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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (145419)	11/2/2005 8:05:22 AM
From: unclewest	Respond to of 793928

Despite falling short 6,600 recruits last year, and some 10,000 combat losses in the last three years, the U.S. Army has managed to increase the size of its active duty force three percent since late 2001. Wowza! 3% how terrific. Except he lied. The current increase is really 2%. But what the heck. What is 5,000 men when you really need a million on more? In late 2001, the size of our army was 481,000 to 482,000 men. As of last report (Sep 30, 05) it stands at 492,000 down 7,000 for the year. The CG of recruiting command has said the recruiting environment for this year is tougher than ever. That means, in military jargon, we should expect a bigger drop this year than last year's 7,000. To fight WWII, we had over 16 million Americans in uniform. During Korea and Vietnam the Army alone had over 1.5 million. Hello! We are conducting this war with 31% of the Army we had in 1952 and 1968. It gets worse. Understanding geography is critical in all wars. In Korea we fought over 38,000 square miles, in South Vietnam 60,000 square miles. Today our Army is expected to fight over the combined total of 420,000 square miles of Iraq and Afghanistan. The current fight covers many many times more square miles and we are doing it with less than 1/3 the men. The real truth about why we don't have more troops in Iraq and Afghan is we don't have them... and congress (even as they complain) has failed to provide a workable mechanism or system to recruit them. In their war resolution which passed both houses by approx 75%, Congress told the President to make war. Then they failed to provide the troops. As much as I like Barnett and his SysAdmin force concept. He says it takes boots on the ground to fight a war. It takes boots on the ground to control a population and terrain. It takes boots on the ground to provide security. But even he has failed to recognize this simple fact. We don't have the boots. Barnett says we need more MPs and Infantry, but like Congress he never says where to get them. Last year, congress ordered the Army to increase strength by 50,000 pairs of boots (Kerry mentioned that number again in a speech last week) but so far Congress has not provided the tools to accomplish that increase. The result is instead of a 50,000 man increase we lost 7,000. Besides all that, 50,000 ain't nearly enough. Not even close to enough. The outcome of the war on terror has not been decided. We can fight a war on a shoestring budget. I have my doubts that we can win one that way. uw