{"id":66100,"date":"2016-06-02T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=66100"},"modified":"2016-06-02T09:37:49","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T13:37:49","slug":"playing-the-numbers-game-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=66100","title":{"rendered":"Playing the numbers game in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Obama Administration has restricted the number of US troops that are deployed to Afghanistan so that the public is fooled into believing that they are drawing down our presence in that conflict. However, according to the Washington Post<\/a>, those restrictions are impacting maintenance and training of organic components that would normally deploy. So, the Pentagon is forced to use contractors to fill the gaps;<\/p>\n

According to an Army document, the use of civilian labor in one of the Army\u2019s combat aviation brigades, or CABs, in Afghanistan has had negative side effects because the contractors are being used in lieu of the brigade\u2019s maintenance soldiers. Those soldiers should be deploying with their units, but are not because of the \u201cconstrained troop level environment\u201d in Afghanistan, the document says.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

According to the Army document, three CABs have deployed to Afghanistan since 2013 with reduced maintenance staffs. A typical CAB usually deploys with 1,500 soldiers but can swell above 2,500 depending on the mission. In 2013, a brigade deployed with 1,900 troops, but as U.S. forces were reduced in Afghanistan, only 800 deployed in 2015. Despite the reduction in troop levels, the brigade was still expected to maintain and fly its roughly 100 aircraft.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Using civilian contractors in the global war against terror is nothing new, except, in this case, it’s being used to intentionally deceive the American public about our involvement in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

While U.S.-led combat operations in Afghanistan officially ended in 2014, last fall, as the Taliban gained momentum throughout the country, President Obama agreed to keep about 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through 2016, and 5,500 into 2017.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Post, there were 26,000 civilian contractors in Afghanistan in April, half of whom are assigned to logistics and maintenance duties – more than twice as many civilians as troops are in Afghanistan. Gives that Nobel Peace Prize a special kind of luster, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Obama Administration has restricted the number of US troops that are deployed to Afghanistan so … Playing the numbers game in Afghanistan<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}