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2009-08-01 Iraq
U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq: Time ‘to Go Home’
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Posted by Besoeker 2009-08-01 09:42|| || Front Page|| [4 views ]  Top

#1 Go home, right after clearing Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Running 50 years of propping up first world economies.
Posted by Procopius2k 2009-08-01 11:38||   2009-08-01 11:38|| Front Page Top

#2 Germany: keep the hospitals and air transport in operation - its strategically well places. Pull all but one heavy and one Stryker brigade out, and colocate everything at Landstuhl along with a single USAF transport + fighter + tac strike unit. Everything else comes home.

Japan: not nearly as much to be done here. secure the missile defense and intelligence gathering bases, and keep the Airbase open in N Japan (for Korea), keep the naval base open, keep Oki.

Korea: pull EVERYTHING back to Pusan. Then pull it all out excepting a "REFORGER" type pre-positioned skeleton crew heavy division, an active cav regiment to screen the whole thing, and a heavy brigade to defend it. Keep just as much USAF as we need to maintain local air superiority (see above, Japan Air Bases) and defend the perimeter for reinforcments entry. Put a naval base at the port there with the capability to RO/RO units in, in a hurry. The 2nd ID comes home as do all the border units, DMZ infrastructure units (give it to the SKors) etc.

Basically, this leaves us with an Air Wing in Germany along with logisitics and a brigade and the hospital, then an Air Wing, a Cav Regiment and a heavy brigade in Korea, and and air wing and some garrison troops in Japan.

It means we hold onto 3 air wings, and at mos a division of permanently based troops overseas, plus a couple of brigades in Iraq with the air wing at Balad.

Everything else is stateside (ready to go), or else in trashcanistan.
Posted by OldSpook 2009-08-01 12:17||   2009-08-01 12:17|| Front Page Top

#3 Special case: 173rd. They are good to go where they are in Vicenza (good reach into the middle east, Airborne).
Posted by OldSpook 2009-08-01 12:21||   2009-08-01 12:21|| Front Page Top

#4 Your CONOP is approved OldSpook. Please write the DPFDL.
Posted by Besoeker 2009-08-01 12:22||   2009-08-01 12:22|| Front Page Top

#5 Excellent analysis,Col. Timothy R. Reese. If there is one good thing that comes out of that ungrateful hole called Iraq, it is that a new generation of intelligent, dedicated leaders have been produced in the furnace of that war that will hurl the Islamic menace back into its cage wherever it raises its monstrous head, in the future.
Posted by tipper 2009-08-01 12:36||   2009-08-01 12:36|| Front Page Top

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