VS sturen meer dan 20.000 extra troepen naar Irak

[Lex]

Talabani comments as Baghdad lawmakers discuss withdrawal timetable

CAMBRIDGE, England - Iraq's Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, said Friday that his country may need U.S. troops for one or two more years. The statement came after lawmakers in Baghdad backed a drawdown in the number of foreign troops in Iraq.

Talabani told students at Cambridge University that all of Iraq was safer because of Saddam Hussein's removal and that many people were living normal lives. "I think that in one or two years we will be able to recruit our forces, to prepare our forces and say goodbye to our friends," he said.

On Thursday, a majority of Iraqi lawmakers endorsed a draft bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and demanding a freeze on the number already in the country.

The legislation was being discussed even as U.S. lawmakers were locked in a dispute with the White House over their call to start reducing the size of the U.S. force in the coming months.

The proposed Iraqi legislation, drafted by the parliamentary bloc loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was signed by 144 members of the 275-member house, said Nassar al-Rubaie, the leader of the Sadrist bloc.

The Sadrist bloc, which holds 30 parliamentary seats and sees the U.S.-led forces as an occupying army, has pushed similar bills before, but this was the first time it garnered the support of a majority of lawmakers.

Would freeze size of foreign forces

The bill would require the Iraqi government to seek approval from parliament before it requests an extension of the U.N. mandate for foreign forces to be in Iraq, al-Rubaie said. It also calls for a timetable for the troop withdrawal and a freeze on the size of the foreign forces.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously in November to extend the mandate of the U.S.-led forces until the end of 2007. The resolution, however, said the council "will terminate this mandate earlier if requested by the government of Iraq."

The measure, which has not yet been introduced in parliament, reflects growing disenchantment among the lawmakers over U.S. involvement in Iraq and the government's failure to curb the violence.

Ali al-Adeeb, a senior Shiite lawmaker and an aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, questioned the wisdom of asking foreign forces to leave when Iraqi forces were not ready to take full responsibility for security in the country.

"Their withdrawal will not benefit anyone if our forces are not ready," said al-Adeeb, who said he did not back the bill. "There must be a commitment from foreign parties to train our forces."

Al-Rubaie said he personally handed the Iraqi bill to speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani on Wednesday.

Not officially submitted

Deputy Speaker Khaled al-Attiyah said the draft legislation had not been officially submitted to the speaker, but was currently being reviewed by the house's legal department, apparently the final step before it can be submitted.

Al-Rubaie said al-Mashhadani had a week to schedule a debate on the bill before he would use the majority that backs it to force one.

However, his majority might be shaky.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said he had backed the draft only on the condition that the withdrawal timetable be linked to a schedule for training and equipping Iraq's security forces.

"But the sponsors of the legislation did not include our observations in the draft. This is deception," he said.

Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which launched two uprisings against U.S. troops in 2004, has been blamed in much of the recent sectarian violence against Sunnis and has been one of the main targets of a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown.

Last month, the cleric ordered his six Cabinet ministers to leave the government after the Shiite prime minister refused to put a timetable for foreign troops withdrawal.

The Associated Press
Updated: 11:24 a.m. ET May 11, 2007

[Lex]

General wants more troops in northern Iraq 

The U.S. commander in northern Iraq said Friday that he doesn't have enough troops for the mission in increasingly violent Diyala province.

Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon also said that Iraqi government officials are not moving fast enough to provide the "most powerful weapon" against insurgents — a government that works and supplies services for the people.

Mixon commands the area that includes Diyala province, north of Baghdad. It was a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency before the start of the Baghdad security crackdown and has worsened since militants fled there to avoid the increased U.S.-led operations started in the capital in February.

Mixon has already received extra troops and has increased attacks on militants. But he has asked Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, for more.

"I laid out a plan for General Odierno on the numbers of forces that I would need," Mixon told Pentagon reporters by video conference from Iraq. "We have made progress ... we have taken terrain back from the enemy. General Odierno intends to give me additional forces as they become available."

Mixon, also commander of the 25th Infantry Division, has about 3,500 troops in his area and there are about 10,000 Iraqi soldiers and several thousand Iraqi police, with 3,000 more police approved but not yet hired and trained.

By Pauline Jelinek - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday May 11, 2007 11:44:29 EDT

[Lex]

10 Army brigades heading for Iraq in August
   
Ten brigade combat teams will begin deploying to Iraq in August as part of the next rotation of forces, Army officials confirmed Tuesday.

The confirmation followed a Defense Department announcement made Tuesday morning and it affects about 35,000 soldiers.

This is the first big announcement of brigade combat team rotations since Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced on April 11 that active Army units in the Central Command area of responsibility will serve no more than 15 months in theater and spend no less than 12 months at home.

Units called up for this rotation, which DoD and Army officials stress is a regular rotation of forces, are:

• 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, the longest actively serving Cavalry Regiment in the Army and the service's newest Stryker Brigade, will deploy in August from Vilseck, Germany.

• 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, was the first brigade formed under the Army's modularity transformation initiative in 2004. The unit deployed to Iraq in January 2005, and will deploy again in September from Fort Stewart, Ga.

• 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, of Fort Campbell, Ky., will deploy in September.

• 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, will deploy in October from Fort Campbell.

• 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, at Fort Campbell, will deploy in October, after 3rd Brigade.

• 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort Hood, Texas, will deploy in early November. The unit relocated to Fort Hood from Fort Carson, Colo., in July 2006 after its second tour in Iraq.

• 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, of Baumholder, Germany, will deploy in late November.

• 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, will deploy in late November from Fort Polk, La. This brigade was formed in January 2005.

• 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, will deploy in December.

• 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, will deploy at the end of December from Fort Hood.

Also deploying this fall are 504 soldiers from the Army Reserve's 478th Combat Engineer Battalion, based in the town of Fort Thomas, Ky. The 40th Signal Battalion at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., will send 430 soldiers. Both battalions will deploy in August.

The 15-month deployment policy will remain in place until the Army can revert to 12 months in theater and 12 months at home, with the ultimate goal of 12 months deployed and 24 months at home. National Guard and Reserve soldiers are not affected by the policy and will be mobilized for no more than 12 months at a time. No time frame has been announced for a return to 12-month tours for active Army soldiers.

Right now, there are 17 BCTs in Iraq and two in Afghanistan; by June there will be 18 BCTs in Iraq, five of them sent to theater as part of the "surge."

The move to 15-month tours, requested by Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren and Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey, provides soldiers and families with long-term predictability about how long deployments will last and how much time soldiers will have at home, Gates said during the April 11 press conference.

Keeping soldiers at home for 12 months also provides them with the time they need to prepare and train for their next deployment, Lt. Gen. James Lovelace, the Army G-3, has said.

By Michelle Tan - Staff writer
Army Times
Posted : Tuesday May 8, 2007 11:27:52 EDT

[unclero]

Hmmm... Ik denk dat ze zich maar vast mogen gaan buigen over en plan B. Ik heb niet het idee dat ze dat echt hebben uitgewerkt.

En ik maar denken dat die troepenvermeerdering plan B was ::).

En anders natuurlijk op z'n Amerikaans: "Plan B was for plan A to work"

[Lex]

Dat verklaarde de voorman van de Republikeinen in het Huis van Afgevaardigden, John Boehner, zondagavond in een programma van Foxnews.

Voor een transcript van het interview, zie: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270303,00.html

[Maj Fred]

Hmmm... Ik denk dat ze zich maar vast mogen gaan buigen over en plan B. Ik heb niet het idee dat ze dat echt hebben uitgewerkt.

[Lex]

WASHINGTON -  Republikeinse afgevaardigden beginnen zich steeds ongemakkelijker te voelen over de voortgang van de oorlog in Irak.

Mocht er aan het eind van de zomer blijken dat het 'nieuwe' plan van president Bush, dat voorzag in een sterke troepenvermeerdering, niet werkt, willen ze weten wat plan B is. Dat verklaarde de voorman van de Republikeinen in het Huis van Afgevaardigden, John Boehner, zondagavond in een programma van Foxnews.

,,Tegen september of oktober willen leden weten hoe goed dit werkt en als het niet werkt wat plan B dan is'', aldus Boehner. De politici vrezen dat de impopulaire oorlog in Irak en de onvoorwaardelijke Republikeinse steun daarvoor opnieuw zijn weerslag kan gaan hebben op de verkiezingen. Afgelopen november verloor de partij haar meerderheid in de Senaat en het Huis mede dankzij Irak.

anp | Gepubliceerd op 07 mei 2007, 13:49

[Lex]

BAGHDAD (AP) — Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have arrived in the capital to strengthen the 12-week crackdown aimed at quelling sectarian violence, the U.S. military said Wednesday, as bombings and shootings killed 12 people across the country.
The developments came on the eve of an international conference on Iraq being held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik at which the U.S. administration is expected to press hard for countries to forgive billions of dollars in Iraqi debt to help the Shiite-led government.

The U.S. military said Wednesday that the fourth of five brigades being sent to help Iraqi security forces as part of the crackdown had arrived this week.

The 4th Brigade, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Lewis, Wash., which includes about 3,700 soldiers, will be deployed in the Baghdad area and in northern Iraq, the military said. Officials want the rest in place by June, for a total in Iraq of 160,000.

U.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said Wednesday that Iraqi and U.S. forces now have 57 joint security stations and combat outposts in the Baghdad area and that "while the security situation remains exceedingly challenging, we've seen some encouraging signs of progress."

"We continue to see a reduced total number of sectarian incidents in comparison to before the Baghdad security operation, including murders and kidnappings," Fox told reporters in Baghdad. But he said car bomb attacks have increased, including some with very high casualties.

When complete, the Baghdad security operation will include about 28,000 additional U.S. forces, including 20,500 combat soldiers and about 8,000 service members involved in support services such intelligence, military police and logistics.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, an Iraqi military spokesman, said most of the crackdown's operations were taking place in volatile areas outside Baghdad, including the Sunni cities of Mahmoudiyah and Madain.

Al-Moussawi said insurgent operations had dropped significantly in Baghdad as the groups had fled to other areas.

"Next week will witness more military operations in both halves of Baghdad," he said, referring to the two sides of the Tigris River that divides Baghdad. "Almost all our military operations are now taking place on Baghdad's outskirts."

The security efforts come as President Bush is engaged in a fierce debate with the Democratic-led Congress over the war in Iraq. Bush vetoed legislation to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq Tuesday night in a historic showdown with Congress over whether the unpopular and costly war should end or escalate.

The measure would would require the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later.

"This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops," Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House. He said the bill would "mandate a rigid and artificial deadline" for troop pullouts, and "it makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing."

Democrats accused Bush of ignoring Americans' desire to stop the war, which has claimed the lives of more than 3,350 members of the military.

Ismail Qassim, a 41-year-old Shiite electricity ministry employee in Baghdad, welcomed the move.

"In spite of all the problems Iraq is facing because of the American presence, there is some need for them at least for one more year because of the sectarian strife in Iraq and corruption in the security services," he said.

But Sameer Hussein, a 22-year-old Sunni college student in Baghdad, said he wanted the U.S. forces to withdraw but didn't think they ever would.

"Even if they will withdraw they will leave permanent military bases in Iraq and that is something Iraqi people will reject," he said.

A senior Interior Ministry official, meanwhile, said officials were trying to gain custody of Abu Ayyub al-Masri's body amid widespread skepticism over claims that the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq had been killed.

Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal declined to comment further, but a police official in Anbar province said al-Masri died when his explosives belt detonated during fighting but security forces could not retrieve the body because it was in a part of the desert controlled by the terror group.

U.S. authorities urged caution about the reports, saying they had not been confirmed and warning that even if the claim were true, the death of the shadowy Egyptian militant likely would not spell the end of the terror movement in Iraq.

05-02-2007
AP

[Lex]

More IRR activations coming this summer

The Corps plans to involuntarily activate as many as 1,800 more Individual Ready Reserve leathernecks this summer, a top manpower officer said Thursday.
The call-up, following closely on the heels of a similarly sized one in March, is based on manpower forecasts for the coming 12 to 18 months, said Col. Guy Stratton, head of planning and policy with Manpower and Reserve Affairs in Quantico, Va.
Those mustered during the summer call-up will be issued orders for active-duty screening, a process that will likely reduce the pool eligible for deployment. The Corps estimates, for example, that about 1,200 of the 1,800 activated in the March call-up will be issued orders for combat deployment.
Those in the summer call-up found fit for active duty will be given orders to U.S. Central Command next year and likely will be headed to Iraq, Stratton said.
Legally, the Corps can involuntarily activate and issue deployment orders to only 2,500 IRR Marines at a time. Late last year, about 100 were issued orders; about 1,200 more from the March call-up are expected to receive deployment orders.
While the Corps is aware of the cap, it plans to continue call-ups as long as needed to keep combat units up to strength, Stratton said.
"If we're going to start bringing the forces home from Iraq, we'll obviously shut it off or ramp it down or whatever it needs to be modified. As long as we're maintaining the Marine Corps presence, then we'll continue to do IRR call-ups," he said.
Keeping tabs on the 60,000 Marines in the IRR remains a constant challenge. Earlier this year, Brig. Gen. Darrell Moore, commander of the Kansas City-based Marine Corps Mobilization Command, said that as many as 20 percent of IRR forces cannot be located because they have failed to keep their contact information current.
"Some of the Marines just don't want to have any more contact with the Marine Corps," Stratton said. "They will tell you 'I did my four years, and I'd just as soon go on and do something else.' "
The Corps puts a lot of effort into maintaining contact, but there are few means open to finding information.
"The easiest way of doing it is ... call the next of kin," Stratton said.
Manpower officials are barred from tapping into other government records, such as Internal Revenue Service or even university records.
"If they're getting some type of military associated benefit ... we can cross-reference our records," he said.
Corps officials will make an appeal to Defense Secretary Robert Gates next month to expand their ability to tap into other government records, Stratton said.
"We, the four services, constantly ask OSD, 'Are there different ways we can be allowed, like a magazine subscription? Can we get an address from that?' We really haven't been given too many avenues," he said.

By Kimberly Johnson - Staff writer
Marine Corps Times
Posted : Thursday Apr 26, 2007 17:57:50 EDT

[Lex]

Analysis: Iraq surge may be extended

The Pentagon is laying the groundwork to extend the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq. At the same time, the administration is warning Iraqi leaders that the boost in forces could be reversed if political reconciliation is not evident by summer.
This approach underscores the central difficulty facing President Bush. If political progress is not possible in the relatively short term, then the justification for sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad — and accepting the rising U.S. combat death toll that has resulted — will disappear. That in turn would put even more pressure on Bush to yield to the Democratic-led push to wind down the war in coming months.
If the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki does manage to achieve the political milestones demanded by Washington, then the U.S. military probably will be told to sustain the troop buildup much longer than originally foreseen — possibly well into 2008. Thus the early planning for keeping it up beyond late summer.
More than half of the extra 21,500 combat troops designated for Baghdad duty have arrived; the rest are due by June. Already it is evident that putting them in the most hotly contested parts of the capital is taking a toll. An average of 22 U.S. troops have died per week in April, the highest rate so far this year.
"This is certainly a price that we're paying for this increased security," Adm. William Fallon, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, told a House committee Wednesday. He also said the United States does not have "a ghost of a chance" of success in Iraq unless it can create "stability and security."
The idea of the troop increase, originally billed by the administration as a temporary "surge," is not to defeat the insurgency. That is not thought possible in the near term. The purpose is to contain the violence — in particular, the sect-on-sect killings in Baghdad — long enough to create an environment in which Iraqi political leaders can move toward conciliation and ordinary Iraqis are persuaded of a viable future.
So far the results are mixed, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week during a visit to Iraq that he wants to see faster political progress by the Iraqis. "The clock is ticking," he said, referring to the limited time the administration can pursue its strategy before the American public demands an end to the war.
Gates also said he told al-Maliki that the United States will not keep fighting indefinitely.
Gates' remarks reflected the administration's effort to strike a balance between reassuring the Iraqis of U.S. support and pressuring their leaders to show they can bring the country together and avert a full-scale civil war.
Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq watcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Friday that even if the Iraqis pass the desired legislation, it probably would take months longer to find out if it proves workable.
"The U.S. should definitely keep up the pressure on the Iraqis, but we should have no illusions," Cordesman said. "Iraqis are driven more by their own politics than outside pressure."
When Bush announced the troop boost in January, administration officials pointedly left unclear how long the extra troops would remain in Iraq. Some, including Gates, suggested that troop levels could be reduced to the previous standard of about 135,000 as early as September — assuming the addition of 21,500 combat troops and roughly 8,000 support troops this spring proved to be an overwhelming success or a clear-cut failure.
Three months later, with troops still flowing into Baghdad, the Pentagon is beginning to take steps that suggests it expects to maintain higher troop levels into 2008 and beyond, yet officials still won't say whether the increase is intended as a short-term move. Some believe the lack of clarity is a mistake because it adds to the strain on troops and their families and it may lessen the psychological pressure on the belligerents.
Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, whose January report on changing the U.S. military strategy in Iraq was largely adopted as part of Bush's new approach to the war, said in an interview Thursday that it appears the administration believes it will have to sustain the troop buildup much longer.
"They seem to be taking the steps that would make it possible to sustain it for longer, which is good," Kagan said. "But they seem to be reluctant to commit to a willingness to do that, which I think is unfortunate."
Kagan says the troops, the Iraqi government and the insurgents all ought to be convinced that U.S. forces will keep up the pressure, particularly in the most contested neighborhoods in Baghdad, for at least another year.
"If I were running the show I would say, 'Look, everyone should assume that we're going to sustain this through 2008 — the Iraqis should assume that, too — and if we can turn it off sooner, then everyone would be happy," Kagan said.
Gen. James T. Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, takes a similar view. In an interview earlier this month he pondered the thought process of a U.S. commander in Iraq evaluating the way ahead. "In six months, if it's working, is he going to say, 'OK, it worked, now you guys can go home'?" Conway thinks there is a reasonable chance for success, and for planning purposes he is preparing to sustain the troop buildup.
The Marines added about 4,000 to their contingent in western Anbar province, the focal point of the Sunni Arab insurgency. In March the Marines made a little-noticed move that gives them the flexibility to continue at the higher rate in Iraq at least into 2008. They extended the tours of Marines in Okinawa, Japan, which freed up other Marine units in the United States to deploy to Iraq later this year instead of Okinawa.
Also, the Pentagon announced earlier this month that normal tours of duty in Iraq will be 15 months instead of 12 months. Gates said that gives the military the capability to maintain the higher troop levels in Iraq until next spring.


By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
April 21, 2007, 10:14AM EDT
___ EDITOR'S NOTE — Robert Burns has covered the military for The Associated Press since 1990.

[Lex]

is die troop surge al begonnen dan???

Ja, bits and pieces.

[oud_zijde]

is die troop surge al begonnen dan???

militaire dingetjes gaan over het algemeen niet zo heel erg snel

[Lex]

Iraq war is 'lost': US Democrat leader

The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), said Thursday.
"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.
Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.
"I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear ... I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically."
Congress is seeking to tie funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable to withdraw US troops from Iraq next year, but Bush has vowed to veto any such bill and no breakthrough was reported from the White House talks.
Bush on Thursday was addressing an Ohio town hall meeting and defending the war on terror launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"It is the most solemn duty of our country, is to protect our country from harm," Bush told the invited audience in Tipp, Ohio.
"A lesson learned was that -- at least in my opinion -- that in order to protect us, we must aggressively pursue the enemy and defeat them elsewhere so that we do not have to face them here."
But Reid drew a parallel with former US president Lyndon Johnson who decided to deploy more troops in Vietnam some 40 years ago when 24,000 US troops had already been killed.
"Johnson did not want a war loss on his watch, so he surged in Vietnam. After the surge was over, we added 34,000 to the 24,000 who died in Vietnam," Reid said.
The comments came a day after bombers killed more than 200 people in a slew of car bombings in Baghdad, dealing a savage blow to the US security plan which aims to deploy an extra 30,000 troops in the country to quell sectarian unrest.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates fly into Iraq Thursday on an unannounced visit for talks with top US military commanders there.
He met with General David Petraeus, chief of coalition forces in Iraq, his deputy Lieutenant Colonel Ray Odierno and Admiral William Fallon, chief of US forces in the Middle East.

April 19, 2007, 2:45PM EDT
AFP

[Lex]

Ben wel weer benieuwd naar het spannend nieuws waar de regering Bush nu weer mee komt met betrekking tot de oorlog tegen terreur. Nog steeds aan het winnen ondanks......... en meer van dit soort opbeurende verhalen ?. Of  dreigende taal aan het adres van Iran ?. Zou ook gepast zijn.

Zal kijken of ik je vraag kan beantwoorden.  ::)

[Ros]

Me dunkt dat we nu niet in het zoveelste topic hierover hoeven te bomen. Misschien valt er wat samen te voegen, mede-beheerder(s)? 

Goed plan....had  ik zelf kunnen bedenken  :)