Army Says It Has Enough Troops for 3 More Years

[Barrett808]

Army Says It Has Enough Troops for 3 More Years
Its chief of staff hopes to eventually reduce the number by improving the service's efficiency.
By Esther Schrader, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The Army's top general on Tuesday vigorously opposed calls for expanding his branch of the military, saying the current force of roughly 500,000 is big enough to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for at least the next three years.

At a time when the Army has doubled the length of deployments, temporarily prevented thousands of soldiers from leaving the service and called up more than 100,000 reservists, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, acknowledged that the war in Iraq was "stressing" the Army. "I don't think that's a secret," he said at a breakfast with reporters.

But Schoomaker predicted that the need for additional troops would be temporary and said that permanently increasing the Army's size would bleed money from programs to improve the equipment soldiers need to fight successfully.

Schoomaker said the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis would not shift the military's focus from defeating insurgents and stabilizing the country.

(more)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-troops16jun16,1,4411930.story?coll=la-headlines-world

[PittPoliSci]

1. comforting, but i doubt the if the truth is behind it...

i really don't want to get drafted.

[2Design]

2. sure that is why they have a stop loss ...enforced draft on

current troops and all the reservists are in iraq....all the main army on the ground are reservists......where are the lifers....

[number6]

3. yea, sure whatever

:eyes:

[daleo]

4. Chimp told him to say this

To deter concerns about a draft.

"Who me? I couldn't eat another bite. Well maybe just a tiny wafer".

[Career Prole]

5. If they want to know whether or not they need more troops, why don't

they ever ask a private? Every step up the chain of command you go the thicker the "can do" attitude gets. By the time you get to generals, they'd rather say they can take on Iraq with a platoon and paintball guns than say there's no way in hell to get it done with what they've been allotted. That's how the troops ended up with no body armor and inadequately armored humvees. No one listened to them until well into the war, because General Can Do said "Yessir, Mr. President, everything's hunky-dory!"

[Twillig]

6. Ya, sure. when they say it's about the money

it's about the money. Somebody's money, anyway.

'...would bleed money from programs to improve the equipment soldiers need to fight successfully.

Change to:

'...ould bleed money from programs defense contractor's have their greedy lil' hearts set on. And as top general, due to retire someday and get a consulting gig, I'm against that.'

[gratuitous]

7. Yeah sure, general, whatever you say

Oregon lost a guard guy last week who had been in Iraq for something like two months after his hitch ended because of stop-loss. Ever the cheerleader for all things military, the Oregonian today editorialized that the young man had been killed by an IED, not the stop-loss order, although they did allow as how "ironic" it was that he got killed after his official separation date.

Dear fuckheads at the Oregonian: It wasn't fucking "ironic" this guy died -- it was "inevitable" that someone would die who had overstayed his time in Iraq. It was "coincidental" that he happened to be from Oregon. Fuckheads.

Less than sanguine about this. Can you tell?

[Karenina]

8. They will betray, "recycle"

and kill off troops rather than have EYEWITNESSES to the atrocities who require health care ($$$) returning to tell the awful tale that will expose their criminality...

[SmokingJacket]

9. Apparently the troops who are there don't have enough ammo ...

or sunscreen or all kinds of things. Hard to imagine increasing the size of the military when they can't fully outfit the ones who are there already. So... duh.

[KansDem]

10. Perhaps the key words here are "3 more years..."

That would put this conflict even with or longer than it took to beat back German and Japanese imperialism of WWII.

It's almost as if we should be relieved that we have enough forces; nevermind that they'll be there another 3 years...