A few weeks ago I pointed out that there would be more than 21,500 troops sent to Iraq as part of the surge, if you counted all the support troops etc. that would inevitably be part of it. For this, I was called a pro-Bush hack who was trying to make black seem white by various bloggers. Well, guess who else is a pro-Bush hack? The CBO! Here is a section of a CBO letter to John Spratt analyzing the surge:

The President has announced an increase in Army and Marine Corps forces to be deployed to the Iraq theater of operations. Over the next several months, that increase will be accomplished largely by deploying troops sooner than was previously planned and by lengthening the deployment of forces already in the Iraq theater. The increase in force levels has already begun and is expected to reach its peak of about 20,000 additional combat personnel in May. Thus far, the Department of Defense (DoD) has identified only combat units for deployment. However, U.S. military operations also require substantial support forces, including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services. Over the past few years , DoD’s practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 personnel per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops. DoD has not yet indicated which support units will be deployed along with the added combat forces, or how many additional troops will be involved. Army and DoD officials have indicated that it will be both possible and desirable to deploy fewer additional support units than historical practice would indicate.CBO expects that, even if the additional brigades required fewer support units than historical practice suggests, those units would still represent a significant additional number of military personnel. To reflect some of the uncertainty about the number of support troops, CBO developed its estimates on the basis of two alternative assumptions. In one scenario, CBO assumed that additional support troops would be deployed in the same proportion to combat troops that currently exists in Iraq. That approach would require about 28,000 support troops in addition to the 20,000 combat troops—a total of 48,000. CBO also presents an alternative scenario that would include a smaller number of support personnel—about 3,000 per combat brigade—totaling about 15,000 support personnel and bringing the total additional forces to about 35,000.

And there’s another pro-Bush hack out there. Chuck Hagel! From “This Week” yesterday:

The president is talking about 21,500 troops. Actually, when you add the support troops to that, we’re going to be talking about more like in the area of 40,000 to 50,000 new troops

The Army disputes these numbers and says only 3,000 additional support troops will be needed because so many are already in Iraq and Kuwait. I don’t know who’s right here at this point, but I’m certainly shocked that the CBO and Chuck Hagel would engage in such dishonest pro-Bush spinning.