The Military Strain will Continue

It appears that the strain on our military forces will not be relieved by any major withdrawals from Iraq any time soon.

I'd like to know how Bush plans to deal with the growing shortage of troops. Well, I've already explained my theory several times. But I'd like to see what Bush has to say.

That's why I was irritated in the debates between Bush and Kerry where Bush kept announcing that there would be no draft, and the GOP shills kept repeating Bush's statements and Rumsfeld's desire for an all-volunteer army as a reason to be confident that there will be no draft. They also kept pointing out that Congress had rejected a draft and that Democrats were the only ones talking about a draft.

Well, yes, those things are all true. But NO ONE addressed the underlying reason why people were worried about a draft. Namely, no one talked about how to relieve the current strain on soldiers.

I suppose we could take all of our troops out of Europe. But we'll need a much bigger commitment than taking a fraction (70,000) of our troops out over 10 years, as Bush is planning. Admittedly, on this issue Bush is far better than Kerry, who wanted to keep our troops in Europe. On this, I agree with Art Chrenkoff.

In any case, if the insurgency does not die down over the next few months, it will be interesting to see what finally starts to happen as the attempts to get troops from the National Guard and Ready Reserves and the Army Reserves finally hit the dust at the bottom of the well.

That is all.