FRAMESHOP:FRAMESHOP: BUSH'S 20,000 "SURGE" LIKELY 48,000

PRESIDENT APPEARS TO HAVE MISLED AMERICANS ABOUT TRUE SIZE OF TROOP ESCALATION 

Ah, the new math.  Remember when Bush said this in his January 10 Address to the Nation (a.k.a. The "Surge" Speech):

So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad.  This will require increasing American force levels.  So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. 

20,000 right?  Well...as it turns out, when President Bush says 20,000 more troops to Iraq, what he really means is--35,000 to 48,000 more troops to Iraq.

Talk about being bad with numbers!

According to ThinkProgress, Peter R. Orszag, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, has prepared a report about the potential costs of Bush's escalation at the request of John M. Spratt, Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget.

Apparently, Bush's troop numbers--the figures that he has been using to sell his escalation policy to the country--were nowhere near accurate. This from Orszag's report to Spratt is a little long and reads like an 8th grade pre-algebra story problem, but it is worth reading to get to the punch line at the end:

Number of Additional Troops
The President has announced an increase in Army and Marine Corps forces to be deployed to the Iraq theater of operations.  Over the next several months, that increase will be accomplished largely by deploying troops sooner than was previously planned and by lengthening the deployment of forces already in the Iraq theater.  The increase in force levels has already begun and is expected to reach its peak of about 20,000 additional combat personnel in May.

Thus far, the Department of Defense (DoD) has identified only combat units for deployment. However, U.S. military operations also require substantial support forces, including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services.  Over the past few years , DoD’s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops. DoD has not yet indicated which support units will be deployed along with the added combat forces, or how many additional troops will be involved.  Army and DoD officials have indicated that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate. CBO expects that, even if the additional brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel.

To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions.  In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq.  That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops—a total of 48,000.  CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel—about 3,000 per combat brigade—totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000.

Whoops.  You do not need to be a genius to figure out why the President used the figure 20,000 instead of the estimate 35,000 to 48,000 in his address to the nation.  Either he lied or he simply cannot add.

Perhaps Bush thinks that breaking the laws of arithmetic is yet another privilege guaranteed by the so called theory of the "unitary executive."

Whatever the reason, Bush's "surge" is looking surgier and surgier by the minute.

© 2007 Jeffrey Feldman, Frameshop