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10thzodiac
11-20-06, 01:53 PM
Monday, November 20, 2006 WASHINGTON - A Pentagon review of Iraq has come up with three options - injecting more troops into Iraq, shrinking the force but staying longer or pulling out, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The newspaper quoted senior defense officials as dubbing the three alternatives "Go big, go long and go home."

The secret military study was commissioned by Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and comes as political and military leaders struggle with how to conduct a war that is increasingly unpopular, both in the United States and in occupied Iraq.

Meanwhile, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter said Monday that the United States should push available and trained Iraqi security forces to the front lines of the fight to stabilize the wartorn country.

"We need to saddle those up and deploy them to the fight" in dangerous areas, primarily in Baghdad, Hunter told The Associated Press in an interview. He took a different tack from Sen. John McCain, a front-running 2008 hopeful who has urged that additional U.S. troops be sent there.

Monday's statements continued an Iraq war policy debate that has been intensifying before and since midterm elections that saw Democrats grab back control of the House and Senate from the GOP.

Also on Monday, Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, pushed again on his argument that the military draft should be reinstated.

Rangel, incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had said Sunday that "there's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft."
In a speech Monday at Baruch College, he said he wants to hold hearings into current troop levels and future plans for Iraq and other potential conflict regions.

But House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, talking to reporters Monday, said restoring the draft will not be on the early legislative priority list for the 110th Congress. Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer added, "The speaker and I discussed scheduling and it did not include that."

McCain said more troops should be sent into Iraq and that the soldiers there now are "fighting and dying for a failed policy."

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said troop withdrawals must begin within four to six months.

Hunter said in the AP interview that he wants to "Go Iraqi." He also said the Pentagon has told him that some 114 Iraqi battalions are trained and equipped, and 27 of those units are operating in areas that see less than one attack a day.

A special advisory commission led by Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James Baker and former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton is to issue its report soon, and there has been strong speculation that its members would propose a way ahead for Iraq while making clear the U.S. military mission shouldn't last indefinitely.

The commission is expected to release its findings and recommendations sometime next month.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who will take over the Foreign Relations Committee in January, said he'd like to see the commission assert that U.S. troop commitments are not open-ended; propose a clear political road map for Iraq; and recommend engaging Iraq's neighbors in a political and diplomatic solution.

The United States should "begin to let the Iraqi leadership know we're not going to be staying," he said Monday on NBC's "Today" program.

McCain said the U.S. must send an overwhelming number of troops to stabilize Iraq or face more attacks - in the region and possibly on American soil.

eddief
11-21-06, 11:19 AM
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.