I was driving back to Carson from Bragg this morning and Gareth Porter was on the radio discussing this issue. The man is a hack who gives other hacks a bad name. He was on some "peace" show. I initially thought that I was listening to NPR but apparently it was a far left leaning station. He talked about how the the military was going rename some of the BCTs to Advisor BDEs and add a few dedicated advisers and then leave them in Iraq. He framed it conspiratorily as if the Obama administration was breaking it's pledge to have all combat troops out of Iraq in 18 months (the exact phrase he used was "political sleight of hand"). He then bemoaned the fact that no one else in the MSM had picked up on this. The host of the show then played a quote from the SECDEF where he announces this exact thing at a press conference. The SECDEF, of course, makes the point that the BDE will have a completely different mission, a fact lost on Porter. Porter tried cover by mumbling some nonsense about how the SECDEF was "giving a hint" to what was going to happen. I would have called it an explicit statement but Porter prefers hint, Tomato Tomahto I guess.

How does this guy have a press pass? As far as I can tell he is a tin foil hat and a copy of A Catcher in the Rye away from his own blog on the Daily Kos.

SFC W