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Smells Fishy
Two days ago the Washington Post and others reported on reinforcements to be send to Iraq:
Responding to an appeal for more forces in Iraq to help manage a rising number of detainees, the Pentagon is dispatching an additional 700 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, defense officials said yesterday.
The previously unscheduled deployment is intended specifically to bolster prison operations, the officials said. It is not part of a temporary increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq that commanders have said is likely to enhance security for a planned constitutional referendum in October and governmental elections in December.
"The basic fact driving this deployment is the steady rise in the prison population," said Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman. "There need to be some additional resources devoted to this."
There was a fishy smell in the air when I read this.
The 82nd Airborne is a strategic force.
[It] provides the ability to begin executing a strategic airborne forcible entry into any area of the world within 18 hours of notification. Their primary mission is airfield and seaport seizure. Once on the ground, they provide the secured terrain and facilities to rapidly receive additional combat forces. The division is the nation’s strategic offensive force, maintaining the highest state of combat readiness.
The 82nd sends some of its core troops: the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Its motto is "Strike Hold" – size a strategic place by air assault and hold it until reinforcements are in, or the objective is achieved. The battalion has been in action in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Iraq I, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq II.
These are NOT prison guards, these are shock troops, the first on the front. They are to leave during the next two month. It is not specified when they might come back.
Wherever these paratroopers are going, they will not go there to guard prisons. Not even Rumsfeld will send the principal strategic assault force of the United States Army to do third degree tasks and to ferry around prisoners.
Either the situation in Iraq is much worse than we assume and elite combat troops are urgently needed there, or there is a mission in the Middle East theater coming up that demands air assault. Maybe something like an airfield or seaport seizure? But Basra is already in British hands. So where are theses troops going?
An undeniable taint’s adrift in the air.
And it is true that the conquistadors’ supply of troops is running low. Like CJoe observes, though, all the pieces seem to be moving into a familiar alignment.
Wayne Madsden (a source of variable accuracy) posted a week ago (Aug 10), the outlines of what he says is a U.S. plan of attack for Iraq, leaked by German intelligence BND, because they oppose U.S. intervention in Iran. The plan sounds a little like Bay of Pigs: Air attacks on nuclear facilities and naval attacks will lead to a popular uprising in southwestern Iraq and appeal for help. Meanwhile, MEK will sabotage critical Iraqi infrastructure.
However, according to a Newsweek report, a National Intelligence Estimate from Spring found that Iran is NOT in a pre-revolutionary state and that the Tehran regime may be entrenched to many years more. (Which makes the plan outlined in Madsden sound even more like Bay of Pigs, doesn’t it?)
Via antiwar.com, Robert Higgs notes a piece in the Washington Post that many of us may have overlooked, which he calls the administration’s “mea culpa” on Iraq. He speculates that the Administration may be testing the idea of giving up all its pretenses for the invasion of Iraq, but sticking to the true objective.
The Bush administration, the article explains, no longer expects to produce a model democracy, a well-functioning oil industry, or “a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges” in Iraq. In short, the country is in terrible shape, and the U.S. government cannot solve the Iraqis’ most pressing problems. According to a senior U.S. official, “what we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground. We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”
… notwithstanding the president’s brave pretense, another official leaker concedes, “We set out to establish a democracy, but we’re slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic.”. . .
Which brings us back to the question, why did the Bush team invade Iraq? The most plausible hypothesis has always appeared to be that it did so as part of a larger plan to reshape the strategic contours of southwest Asia, from the Mediterranean to China, from Kazakhstan to the Arabian Sea. . . .
By effectively controlling the region, the U.S. government would attain several of its cherished ends. First, it would eliminate or greatly diminish the threats posed to Israel by countries such as Syria and Iran. Second, it would control much of the oil and gas extraction and transportation in a region believed to be richly endowed with untapped deposits of those prized fossil fuels. Third, it would butt up against the Russians and the Chinese, excluding them from hegemony or substantial influence in the lands of the Great Game. Fourth (but merely incidental, you should understand), important supporters of the Bush team would make tons of money: Halliburton, Bechtel, Chevron, Unocal, Shell, and the rest of the good old boys, not to mention the arms suppliers and the mercenaries.
As for that next terrorist attack that CJoe anticipates, the warnings are already out: Fuel tankers in U.S. & London around Sept 11. (www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20871734148,00.html)
So do all these suspiciously familiar moves foretell a new belligerency? Could they be an enormous bluff to urge Iran and Iraqi Shi’a, Sunni too, for that matter, into more compliant positions? Are divisions among the upper ranks of the civilian and military career employees so intense that it is hard for even them to be sure what direction the imponderable bulk of the US will move from its current posiitioning?
It’s beyond me. From somewhere deep and far I keep hearing that faint familiar chorus, “we won’t be fooled again!”
Posted by: small coke | Aug 20 2005 4:24 utc | 19
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