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PrintAugust 23, 2010
What the Obama administration isn't telling you about the troops who are left in Iraq
Amid all the hoopla this past week about the last combat brigade of American troops being withdrawn from Iraq was this bit of missing information found in Army Times:
As the final convoy of the Army's 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., entered Kuwait early Thursday, a different Stryker brigade remained in Iraq.
Soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division are deployed in Iraq as members of an Advise and Assist Brigade, the Army's designation for brigades selected to conduct security force assistance.
So while the "last full U.S. combat brigade" have left Iraq, just under 50,000 soldiers from specially trained heavy, infantry and Stryker brigades will stay, as well as two combat aviation brigades.
The article goes on to point out that these nine infantry brigades are combat brigades, with the temporary mission of advising and assisting Iraqi forces. But make no mistake about it, they are first and foremost combat arms units capable of fighting should the need arise. I can just hear an American officer interacting with his Iraqi counterpart, "Sir I would strongly advise you to call in an immediate artillery fire mission on that village and we will assist with a battery of 155 howitzers which just happens to be standing by."
The question begging to be asked then is surely this: Is this missing information from the government press releases or misinformation deliberately fed to Americans to get the anti-war left off Obama's back? I guess it does make some kind of loopy sense to this hopey-changey administration to conduct the now unmentionable Global War on T****r and unnamable t****rists with Advise and Assist Brigades.
Armed to the teeth Advise and Assist Brigades, that is...
