The US military, Iraq and Afstan: Troubles

[MarkOttawa]

U.S. extends army tours in Iraq, Afghanistan
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070411/iraq_tours_070411/20070411?hub=TopStories

The U.S. announced Wednesday that all active-duty Army troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will serve 15-month tours -- three months longer than the usual standard -- beginning immediately.

"This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step," U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates told a Pentagon news conference.

It's the latest move by the Pentagon to cope with the strains on the military, which is fighting two wars simultaneously and maintaining a higher troop level in Iraq as part of President George Bush's revised strategy for stabilizing Baghdad.

"Our forces are stretched, there's no question about that," Gates said.

The move does not affect the Marines, whose standard tour is seven months, nor the Army National Guard or Army Reserve, which will continue to serve 12-month tours...

3 Generals Spurn the Position of War 'Czar'
Bush Seeks Overseer For Iraq, Afghanistan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/10/AR2007041001776.html?hpid=topnews

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[tomahawk6]

The position of czar responsible for waging war in Iraq/Afghanistan is a poorly thought out concept. We dont need another layer of supervision. The Secretary of Defense is responsible for the war effort. While the Bush adminstration has done alot of good they have also come up with a few very bad ideas. One was putting State in charge of the CPA and this is another.

 

[MarkOttawa]

And a Washington Times editorial (Shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act):

An ailing Army
http://washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20070411-084916-7193r

Two of the five new Army brigades that will be involved in the Baghdad surge were so quickly deployed to Iraq that they did not engage in crucial training at Fort Irwin, Calif. "These soldiers, aren't getting the benefit of participating in war games on the wide Mojave Desert, where gun-jamming sand and faux insurgents closely resemble conditions in Iraq," Time magazine reported in a weekend cover story, "Why Our Army Is At the Breaking Point." In an April 7 article, "For the Army: Code Yellow," the National Journal reported: "The high demand for fresh troops has led the Army to reduce basic training from 14 weeks to nine, and drill instructors have lessened the physical demands so that injuries won't disqualify valuable recruits."
   
As these magazines hit the newsstands, the Pentagon revealed new developments confirming the Army readiness crisis. At least 13,000 troops in four Army National Guard combat brigades, all of which served overseas combat tours in 2004 and 2005, will be involuntarily mobilized and deployed to Iraq before the end of the year, the Pentagon announced over the weekend. Also, another 17,500 soldiers now serving in Iraq will likely have their one-year combat deployments extended by as many as four months.
   
Meanwhile, the equipment crisis is so severe that stateside troops routinely train on hardware different from the equipment they will operate in Iraq. "Beyond the lack of weapons for stateside troops," Time reported, "Army stockpiles of equipment around the globe are shrinking as their contents are siphoned to Iraq, reducing the nation's ability to respond to the next crisis." On the op-ed page of this newspaper on Monday, retired Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, a former commander of the Army War College, wrote: "While the true magnitude of the Army's equipment disaster remains clouded in classification, the anecdotal evidence of impending collapse is anywhere you choose to look. For the first time in nearly half a century ... the 82nd Airborne Division cannot generate enough power to put one of its brigades on strategic alert."
   
Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War, told the National Journal: "[T]here is a sense of denial of the problem in the Pentagon that I find utterly beyond belief. 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. Only this time we won't have 10 years to fix it again. There will be no timeout from the Global War on Terror."

Mark
Ottawa

 

[CougarKing]

The recent strain on the US military's ground forces is not news to you, but retired US Army Gen. Mcaffrey shouldn't be ignored.


(IIRC, wasn't he the Commanding General of the 24th Mech. Division in the First Gulf War/Desert Storm? And wasn't he initially pessimistic during OIF in March 2003, when he recommended the US military should have sent in more divisions during the initial invasion?)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070417/pl_nm/iraq_usa_dc

Stressed army makes U.S. vulnerable: retired general
By Susan Cornwell
50 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The disastrous state of the U.S. military is putting the country in strategic peril, a retired U.S. general said on the eve of a showdown between        President George W. Bush and Democrats over paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even as he offered a blistering critique of the Pentagon, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey on Tuesday urged Congress to approve Bush's $100 billion funding request for the conflicts, saying that to delay it would be "monumental bad judgment."

"We have no option at this point but to give General (David) Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Cocker the tools and timing to do their job," McCaffrey told the Senate Armed Services Committee, referring to the new U.S. commander and ambassador in Iraq.

"If it doesn't work, within a year this Congress is going to pull the plug on the war," said McCaffrey, retired four-star general and former head of the U.S. Southern Command.

Talks are set for Wednesday between the Republican president and congressional leaders. Democrats say there must be a withdrawal timetable for the 49ers Iraq war attached to the money for the troops; Bush says he won't sign a funding bill with a withdrawal deadline attached.

McCaffrey, who returned last month from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, condemned Pentagon policies he said had left the U.S. Army too small, with its equipment in disarray and lacking a fallback position should a challenge come from somewhere like Iran, Syria or North Korea.

The Bush administration plans to permanently increase the size of the U.S. Army and Marines by about 92,000 troops over the next several years, but McCaffrey felt increases were not happening fast enough.

"It is my judgment we are in a position of strategic peril that is going to take us three to five years to get out of," McCaffrey said.
But Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military has the ability to take on a major new conflict, despite the strain of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I try to speak very precisely publicly about this because the worst thing you can do is you have some country sitting out there miscalculating the enormous residual capacity of the United States military and think that they can do something because we are currently tied up," Pace told reporters in Washington.

"We are focused on Iraq. We are focused on Afghanistan. We do have a lot of our assets there. But we do have enormous residual capacity that's available to the nation," he said.

In the House of Representatives, top Army officials on Tuesday urged Congress to approve the war money. Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody said a delay in funding last year had forced Army officials to freeze civilian hiring, fire temporary workers and delay information technology purchases.

 

[sigpig]

Wow, just what we need more arm chair retired generals..... :-X

Would they be respected former generals who views we should consider if they more closely followed your right wing view of things?

Surely you wouldn't want them stating these views while they were serving officers? Yet now that they are retired and are allowed to say what they think, they should just stfu if they aren't towing the party line?

 

[sigpig]

Towing the line as in backing up whatever Bush and his sycophants have to say. As you said, you don't care what my point of view is and the feeling is mutual. I was just wondering why you were so adamant about about dismissing what these retired generals had to say. But, no sense getting worked up about it, I withdraw the question.

 

[tomahawk6]

The retired generals that you insist on citing all seem to support the democrats and are critical of the Bush administration. That in itself should make fair minded folks pause before buying the crap they are selling. Based on your anti-administration comment you have revealed your bias. No point in discussing this any further.