Posted on 01/29/2007 9:48:45 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
But today, we would need congressional investigations into environmental concerns, union concerns, wage concerns, gender concerns, multicultural concerns, ethnic concerns, muslim concerns, health concerns, age concerns, political concerns, racial concerns, immigration concerns, homosexual concerns, etc. THEN we will mobilize. It may take 5 or 6 years, but we'll be ready to go!
Brilliant post, and long overdue.
I appreciate the sarcasm, really, and I understand the hurdles, but they are no excuse for the condition we find our military in.
Consider, why would we telegraph a message to the insurgents in Iraq that we're going to "surge" troops (whatever that means?) months before we do it? Four years experience fighting this war without fighting this war is making us look like something other than a super power.
Rotation schedule? You're kidding, right. Exactly six months ago the 172nd Stryker Brigade was yanked back into Iraq for duty in Baghdad. Later the 1st Bde of the 1st AD was extended for the same duty, and now the 3rd Bde of the 10 Mountain Div is being extended in Afghanistan. I don't want to hear about rotation schedules.
Ten years ago we had 250,000 more troops than we do now. What did we do with all the stuff they were using?
We don't have the industrial base to do that. We have a single company manufacturing Humvees. A single source for trucks. A single source for armor kits. They don't ramp up that quickly.
This is not an increase in the force. You won't start to see the effects of the planned increase for, at the earliest, a year. The 21.5 is coming out of the, so called, normal rotation schedule.
Our military is always stretched thin and always has been. It is in better shape however than when President Bush arrived. These problems will be fixed in short order and the surge is working.
Pray for W and Our Troops
"What did we do with all the stuff they were using?"
Worn out and blowed up.
"We don't have the industrial base to do that."
Who's fault is that? We've had five years to do something about it.
You're smoking better stuff than I am.
You are actually incorrect. What we are talking about is the maintainance of function fire stations, not the creation of new ones. It is about leaking hoses and out of date trucks, not new equipment for new fire stations.
To stay with the metaphor. Iraq is a forest fire, and major military units are fire stations being rotated in to fight it. They had a rotation schedule that already stretched their ability to rest their guys and fix their equipment. Now, for the surge, some stations are being asked to commit longer, and others are being rushed back before they're ready. That means that the readiness of each unit is wearing down faster than our ability to restore it.
We're in no way talking about additional or extraneous capabilities. We're talking about the basic combat capabilities of our regular military units.
If the MSM is finding fault with how the administration is handling military readiness, then they're finally doing their job. The troop surge
We killed 600 terrorists just the other day. Not a bad start.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Right, the politics of body counts worked out great in Vietnam.
The administration. With all the Vietnam comparisons floating around out there, the one that cannot be denied is that the administration is repeating the error of Vietnam by trying to run the war on the cheap. We're paying for Iraq and Afganistan largely by canibalizing the rest of the forces. I started my Navy career right after Vietnam and heard all the stories. And it's deja vu all over again. The Navy is cutting ships and slashing maintenance because they don't have the funds. The Army has been turned into an occupation force only, because the troops don't have the time or money or equipment to train for their real job of fighting wars. The Air Force is seeing it's down aircraft percentage go through the roof for the same reason. Either the administration decides to fund the military as it should or it needs to get out. And funding the military will require hard choices. The money has to come from somewhere and that's either through revenue increases or real spending cuts in other areas. And I'm not holding my breath waiting for either of those to happen.
Having served under both, I can say that I don't know that's entirely accurate. It's better in some ways, and worse than others. It's certainly no where near as good as it should be under a Republican fighting wars across the globe. For instance, his failure to repair Clinton's damage to our overall troop strength is flat out inexcusable.
These problems will be fixed in short order and the surge is working.
The surge may or may not work, but your assertation of things being fixed in short order is a dangerous fantasy. You may as well get up and chant "Help is on the way". It will take us many years to fix what we've broken.
At least we should report that we are killing the enemy and this is not Vietnam. They have an elected gummit and their economy is roaring.
Butt then Good News is not what you are looking for.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
According to who? Iraqi police officials? Unnamed Iraqi military sources? What terrorist group were they with? Why does the body count keep increasing by increments of 50 every time I hit 'refresh'?
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