http://www.denverpos...

Brain injuries plague Carson GIs
Nearly 2 in 10 got traumatic brain injuries in Iraq

Fort Carson - Nearly two in 10 soldiers who have returned to Fort Carson from Iraq in the past two years have suffered a traumatic brain injury, according to an ongoing study by medical experts at the base.

Since June 2005, 13,400 soldiers in three brigades have been screened for TBI. Fort Carson has found that 178 of every 1,000 soldiers screened had a traumatic brain injury.

Most of those cases are considered relatively mild, caused by sudden acceleration or deceleration of the head from events such as a blast or car crash, and soldiers are cleared to return to duty. But 13 percent of those diagnosed with TBI - or about 300 soldiers - were deemed "non deployable" for future missions.***

The article concludes:

"With therapy and everything, this takes somewhere between three to five years to recover if you can recover to where you were at before the injury."

There is a constitutionally sanctioned way to remove this stain that occupies our highest office.  I am at a loss why our representatives are not proceeding against him.  Proceedings started against Nixon and Clinton, for what?  For matters that were trivial compared to this man's crimes.

It is a sin.

http://www.msnbc.msn...

Some of the startling points:

Totaling well over 2 million-10 percent of Iraq's population and the largest displacement of Arabs since the Palestinian-refugee crisis after the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 through 1967-it ranks alongside the great human dislocations of Africa and the Indian Subcontinent.

Before the war there were 30,000 physicians registered in Iraq's main medical syndicate, or union. Now there are 8,000. "Doctors are prime targets," says Abdul-Hadi from his humble quarters in Amman, where he works in a public hospital for a fraction of the pay he once earned in Iraq. "It will take 10 years to rebuild the Iraqi health sector." The same can be said of Iraq's universities. Advanced studies are no longer available at many elite colleges in Baghdad.

The article sums up:

The departure of so many white-collar professionals and skilled workers has essentially stripped the nation of much of its human infrastructure, completing the physical destruction of the war.

The International Red Cross report on the intolerable situation in Iraq was all over the world press today.  Here's an example of the reportage:

http://www.forbes.co...

Millions of Iraqis are in a "disastrous" situation that is getting worse, with mothers appealing for someone to pick up the bodies on the street so their children will be spared the horror of looking at them on their way to school, the international Red Cross said Wednesday.

Thousands of bodies lie unclaimed in mortuaries, with family members either unaware that they are there or too afraid to recover them, according to Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the neutral agency's director of operations.

I've said this before and I'll say it again.  People who still support this president, this war, and its associated atrocities like Guantanamo, are no better than the Germans who supported Hitler in his elections.  And the percentages who supported Hitler are about the same as those who support Bush.  No country has a monopoly on evil, or love for totalitarianism among its citizens.  You can see who they are in this country.

Senator Webb Applauds Passage of Stem Cell Legislation

The following is a statement from Senator Jim Webb regarding the Senate's passage of S.5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act:

"I am pleased that the Senate has once again passed a stem cell research bill that offers hope to millions of Americans currently suffering from diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes.  I co-sponsored the legislation because it requires that research be conducted under strict ethical criteria that respect human life.

"Responsible stem cell research holds too much potential for too many people to be obstructed by the veto power of one man.  We have found common ground that binds the majority of Americans and an overwhelming majority in Congress.  We now look to the President to provide proper leadership and sign this bill into law."

Of course, Bush will probably veto this legislation because he's pandering to his extremist "Christian conservative" base.  Why he bothers, I'm not sure, given that he's not up for re-election and also given that embryonic stem cell research is overwhelmingly popular among the American people.  Not to mention that doing research on stem cells extracted from blastocysts that would have been destroyed anyway is the morally correct thing to do.

Federal funding = taxes.

Put a check off yes/no box on every federal tax form.  The "no" would read something like:

I refuse to permit any of my tax dollars to be used for embryonic stem cell research.  I understand that by checking this box I will forfeit any future rights to Medicare payments (or other federally funded health insurance) for treatments relying on underlying stem cell research, since I have not paid for the research with my taxes.

As far as insults go, you have my email address and if you believe I've insulted someone I would have expected to hear from you there or here long ago.  Nothing?

I think we can all stipulate that this issue is extremely volatile precisely because of the religious beliefs involved by many.  These beliefs are sincere and deeply held and shouldn't be summarily dismissed or mocked.  Saying the President of the United States was "pandering to the right" when he makes a decision from conviction or principle to me was far more disrespectful and insulting than anything I've posted.  Was this an example of the "facts and logic" you ask of me? 

In all honesty, it's your sandbox and if I'm to be banned then so be it.  I expected it long ago.  Sites like this aren't really famous for balance or a diversity of views.  Differing opinions or an alternative viewpoint of the issues aren't welcomed because they fall outside the groupthink mode of the posters.  Outside of me, where's the diversity of ideas here? 

Banning me will certainly make some of your posters happy.  You certainly have an obligation to them to do that.  I enjoy having my ideas challenged and constantly debated, it's the only way we grow intellectually.  Others, however, many with extremely thin skin, apparently prefer to congregate around those who only think like they do looking for validation of what they believe to be true. I suppose that's OK too but it's also gotten to the point where it's created such polarization in this country that we're now refusing to even listen to (or read) alternative viewpoints.  That's not good for the country.

Your site--your decision. 

Accept with humility that others, a majority, see it differently, and refuse medical treatment from these medical gains like a Jehovah Witness. But at the very least practice humility and reserve judgment unto Him. I would direct your attention to the Sermon on the Mount, and the Beatitudes, where you will see Jesus describe the nature of Christians - a people that have little in common with George Walker Bush.

The most innocent and helpless among us are babies and children with juvenile diabetes, asthma, and other living humans with cancer, parkinsons, etc.

I hestitate to even answer because your statement doesn't even seem based on truth or reality - but had to in case you seriously believe the crap you write!

But you support the war, which is all about killing.

How deep can you really believe in the value of human life and support actions that destroy it.

So, if human life sacred or not? :)

Issue one is using embryos that could produce babies in the future.  Since the embryo is going to be thrown away anyway I don't really follow this argument

Issue two is the overall issue of tampering with nature.  First its stem cells next thing you know its cloning (basically the slippery slope argument) and the religious argument of basically acting like "God"

This is a tough issue for me personally because of issue 2.  Just wanted to show what some on the other "side" think about.

In the end I think I would support a bill because you have the potential to save adult human lives.  With the caveat, there need to be tight controls to limit the science to just cloning stem cells and not working towards the eventual goal of cloning humans. 

Even  conservative Ropbert Novak, in his column today admitted that most reports from Iraq show The Surge to be a failure; he says that, while here has been some diminuation of violence in those selected areas of Baghadad, attacks and violence have had their own surge outside of Baghdad. Is the Administration perhaps hoping to present some Baghdad neighborhood as "quieted," and then announce victory, ignoring the over-all deterioration? Novak seems to believe we will begin pulling troops back by the end of the year.

That was two and a half years ago.

So I don't know what to think.  For this discussion to be of any value, people need to define what they mean when they say the Army is breaking (or is broken). 

How much can we ask of them and their families?  15 months is an enormously long time for those exposed to daily violence and danger.  Not to mention away from their wives, their growing babies, their friends and family.  It's just sick that we are doing this to those who have to fully rely on good leadership for their very life.

Way to go Webb.  He is stepping up where others fall away.

To me a broken army is like the Iraqi army was immediately before the invasion -- ill-equipped, poorly led, a large percentage unwilling to fight (of course many did fight), entire units disintegrating upon contact with the enemy, soldiers surrendering and deserting in significant numbers, poor military discipline, etc. 

Now, I don't think anyone is suggesting the U.S. Army is broken in the latter sense, or even that any individual units are broken from being deployed 3 or 4 times.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, and if so, somebody please set me straight.

Otherwise, I agree that as a whole the Army needs rest and refitting, and needs to be bigger for this kind of ongoing commitment.  The Army is probably going to lose many experienced NCO's and junior officers whose wives say, "enough."  The quality of the Army is going to slide down as that happens, although the loss of experience apparently has been mitigated to a degree by the experience being gained in ongoing operations. 

Recruitment and retention is going to become more expensive.  The costs of long-term health care for the wounded soldiers and those with PTSD and TBI are going to be enormous -- we are probably only seeing the tip of the iceberg on that now.  Further, I believe that as a nation we ought to give the veterans a GI Bill like the WW II veterans got.

A lot of the mechanized equipment is going to need to be replaced.

All this is going to be very expensive, and very taxing to fix.

http://washtimes.com...

Yes, this is actually from the Washington Times...

As reported in Raw Story:

"The early reports from Baghdad indicate the 'surge' and new strategy will not win the war," writes Novak in the latest edition of the Evans-Novak Political Report. "The expectation from all sides is that a troop removal will be underway in earnest by year's end, no matter who is winning the war."

Novak says the troop boost in Iraq is affording "mixed results," but the feedback so far is decidedly negative.

"The heightened U.S. troop presence, according to the top commanders, appears to be pushing the violence out of certain areas, but it has increased in others," he asserts. "Meanwhile, U.S. troop deaths are skyrocketing, with very little attention being paid to this fact at home."

The current war seems to be an example of the limits of modern warfare where a conventional army tries to "liberate" and occupy an entire nation.  Iraq, despite a weak army, had a population and land area quotient sufficient to support insurgency.  It is easy enough to bomb the hell out of targets with precision, but when it comes to the aftermath, manpower become a vastly more important ingredient.  One hopes that those anxious to invade another country will recognize the futility of the Iraq-type exercise (a futility which was recognized in the first Gulf War by some experts).

So, we have added more troops, yet someone can get inside the Iraqi Parliament, and also damage infrastructure as in this example from today:

The planners of the Iraq War were operating with a WWII mentality.  If a population is sufficiently stirred up, homemade bombs can be very effective against a distant invader.

What the reporter apparently didn't ask:  "What do you mean, 'break the Army?'  What exactly does that mean?"

Can see that you have a hard time empathizing with the sheer hell that our country is laying on our troops. 

You better not have one of those stupid yellow magnets on your car.

I do empathize with the troops, spent some time on active duty in the Marine Corps myself, and I have a nephew who was deployed and extended in a Stryker brigade and has come back with PTSD and a hearing loss from IED's.  I was never in favor of this war, and am not now.

It is true I am ridiculous.  I felt pretty ridiculous the day I took some electric shavers over to Walter Reed so they could give them to wounded soldiers.  It felt like a futile, pitiful, ridiculous gesture.

I'm not sure that it is practical to base political and military decisions on empathy for the troops.  I mean, if the nation sends infantry into combat it is a given that there are going to be dead, wounded, and that all the soldiers will go through sheer hell. 

For me it would be enough to say that the Iraq war was started based on misrepresentations and isn't worth the cost, and just cancel the darn war.  But it is kind of dishonest to say the Army is broken, if it isn't. 

About the magnets, I used to think they were stupid too, especially since the original song about tying a yellow ribbon around the old oak tree dealt with a prison convict wanting to see a sign whether he was wanted back at home when he was released, and then the yellow ribbons came to symbolize the embassy hostages taken in Iran.  So I never understood how it all got transferred to soldiers.

But you know, the magnets are just sold as fund-raisers for groups that provide support for military families.  That's all they are. 

The yellow ribbons got transferred to the troops - since this particular war is a Military War which doesn't affect 98% of our citizens.  So they slap the magnets on their cars and think they are making a difference.  Or that it somehow means something.  It's an insult in my opinion, which is based on the conversations I've had with infantry Marines currently serving in Anbar.

How can you not have empathy for those who volunteer and whose leaders have fatally failed them?  How can you not have empathy for the continual misusing of our troops by those who have never served and don't even seem to understand the history of the Middle East - and how we have empowered Iran?  Empathy breeds anger which breeds action which leads to change.  We need serious change.

Do you see anyone here protesting against our troops in Afghanistan?  Did we get into Afghanistan based on lies?  Don't you think we're smart enough to realize that we have a military for a reason - and sometimes we need to show force and swallow the sacrifices that come along with that?  We know that.  Iraq is different.  And it's breaking our Army and soon our Marine Corps. 

Define break however you wish.  Breaking the spirit, breaking the system, breaking our budget, breaking our country.  However you wish to define it -- we're not quite totally broken yet -- but the deep cracks are showing and it seems to be all downhill from here.

What I meant was the decision making process that ignored the history of the thousands of years of fighting - and how our taking out Sadaam has empowered Iran.  And now Bush et al. refuse to take "Iran" off the table.

By the way, this was all predictable and predicted by Senator Webb among others.

I wouldn't take Iran off the table either.  They've been, and should remain, on every President's poo-poo list since they sat on our hostages for 444 days.  Appeasement has never worked with madmen, ask Neville Chamberlain. 

Iran was far more terrified of Saddam than "liberty."  He's not afraid of "liberty."  He was elected by a free Iran.  Saddam kept Iran in check because Iraq would've tried to destroy Iran had it ever tried to build Nuclear Weapons (they were enemies, if you remember). 

What is your definition of "empowered?"  Please, tell me.  Because before the Iraq War, Iran has not Nuclear Capabilities.  Now they do.  That's a lot of damn empowerment if you ask me.

Stop drinking to Kool-Aid, Detcord.  The sugar is killing your brain.  Instead, why don't you read a history book.

Of course, following that with "Because before the Iraq War, Iran has not Nuclear Capabilities.  Now they do." also is just a little off the map.  Please note the following story from over two years ago and underline the sentence which reads:

"A more than two-year IAEA investigation already has established that Iran ran a clandestine nuclear program, including uranium enrichment, for nearly two decades."
Source: http://www.cbsnews.c...

So the war started Iran's nuke program?  IAEA seems to disagree.

Now you are shadow-boxing against some imaginary audience -- certainly not me.

You just like to pick fights. 

The base assumption is that there are a given number of people (input) to do a given task (output) or mission.  You can call the relationship between the two "broken" if:

1. You believe the mission (output) is valid but you don't have the number of people (input) to adequately conduct it.

2. You believe the mission (output) is invalid and the number of people is therefore irrelevant because it is then the mission that is invalid and not the input.

We've had some brief exchanges on this a few pages back and the OPTEMPO (rotations, redeployments, etc) is so much higher because the force to conduct the missions was cut too low (by SecDEf's Aspin, Perry and Cohen) from 1991-2000 and remained artificially low (Rummie) given the tasks at hand and the potential for more of them.  The recent efforts to restore manpower to the Army and Marines is a great step toward fixing this but it'll be years before the accession process can get them through the pipeline.

It seems to sum up the current situation with 33% of the country and military supporting #1 (if input also includes decades to accomplish the task) and the rest of the polled people basically going for #2.

But we've been at this for years now -- and it seems there are a lot of people  - from both sides of the aisle (myself not included) that initially supported the Output (not always the Input as many military experts believed we needed more boots in the beginning) - but now don't.  If this large "defection" to the #2 position includes high ranking military people, people "in the know" and elected officials who have grave concerns about the sustainability of our military in its current capacity -- then that is a concern we should all pay attention to.  I think that's the point of the whole word "broken" -- politics aside.

If you belived from the begining that the manpower was sufficient for a given task, but the task kept changing to include things you were never designed to do (in this case peacekeeping, peacemaking, etc) then the adaptation period to accomodate for those new missions is going to take away from core missions and capabilities as you train differently.  The phrase "we'll never win this just militarily" is something the guys on the ground and their commanders have known and said for years.  It's the Iraqi side of the equation that hasn't materialized and the part of this calculus that Rumsfeld bet the farm on, and lost.  Had he been right (strictly from a manpower perspective) things would be quite different.

The "defection" is a realization that the numbers are what they are and that normal peacetime training and unit prep times and all associated pre-deployment training will have to be scrubbed of time-wasters and focus more on unit, vice individual, capabilities.  Rather than lose 650,000 or so between 1991-2000 to claim a "peace dividend" that number should have been maybe half of that and these kinds of things we're seeing to day would be very different. 

The gear hitting the field now is much better than what was deployed with.  It's actually designed specifically for the conditions and usage rather than moving stuff from Europe or Asia intended to operate in different weathe rand environments.  But the production pipelines are just catching up with the expedited unit rotations so a few gaps and burps in the logistics support crops up now and then but this is the normal, routine "fog of war" these great guys and gals are used to.  I doubt any of them would use the term "broken." 

That concern is shared precisely because of those impacts you spoke of and others.  But I need to stress that none of it would be happening if the manpower levels in the military weren't so low to begin with.  I have no idea what the "right" initial number was and will leave that to military historians with the access to the internal decision-making processes.  But the "sustainment numbers are clearly too low but being addressed.  So in that regard I think we're saying pretty much the same thing.

Who knew that conservatives were such fans of post-modernist philosophy of language?

Can't you picture them in a Parisian cafe, drinking espresso while snacking on French bread and cheese discussing among themselves what the meaning of the "deception", "failed", "war", and "corruption" really means?

The article I posted earlier was just before the 2004 election, and featured the analysis of various military analysts whether the military was broken or was being broken by the incessant deployments for the Iraq war up to that date (Oct. 2004).

One can't help but conclude that the military, or even the Army, was not broken in 2000, or in 2004, despite the rhetoric.

Now it is 2007 and again there are some saying the army is broken, or "is being progressively broken", and measures have to be taken. 

Is it so bad to point out that the Army probably really isn't broken (since they have been victorious whenever they are in combat), and that that is rhetoric to get increased manpower levels and budgets? 

President George W. Bush's ongoing "surge" of some 35,000 troops to add to the 140,000 already deployed in Iraq is highlighting growing concern, particularly among the military brass, that the U.S. army is overstretched and fast becoming "broken".

An increasing number of senior retired officers, some of whom had previously expressed optimism that the active-duty force of some 500,000 soldiers could handle U.S. commitments in the "global war on terror", now say the current situation today reminds them of 1980, when the service's top officer, Gen. Edward Meyer, publicly declared that the country had a "hollow Army".
The truth is, the U.S. Army is in serious trouble and any recovery will be years in the making and, as a result, the country is in a position of strategic peril

"The active army is about broken," former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who also served as chairman of the Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush 15 years ago, told Time magazine this week, while another highly decorated retired general who just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan described the situation in even more dire terms.

"The truth is, the U.S. Army is in serious trouble and any recovery will be years in the making and, as a result, the country is in a position of strategic peril," ret. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former head of the U.S. Southern Command, told the National Journal, elaborating on a much-cited memo he had written for his colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

"My bottom line is that the Army is unraveling, and if we don't expend significant national energy to reverse that trend, sometime in the next two years we will break the Army just like we did during Vietnam," he added.

In an indication of the growing concern, both Time and the more elite-oriented Journal ran cover stories this week. They both concluded that the Army was rapidly approaching or had already reached "the breaking point".

"Pressed by the demands of two wars, plus mandates to expand, reorganize, and modernize, the Army is nearing its breaking point," according to the Journal, which also ran a companion article on how much the service has been forced to lower its mental, physical and moral standards to meet recruitment targets.

Some 15 percent of Army recruits last year were granted "waivers" from the Army's minimum standards -- about half of those were "moral waivers"; that is, they were permitted to enter the service despite prior criminal records. Only 82 percent of recruits had a high school diploma or its equivalent, below the Army's benchmark of 90 percent and the lowest rate since 1981, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

From just over 1.6 million soldiers at the height of the Vietnam War, the Army's active-duty force fell to a half million troops by the mid-1990s, following the end of the Cold War. Counting reserve and National Guard forces, the Army's total strength stands at about one million soldiers, of whom less than 400,000 are trained for combat.

While that was considered adequate for conventional conflicts with clear military and political objectives like the first Gulf War, in which the U.S. used overwhelming force to quickly prevail, it has proven far less suitable for the kind of prolonged occupation and unconventional war in which Washington now finds itself engaged in Iraq.

While some in the military brass, like then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, warned the Bush administration even before the 2003 Iraq war that several hundred thousand troops would be required to stabilize the country, Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was determined to show that a "transformed" military -- one that used advanced technology to make up for numbers -- was the wave of the future, repeatedly rejecting appeals by his commanders, Congress and some of his neo-conservative allies to expand the army's size.

It was not until Rumsfeld was ousted after last November's elections, nearly four years into the U.S. occupation, that Bush finally agreed. In January, his new defense secretary, Robert Gates, called for an increase in army ranks to nearly 550,000 and in the Marines, from 175,000 to 202,000.

These increases, however, will be phased in over five years, offering little relief to stresses in the existing force, according to defense experts.

In addition to lowered standards for recruitment, the biggest concerns at the moment have to do with readiness and training. As more troops are rotated into Iraq for the "surge", the amount of time devoted to training has been substantially reduced.

"Given the new policy of having (U.S.) troops (interact more) among the Iraqis," Lawrence Korb, the Pentagon's top personnel officer under President Ronald Reagan, told Time, "they should be giving our young soldiers more training, not less."

Adding to the readiness problem are shortages of equipment, such as tanks and Humvees, on U.S. bases where training takes place. Instead, as units are rotated out of Iraq, they leave their equipment behind for their replacements to use.

"On the equipment side of the equation, the Army is pretty much broken," Tom McNaugher, an expert at the RAND Corporation, told the Journal.

Just as the Army has been forced to relax its recruitment standards, it has also been forced to shorten intervals between deployments. While the Army's recommended standard is a two-year interval between deployments that can last up to one year, the average current interval is substantially less; in some cases, as little as seven months.

Those stresses are particularly difficult to manage for mid-level officers, most of whom have families back at home and have already served as many as three and even four tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

While retention rates for these ranks remain strong, according to the Pentagon, some experts believe its statistics, which lag by several months, do not reflect what is actually taking place.

"Today, anecdotal evidence of collapse is all around," according to ret. Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a former Rumsfeld adviser and a regular commentator on CNN, who previously was optimistic about the war and its impact on the Army.

"The Army's collapse after Vietnam was presaged by a desertion of mid-grade officers (captains) and non-commissioned officers? Most left because they and their families were tired and didn't want to serve in units unprepared for war."

"If we lose our sergeants and captains, the Army breaks again. It's just that simple. That's why these soldiers are the canaries in the readiness coal mine," he told the Washington Times last week. "And... if you look closely, you will see that these canaries are fleeing their cages in frightening numbers."

Indeed, the Army is currently short about 3,000 mid-career officers, a number that will be impossible to make up as the army expands over the next five years -- a situation that Scales called "pretty much irreversible".

According to a report in the Boston Globe Wednesday, graduates from the military's officer training academy at West Point are choosing to leave active duty at the highest rate in more than three decades -- "a sign to many specialists," the Globe said, "that repeated tours in Iraq are prematurely driving out some of the Army's top young officers."

Of the 903 officers commissioned on graduating from West Point in 2001, 54 percent had left the service by January of this year.

Meyer, the general who pronounced the army "hollow" in 1980, agrees that the army appears headed down the same path as after Vietnam.

"I absolutely see similar challenges confronting the Army today as we faced then in terms of stresses being placed on the force," he told Journal. "I think the Army is stressed at this point more than in all the time I've watched it since at least the end of the Cold War."

All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2007). 
 

In the end, though, when you work your way through articles like this that have been running for the last week or so, the message is that the Army needs and deserves a larger budget, and a larger proportion of the overall defense budget. 

There's even talk of returning the Army to the size it was before the Cold Ware ended, e.g., here:

http://inteldump.pow...

I don't think that the people who are saying the Army is broken in the papers want what you want.

For them - they are trying to repair mistakes made by Rumsfeld and some 4 stars with money to rebuild and restock the Army through contractors?

For me - I just want it to be over.  So I worry and base things on empathy and use their word "broken" to fit my concerns -- not their intentions.

Is that right - or are we on the same page with the whole bottom line on this?

"For them - they are trying to repair mistakes made by Rumsfeld and some 4 stars with money to rebuild and restock the Army through contractors?"

As I posted earlier, Rumsfeld's "mistake" was in thinking that technology and "smaller/lighter/more lethal" could prevail and that more people ( a costly portion of the budget) were unnecessary so the Department stayed at about 1.4 million through his tenure. 

But the real "mistake" as those 4-stars will tell you, was in castrating the miliatry so drastically in the first place just to "save money."  Planners have known and forcasted the human capital requirements of asymetric warfare for a very long time. 

Fix the numbers and the immediate operating tempo pressures are alleviated...or at least mitigated somewhat to a reasonable level. 

This needs to be done now because there are more of these things coming...

But I'm at the point where I'd be willing to see us take some risk of each of those three alternatives, rather than stay there indefinitely.

To me the whole "army is broken" discussion is more about what the defense budget is going to look like over the next 3-5 years.

I think the Army is definitely stressed and worn out, but my gut feeling is that it isn't near the point, yet, where that alone would force us out of Iraq.

Plus there is a conviction in the Administration that pulling out simply to shelter the Army would only show weakness that would invite further attacks.  And I have to admit, there is probably a lot of truth in that.

Another way to look at the Army's condition is to ask, if we get out of Iraq by the end of 2007, would the Army still be "broken" in 2008?

There is a supplemental spending bill in the works that gives the Army much more money, but which has the timeline for withdrawal from Iraq appended to it. 

So I guess "the Army is broken" rhetoric got turned up just now, so that the Democratic Congress would pay a political price for putting strings on the money which will end up holding it up (after Bush vetoes the bill). 

No doubt some of the generals have political scores to settle with the Bush administration too, and in any event, all the generals want the Army's budget to go up.

So where normally retired generals prefer to stay aloof from politics for awhile, here we've got a Greek chorus of generals. 

The military analysts are talking about a "Long War", so we can't necessarily expect any "peace dividend" after the Iraq war is over.

It's understandable that Jim Webb would say that the Administration is breaking the Army. The Bush administration has to be held accountable for its part in that.

John Kerry has also taken that line:
http://blog.johnkerr...

But I'm afraid that's going to backfire in the long term.  We may end up with an unshakeable consensus on both sides of the aisle that the Army is broken, and a race to see who can outdo the other side in throwing money at the problem. 

It's going to be very difficult now for these Senators to say no to the Army on anything.

If the Army ends up getting an extra 30 or 40 billion a year (I'm just guessing at the numbers), that's going to mean less money available for other priorities. 

I don't begrudge the Army an increased budget, nor the veterans the benefits they have earned.  But at the same time, we should have a political climate where it's ok to ask questions and to seek details about what needs to be done and when.