About 300 U.S. soldiers who just weeks ago returned home to Alaska after a year in Iraq are being ordered back to try to help bolster security in Baghdad, the U.S. Army said on Monday.
The soldiers are part of the 3,900-strong 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Wainwright in Alaska. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on July 27 ordered the unit to remain in Iraq for up to four months past its scheduled departure.
The order provoked anger and disappointment among some of the soldiers' families in Alaska. It also made clear that any significant reduction in the 135,000-strong U.S. force in Iraq was unlikely in the immediate future.
The brigade was so far along in the process of flowing out of Iraq after its yearlong tour that 380 soldiers had returned home to Alaska and 300 had arrived in Kuwait en route home, the Army said.
All of the brigade's soldiers who had reached Kuwait were sent back into Iraq, the Army said. And now, 300 of the 380 who made it to Alaska will be sent back to Iraq within the next couple of weeks, said Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon.
Those 300, mainly infantry soldiers, are needed back in Iraq "to maintain the cohesiveness of that unit as much as possible," Boyce said. Most of these soldiers returned to Alaska three weeks ago but some have been back for as long as five weeks, Boyce added.
Cough, cough.
So I'm guessing that reduction in troops that was supposed to happen soon is now not likely to happen at all, huh?
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