Reply #10: On building up troops

[Tom Rinaldo]

Good reading skills here are helpful. Clark always gives factual answers. He explained what could be accomplished with 30,000 troops. A little. Temporarily. But read the whole interview. He is describing a technical feasibility as in "that's mechanically possible". The full context is this:

"I think it's possibly on a short-term basis to surge 20 or 30 thousand. It's a question of the level of pain you're willing to inflict on the rest of force, the people who are back here preparing, the people who are in the Guard and Reserve. That can be done. That, that's mechanically possible. The question is: What do you gain from it? As Robert said, we don't have any leverage against Iran. So, we're going to put these troops in there to try to stabilize the situation. Are we likely to succeed by increasing 20 or 30 thousand troops. Temporarily, I think you'll probably suppress some of the violence. They'll have more difficulty moving and so forth, but within six weeks, eight weeks, six months, if Iran wants to crank up the heat on the United States forces, they'll find a way to do this. So, how are we going to come back and deal with Iran? That's the question."

Clark nails why the temporary gains would ultimately be futile: "but within six weeks, eight weeks, six months (Iran could crank up trouble again)" if Iraq is dealt with as a military problem.