When the White House unveiled the president’s escalation strategy for Iraq, officials told reporters that the so-called “surge” would include 21,500 combat troops. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the actual size of the deployment would have to be considerably larger because combat troops will need to be backed up by support troops. Don’t worry, said the Bush gang: “We think that there are already enough support troops on the ground there that very few will be required.”
Right now, it all depends on the meaning of “very few.”
President Bush’s planned escalation of U.S. forces in Iraq will require as many as 28,500 troops, Pentagon officials told a Senate committee Thursday. […]
In January, Bush said he would send 21,500 more combat troops to Iraq. England said 6,000 to 7,000 support troops will be needed to back up the larger combat force.
This, of course, reinforces the same concerns that existed a month ago. With an escalation deployment of 28,000, instead of 21,000, the equipment shortages become even bigger problem. Moreover, as the WaPo reported a few weeks ago, a larger deployment will “further degrade the readiness of U.S.-based ground forces, hampering their ability to respond quickly, fully trained and well equipped in the case of other military contingencies around the world and increasing the risk of U.S. casualties, according to Army and Marine Corps leaders.”
And then there’s the matter of support troops coming from an already depleted National Guard and Reserve.
Nearly 90 percent of Army National Guard units in the United States are rated “not ready” — largely as a result of shortfalls in billions of dollars’ worth of equipment — jeopardizing their capability to respond to crises at home and abroad, according to a congressional commission that released a preliminary report yesterday on the state of U.S. military reserve forces.
The report found that heavy deployments of the National Guard and reserves since 2001 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for other anti-terrorism missions have deepened shortages, forced the cobbling together of units and hurt recruiting.
“We can’t sustain the [National Guard and reserves] on the course we’re on,” said Arnold L. Punaro, chairman of the 13-member Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, established by Congress in 2005. The independent commission, made up mainly of former senior military and civilian officials appointed by both parties, is tasked to study the mission, readiness and compensation of the reserve forces.
“The Department of Defense is not adequately equipping the National Guard for its domestic missions,” the commission’s report found. It faulted the Pentagon for a lack of budgeting for “civil support” in domestic emergencies, criticizing the “flawed assumption” that as long as the military is prepared to fight a major war, it is ready to respond to a disaster or emergency at home.
From Virginia and the District of Columbia to Indiana and New Mexico, National Guard units lack thousands of trucks, Humvees, generators, radios, night-vision goggles and other gear that would be critical for responding to a major disaster, terrorist attack or other domestic emergency, according to state Guard officials.
Just think, in the 2000 presidential election, then-Gov. Bush blamed Clinton and Gore directly for “hollowing out” the military. “If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, ‘Not ready for duty, sir.'”
I wonder if an enterprising young White House reporter might ask if the president still believes he was right then, and whether he’s similarly concerned now.