Thursday, January 04, 2007

Surging to defeat

So the neo-cons want to "surge" 20,000 more troops into Iraq.

Madness. Utter madness. The fantasy that 20,000 extra troops will accomplish anything other than providing 20,000 extra targets for the jihadis is just that -- a fantasy. At this point, we would need to put at least -- at LEAST -- 500,000 soldiers in-country in order to make any difference at all. We don't *have* 500,000 soldiers, and we can't get them, short of calling a draft. And then what? What would we arm them with, sticks and stones? We don't have 500,000 rifles in inventory. How would we transport them within Iraq? Every servicable military vehicle with wheels is already in Iraq (all the rest are broke down in repair depots) and we only have enough of them for 150,000 or so soldiers. How would we supply them in Iraq? Our entire military airlift capability is already stretched to its limits simply supporting the troops already in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Fantasies. Deluded fantasies. Short of a WWII-style complete mobilization of America for the war effort, "victory" (defined as "securing the oil of Iraq for America") is impossible in Iraq. Do we really care that much about Iraq's oil???

- Badtux the Oily Penguin

Posted by BadTux at 1/04/2007 06:03:00 PM

4 comments:

  1. BBC5/1/07 8:54 AM

    Actually, we don't really know how many rifles there are. Our government has many secrets.

    That is beside the point though, we should leave, or stay and install our own government and control.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BadTux5/1/07 9:25 AM

    Well, BBC, it may be a "secret", but it is no secret that every National Guard armory in America has been stripped of its M-16's, which have been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. National Guardsmen deployed to Iraq don't even have *rifles* for training prior to deployment, they don't get rifles until they hit Kuwait. The government may have tried to classify this as "secret", but it can hardly be a secret if hundreds of thousands of National Guardsmen know about it, right?

    -BT

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5/1/07 12:03 PM

    Do we really care that much about Iraq's oil???

    Given the identity of the people running the Executive Branch, I'm going to assume this is a rhetorical question. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. deuddersun6/1/07 7:01 AM

    Man you hit the nail on the head here, brother!

    Good post.

    d.

    ReplyDelete

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