This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if Bush truly wants to win in Iraq. He openly promotes that we should have a restricted and ineffective Border Patrol. Is he telling the troop commanders in Iraq to conduct restricted and therefore ineffective tactical operations against the enemy?
"This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if Bush truly wants to win in Iraq"
Hmm.....you mean a war with no end.
That situation is about as messed up as it can be. Poorly managed Foreign policy and National Security policy since the Ford Administration has gotten us where we are. The threat of death to foreign national leaders who sponsored or enabled terrorist was eliminated by Jerry Ford.
The Declaration of War against Iraq was at best sickening in content. We declared WW2 on a paragraph spelling out our national interest. The Iraq Declaration looked more like a U.N. writ. The second problem was a lack of a specifically spelled out military objective in Iraq. Meaning the elimination of Saddam and sons. The third is involving our troops in nation building. Soldiers are not the Peace Corp and the U.S. has zero obligation to rebuild Iraq especially at the expense of the lives of our troops and overextension of an overtaxes and undermanned military.
I expected more defense wise from the GOP. I expected to see permanent Active Duty Armed Forces numbers substantially increased. They haven't been which means the reserves and National Guard has been taking up the slack. We saw first hand last summer the value of having state National Guards and what happens when they aren't available. Many state Civil Defense and disaster relief programs rely heavily on the Guards because of their equipment and experience. When the guards deploy overseas that means in rural areas sometimes up to a forth of a local department be it sheriffs, parimedics, or fire, may be suddenly unaviable.
It's time for the WOT to take on a more covert based plan of operation and bring troops back for training and some well deserved and needed downtime. The equipment needs maintenance as well. We need to get back towards having the capabilities to handle our own problems military wise.
We live by a color coded alert system on terrorism yet anyone can still walk in south of the border unchallenged. We treat our own with suspicion by searching them head to toe to board a subway yet allow anyone to enter illegally then invite more to do the same. It does make a person wonder about things. I have no doubts as to the risk of terrorism it is real. But we are not using good common sense in the fight of it by any means.