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"MR. O'HANLON: Senator Clinton, thanks so much for being here.

In regard to the increase in the size of the Army, I wonder if part of your rationale for that is because you'd like to see a stronger presence in Afghanistan. Is that part of the logic?"

""SENATOR CLINTON: It is part of the logic but it's also the case that I don't think we ever went in with enough troops in Iraq.

We had enough troops to win the military conflict and then we didn't have enough troops to do the post-military stabilization and security mission, and like you, I've talked to a lot of people who are, you know, in the Army, who've literally borne the great brunt of the post-conflict period, and, you know, off the record they'll tell you they don't have enough and they've never had enough. I mean they're all good soldiers and they go right along with, you know, what the Secretary says.

We've also dramatically stressed our guard and reserve and I think, you know, I'm not positive, but I think the number is that when we finish this troop rotation that's going on now, 44 percent of our force will be guard and reserve and, you know, it's just not sustainable.

Now if we're going to have, as broad-based a theater as the administration believes the war on terror suggests, we don't have the ongoing manpower, and you know that a lot of our troops are still in because of stop-loss orders.

They can't get out right now, and the, several thousands of numbers over the authorized level that the Secretary of Defense has authorized at this point, is largely people who, we don't know what they're going to do when the stop-loss comes off.

So, you know, I think that Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed, who know a lot about this, have been right for some time. That's let be honest about it and say what is it and what's it going to cost.

Now this is a topic for another day but you follow this so closely, you know, that this runs right smack into Rumsfeld's transformation, you know, theories, and so there's resistance to it because, you know, he came in to DOD with a bias against the Army, frankly, with a big push toward, you know, more technology, more ability to wage so-called modern warfare without having to put troops on the ground and all the rest of that.

And I think they really did believe, wrongly, it turned out, that, you know, they could get in and out of Iraq, and I don't know whether this was, you know, because of defectors or wrong intelligence or their own romantic fantasy about what would happen once they got in and they won. But nevertheless, they were not prepared for it and I don't think they are still prepared.

With respect to Afghanistan we've made the same mistake.

We had fewer troops in Afghanistan than we had law enforcement at the Olympics in Salt Lake City, and, you know, we are no, by no means able to really support the Karzai government, and NATO, for reasons that I think have to do with a little bit of peek and a little bit of, well, you really need us now? well, we're going to make you really sweat for us, has not been exactly forthcoming in fulfilling the pledge they made when they agreed to go into Afghanistan with us.

You know, when we landed in Kabul on Thanksgiving Day, I mean we tried desperately to find somebody in NATO we could talk to, and, you know, other than the German troops and the Belgian troops that were actually at the airfield, we couldn't find anybody and they now have these provincial reconstruction teams and most of the NATO troops are going to the north where they're not really needed. You know, they're needed in the south.

And so I think there's a little bit of resistance and despite entreaties by Powell and Rumsfeld and others to come forth with what has been pledged, they're still slow walking it, and, you know, I think that that's all tied in with what direction are we really going militarily.

You know, what is the plan for the future? You know, what does so-called transformation mean today?

""What size a volunteer army… And I want to just say one other thing, that it is beginning to trouble me, and, you know, when you have an all-volunteer force, it may be easy for decision makers to just try to keep it outta sight, outta mind. You know, the idea is these people signed up, they didn't have to do this, they're professionals, and we don't have to show you caskets coming home, we don't have to show you, you know, a video of the President meeting with families. We don't have to do any of that cause this is an all-volunteer professional military."

That, to me, raises serious questions in a democracy, you know, both by how we define ourselves, what the real risks associated, both politically and military with taking action might be, and what we owe these young men and women who have gone into the military, you know, for just extraordinarily patriotic reasons and personal goals and the rest.

So we should be having a vigorous debate about the future of the military in this country and I fear that, you know, being an election year we may not have it or it may be, you know, put to one side.

But we're in the process, as you know, of looking at the defense budget for the time, you know, for the next year, and there are a lot of serious issues that are embedded in there, that will determine our direction. Whether we have an appropriate debate and dialogue is, I think an open question.
Thank you very much.""

-Notice that the wife of a confirmed, proven and documented draft dodger doesn't state we need to re-institute the draft but states all the scum-bag reasons that she/it protested it 40 years ago.-