Pentagon PM Report

The Pentagon has announced a one-time, seven-month deployment for 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan starting in March. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell stressed that this was a “one time…extraordinary…finite” deployment and discouraged labeling it as a surge. “A surge, I think, at least in the Iraq definition of things, was a plussing up of forces for an indefinite period of time,” Morrell said. “This is a plussing up of forces, and a significant one.”

Morrell said that this decision reflected a new ability to fulfill a long-standing desire of commanders on the ground with an addition of forces for the Afghanistan spring and summer or “fighting season.”

“Finding these forces has been difficult,” he said. “The Marines, I believe, have made a decision that they can, at least temporarily, continue this heightened operational tempo for a little longer to meet the needs expressed by the commanders in Afghanistan.”

 The forces will be divided between combat operations and the ongoing training mission of Afghan national police and the Afghan army. Morrell said this deployment would be finite regardless of conditions on the ground next December when the seven months are up. He said that NATO member countries might be called on to “back-fill” positions vacated by the Marines when they redeploy by the end of the year.

The Secretary of Defense Robert Gates met with a delegation from Poland, including the Defense Minister, Bogdan Klich. The main focus of private talks between the two officials was strategic missile defense and the possibility of placing missile defense technology in Poland. Poland is one of the top recipients of military aid in Europe.

Finally, Morrell addressed an incident last Sunday when five Iranian fast boats threatened US warships in the Persian Gulf. He said that the combined threats of the five boats, their interference with the US ships’ travel path, releasing "white boxes" in their wake, and troubling radio transmissions were enough to make the threat significant to the Pentagon. He also said that any notion of the Pentagon's media response being timed or hyped up to coincide with Bush's trip to the Middle East was “absurd.”