Adding Units

Okay, the Broken Army clock is set to send out the cuckoos in March of 2008 due to the fact that there are more active duty brigades in the field than in the training and reconstitution cycle right now. There are no more units left to send to Baghdad, and that is why most analysts are assuming that US troops strengths in Iraq have to go from the twenty ground combat maneuver brigades to roughly fifteen brigades by early next spring, even including the four pre-maturely activated National Guard combat brigades which are going back for their second combat tour.


General Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is hinting that one of the September recommendations may be an increase in the force structure in Iraq.

The U.S. military's top general said Monday that the Joint Chiefs of Staff is weighing a range of possible new directions in Iraq, including, if President Bush deems it necessary, an even bigger troop buildup.

"That way, if we need to plus up or come down" in numbers of troops in Iraq, then the details will have been studied and the military services will be in position to carry out whatever policy Bush chooses, Pace said.

He mentioned no potential range of increases or decreases in force levels. Another possibility being considered, he said, is maintaining the current level of troops for some period beyond September.

The only source of new brigade months are either extending the tour of duty from fifteen months to eighteen months, or activating more National Guard brigades. If the National Guard route is taken, these brigades will receive warning and deployment orders within the next two months in order to have them ready to deploy by March, 2008.

We're past being all-in on a bad bet with the future sustainability of the US Army as the chips. The house is being remortgaged in an option-ARM with a three year balloon payment and the cubic zirconium engagement ring is in the process of being pawned as an authentic diamond.