Hear No Evil

No matter how many times the military brass points out that we don't have enough troops, the administration denies the facts.

Top U.S. General Says Army 'Stretched' - By NICK WADHAMS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006

The top U.S. general in Iraq acknowledged Thursday that American forces are "stretched" but said troop withdrawals will be dictated by war strategy and not the strain faced by the soldiers.

Gen. George Casey's remarks contrasted sharply with statements made on Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who disputed findings of an unreleased study conducted for the Pentagon that said the Army is overextended because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush shrugged off the report Thursday.

This is just confirming what we knew a long time back. Gen. Shineski was right that if we were going to pull Iraq off "right" or at least substantially increase the odds of reasonable success, pretty much the entire deployable US Army and Marine Corps would have been needed to flood Iraq with manpower intensive security on April 9, 2003. This is not the analysis of some wild eyed think tank analyst, but the analysis of Paul Bremer as Reuters reports the following:

In an interview on NBC Television broadcast Sunday night, Bremer said he sent a memo to Rumsfeld suggesting that half a million soldiers would be needed, three times the number deployed by the Bush administration.

"I never had any reaction from him," Bremer told NBC's Brian Williams on "Dateline."

Although he never heard back from his direct boss, Bremer said he did discuss his concerns with Bush.

Quoting Bremer, the network said Bush replied that he would try to get more troops from other countries "but made no mention of increasing the number of American forces."

Yet every time that there is question about troop strength in Iraq the White House response is that the force levels are an operational commander level decision and not a NCA level decision --- ie the field generals are getting everything that they asked for.