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We're taking illegal aliens now.
How do you feel about recruiters going into high schools? Seems more than a little exploitative to me.
Oh, and BTW, those "minimum standards" so lauded by the US armed forces are a load of sheeeit. I talked directly to 3 different guys who were stationed in Okinawa (all marines) who were PLEA BARGAINED into the military! One was a drug dealer (meth and dope) on his 3rd strike, one was involved in an assault and battery, and the other was on some sort of sexual charge although he said it wasn't rape. The first two were very specific about the details of what happened to them, the third less so. Certainly I believe the first two though.
Nice idea, that. Plea bargain your criminals into the military then send them to overseas countries to wreak havoc... (US military in Okinawa has a very bad record of crime in the local community)
BTW Yoni, you never bothered to respond to the fact that your "reputable source" on climate change, "junk science", is written by Steven Milloy, an Exxon lobbyist. You should state your sources before you start saying things like "let me assure you climate change is all crap". If you really want to actually learn something, maybe you should go to the primary sources (governments, scientific ins utes, the UN, etc.) and learn the FACTS, rather swallowing and regurgitating whole the specious arguments of compromised individuals.
We're taking illegal aliens now.
I'm all for conscription of kids of families of registered Repugs.
Last edited by boutons_; 08-23-2006 at 03:01 AM.
Let's out-source the Chinese to fight for us.
The chinese would have enough troops to REALLY keep the peace in Iraq...
Seriously though, in keeping with this thread's topic, anybody see in the news where the Marines had to RAISE the number of involuntary recalls of the Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR)?
The bungled Iraq occupation is destroying our military, and the damage will get worse the longer we are there.
I have not been one to support a full-out withdrawal so far, as I think we have incurred some moral responsibility to the Iraqi people, but at some point we will need to admit that our presence is part of the problem.
I really wish we had an administration capable of nuanced understanding of complex issues. (sighs)
So, you're going to argue against the propositions he makes? I guess not.
Regardless of his associations (God knows Al Gore is an unbiased advocate for his environmental policy) can you poke holes in his reasoning other than to say "big oil backs him therefore he's a liar?"
Oh, and this just in:
ENVIRONMENTALISTS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING
Wow! Now that's an inconvenient truth.
Yeah, no agendas in any of those fine ins utions...
Yonivore, you know I won't address the entirity of what he says because it has taken thousands of studies to assemble the argument for enhanced global warming (egw), and this is a message board fer christsake. However, I have completed a degree in ecology, and am on my way to a Masters in human ecology, and I read his "facts", and most of them are nit-picking or taken out of context.
I encourage people to GO TO PRIMARY SOURCES. Find out for yourselves. Don't take my word, or Yoni's or Steve Milloy's... in fact Mr Y, I challenge you to go to all of the universities in your area that have ecology/climatology departments and SPEAK TO THE SCIENTISTS THEMSELVES. Ask them what they think about the evidence for anthropocentric e.g.w. I know what they will say, but you are lying to people by suggesting they will say the opposite. And of course your next move is to say they are all lying to protect their jobs, in which case I say that that sure is one uva global conspiracy, and Milloy isn't lying to protect his job, it IS his job. Checkmate, you lose.
Milloy does very well what all lobbyists do very well - he dresses up lies to make them look half-credible, or debunks small pieces of evidence in isolation from their context... and you know he is doing that, or you are a fool, which I do not think you are. You are a guttersnipe just like he is and you use the same tools of misdirection. You and Milloy do the same thing Rush Limbaugh does on the radio every day - use half-truths and emotive lies to confuse people and force them to rely on feelings, not reason.
Your citation of the article on HCFCs (the replacement for CFCs) relies on exactly these tactics... but hey, wait a minute, what volume of HCFCs are we talking about? Has it had a noticeable effect? Didn't the hole in the ozone layer lead to a massive e in skin cancers? Was that more important at the time? Were there other options? HCFCs may cause greenhouse warming, but the volume of HCFCs pumped into the atmosphere is miniscule compared with the volumes we are talking about for CO2 and CH4, just to name two industrial byproduct gases. And if anyone bothers to read the article they would see that only one paragraph concerns the possible impact of HCFCs on egw - the rest is about the damage that was being done by CFCs. See, even here you have self-gratifyingly distrted the presentation of an article! And you presented your warped view of it in isolation from all context. Those tactics only affect someone who won't think about the issues involved and analyse for themsleves... unfortunately, that is a lot of people.
As for the claim about agendas...
Please spell out for me how people like myself are gaining from the world's environmental turmoil. I make no money from the environment or environmental work. In fact, I am paying 15K to study it. I volunteer my time and pay more for env. friendly products, or I go without. Most environmentally aware people are in the same boat as I am. How are we gaining from this again???
I can tell you how big business and politicians are gaining by polluting and not paying for their pollution though - they are getting RICHER. In fact, they are getting richer as a percentage of total wealth than at any other time in recent history. Follow the money and it leads you to the truth. Who is making all the dirty money? That would be big business, not the environmental movement. Yet somehow our agenda is the stronger.
BTW, I like debating people like you because you sharpen me up with your syllogisms and specious arguments. Thanks for the practice.
Last edited by RuffnReadyOzStyle; 08-24-2006 at 12:31 AM.
Concern over US army recruitment
By Robert Hodierne
Presenter, BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents
As the "war on terror" drags on, the US military is finding it difficult to fill its ranks and there are growing concerns some recruiters are breaking the rules.
Nearly five years into the war, with conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the death toll is approaching 3,000 servicemen and women.
The pressure to sign up new recruits against this background has challenged the US military.
The problem is especially acute for the army.
It had a goal of bringing in 80,000 new soldiers in the financial year that ended on 30 September 2005.
It finished that year with just 73,000 recruits.
This year the army appears to be on target to reach the 80,000 goal but to do so it has had to double the top enlistment bonuses for recruits from $20,000 to $40,000.
It has also had to loosen medical standards, forgive more minor criminal offences, raise the age limit for new recruits from 35 to 42 and accept more people who did not finish high school.
Casualty rates
The burden of finding and signing up new soldiers falls on 8,000 army recruiters scattered through nearly every town of any size in the US.
But the burden of fighting the war is not spread evenly among Americans.
Small towns suffer a disproportionate number of the casualties.
BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents visited such a town - Kokomo, Indiana, which has a population of just 46,000.
Four young men from Kokomo have died in the war, the same number as from much larger towns - Boston, Atlanta, Washington.
The programme wanted to know if recruiters there are having a tougher time these days finding volunteers.
Sergeant 1st Class Gil Lang runs the six-man recruiting station in Kokomo.
He has no doubt about what is keeping people from signing up.
"The biggest thing is the war - it's the war," he said.
"People believe what they see on TV - they show the bad things and not the good things that are going on as well. And I believe a lot of families are just scared of that."
Cold calls
One of Sgt 1st Class Lang's best recruiters is Sergeant 1st Class Larry Arnold.
A career soldier with a charming line of fast-paced chatter, Sgt 1st Class Arnold circulates through town like a salesman.
He visits local high schools and colleges and drops by the government office where the unemployed come looking for jobs.
He stands in front of a busy convenience store handing out his business cards and eyes fellow customers as he eats lunch in a local cafe.
Sgt 1st Class Arnold also does something every day that is the subject of controversy in America - he makes cold calls to high school students trying to talk them into signing up.
He tells the students about the financial help the army can give them for their college education, the bonuses and how the training can help in their future careers.
He uses lists of students that federal law requires the schools to provide to military recruiters.
The law - passed in 2001 before the 11 September attacks - grew out of the military's frustration that some public schools banned recruiters from visiting campus.
Others put severe restrictions on their access and many refused to provide phone lists.
Today, the schools have no choice and the summer before their final year of secondary education, it is not uncommon for students to get calls from every branch of the service.
The army recruiters in Kokomo will make 300 calls a day, Sgt 1st Class Lang told the programme.
"Pressure is always there. It's the army, it's your mission, and they drill that into you every day," he added.
Rule-breaking
The pressure to meet goals in an environment where potential recruits - and their parents - read daily about the mounting death toll has caused increasing numbers of recruiters to misbehave.
In order to meet their goals, recruiters have encouraged potential recruits to lie about medical conditions that would disqualify them, such as asthma or attention deficit disorder.
Some recruiters have shown young people how to cheat on the drug tests that are mandatory.
In the three years prior to the start of the war, the army says it caught an average of 93 recruiters a year in some sort of impropriety.
In the last three years that number jumped to an average of 126.
The same pattern repeats itself for the other services as well.
Days to go
It is easy to see how recruiters could be tempted.
With less than four days to go, Sgt 1st Class Arnold still needed one more recruit to meet his goal of signing up two new soldiers.
If he fails, he will have to attend a punitive counselling session in his own time on a Saturday.
If he fails often, it can hurt his chances for promotion.
Sgt 1st Class Arnold met 17-year-old Matthew, a quiet boy who may or may not be able to graduate from high school in the spring of 2007. He was not certain.
If that was not enough cause for concern, Matthew's mother also confided that her son was taking two medications a day for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Despite that clearly disqualifying medical condition, Sgt 1st Class Arnold admitted he was tempted to sign him up anyway.
The army does not test for the presence of ADHD drugs so it is possible to conceal this condition.
Some recruiters have been caught encouraging people to do just that.
"I was tempted, no doubt about it, running out of time and I know when the deadline is. But we move on and we find the next one," Sgt 1st Class Arnold confessed to the programme.
The good news for Sgt 1st Class Arnold is that the day before his month-end deadline he found a second recruit.
Overall, the Kokomo station signed up nine new soldiers, one more than its goal.
In Kokomo, despite the unusually high casualty rate, there remains a large pool of young people attracted to the army for a combination of reasons, including both benefits and their sense of patriotism.
BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents was broadcast on Thursday, 24 August 2006, at 1102 BST and will be repeated on Monday, 28 August 2006.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...ts/5278654.stm
Published: 2006/08/23 22:48:02 GMT
Yonivore, you know I won't address the entirity of what he says because it has taken thousands of studies to assemble the argument for enhanced global warming (egw), and this is a message board fer christsake. However, I have completed a degree in ecology, and am on my way to a Masters in human ecology, and I read his "facts", and most of them are nit-picking or taken out of context.
I encourage people to GO TO PRIMARY SOURCES. Find out for yourselves. Don't take my word, or Yoni's or Steve Milloy's... in fact Mr Y, I challenge you to go to all of the universities in your area that have ecology/climatology departments and SPEAK TO THE SCIENTISTS THEMSELVES. Ask them what they think about the evidence for anthropocentric e.g.w. I know what they will say, but you are lying to people by suggesting they will say the opposite. And of course your next move is to say they are all lying to protect their jobs, in which case I say that that sure is one uva global conspiracy, and Milloy isn't lying to protect his job, it IS his job. Checkmate, you lose.
Milloy does very well what all lobbyists do very well - he dresses up lies to make them look half-credible, or debunks small pieces of evidence in isolation from their context... and you know he is doing that, or you are a fool, which I do not think you are. You are a guttersnipe just like he is and you use the same tools of misdirection. You and Milloy do the same thing Rush Limbaugh does on the radio every day - use half-truths and emotive lies to confuse people and force them to rely on feelings, not reason.
Your citation of the article on HCFCs (the replacement for CFCs) relies on exactly these tactics... but hey, wait a minute, what volume of HCFCs are we talking about? Has it had a noticeable effect? Didn't the hole in the ozone layer lead to a massive e in skin cancers? Was that more important at the time? Were there other options? HCFCs may cause greenhouse warming, but the volume of HCFCs pumped into the atmosphere is miniscule compared with the volumes we are talking about for CO2 and CH4, just to name two industrial byproduct gases. And if anyone bothers to read the article they would see that only one paragraph concerns the possible impact of HCFCs on egw - the rest is about the damage that was being done by CFCs. See, even here you have self-gratifyingly distrted the presentation of an article! And you presented your warped view of it in isolation from all context. Those tactics only affect someone who won't think about the issues involved and analyse for themsleves... unfortunately, that is a lot of people.
As for the claim about agendas...
Please spell out for me how people like myself are gaining from the world's environmental turmoil. I make no money from the environment or environmental work. In fact, I am paying 15K to study it. I volunteer my time and pay more for env. friendly products, or I go without. Most environmentally aware people are in the same boat as I am. How are we gaining from this again???
I can tell you how big business and politicians are gaining by polluting and not paying for their pollution though - they are getting RICHER. In fact, they are getting richer as a percentage of total wealth than at any other time in recent history. Follow the money and it leads you to the truth. Who is making all the dirty money? That would be big business, not the environmental movement. Yet somehow our agenda is the stronger.
BTW, I like debating people like you because you sharpen me up with your syllogisms and specious arguments. Thanks for the practice.
National Briefing | Washington: Reported Violations By Recruiters Increase
Published: August 15, 2006
Accusations of wrongdoing by military recruiters jumped 50 percent from 2004 to 2005, and criminal violations like sexual harassment and falsifying do ents more than doubled, the Government Accountability Office said. The office, Congress's investigative agency, said the full extent of violations was unknown because the Defense Department did not have an oversight system. Substantiated cases rose to almost 630 cases from 400, and criminal violations jumped to 70 from about 30, it said. ''Determined to find ways to succeed in a challenging recruiting environment, some recruiters reportedly have resorted to overly aggressive tactics, such as coercion and harassment,'' the report said.
================
Sign-up bonuses have been doubled to $40K (which is more in one lump sum than probably 95% of the recruits make in one-year (if the even a recruit had a civilian job)), age limit lifted to 42 years, more recruiters hired, and recruiters using more coercive methods up to and beyond violations and criminality, and more recruiters are sexually attacking recruit candidates.
The upsurge in patriotric support for the Repug re-elect-dubya Iraq war disaster will make anybody's heart soar like an eagle.
So, Yoni's dubya-sucking propaganda is shown to be, again, totally lying bull .
No doubt that the Repugs, (if they're lips moving, their lying) put out the propaganda in the election time to show the overwhelming support for the war as all the patriots climb out of the bottom of the barrel to collect their $40K signup bonuses.
===================
September 22, 2006
Strained, Army Looks to Guard for More Relief
By THOM SHANKER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 — Strains on the Army from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become so severe that Army officials say they may be forced to make greater use of the National Guard to provide enough troops for overseas deployments.
Senior Army officers have discussed that analysis — and described the possible need to use more members of the National Guard — with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s senior adviser on personnel, David S. C. Chu, according to Pentagon officials.
While no decision has been made to mobilize more Guard forces, and may not need to be before midterm elections, the prospect presents the Bush administration with a politically vexing problem: how, without expanding the Army, to balance the pressing need for troops in the field against promises to limit overseas deployments for the Guard.
( the military is 300K troops short for Iran and Afghanistan )
The National Guard has a goal of allowing five years at home between foreign deployments so as not to disrupt the family life and careers of its citizen soldiers. But instead it has been sending units every three to four years, according to Guard officials.
The question of how to sustain the high level of forces abroad became more acute this week as General John P. Abizaid, the senior American commander in the Middle East, said that the number of troops in Iraq, currently at more than 140,000, could not be expected to drop until next spring at the very earliest.
( oops! Just a few (campagin) weeks ago, a significant number troops were coming home before Christmas, as that stellar Iraqi Army took over )
That disclosure comes amid many signs of mounting strain on active Army units. So many are deployed or only recently returned from combat duty that only two or three combat brigades — perhaps 7,000 to 10,000 troops — are fully ready to respond in case of unexpected crises, according to a senior Army general.
( Yes! I'm convinced, finally. The phony Iraq war has made America safer, but not safe. Orwellian bull )
An internal Army do ent that was provided to The New York Times notes that the demand for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has greatly exceeded past projections that predicted earlier troop reductions.
( Ask disgraced and forcibly retired Gen. Shinsheki, he seems to know somehing about predicting troops required )
According to the do ent, the Army needs $66.1 billion to make up for all of its equipment shortfalls. Referring to the units that are to deploy next to Iraq and Afghanistan, or are in training, the do ent shows a large question mark to indicate their limited readiness.
( but the super-rich and corps are FULLY READY to continue their LUXURIOUS lifestyles withe $Bs in tax cuts now not available to "support our troops" )
The Army had to offer generous new enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000 to attract recruits into such dangerous jobs as operating convoys in Iraq. It was able to meet its active-duty enlistment goals this year with the addition of 1,000 new recruiters.
Enmeshed in negotiations with Bush administration officials over its spending request for next year, neither Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, nor any of his top Pentagon aides would agree to be interviewed about the personnel stresses they are confronting. But Army officials have shared their concerns with retired Army officers and members of Congress, and quietly distributed budget tallies, including the internal do ent on troop and equipment demands, to their supporters. Military officers and civilian Pentagon officials interviewed for this article would discuss the issues only on condition of anonymity.
An examination of the Army’s plan for deploying its force shows some of the ways it has been overextended.
In overhauling its structure, the active-duty Army is growing to 42 combat brigades. Army officials have said they want to establish a pattern in which an active brigade spends two years at home for each year it is deployed overseas.
But so many units are needed for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that combat brigades are generally spending only a year at home for each year they are deployed. Military analysts concluded that this has severely reduced the number of forces that are available for other contingencies.
“The continuing frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the U.S. Army so thin that there are few brigades ready to respond to crises elsewhere,” said Lynn Davis, a senior analyst in the Arroyo Center, a division of the RAND Corporation that does research for the Army.
Ms. Davis said that there was no quick fix for the limited number of troops. The longer-term solution, she said, was to rely more on the National Guard or to increase the number of Army brigades, a move that would cost billions of dollars.
( the Repug solution? Let's cut a few $100B more in taxes for the super-rich )
Gordon R. Sullivan, the former Army chief of staff and president of the Association of the United States Army, said in an interview that the Army was simply too small for the many responsibilities it faced and should be expanded from about 500,000 in the active force to some 560,000. It also needs to make greater use of the National Guard, he said.
“The biggest challenge is manpower,” General Sullivan said.
( the Repug solution? Let's cut a few $100B more in taxes for the super-rich )
Barry R. McCaffrey, the retired four-star Army general, also asserted that the armed forces needed to be expanded. “We cannot sustain the current national security policy with an Army, Marine Corps, Air Force lift capability and Special Operations forces of this size,” he added. “They are clearly inadequate.” The pace of deployments and financing shortfalls, he said, had taken a toll of units in the active duty Army and the National Guard. “One third is completely ready to fight, and two-thirds are severely impaired,” he said.
( the Repug solution? Let's cut a few $100B more in taxes for the super-rich )
Asked if it was true that only a handful of combat brigades not currently deployed were immediately ready for a crisis, a spokesman for the Army said he could not address specifics because the information was classified.
Mr. Rumsfeld has not favored substantially expanding the Army, concluding that such a step would draw money from programs he favors to overhaul the military and calculating that the high level of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will prove temporary. Congress, however, has mandated a temporary 30,000-soldier increase for the Army.
( did the mind-blowinglingly incompetent rummy get dubya's memos about staying the course and the long, long battle against terrrism? )
As for whether any decision on mobilizing more members of the Guard can be expected, Mr. Chu, the Pentagon’s chief personnel officer, declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed on Army discussions about how to meet its needs.
But active commanders have highlighted the issue. At a recent conference at Fort Benning, Ga., Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the head of the Army’s Forces Command, which oversees training and mobilization for all Army forces in the continental United States, suggested that the service needed to make greater use of the National Guard if the United States was to pursue what the Bush administration has described as a “long war” against Islamic terrorists.
“If we are going to prosecute this long war, we need relatively unen bered access to the citizen soldier formations,” General McNeill said.
The equivalent of several Guard brigades are deployed today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sinai, the Horn of Africa and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Sending more Guard units to Iraq is politically sensitive because of complaints from families and employers while the Guard and Reserve were used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004.
Restrictions on the use of the Guard are a matter of interpretation. Guard officials said that under President Bush’s current mobilization order, its members may not be called up if they have served for 24 consecutive months. But a conflicting Defense Department policy interprets the order as limiting the call-up of those who have tallied 24 months of total service, regardless of the length of time served consecutively. That view would put more Guard members off-limits for remobilization without a new order from the president.
If the military cannot deploy enough members of the Guard by following either interpretation of the rules, officials may be forced to propose that Mr. Rumsfeld advise President Bush of the need to sign a new mobilization order that would reset the clock for many Guard members who have already served overseas.
Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, the head of the Guard, said his forces would be prepared to meet current requirements and to send more forces if needed.
“Can I sustain that?” General Blum said. “I say the answer is, ‘Absolutely’ — if three things remain, three critical things.”
He said Guard members must continue to feel that what they are doing is important and that they have the support of the American people. Finally, he said, “We’ve got to give them some predictability or some kind of certainty so they can balance their civilian life, with their employers and their family, with their military service to the nation.”
( Well tough, , Blum. Follow the media. The American people support the troops but they don't support the Iraqi war, and votes will show in November. The 10s of millions of Americans against the Iraq war are all traitors who support the terrorisists. )
Given the lengthy lead time required for calling up, training, equipping and deploying Guard forces, Pentagon officials said that if more Guard members were mobilized, it would probably be for a rotation that begins in 2008.
Even so, Pentagon and military officials said that it was unlikely that any decision on a Guard mobilization would be necessary for several months or even into next year, which would place any announcement beyond the November mid-term Congressional elections.
To take on a greater load in Iraq and remedy existing equipment shortfalls, the Guard needs $23 billion over five years, Guard officials say.
“There is no brigade in the United States Army active, Guard or reserve that is completely ready back at home,” General Blum said. “That is to ensure that every brigade overseas is completely ready. And by ready I mean completely equipped. Right now, the key to readiness of the total force is equipping it, resetting it and modernizing it. It is a function of time and money.”
The stress of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted senior Army officers to pass a colorful hand card around Capitol Hill explaining that it will take $17.1 billion in extra spending over the next year to repair and replace tanks, trucks, radios and other equipment for the total force. The card indicates that another $13 billion is needed each year for the following five years to fix and replace equipment.
One Army official said this week that the service is seeking about $138 billion for the next fiscal year, compared with the $112 budget request the Army submitted last year.
===================
The clock is ticking along towards the phony, useless, lost war in Iraq costing $1T. The Repug solution? Let's cut a few $100B more in taxes for the super-rich, aka "starve the government beast". which of course makes America safer (and the super-rich richer).
By the way kids, read that fine print on the "signing bonuses". You don't get it all up front, it is paid over the term of the enlistment. And oh yeah, sign up for four years and there is more fine print that says you will be in inactive reserve for another two or four years. That was there back in the '70s when I served but we didn't have clusterf**ks like Iraq stretching the military so thin that it was actually used.
Yeah, we can beat Iran in a war but they sure can make our lives miserable if we try anything with them at this point in time.
Don't forget the what the chickenhawks are fond of saying either if some guy in the service has the audacity to about things. They sneer "well you volunteered".( the Repug solution? Let's cut a few $100B more in taxes for the super-rich )
It's true that one doesn't need military experience to be commander-in-chief but during times of war it sure as helps and if you don't, you would be well advised to listen to those whose lives it has been serving in the military.
You say this as if all military advisors to the President are of a like mind over the war on terror and the actions in Iraq.
You'd of been more honest if you had said the President, "...would be well advised to listen to those whose lives it has been serving in the military [and that agree with me.]"
Because there are just as many whose lives it has been serving in the military who agree with the President. That he chooses to place his trust in those instead of the ones you like, is irrelevant.
The good news from Iraq just never stops, and leftist/commie/pinko/socialist/traitor/liberal General Thurman wants to share his good news with us.
======================
September 22, 2006
Gen. Needs More Iraqi Troops in Baghdad
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:10 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. needs roughly 3,000 more Iraqi forces to join the battle in Baghdad, but requests for the troops have not been met because Iraqi soldiers are reluctant to leave their home regions, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad said Friday.
Maj. Gen. James Thurman told Pentagon reporters that while the U.S. has 15,000 troops in Baghdad -- which military leaders say is the priority battlefront in Iraq -- there are only about 9,000 Iraqi soldiers there. That is just a fraction of the 128,000 Iraqi Army troops that the U.S. says are now trained and equipped.
Iraqi soldiers generally join battalions in their geographic regions, and Thurman said that ''due to the distance, (they) did not want to travel into Baghdad.'' He said the Iraqi minister of defense is working on the problem, and ''I'm confident that they're going to meet that requirement here within the next few weeks, but it's going to take a little time.''
Thurman said he asked for the additional Iraqi forces early on in the Baghdad campaign, which began in June. He added, ''I don't think putting more coalition (troops) in here is the right answer.''
( well, good, because they're aren't any more )
As an example, Thurman said that he has one U.S. battalion working with Iraqi Army and police in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite al-Baya neighborhood and the mixed southern neighborhood of Dora.
But, he said, ''I felt like we needed more Iraqi Army in there to work side by side with the police and the national police, because those have been bad areas. And we're clearing the enemy out of there and we don't want them to come back.''
There are a total of 302,000 Iraqi security forces, which include the army, national and local police. Currently there are 12,000 national police and 22,000 local police serving in Baghdad, Thurman said.
U.S. military leaders have repeatedly stressed that Baghdad is the top priority in Iraq right now, as forces try to stabilize the capital city so the government can progress.
Attacks against the security forces have increased since the Baghdad operation began, from about 36 attacks a day to about 42 attacks a day, said Thurman. He added that about six of those daily attacks result in injuries to U.S. troops or damage to equipment.
I am thinking of people such as Shinseki and Zinni who weren't saying whether we should or should not invade Iraq, they were saying what it would take for it to be successful and since hindsight has proven them correct, it is more relevant than you care to admit.
"serving in the military who agree with the President"
But dubya and the his ass-kissers, a well-known career option, in the military have been WRONG on troop levels. dubya continues as bubble-man, not man enough to handle dissent and extract the good points from the dissent, the dissenters having at least as much interest in success of a venture as anybody else, but have the huge advantage of being ing RIGHT!
oh yeah, the Germans and French were RIGHT about Iraq,
dubya and the Repugs were WRONG.
And Shinseki and Zinni are just two people. There are military men, still engaged in the fighting, who obviously differ.
Shinseki and Zinni have the luxury of now sitting on the sidelines and playing pundit like the rest of us. They fail to allow that they were just one voice in the decision making process and they were voted down.
Please move to one of the two nations you've mentioned here. France seems more suited for you.
"allow that they were just one voice"
THAT WAS RIGHT,
while all the yes-men and medal-chasing ass-kissers conscripted by the Repugs to execute this phony, unnecessary Iraq war
WERE WRONG
By Yoni's standard, majority vote is right because they in the majority.
Tell that to the 3000 military dead wasted in the lost Iraq war.
Anybody in here for the war going to enlist?
After what happened to Shinseki I would offer there is likely a reluctance to stray too far from what Rummy, Cheney and Bush want to hear from the brass.
Murtha (whom I know is now despised by the right) hears a lot of what they think but feel they cannot say and that is what he claims motivated him to the position he now holds.
So, heresay informs your opinions? Cool.
And, why should anyone listen to Murtha? Particularly on matter of military strategy? This guy wanted to redeploy the troops to Okinawa. , that's further away than if he'd of said Germany -- a place that is actually equipped to house that many troops.
The man's a doddering old fool who deserves our pity. But, anyone that places stock in what he says is an idiot.
By reading all these statistics I wonder whether the US realizes that it CANNOT afford to LOOSE the war.
Nor it can runaway as in Vietnam.
Can't stop the game at halftime.
If you can't win, you better not play.
dubya will leave office with the US military deeply quagmired as spectators of the civil war.
The next President (probably a Dem but I have no confidence that the Dems can find a candidate) will be left to bring the troops home.
Then we'll hear the Repugs slime the next President with "The Repugs were winning in Iraq in Jan 2009. It was the Dems who "lost Iraq"."
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