Fibbing Troop Levels and the Need for Transparency

An article inPolitico today reports on a persistent problem with the Pentagon providing inaccurate numbers of U.S. troops deployed in foreign countries, particularly war zones like Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.The Defense Department has long been amongthe worst federal offenders in terms of lack of transparency in public reporting on everything from where Americans are deployed to how tax dollars are spent. Specifically, though, Pentagon officials have recently resorted to some clever accounting tricks in order to make total troop levels appear lower than they actually are.At least a few factors are motivating this “concealment of total troops in war-zones,” asPolitico puts it. First, the Obama administration set certain caps on the number of troops permitted to be deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. In Afghanistan, for example, President Obama capped troop levels at 8,400. That is significantly lower than the 12,000-13,000 total troops actually present in Afghanistan, and once President Trump deploys another 4,000 or soas he outlined in his speech to the nation last week “the total will be nearly double the current public number,”Politico reports.The reason for the undercounting is that the Pentagon has not been including troops present in the country for fewer than 120 days —including, for example, “construction engineers who are building a bridge or repairing an airfield, as well as the combat units like Marine artillery batteries that have deployed to Sy...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs