Newshoggers Archive: Another 3,000 on top of 30,000 surge?

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Thursday, December 3, 2009

Another 3,000 on top of 30,000 surge?

By Steve Hynd

Let the incremetal escalation continue!

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he asked the president for flexibility on the number in case military commanders in the field request additional medics or troops trained to detect improvised explosive devices.

Gates told a Senate committee Thursday that he got approval for the 30,000 troop deployment to be expanded by as much as 3,000 if necessary.

We've seen this already from the Obama administration and the Pentagon. Obama's last escalation - touted publicly as 21,000 troops - didn't include 13,000 support troops.

But we're probably at the very limit of escalation now. The cupboard is bare of other units to send and even sending this many new troops is causing the Pentagon and White House to break long-standing promises to veterans on "dwell time". Veterans rights group VoteVets worry that's only the first broken promise on the way to a broken army. To be followed by "stop-loss", extra tours and maybe even veterans benefits as the occupation's costs drain the treasury?

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Another 3,000 on top of 30,000 surge?

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