[Calpernia]

The military will become more involved in humanitarian missions, an assistant secretary of defense said Wednesday at Fort Bragg.

''We are going to turn the Defense Department into a different type of department,'' Thomas W. O'Connell said. ''The mandate is on the wall. We are going to have to be prepared as an armed force to do much more on the humanitarian side, transition to and from war. I've got some strong feelings on this. I think we are going the right way.''

[ex-snook]

Translation - 'we have to increase recruitment'.

[cinives]

great - now we're exporting our nanny state and our taxdollars overseas for this ?

how about we just cut out this type of junk and concentrate on the mission of defending the homeland ?

[Gunner9mm]

Why do we have a Peace Corps? Either use it for humanitarian operations, or disband it.

[kas2591]

One of the reasons the military is stretched so thin now is precisely because of the humanitarian missions assigned during the 90s. This is true of both the personnel and the equipment. What these suits always forget about is that the gear wears out.

Some DC genius sends out the Army or Marines and tells them to pay for the operation through their Operations and Maintenance budget without requesting an additional appropriation. Then something like Iraq comes along and presto we're getting to the bottom of the barrel.