When a withdrawal is not a withdrawal -Garth Porter

When Bhutto Sr. brought in a bill protecting factory workers, granting them minimum wages, right to strike etc. a smart mill owner called in his night watchman and "promoted" him to a "night manager" (with the same wages) ...:) I have been reminded of that story when I read the floowing one ~~~t


Despite United States President Barack Obama's statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, on February 27 that he had "chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months", a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic US Army combat unit in Iraq for six years, will remain in Iraq after that date under a new non-combat label. A spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Lieutenant Colonel Patrick S Ryder, told Inter Press Service on Tuesday that "several advisory and assistance brigades" would be part of a US command in Iraq that would be "re-designated" as a "transition force headquarters" after August 2010. But the "advisory and assistance brigades" to remain in Iraq after that date will in fact be the same as BCTs, except for the addition of a few dozen officers who would carry out the advice and assistance missions, according to military officials involved in the planning process. Gates has hinted that the withdrawal of combat brigades would be accomplished through an administrative sleight of hand rather than by actually withdrawing all the combat brigade teams. Appearing on Meet the Press on March 1, Gates said the "transition force" would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterized differently". "They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't be called combat brigades."