"The National Guard is in a stage of
meltdown.
Green Left Weekly
Doug Lorimer
August 10, 2005
IRAQ: US troop withdrawal planned for next year?
Doug Lorimer
Over the last few weeks the US corporate media have been abuzz with reports
that the Pentagon has secretly drawn up plans to withdraw most of its troops
from Iraq next year. This story was given a major boost when General George
Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad that there
could be "fairly substantial reductions' in the numbers of US
troops in Iraq by the next northern spring.
Casey's statement was given headline treatment in the US corporate
press. It was interpreted as a signal that, while US President George Bush has
repeatedly made public statements rejecting calls for a withdrawal timetable,
the Pentagon has been instructed by the White House to secretly draw up just
such a timetable.
Even when Pentagon officials denied this, the corporate press kept up the
withdrawal spin. The July 28 Wall Street Journal, for example, ran a front-page
article reporting that Pentagon officials not only denied that they had any
plans for a reduction in the present size of US forces in Iraq, they said they
were actually looking at increasing the number of US troops in Iraq in the next
few months.
"Any troop reduction isn't likely to start soon; in fact,
overall troop numbers are likely to go up somewhat before they begin to head
down', the WSJ reported. Despite this, the article was headlined
"US Opens Door for Big Pullback in Iraq Next Year'.
The media spin about secret Pentagon planning for a big withdrawal of US
troops next year was given a further boost by the August 8 edition of Newsweek
magazine, which hit newsstands on August 1.
"The Pentagon has developed a detailed plan in recent months to scale
down the US troop presence in Iraq to about 80,000 by mid-2006 and down to
40,000 to 60,000 troops by the end of that year, according to two Pentagon
officials involved in the planning who asked not to be identified because of
the sensitive nature of their work', Newsweek reported.
The report claimed that Casey had "hinted at those numbers last
week' when he "told reporters that the United States will be
‘still able to take some fairly substantial reductions' if Iraq can
keep to the timeline set out in the US-sponsored interim constitution, which
calls for elections for a permanent Iraqi government by Dec. 15,
2005'.
The report then added: "After that, US officials believe, the main
task of the US occupation will have been completed.'
Casey, however, stated that any reduction of US forces in Iraq would
dependent upon Washington's puppet Iraqi security forces being able to
take over from US troops in fighting the Iraqi anti-occupation insurgency,
whose combat forces are "bigger than the US military in Iraq',
according to General Mohammed Shahwani, the US-appointed Iraqi intelligence
chief.
While Casey implied this might be possible next year, in a report prepared
by General Peter Pace, the incoming top US military officer, concluded that
only a "small number' of US-recruited Iraqi forces were capable of
fighting the guerrillas "without US assistance'.
According to US military reports, of the 145,000
"combat-capable' Iraqi security forces, 50,000 exist only on paper
(their pay being pocketed by their officers). Another 55,000 refuse to fight
the anti-occupation guerrillas, and only 14,000 are fully trained, but are
believed to be thoroughly infiltrated by supporters of the anti-occupation
guerrillas.
Clearly, the puppet Iraqi forces are in no position to replace US troops in
fighting the insurgency. So what is this talk about plans for a big US troops
withdrawal next year? According to Newsweek, the "Bush administration
wants to pre-empt growing public pressure for withdrawal, which could give the
insurgents a Vietnam-like strategic goal'.
Latest opinion polls show that 53% of US voters now believe that the US will
lose the war in Iraq and 51% want the Bush administration to set a timetable
for withdrawal.
In addition, the Pentagon is well aware that its inability to crush the
anti-occupation guerrillas in Iraq is eroding recruitment rates to the US
military. "Military planners ... are deeply concerned about driving away
Army careerists and recruits if current deployments are forced into
2007', Newsweek reported. "If the US Army has to do another
rotation into Iraq in the fall of 2006 to keep force levels up to their current
138,000, it ‘goes off a cliff', says retired Gen. Barry
McCaffrey.'
After a week-long visit to Iraq in early June, McCaffrey, a retired US Army
commander, told the US Senate's foreign relations committee on July 18
that the strain of the war in Iraq was pushing the US military forces toward a
"meltdown'. McCaffrey told the committee: "The Army and
Marines are starting to come apart. The National Guard is in a stage of
meltdown.'
McCaffrey's assessment was supported by a US Army mental health
team's study dated January 30 and released on July 20. The study found
that 54% of US soldiers in Iraq rated their unit's morale as low or very
low. Summarising the findings of the study, Associated Press reported that
"psychological stress is weighing particularly heavily on National Guard
and Reserve troops ...
"The thing that bothered soldiers the most, the latest assessment
said, was the length of their required stay in Iraq. At the start of the war,
most were deployed for six months, but now they go for 12 months.'
The talk of a big pull-out of US troops from Iraq next year is particularly
aimed at countering the low morale among National Guard and Reserve troops.
These part-time soldiers make up about 35% of the US occupation forces in Iraq,
down from more than 40% a year ago.
The July 12 New York Times reported that the number of Army National Guard
and Reserve soldiers deployed in Iraq will fall substantially over the next 12
months simply because "more and more of these troops who have been
involuntarily mobilized are nearing their 24-month maximum call-up limit set by
the Bush administration'.
The Times went on to report that the Pentagon would attempt to compensate
for the decline in the number of part-time soldiers able to be deployed in Iraq
by "increasingly turning to the Navy and Air Force to provide truck
drivers and security personnel' and "hiring more private
contractors', that is, mercenary soldiers, of whom there are already
about 20,000 in Iraq.
While Pentagon officials feed stories to the corporate media about plans for
a substantial US troop reduction next year, Washington continues to push ahead
with its strategic plan for Iraq. This calls for the building of four large,
small-city-sized bases from which US troops and air power will permanently
control Iraq and provide the platform for mounting a future Iraq-style
"regime change' invasion of neighbouring oil- and gas-rich
Iran.
The May 22 Washington Post reported that this plan calls for
"construction of long-lasting facilities, such as barracks and offices
built of concrete blocks, rather than the metal trailers and buildings that are
found at the [existing] larger US bases in Iraq ...
"The new buildings are being designed to withstand direct mortar
strikes, according to a senior military engineer. Funding for the first group
of redesigned barracks was included in the $82 billion supplemental
war-spending bill approved by Congress this month, he said.'
In a letter published in the July 30 New York Times, Ronald Asher from
Irvine, California, argued that Washington has "no real withdrawal
plan', adding: "My brother-in-law just returned from a stint in
Iraq with the Minnesota Air National Guard. Although he couldn't tell me
where in Iraq he was stationed, he did say that the level and type of
construction going on at the air base convinced him that the United States
military planned on being there for a very long time.'
From Green Left Weekly, August 10, 2005.
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