Retired Army Major General and Fox News Military Analyst Bob Scales reported that the U.S. military “knew three months ago” that it needed to send additional troops to Iraq, but “it wasn’t until three days after the election” that the Obama administration agreed to do so on Friday’s “On the Record” on the Fox News Channel.
Scales said, “it [sending more troops] was first discussed back in September when the assessment groups in Iraq came back to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey and said, ‘look, General, there [are] probably nine brigades, Iraqi brigades that are capable of taking the offensive…nine brigades that if we think we reinforce them like we did in 2007 with the Iraqis during the surge. We think we can put enough combat power enough will and enough initiative and enough leadership behind the Iraqis to allow them to take the offensive.’”
He added that the delay, “makes taking the offensive infinitely more difficult. In fact, maybe we’ve waited too long, and the military knew three months ago that this is what needs to be done and over and over again they told the administration ‘we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do this soon, we can’t wait,’ And it wasn’t, unfortunately, until three days after the election that they [the Obama administration] started the ball rolling again.”
Scales concluded that the three month delay was a “huge” blow to the likelihood that sending the additional forces would work, adding “this three month delay is enormous from a military perspective,” a fact that he stated was “obvious to everybody.”
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