Number-Crunching "Plus Up"

Fred Kagan responds to the rather obvious point that his initial assertion that some 80,000 troops would be needed to secure Baghdad has not, er, been borne out by the actual plan. There's a big difference between 80,000 and 17,500. Or is there? Kagan argues that his 80,000 number was for the "entire Baghdad capital area." 50,000 would be needed for Baghdad proper. 30,000 would be necessary if we were to ignore Sadr City and just clear Baghdad of Sunni insurgents in phases (what Maliki wants). Got that? Still, Kagan has to concede that 17,500 for Baghdad is only around half the number he first proposed. How does he explain that? Here goes:

Brigade sizes range based on the type of unit, but average around 3,500 soldiers each. The administration's figures are based on that estimate. In reality, the U.S. Army does not simply deploy brigades into combat, but instead sends Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs). A BCT includes a brigade as described above, but also additional support elements such as engineers, military police, additional logistics elements, and so on, which are necessary to the functioning of the brigade in combat.

In a counter-insurgency operation such as Iraq, these additional forces are fully as important to the overall success of the mission as the combat troops. Sizes of BCTs also vary, of course, but they average more like 5,000 soldiers. Since these are the formations that will actually be deployed to Iraq and used there, I have been estimating deployments on this basis: five brigade combat teams include around 25,000 soldiers; one Marine Regimental Combat Team (RCTs are somewhat smaller than Army brigades) includes perhaps 4,000. So the surge being briefed by the Bush administration now is much more likely to be around 29,000 troops than 22,000 - in other words, close to the number of combat troops the IPG recommended, and, when necessary support troops are added, close to the overall numbers I had estimated before the IPG met.

So the Bush plan is actually, according to Kagan, 29,000 troops, not 21,500. Somehow the president forgot to mention that. (For the full monty on this numerical pas de deux, check out this definitive post by Greg Djerejian.) And then we have this rather devastating sentence by Kagan:

It remains to be seen if the Bush administration will adhere to this plan, of course.

The "of course" is priceless. To recap: first Kagan wanted 80,000; then he settled for 50,000; then he was fine with 29,000; when confronted with the Plus Up number of 17,500 for Bahdad and 4,000 for Anbar, he argued that it is actually 29,000, except the president didn't say so, and except Kagan doesn't know for sure. So, under these cloudy circumstances, with so much at stake, is he for Plus Up? Here's the answer:

The new commander, Lieutenant General David Petraeus, has not yet taken up command, and it would be best to await his plan before commenting in detail on proposals that may or may not take concrete form.

The Bush message is now what it has always been: our very civilization is at stake. So let's wing it.