Word: trooped
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Tuesday's end, it was becoming clear that Congress is not impressed by President Bush's plan, in a Thursday night address to the nation, to embrace Petraeus' proposal to reduce the 160,000-troop contingent currently in Iraq to 130,000 by next August. And it was not only Democrats asking the questions suggesting that remaining in Iraq was futile. "The greatest risk for United States policy is not that we are incapable of making progress, but that this progress may be largely beside the point, given the divisions that now afflict Iraqi society," said Senator Richard Lugar...
...Much of what happens in Iraq is bewildering and contradictory. A surge in U.S. troops has helped secure the capital - but seems to have pushed the violence elsewhere. Casualties among U.S. troops were down slightly in July and August but are surpassing last year's levels. An avalanche of new progress reports is interpreted by both proponents and opponents of U.S. policy as validation of their positions. Even the President's comments about troop levels can be confounding: Bush made the trip in part to pressure a reluctant Congress to permit his 30,000-troop surge, announced in January...
...What happens now in Congress? Less than many might expect. Democrats have been trying a variety of approaches since January: setting timetables, limiting deployments or easing troop-deployment schedules. Despite or maybe because of the consistent and vocal demands of the party's antiwar flank, none of the Democratic efforts have yet attracted lasting bipartisan support. The few that have come close fall well short of veto-proof margins. The best proposals, like the plan developed by Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island that would begin withdrawals by 120 days after passage, mustered only...
...Will troops start coming home? Petraeus is likely to recommend that troop levels remain constant at around 160,000 soldiers and Marines until April 2008, when a gradual redeployment will begin. The drawdown process will seem agonizingly slow, and that's because it will be - one 3,500-strong brigade and its supporting personnel a month. The timing is strategic and political. Pentagon personnel predict a massive drop in recruiting and retention in April if troops overseas aren't given long-promised breaks to go home. The political clock is ticking too. A partial springtime withdrawal would permit the White...
...what a smaller U.S. troop presence can accomplish is less certain and much less discussed. Some lawmakers want the U.S. to pull out of Baghdad to Kuwait or Kurdistan. Others have called for the military to concentrate on training the Iraqi army - a project that has already cost the U.S. billions, to little effect. American soldiers complain that their nominal allies in the Iraqi police and army are more loyal to Shi'ite militias than to the national government. An American intelligence officer in a western Baghdad suburb reports that the Iraqi police there are so thoroughly infiltrated by insurgents...