Troop surge will actually be as high as 48,000, NOT 21,000

My, my, looks like instead of a "mere" 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers being sent to Iraq, as President Bush claims, the real number could be as high as 48,000.

Checkout this study done by the bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office which claims the number will be anywhere between 35,000 to 48,000.

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.

As one might assume, this also means the cost of the surge will, of course, increase (best case, it's going to cost DOUBLE what Bush quoted):

Estimating the cost of deploying additional troops to Iraq is difficult. DoD prepares monthly reports on obligations incurred in support of the war, but those reports do not contain sufficient detail on many cost elements, nor do they include information on key factors such as personnel levels or the pace of operations. As a result, they are not very useful in developing costestimating relationships.

In the absence of sufficient information from the monthly obligation reports or other sources, CBO based its estimate on appropriations provided in 2006 for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the war on terrorism—a total of $116 billion—and subtracted from that amount the costs of activities not related to the conflict in Iraq or not likely to vary significantly as a result of changes in the number of deployed troops. In total, CBO estimates that $89 billion of the funding provided in 2006 for personnel and personnel support, equipment repair and replacement, operating support, and transportation was related to the size of the deployed forces. CBO then projected costs for operations in Iraq in future years based on changes to those forces that would occur under the scenarios specified above. Most costs would be incurred during the deployment, but some of the costs to restore or replace damaged equipment could lag the end of the deployment by a year or more.

Congratulations America, you've been lied to again!!