KDHNews.com
Top leaders deny reports of 1st Cavalry extension
By Debbie Stevenson
Killeen Daily Herald
The 1st Cavalry Division's top leadership on Sunday swiftly denied reports that the division's 2nd Brigade has been delayed in Iraq for a second time.
Maj. Gen. Pete Chiarelli, the division's commander, said the information in the reports released by news media Saturday was wrong and contradictory.
Chiarelli said the division had checked with Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, Fort Hood's III Corps commander, who is in Iraq to lead Multi-National Forces-Iraq ground forces, after first seeing the reports on MSNBC. Metz in turn had checked with Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the highest-ranking military commander in Iraq.
The commanders had assured him the brigade had not been extended a second time, said Chiarelli via telephone Sunday from Baghdad.
In Washington on Saturday, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Associated Press and other news organizations that 3,500 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade had been extended until the Iraq elections are over.
The purpose, Whitman told the Associated Press, is to "maintain continuity of forces in the theater during the election period."
The Fort Hood troops were among 6,500 soldiers delayed, Whitman said. The Iraqi elections are scheduled for late January.
Chiarelli noted that Whitman had said the troops were being extended another two months, which would make their stay in Iraq 14 months instead of the 12 months indicated in other parts of Whitman's statement.
"The information we have indicates that the 2nd Brigade Combat Team will return to Fort Hood in January," stated Lt. Col. James Hutton, the division's spokesman in Baghdad, in an e-mail sent Sunday to the Killeen Daily Herald.
"There is no change to the information we sent almost three weeks ago," Hutton said.
In early October, the division announced the soldiers, who departed Fort Hood for Iraq in January, had been told they will spend a full year in Iraq instead of returning early.
The Oct. 4 announcement from Baghdad indicated that the soldiers had been scheduled to return in December to avoid a logjam of returning troops during the next scheduled changeover of U.S. forces in Iraq that has the 3rd Infantry Division relieving the 1st Cavalry in Baghdad.
Whitman's statement Saturday appeared to mark the second time in recent weeks that soldiers of the 2nd Brigade had their deployments extended.
"It is wrong," Hutton said of the announcement. "This is the same situation that we informed (the Herald) about a few weeks ago. The national (media) outlets are just now catching up to it."
Sensitive to the concerns of the brigade's families at Fort Hood, Chiarelli said he had ordered his leadership to set up a video teleconference today at the post for the families to "put to rest this mistake."
Chiarelli said the first the leadership in Iraq was aware of the comments was when they began airing on cable news outlets.
"To have families read this in the paper upsets me," Chiarelli said.
As of now, Chiarelli said the return date for the 2nd Brigade remains Jan. 15, with some troops scheduled to arrive at Fort Hood a week either side of that date.
"That could change. Things change in Iraq," Chiarelli cautioned. "I'm never gong to put myself into a box and say that anyone is coming home on a specific day."
He insisted that any changes to return dates will first be put out to the families and then sent to the media.
Contact Debbie Stevenson at
deborah@kdhnews.com