Iraq: The Return

In 2003 the US made a grievous mistake……it invaded then occupied Iraq….but Obama had to pull troops out because a “status of forces” would not be allowed by the Iraqi government…..but we cannot return to a place that we never left.  Kinda like claiming to discover a place where people already live.

The war on ISIS is going well, according to the Pentagon,  ISIS is on the run….that is good news….but if true why would the US need to redeploy more troops to Iraq?

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford told reporters today that the US will be sending a significant number of new combat troops to Iraq in the weeks to come, saying a series of recommendations have been drawn up, and it’s just a question of exactly which is approved.

This will mark the latest in a series of US escalations in Iraq, which have put the US far above the 3,870 soldier limit they negotiated with Iraq. Pentagon officials concede the number of troops in Iraq is closer to 5,000 now, though the exact figure is not being disclosed.

Pentagon officials insist that they don’t count “temporary troops” in their official numbers, which often means the figures they report publicly are underreported by as many as 1,000 troops at any given time. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi has been under growing pressure from important Shi’ite figures to keep the US role limited.

Special ops troops were temporary assignments……I am sorry but that is pure manure!  Seriously?  If you are being shot at what you call your deployment matters not.

The Pentagon seems to be in a never-ending scramble to add more troops, sometimes only a few dozen at a time, sometimes a few hundred. Sending relatively small numbers each time has kept the individual deployments sparsely covered in the US press, and this avoids significant debate over the transition from a “no boots on the ground” (Dammit1  Stop! using this term the troops are humans and do not demean them or de-humanize them) war toward one in which thousands of US troops are at or near the front lines.

6 thoughts on “Iraq: The Return

  1. To comment on this would probably take me a couple days, given the depth of the degree of insanity involved in anything to do with the Middle East political scene, which most closely resembles a large ball of rubber bands, with a thousand loose ends…. and, when finished, I wouldn’t feel any better for having ranted about a subject with no fucking solution…

    There will be no peace, in the Middle East, or anywhere else, as long as humans refuse to be adults….

    gigoid, the dubious

      1. In my mind, Vietnam was our first warning of what was happening in the real world of politics after WWII; Eisenhower mentioned his fears of the doings of the M-IC, and it has all come true, right down the line since then…. Currently, the arms dealers are in pretty good control of things, and are happily counting their profits as the world burns….

        gigoid

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