It looks like the Bush politicization of the government has reached into the ranks of the military. Either that, or the military has abandoned its tradition or not getting directly involved in politics, or ABC has taken some statements by top military officers completely out of context. Right now, ABC News has on its website an article entitled Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Plan May Prove Difficult: U.S. Commanders in Iraq Warn of Security Dangers, See Logistical Nightmare
The ABC News article suggests that removing one to two brigades per month is a massive undertaking that could only be accomplished if they left their equipment in Iraq. That's simply absurd. We've currently got about 140,000 troops in Iraq. Pretty clearly, if we wanted to leave their equipment behind, we could have them all out within a couple of months after the withdrawals began. But nobody wants to leave their equipment behind, which is why OBAMA'S PLAN IS FOR THE WITHDRAWAL TO TAKE ROUGHLY 16 MONTHS, rather than a couple of months.
A modern U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team has roughly six battallions, counting its support personnel (less direct combat battallions than that). Right now, the government has in its inventory, 11 large, medium-speed, roll-on, roll-off ships, each of which is capable of carrying all of the equipment for a full armored or air assault battallion -- which are the most equipment-heavy battallions in the Army. In addition, we've got 8 fast sealift ships which each have about half the cargo capacity of the 11 larger ships, but which together are capable of carrying the equipment for a full 15,000 member Army mechanized division. And there are additional cargo ships in our reserve forces.
If we can't readily transport 1 or 2 combat brigades per month OUT of Iraq, then it would seem that we also probably couldn't transport them INTO an area of rising tensions. And if that's the case, then Bush has obviously allowed our military capacity even further than many of us had thought. Simply put, it's utter (and utterly obvious) bullshit to say that we couldn't even remove 1-2 combat brigades per month from Iraq without leaving their equipment behind.
Maj. Gen. Charles Anderson told ABC News the following:
"We have the capacity to do a minimum of two-and-a-half brigade combat teams a month -- can we expand that capacity? Sure. Can we accelerate? It depends. It depends on the amount of equipment that we bring back. And it's going to depend on how fast we bring them out."
Somehow, ABC managed to take this to mean that bringing this number of troops out would involve leaving their equipment behind. Nowhere does General Anderson say that, and given the fact that we transported their equipment INTO Iraq and adjacent areas more rapidly than that, I seriously doubt that's what General Anderson meant. In what seems to me to be a patently ridiculous take, ABC explains the logistical problems in part as follows:
Two combat brigades means up to 1,200 humvees in addition to thousands of other pieces of equipment, like trucks, fuelers, tankers and helicopters.
And 90 percent of the equipment would have to be moved by ground through the Iraqi war zone, to the port in Kuwait, where it must all be cleaned and inspected and prepared for shipment. This is a place with frequent dust storms, limited port facilities and limited numbers of wash racks.
Um, with all due respect to ABC News, cleanliness is nice, but it would be the end of the world if these vehicles were thoroughly washed after they got back here, when extensive body and mechanical work is required on many of them in any event? To the extent that they're brought back through the Port of Baltimore, where a couple of the ships that would carry them are home ported, I'll be I could find plenty of volunteers to wash the dirt and sand off them. The idea that the pace of our withdrawal would be dictated by a shortage of wash racks in Kuwait would be hilarious as a joke, but with ABC offering it as a serious consideration, it's simply pathetic.
Let me provide a few facts and figures to ABC News:
We're not talking about a D-Day level of intensity here. We're talking about A TOTAL OF 140,000 troops in Iraq, and Obama is talking about removing them in roughly 16 months. That's roughly the same number of troops as landed on the beaches at Normandy in A SINGLE DAY on June 6, 1944. In less than a month, between June 6 and July 4, 1944, we moved more than a million troops, nearly 150,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies onto the European mainland. The idea that we can't move 140,000 troops out of Iraq over a period of nearly a year and a half is simply ludicrous, especially since our current military airlift and sealift capacities were sufficient to get them INTO Iraq in a shorter period than that.
UPDATE: I changed the title to reflect the fact that it's really ABC News that's doing the trashing. Given that several of the quotes from the military brass seem to have been ripped pretty badly out of context, I didn't think it was reasonable to blame them for doing the trashing, as the original title seemed to do.