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Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
                Imad Khadduri's blog "Free Iraq" (scroll down for English version)

Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Shortage of troops in Iraq a `grim warning'
(Tom Lasseter, McClatchy Newspapers, July 27, 2006)
The Bush administration's decision to move thousands of U.S. soldiers into Baghdad to quell sectarian warfare before it explodes into outright civil war underscores a problem that's hindered the American effort to rebuild Iraq from the beginning: There aren't enough troops to do the job. . . . Many U.S. officials in Baghdad and in Washington privately concede the point. They say they've been forced to shuffle American units from one part of the country to another for at least two years because there haven't been enough soldiers and Marines to deal simultaneously with Sunni Muslim insurgents and Shiite militias; train Iraqi forces; and secure roads, power lines, border crossings and ammunition dumps. . . . Although military planners are still finalizing the details, as many as 4,000 additional U.S. soldiers are being sent to Baghdad, including two battalions of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade, four or five military police companies from northern Iraq and a field artillery battalion that's standing in reserve in Kuwait. . . . "You can't do clear-and-hold with the force structure we have," the senior American military official said. "I'm almost of the view that you've got to bring more troops and they've got to stay longer, but no one wants to hear that." . . . Almost no high-ranking, active-duty U.S. officers are willing to discuss their concerns about troop levels publicly, for fear of being reprimanded or having their careers cut short. . . . There have been many examples of the implications of inadequate troop levels in Iraq [click the link above for full details] . . . Anthony Cordesman, an expert on military affairs, wrote this week that "the announcement that the U.S. is sending more troops into Baghdad is a grim warning of just how serious the situation in Iraq has become. The fact is that U.S. forces are now strained throughout the country in spite of efforts to create Iraqi military, security and police forces." . . . Cordesman continued: "Reinforcing Baghdad inevitably means weakening both U.S. and Iraqi capabilities somewhere else, and despite all of the talk that the insurgency focuses on Baghdad and four provinces, civil strife is steadily broadening in most of Iraq."

ALSO SEE: Stars and Stripes says "25,000 stateside troops tapped for Iraq deployment"

posted by LoZo 3:54 PM