The Coalition currently has about half the combat troops, and 1/3 of the overall troops, in Iraq as at the beginning of the Surge.  The discrepancy is due to so many of the remaining troops being in support units – logistics, transportation, intelligence, signals and other specialties where the Iraqi military is lagging while building combat units.

Looks like President Obama is having the planned impact in reversing Bush Administration policy in country!

Or…not:

The cycle of coalition reductions is still based on the brief by General Petraeus to the US House and Senate on Sept. 11, 2007. Just replace the word “overwatch” with “training” on the briefing slide. Each six months (March and September), military planners determine the next reductions. The commanders have just announced the reduction from 15 to 12 combat brigades. In September, they will probably announce the further reduction to 10. Next March, they will be looking at reducing to seven “training” brigades by September of 2010. In September 2010, they will be looking at reducing to five “training” brigades. In March 2011, they will be looking at the removal of the final five “training” brigades.

I’ve noticed a lot of Dems claiming credit for the downsizing for Obama for the downsizing of the force in Iraq.

Let’s do try to keep things straight, here.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 6:13 am and is filed under War On Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.