Think tank: Anbar RCTs would help secure Baghdad

[thedrifter]

January 10, 2007
Think tank: Anbar RCTs would help secure Baghdad

By Kimberly Johnson
kjohnson@militarytimes.com

Sending two additional Marine regimental combat teams into Iraq’s Anbar province to secure inroads into Baghdad would help U.S. military commanders hold the capital during surge operations, an American Enterprise Institute report said.

The extra Marines could also be necessary in Baghdad, the conservative think tank said.

AEI’s proposed surge plans are significant because its scholars and their Iraq war stance are considered closely aligned with that of the Bush administration.

Adding two RCTs to Anbar to the two existing RCTs and one Army Brigade Combat Team would essentially double the Marine presence in the Sunni-dominated province in Western Iraq, bringing the total troops numbers in the region to around 18,000.

“The Army and Marine presence in Anbar is inadequate to maintain even the most basic security in that province,” the report said. Pulling troops from Anbar or Diyala — the province considered an al-Qaida base north of Baghdad — to reinforce the capital “would almost surely lead to the further collapse of those regions,” it added.

AEI’s assessment of the state of affairs in Anbar counters statements made recently by the Corps’ top commander following his visit to Marine bases in Iraq during the holidays.

“I don’t think that a surge in a strict sense of putting a number of additional battalions in here is what they seem to need right now,” Commandant Gen. James Conway said Dec. 26 while in Fallujah. “If you look for the identifiable military objectives in Al Anbar that would justify a surge there, I don’t know if [commander of Multi-National Force-West Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer] could give one at this point,” he said.

In addition to sending in two RCTs, AEI proposed in its Jan. 5 report sending in five more BCTs, for a total of about 30,000 additional troops.

Central to AEI’s plan is bringing sectarian violence down to a level that would allow political and economic reforms to take root alongside the training of Iraqi security forces.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

January 09, 2007
First surge moving by month’s end

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON— The first of up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops will move into Iraq by month’s end under President Bush’s new war plan, a senior defense official said Tuesday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged to hold a vote on the increase, opposed by many Democrats.

Details of a gradual military buildup emerged a day before Bush’s planned speech to the nation, in which he also will propose a bit over $1 billion to shore up the country’s battered economy and create jobs, said a second U.S. official.

Bush is expected to urge friendly Mideast countries to increase their aid to Iraq but will ignore the recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study group that he include Syria and Iran in an effort to staunch Iraqi bloodshed nearly four years after the U.S. invasion, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not yet been announced.

Bush is expected to link the troop increase to promised steps by the Iraqi government to build up its own military, ease the country’s murderous sectarian tensions, increase reconstruction and enact a plan to distribute oil revenues among the country’s religious sects.

Moving first into Iraq would be the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, which is in Kuwait and poised to move quickly into the country, the defense official said.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he expects Bush to announce that up to 20,000 additional troops will be sent to Iraq but not to say how long the extra forces will be there.

Ellie