Another Bush Lie: Troop Surge To Include Almost Double the 21,500 Promised

When President Bush stood before the American people last month, and promised "A New Way Forward" (Tm) in Iraq, he explained to us that this plan would include 17,500 new troops in the Baghdad area (as well as another 4,000 troops in Anbar province).

Well, once again the President "decided" that he wasn't going to share the entire truth with the American people.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the escalation of troops will not just include 21,500 of our men and women, but closer to 48,000.

Thus far, the Department of Defense (DoD) has identified only combat units for deployment. However, U.S. military operations also require substantial support forces, including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services. Over the past few years , DoD’s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops.

DoD has not yet indicated which support units will be deployed along with the added combat forces, or how many additional troops will be involved. Army and DoD officials have indicated that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate. CBO expects that, even if the additional brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel.

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops—a total of 48,000. CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel—about 3,000 per combat brigade—totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000.

It seems the DoD is still determining whether it will send the usual amount of support troops along with the surge, but either way this new plan will either require close to 48,000 troops, or our soldiers in harms way won't have the proper support - once again.

In the same report, the CBO estimates the cost of the troop surge "would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment, depending upon the total number of troops deployed and including additional costs that would be incurred during the build-up and ramp-down periods."

So, the President has once again mislead the American public and is planning to send a larger number of troops into battle without the support of the American people or the Congress, at a price tag of about $20 million.

(H/T to Dee, via Myspace)