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[From the Left] U.S. Troops in Iraq Bored, taking Salsa Dancing, Yoga and Martial ...: The image of idle and bored U.S. combat troops certainly calls into question the wisdom of President Obama’s timeline of not withdrawing military personnel from Iraq until August, 2010. In addition to the staggering $12 billion dollar a month expense, there appears to be no security justification for keeping 117,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq at least another year.

[Army Times - News] New Iraq realities bring much more down time - Army News, news ...: “An accelerated drawdown in Iraq would give the Pentagon more flexibility to meet the force requirements for Afghanistan, even if no troops were transferred directly between the two theaters of war,” says James Phillips, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.

[Argue With Everyone Political Forums] US Troops Admit Just Bored - Try Dancing Lessons: U.S. troops — particularly here in relatively peaceful southern Iraq — are seldom involved in combat operations these days, says Col. Peter Newell, who commands more than 4,000 soldiers in an advisory brigade to the Iraqi security forces in an area the size of South Carolina.

[Say Anything: Reader Blogs] Soldiers Deployed To Iraq Spending More Time Playing Than Fighting: But for many troops in places such as this large military base in southern Iraq, traditional soldiering such as kicking down doors and searching for roadside bombs has at least partly given way to book clubs, karaoke nights, sports and distance-learning university programs.

[News Updated Frequently] U.S. Troops In Iraq Have Time On Hands | News Updated Frequently: Nicholas Pieniazek of Delanson, NY, tries to block a shot by an Iraqi soldier during a recent soccer game at a post southeast of Baghdad. Improved security has created free time for US troops.

[Breaking News] Feds: Mass. man conspired to carry out attacks on US shopping ...: Bomb kills anti-insurgent cleric in IraqBAGHDAD ”” A Sunni cleric known for denouncing insurgents in Iraq was killed Friday by a bomb that ripped apart his car, a police official said, in the second targeted attack on a religious figure in as many weeks. Activists and clerics who speak out against al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups have been attacked with some regularity, raising the possibility that the waning insurgency has shifted to a more targeted terror campaign.

[Politics & Current Affairs Forum] Yo Prez! - Politics & Current Affairs Forum: Because of new rules that require Iraqi approval for all U.S. missions, and a general decline in violence nationwide, many of the 117,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq say they now have more idle time than at any previous point in the six-year war.

[COACHEP] COACHEP » Blog Archive » Posts about Obama Surrenders Afghanistan ...: Okay, take yourselves back to March 2008.Obama said that while President Bush has said that he follows the advice of his generals regarding Iraq, when they give the president advice he doesn’t like ”” cautioning against the War in Iraq, for example ”” Bush doesn’t listen to them.Let’s move forward to September 2009.The top military commander in Afghanistan warns in a confidential assessment of the war there that he needs additional troops within the next year or else the conflict “will likely result in failure.”And here we are today”¦ Several weeks worth of war cabinet meetings have not made Obama’s staff and NSC advisers any more comfortable with Gen.

[Conservative Blog Watch] US Troops Enjoy Salsa & Yoga Classes in Iraq Thanks to Massive ...: Adrian Vesik heard that war could be hell. He was happy to discover when he arrived in Iraq earlier this year that his war experience also would include salsa dancing, yoga and martial-arts classes.

[Breaking News] Colin Powell says US took too long to bolster Iraq forces after ...: Colin Powell worries Obama tackling too muchWASHINGTON ”” Colin Powell worries that President Barack Obama is trying to tackle too many big issues at one time and he offers this advice: take a hard look at costs and consider the additional red tape that will be created. "The right answer is, 'Give me a government that works,'" the former secretary of state said in a television interview to be aired Sunday.

[SWJ Blog] Plan B in Iraq (SWJ Blog): Instead of capitalizing on existing Iraqi power structures and working through local institutions, interim US administrators drafted short-sighted policies such as de-Baathification and the demobilization of the Iraqi military which only helped sow the seeds of a powerful insurgency. Instead of leveraging interagency expertise and planning in advance for the complex political and cultural geography, planning initiatives such as the Free Iraq Project were brushed aside in favor of traditional military war plans (as detailed by former senior State Department Advisor David Phillips in his book, Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco).

[Chesler Chronicles] Chesler Chronicles » Why Bin Laden Really Turned to Terrorism: But indeed the rain was the key, for he always started positioning his artillery early in the morning, and in Waterloo towards noon, and if he would have done that, the appearance of von Blucher later in the afternoon around 6 PM would have had no effect, as the battle would have been over by then. On Blucher, it was the mediocrity of Grouchy that allowed Blucher to faint him and return to Waterloo, and for that Grouchy has been skinned alive in history books.

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