Army chief wants to speed up troop hike

[SpookyWriter]

The next to go...(story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070429/ap_on_re_us/army_chief_iraq))...I hope they earn a merit badge for baking in the Iraqi sun. * sniff sniff -- go with god my little troopers *


http://www.thehenryford.org/boyscouts/images/boyscouts_3.jpg

[SC Harrison]

A woman in the group asked Casey if her husband's deployments would stop getting longer. She said they used to last for six months in the 1990s but then started lasting nine months and 12 months. Two weeks ago, she heard the Army's announcement that deployments would be extended as long as 15 months.

"Do you honestly foresee this spiral, in effect, stopping?" she asked.

Casey said the Army wants to keep deployments to 15 months, but "I cannot look at you in the eye and guarantee that it would not go beyond."

Better go ahead and add a few hundred more JAG officers to handle all the divorces.

[MattW]

They are asking for over 600k active duty army soldiers? And increasing the Marine Corps from 27K to 202K?

That's....excessive.

I had a problem with the lean,technology-centered armed forces, and I have a problem with a jugernaut of this size - suitable only for occupation, not surgical strikes, CI, or rapid deployment warfare.

Seems like the good lessons learned from each war are lost because of outlier successes and failures of the current conflict.

[SC Harrison]

Seems like the good lessons learned from each war are lost because of outlier successes and failures of the current conflict.

Right. The lesson of this war should have been: a country that will require a large and extended military occupation after regime change in order to ensure Democracy survives is a country that is not ready for Democracy in the first place.

Beefing up the military so it can better enforce the will of weak Democracies is a recipe for the death of Democracy as an ideal.