December 29, 2003

Troop Rotation, Regime Rotation

So its pretty obvious that the US troops in Iraq have been there far too long. But whose great idea was it switch out nearly every troop all at the same time? The Times harps on the issue of military preparedness if some geopolitical problem arises elsewhere in the world. Quite frankly I'm not too worried about that, if a problem arises that truly requires a military response then there are plenty of other nations around who can pick up a month of slack for the US. What worries me is the problem that the US built all by its lonesome, Iraq.

Am I the only one who sees a massive swapping of nearly all experienced troops for inexperienced as the geopolitical equivalent of tacking an arabic "shoot me" sign on the back of each soldier's uniform? Assuming of course the Army can find enough soldiers with any knowledge of the language. Guess that's what the infinite servitude clause is there for.

It's bad enough that Bush has lead us into this conflict, but is it too much to ask for his team to show the slightest bit of preparedness or foresight in its organization? Of course the conservatives are busy rewriting history to inexplicably make lack of preparedness a positive...

There is only so much history you can rewrite though, its about time the Bush administration take some responsibility for their repeated blunders. Troop rotation? the warnings where in the NYT, we are watching to see how it goes down.

Posted by Abe at December 29, 2003 02:34 PM

Comments

baffling. the entire situation is utterly baffling and nigh hopeless. it's hard to get my head around my notion that i have NO idea how we're going to dig out of this situation. haven't heard any news in a long while on the Joseph Wilson episode... i was quite hoping that when that broke, it would be the beginning of something rather undeniable to anyone rational. alas.

I had written about this briefly as well yesterday - I just don't see the easy solution, to be honest. I wish I could, but there's a couple of things that need to happen and I'm not sure if it's logistically feasible.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/30/ashcroft.cia.leaks/index.html

not entirely sure what to make of this development... but the abundance of swagger certainly leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

i stumbled across the brief saga Georg-Andreas Pogany today as well. google it if you aren't familiar... swagger swagger swagger