Word: troop
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...Klein's "The July surprise" [July 23]: Is George W. Bush off-base on Iraq policy? With the Democrats and a few defecting Republicans clamoring for a speedy exit from Iraq, Bush has a golden opportunity to save face. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggested that U.S. troops could go home anytime they want. Whether or not the troop surge is fully effective, the perception remains that Bush's policy is in the wrong ballpark. Cal George, CARROLLTON, TEXAS...
Soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division are digging into an area where American troops have had little presence in the four years since the U.S. invasion. Madain hugs the Tigris River about 20 miles southeast of Baghdad. Its relatively small population once made it an afterthought for the over-stretched American units in and around Baghdad. Now, with the troop surge under way in Baghdad, the U.S. hopes that an increased presence in places like Madain will deny insurgents and militiamen safe havens on the outskirts of the capital...
Even as there's talk inside the Pentagon of extending the troop surge in Iraq well into 2008, the U.S. military remains in a vise, crushed between the demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have made recruiting more difficult. Right now, there are only two real ways to extend or even increase the surge: call up more reservists - always tough to do in an election year - or extend active-duty combat tours from the current morale-wrecking 15 months to an even more painful 18 months. But Marine General Peter Pace, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs, reassured...
...Given that the current U.S. force has been unable to curb sectarian killings, it's unreasonable to expect that a reduced U.S. troop presence would stop Sunnis and Shi'ites from killing one another. But even with a significantly smaller footprint, the U.S. would retain sufficient firepower on the ground and in the skies to guard against others trying to intervene. After a majority of U.S. troops depart, a military presence of some size will still be needed - not so much to referee a civil war, as U.S. forces are doing now, but to try to keep it from expanding...
...small counterterrorism force there. "No one is going to complain about going after an al-Qaeda target," says Anthony Zinni, former head of U.S. Central Command, who advocates a gradual disengagement from the sectarian conflict. Even so, the U.S. needs to be realistic about what 75,000 U.S. troops can achieve. "I want to blow up al-Qaeda wherever we can, but I don't think we're going to have any particular capacity to do that if we cut our troop strength in half and pull back into the desert," says Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations...