It is going to take me awhile to digest most of what General Petraeus testified to the House and the Senate. As an Iraq centric approach, I found it difficult to gauge the larger strategic context in which the testimony effects. I would guess my early impressions are like most peoples, the General is clearly more impressive than the people asking the questions, particularly on Monday.
If I ignore the circus, and by circus I am talking about the overweight older women wearing pink and the comments of Ike Shelton (check 3:19), the one thing that stood out was in all the CSPAN I watched, nobody asked the question "What is it going to take to win in Iraq?" It seems to me the question would have produced an interesting answer.
But no, the questions of our nations political leaders aren't about victory, rather they center around how quickly troops can come home. I thought it was funny that Petraeus threw Congress a bone, and while nobody on Monday apparently knows anything about troop rotations in Iraq enough to catch it, Senator Joe Biden did, and for a second I thought he was about to hit home a point I nearly brought up last night.
In the troop withdrawal plan Petraeus puts out, the bone for Congress comes in the form of the 13th MEU that deployed off the Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group. The MEU includes Battalion Landing Team 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, and Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 163. The Bonhomme Richard ESG deployed in April, meaning the troops probably deployed into Iraq in late May, and if the ESG is on schedule to return home then the Marines would return to the ESG by the end of this month.
At one point in Tuesday's hearing, Senate Biden called Petraeus on this point, and for a second I thought Biden was going to throw the bone back at Petraeus, but the exchange actually gave some insight that I was unaware of.
Petraeus referred to the MEU as part of the regional strategic reserve. There have been a number of MEUs rotating in and out of the region, but each one of them since at least early 2006 has deployed into Kuwait. If they are the strategic reserve, why have all of them deployed? For example, the 26th MEU offloaded from the Bataan ESG on April 25th, 2007 to Kuwait, but did they ever deploy to Iraq? Considering they did exercises in Kenya, I assumed they were only in Kuwait for 2 weeks or so. However, the 15th MEU, which offloaded from the Boxer ESG back in November of 2006 operated in Iraq until April 2007, which was about the same time the before mentioned 13th MEU deployed to Iraq. In fact, as I keep going back to early 2006 it appears every MEU offloaded into Kuwait, and I can find stories where there has consistently been a ship based MEU deployed to Iraq.
Has the MEUs deployed on ESGs represented the strategic reserve for OIF forces? If so, for how long, and if CENTCOM has been deploying the regional strategic reserve to Iraq why hasn't this been discussed until now? Under Rumsfeld it was constantly preached how no more troops were needed, but if you commit your strategic reserves to action, how could he keep saying he did not need more forces?
It will be interesting to watch what happens with the 22nd MEU that is now on station in the region with the Kearsarge ESG. According to General Petraeus, the 13th MEU isn't being replaced, meaning the 22nd MEU isn't being deployed into Iraq.
I wonder if that means the 22nd MEU is being staged for Iran? I wonder how long it will take the conspiracy theorist to put 2 and 2 together and come up with that. Not long I bet.
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