NPR's Morning Edition Talks to Retired US Army Generals

[evworldeditor]

In case you missed it this morning (Thrs, April 15th) here's the link to Bob Edward's interview this morning with Generals Barry McCaffrey and William Odom.

The most striking aspect of the interview is the comment by McCaffrey, I believe when asked about sending more troops to Iraq. He replied that "we've shot the bolt"... there are no more available troops to send.



http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1837816

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http://www.evworld.com

[RobertSeattle]

1. Catch the Pentagon couter spin?

Something like "We've got 2.4 Million active, NG, and reserve military members" so there is plenty of spares. They think the American public are idiots - more than 1/2 of that total are Air Force or Navy so that doesn't count for Iraq - down to less than 1.2 Million. At any given time, about 1/4 of the Army or Marines are undergoing required training. Probably another 1/4 are already on tasked missions (Korea, Kosovo, etc). I think the one general said we actually have only 3 brigades are ready for war as in something big happens (outside of Iraq) and we need to send people fast - that's down from Clinton's military where we always had at least 5 brigages ready to go at anytime.

[kcwayne]

2. This simply has to be wrong

For McCaffrey to say that we've shot the bolt doesn't make sense. We have something around 120,000 troops in Iraq. The regular army has about 330,000 troups. There are probably an equal number of Marines. I don't think the figures include the national guard. We spend trillions of dollars on defense, and for this we have burned through our military capacity with an operational force of 120,000? It just does not make sense. If it is indeed the case that we can only commit 5-10% of our military force to an operation, we need a new military strategy that emphasizes the DEFENSE part of the military mission, and scrap the OFFENSE bullshit.

[hadrons]

3. maybe McCaffrey referring to those available to fight ....

there's a lot of paper-pushers in the military, specialized techs, warehouse people, and misc "combat support" (known as rear echelon mother fuckers in Viet'Nam)

[kcwayne]

4. How well prepared is an auto mechanic in the National Guard

who spends 12 weekends a year getting training, as opposed to a full time military person?

I am really baffled by this. In the mid 80's I did some instruction at Ft. Huachuca on communications systems that were to be deployed in Europe to stop the Russian horde from crossing over Poland and having lunch at the Eiffle Tower. The colonel in charge of the mission did a pep talk to the grunts I was instructing on the rationale of the systems we were deploying. The idea was that the US Military would be able to fend off a couple of million communist soldiers with a deployment of something less than a million of our troops by being more organized, and better equipped, and faster to put force into the right areas.

The whole idea seemed patently stupid to me for reasons I won't go into here, but what did stick out was that the number of troops I discovered we had in Germany alone was close to a million. I subsequently spoke with some military people I met on a train in Germany who were saying how much the Germans hated them, which they attributed to the sheer number of 18-25 year old hell raising grunts running around the German countryside looking for a good time. The Germans felt like they were occupied.

So I realize there have been some downsizings in the size of the military over the last 20 years, but I have never read anything to suggest that the cuts were even a decimation (1 in 10) of the force standing in 1985. I think that there were on the order of 2 million people in the military in 1985. I am having a hard time finding the number now, I think they want to keep it close to the chest to protect their budgets.

I am starting to view this idea that we don't have enough troops as pure propaganda to make it easier to convince the American public that we need a draft.

[Torgo4]

5. McCafferey is Right

-There are probably an equal number of Marines.--

There are only about 100,000+/- active duty Marines.

McCafferey made the point most folks forget, train-up, deployment, in-transit are not instant. Prep to deploy and recovery from deployment used mean 6 months before and after the actual duty, now 12-18 months.

The Generals are right--WE ARE F---cked!!!

[JPZenger]

6. Army personnel were cut back more than most services

Here's a few reasons for the shortage of U.S. troops for Iraq:

- At any one time, tens of thousands are undergoing basic training or other training that they need before they can be sent overseas.

- Tens of thousands were already in Iraq and were promised they would not be sent back. That promise, by the way, is also about to be broken. At least one unit is now preparing for a return deployment. It also takes time for a unit to repair and replace equipment after a long deployment.

- We keep over 30,000 combat troops in S. Korea to deter N. Korea. I believe we also keep a Marine combat brigade on ships in the Pacific to deal with crises that arise.

- Many military personnel are in support jobs, not combat units. These include people working in the Pentagon, medical staff, Chaplains, supply staff and others.

- Afghanistan is still a very dangerous place, with the Taliban and Al Queada seeing a resurgence. We have insufficient numbers of troops there already. As Wesley Clark emphasized last year, that is the biggest screw-up George W. made - he wasted our resources on a quagmire in Iraq instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan.

- We also keep military personnel in over 30 countries, including peacekeepers in Kosovo and the Sinai. Instead of trying to get countries to send troops to Iraq, we should have gotten other countries to take over those other missions.