Sooo the 952nd Engineering Company has been called up

[Horse with no Name]

and will join 5 other units. What significance is this, if any?
>>>snip
The 952nd Engineer Company is a support group responsible for horizontal construction including airfields, parking lots, roads and bridges.

http://theparisnews.com/story.lasso?wcd=26394

[havocmom]

1. Perhaps recent revelations about Haliburton not doing their jobs

is propmting Dick & Rummy to force the military to help the 'private contractors' out yet again?

[Horse with no Name]

4. Or perhaps to build landing strips ?

Who really knows?

[havocmom]

5. Any new info about what is shakin on Diego Garcia?

Am far from the military construction corps loop these days.

[Master Mahon]

2. Building bridges

For Bush, Rumsfeld, et al to use to FLEE TO SAFETY perhaps?

:+

[HereSince1628]

3. If they are using Air Force as ground troops, engineers may

not being doing what they were initially designated to do. Just saying. Halliburton or a subsidiary is probably doing all the construction.

[leftchick]

8. exactly what I was thinking

I have a niece in the Air Force who may be called up. She is in computers and now may be in the sand. :(

[HereSince1628]

10. Best wishes to her.

[cassiepriam]

6. Yes, hard to tell. They have been calling up veterinarians to do water

testing. Vets have some training in that kind of thing,
but it is a bit of a stretch.

[jmowreader]

7. Crossing the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers?

It's a bridging unit. Conducting a ground assault from Iraq into Iran requires crossing two major rivers--and fording rivers in a tank is exceptionally difficult. (The Soviet Army was the world's expert in fording rivers in tanks, and they lost so many tanks during river-crossing training in East Germany that they finally paved part of the bottom of the Oder River. And they STILL lost tanks there!)

I don't think it's a warning shot at Halliburton--they do damn near anything they want, or DON'T do damn near anything they want, and still get paid.

[Horse with no Name]

9. IF this is true

My bet is that Halliburton doesn't want to build that particular bridge-so they insource the troops to do the more hazardous work.

[jmowreader]

11. Yes, Horse, you're absolutely right

Think back to the start of the war, when Halliburton wouldn't take supplies to the troops (even though we were paying them massively) because they were afraid of getting killed.

This would be worse--they'd be going into a hot area with intent to make it hotter.

Another thing to consider: Halliburton is many things (almost all of them bad) but so far they don't seem to be mercenaries. That's Blackwater's job and Blackwater doesn't do heavy construction. Part of the job description for Combat Engineers is "fight as infantry." If Halliburton was tasked to bridge the Tigris and/or the Euphrates in preparation for a ground assault on Iran--an act which would rank near the top of the list of stupid shit attributable to George Bush's reign of error--they'd be required to fight as infantry. (They'd be moving from one hot area to another one...and something tells me that if the Iranian Army invades Iraq to kick the US Army's ass, Bush will have finally fulfilled his campaign promise to be a uniter in that the Iranian Army will unite with the Old Iraqi Army as they fight the US Army.)

In a situation such as this, the military is going to have to do the bridging operations.