While insisting he hasn’t decided on whether to increase troop levels in Iraq, President Bush sounds pretty clear about permanently increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
“We need to reset our military,” Bush said today. It’s a change of course for the president, who opposed the same idea last summer. The announcement comes amid warnings from both Congress and the Pentagon that Afghanistan and Iraq have stretched U.S. forces to a breaking point — and concern that America’s most committed foes are keenly aware of the fact.
Bush, by the way, also altered his assessment of the war in Iraq, saying, “We’re not winning; we’re not losing.”
Thanks for clearing that up.
Posted by Dave Knadler
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell isn’t the only one who thinks a temporary “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq is a bad idea. According to the Washington Post, the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously concur.
The short-term deployment of up to 30,000 more troops is said to be one of the main proposals in a White House policy review aimed at reversing Iraq’s slide into chaos.
The JointChiefs oppose the idea on the grounds that it would probably have the opposite effect. For one thing, announcing a timetable for such a deployment — between six and eight months — would give the jihadists a strategic advantage and a powerful recruiting tool. For another, the Joint Chiefs think the White House is grasping at straws, and still doesn’t have a plan for what will happen afterward.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in Baghdad (see photo); maybe he’ll get some new ideas. But that part about grasping at straws is all too easy to believe.
Posted by Dave Knadler
He’s long dead, but Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s bloody design for Iraq appears to be moving forward without him.
In February 2004, a captured Zarqawi memo laid out the al-Qaida leader’s plan to foment civil war in Iraq by attacking Shiites until they joined in the carnage.
Now, CNN reports, the Pentagon considers the Shiite militia controlled by firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (in photo) to be a bigger threat than al-Qaida. Attacks by both insurgents and militias are up 22 percent in the past three months, to about 1,000 a week. As is usually the case, the majority of the casualties in those attacks have been Iraqi civilians.
Posted by Dave Knadler
Remember the national furor last spring over the Colorado high school teacher who was caught on tape going off on President Bush and U.S. policies during class? Will there be a similar reaction to the New Jersey history teacher who was recorded telling his students that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark and that if you reject Jesus, “you belong in hell”? So far, it’s mostly been the student who complained who has been getting grief, with many other students and townspeople backing the teacher’s supposed First Amendment right of free speech. But as John W. Whitehead of the conservative Rutherford Institute noted, the free speech argument doesn’t fly. “It’s proselytizing,” he said, “and the courts have been pretty clear you can’t do that.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Wichita City Manager George Kolb started his job amid the last dispute over police play, a 16-month standoff ending in 2004, so he couldn’t be judged too harshly over it. But this one will reflect on his skill at keeping the peace with the city’s labor unions, as well as on the ability of Mayor Carlos Mayans and City Council members to safeguard both the public and the budget. So far, things don’t look encouraging, with the contract now expired, officers picketing, talks deadlocked and a state mediation hearing pending. To some, the union’s demand of 6 percent sounds high and the city’s offer –a 2 percent raise, in addition to 2.5 percent merit increases — seems awfully close to 6 percent anyway. A compromise should be reachable, and soon.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
