Originally Posted by
Velocipede
What will be the next stop in "finishing the war"? Syria? They harbor terrorists. Yemen? Yep, they do to. Turkey? Gotta help those Kurds. Kazakstan? They're notorious Armenian persecuters.
Man, we need a bigger military. Oh, that's right, Republicans don't want any taxes to pay for that or any other government program.
Something of a quandry...Hmm...How about if we declare victory, bring the boys home and let the ragheads smoke each other? Of course, that might have negative consequences for Halliburton's business enterprises in Iraq. CEO Dick Cheney won't like that. Or is he VPUS? Which pays more?
According to NYT POTUS will increase troops in Iraq by 30K - we will be at 165K troops in Iraq (up from 135K at present) for the next two years.
Army is extending tours from by 3 months, and the Marines are now going to do 9 month combat tours in Iraq.
If the US is unable to contain / mitigate the violence in Iraq you may have Saudi Arabia and other Arab states flooding the country with arms / money in order to defeat the Iranian elemetns / influence.
Increasing troops in my opinion is a bad idea. It will make the Iraq less able / willing to stand up and provide for its own security. We may be creating a dependency in the Middle-East and that will be a total disaster.
-LAFF