
There is no excuses for this crap. Congress needs to get the Pentagon to cough up the documentation and proof of where those billions disappear to and what they are used for.Because this "surge" idiocy is looking more and more like we are sending our citizens over there to be 21,000 sitting ducks.


WASHINGTON - After nearly four years of war in Iraq, the Pentagon's effort to protect its troops against roadside bombs is in disarray, with soldiers and Marines having to swap access to scarce armored vehicles, and the military unsure whether it has the money or industrial capacity to produce the safe vehicles it says the troops need.

On Jan. 10, The Baltimore Sun reported that most of the 21,500 troops President Bush has ordered to Iraq as reinforcements will not have access to specialized blast-resistant armored vehicles because they are in such short supply.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/special_packages/iraq/16516307.htm

[magellan]

1. That suggests that GreenZoneLT is right

They don't need extra vehicles because there aren't really going to be more US troops there. It's a shell game Bush** is playing with our troops.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2689058#2689299

GreenZoneLT:

That's mostly PR, that 21,500.

Stars & Stripes had a story the other day on where the troops are coming from. The Army's going to extend some units and deploy some early. The entire "surge," which is more like the tide coming in than a wave, won't be in place until May. And at the peak, we'll have 6,000 fewer troops here than we did in November, 2005.

The more interesting and important surge is the supposed nine combat brigades the Iraqis claim they're going to provide. Many of them are Kurds who until recently were peshmerga militia, who don't speak Arabic. That ought to work just swell.

[Spearman87]

3. I don't know anything about current deployment theory

But if, as I hear, we really need more troops in Afghanistan, and we really want to increase troops in Iraq......couldn't we "redeploy" some of the troops stationed say in Germany, Japan, or the tens of thousands in South Korea? Aside from propping up the local economies (if that happens), are those troops really wanted there by the locals, or needed? Is N. Korea really a threat to swoop down across the border nowadays, and if they did, would we oppose them, and would we do it with a traditional infrantry-type show of force?

[snowbear]

2. If the troops on the ground need weapons and safety items..

I trust our Democratic majority to get whatever they need to them WHILE WE WORK ON THE PLAN TO GET THEM SAFELY HOME!!!