Today House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and committee members Jim Marshall (D-Ga.), Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) and Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) are discussing their agenda for Iraq in the 110th Congress during a forum entitled “The Way Forward in Iraq,” sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Skelton, who recently visited Iraq with a bipartisan Congressional delegation, said “Any plan that proposes an increase in deployed American forces must address the question of what the Iraqis will do to put political solutions in place and to take over greater security responsibilities. … My view remains that removing some number of American troops—however small—would send a more powerful message to our Iraqi partners than raising force levels.”
Fresh off the first combat deployment of its new EA-37B, the Air Force is nearly doubling the planned number of new electronic attack jets and projecting more than $3 billion in spending on the program in the next five years.