The never ending war ... or ... they lied again, (and again, and again.)

posted by The Sailor @ 5:59 PM Permalink

Coming on the heels of a controversial "surge" of 21,000 U.S. troops that has stretched the Army thin, the Defense Department is preparing to send an additional 12,000 National Guard combat forces to Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials told NBC News on Thursday.
[...]
Surge timetable could be extended
Gates indicated Thursday that defense planners expected the U.S. military commitment to last well beyond the timetable of early next year that was put forth in the Pentagon's arguments to send more than 20,000 regular Army troops to help quiet sectarian violence.

Geebus, talk about moving the goal posts! This isn't a 'surge', it's an constant escalation.

And in related news:

Guard is short of arms, gear
Officials say this hurts training of Virginia troops for active duty

The Virginia Army National Guard does not have the weapons and equipment it needs to prepare its soldiers to go to war overseas.
[...]
Virginia's Army Guard is short of:

heavy machine guns;
squad automatic weapons;
night-vision goggles;
assault carbines;
GPS-based systems to keep track of units in combat;
secure satellite radio systems.

"Those are just some we know right now," said Lt. Col. Charles Taylor, the Virginia Guard's logistics director.
[...]
"There isn't a state right now that has more than probably 64 [percent] to 65 percent of the equipment they need," said Emanuel Pacheco, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon.

Tell me again how republicans support the troops.

More related news ... or ... you don't need facts, you just gotta have Feith

Pentagon report debunks prewar Iraq-Al Qaeda connection

Declassified document cites lack of 'evidence of a long-term relationship,' although No. 3 Defense staffer called contact 'mature and symbiotic.'

A declassified report by the Pentagon's acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble provides new insight into the circumstances behind former Pentagon official Douglas Feith's pre-Iraq war assessment of an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection — an assessment that was contrary to US intelligence agency findings, and helped bolster the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war.
[...]
The Times reports that the memo "marked the beginnings of what would become a controversial yearlong Pentagon project" to convince White House officials of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a connection "that was hotly disputed by U.S. intelligence agencies at the time and has been discredited in the years since."
[...]
Despite the release of Gimble's report, the Associated Press reports that Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday appeared on a conservative radio show and reiterated his stance that Al Qaeda had links to Iraq before the US invasion in 2003.

"[Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. "As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."
[...]
Mr. Zarqawi only publicly allied himself with Al Qaeda after the US invasion, and until then "was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts."

Labels: Iraq war