It Might Pay...

...to be a Senator's son pretty soon.

Army support systems, designed for the pre-9/11 peacetime Army, are straining under the accumulation of stress from six years at war.
....
If unaddressed, this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the All-Volunteer Force and degrades the Army’s ability to make a timely response to other contingencies.

Testimony from Gen. Richard A. Cody, Vice Chief of Staff. I'm no friend or supporter of the military, in general, but it sounds like Bu$hCo has pretty much destroyed the Army. Cody sounds like he asking for a draft so that the Army can continue to "sustain" itself. If these guys think the war is unpopular now, just let them institute a draft. It also disappoints me that Cody has to use the draft as a threat to the Congress to pony up more money. It looks like bad money after bad money.

The Army We Have Created

Thanks Rummy & Bu$hCo, this is what your have created.

One full-moon night I was sitting outside a sandbag-reinforced hut with Kearney when a young sergeant stepped out hauling the garbage. He looked around at the illuminated mountains, the dust, the rocks, the garbage bin. The monkeys were screeching. “I hate this country!” he shouted. Then he smiled and walked back into the hut. “He’s on medication,” Kearney said quietly to me.

Then another soldier walked by and shouted, “Hey, I’m with you, sir!” and Kearney said to me, “Prozac. Serious P.T.S.D. from last tour.” Another one popped out of the HQ cursing and muttering. “Medicated,” Kearney said. “Last tour, if you didn’t give him information, he’d burn down your house. He killed so many people. He’s checked out.”

As I went to get some hot chocolate in the dining tent, the peaceful night was shattered by mortars, rockets and machine-gun fire banging and bursting around us. It was a coordinated attack on all the fire bases. It didn’t take long to understand why so many soldiers were taking antidepressants. The soldiers were on a 15-month tour that included just 18 days off. Many of them were “stop-lossed,” meaning their contracts were extended because the army is stretched so thin.

& from the same piece this is for all the Neanderthals out there who say women just can’t be in the military, especially in combat roles.

As the medevacs flew out, Sergeant Sandifer had talked in air cover: Slasher, the AC-130. The pilot was a woman and, Sandifer later told me, “It was so reassuring for us to hear her voice.” She spotted guys hiding and asked if she was clear to engage. “ ‘You’re cleared hot,’ I told her. And we killed two people together.” But, at this point, the killings were no consolation to Sandifer.

My emphasis.

Heckuva Job, Bu$hCo

Talk about taking your eye off the ball.

Islamic insurgents are expanding their numbers and reach in Afghanistan and Pakistan, spreading violence and disarray over a vast cross-border zone where al Qaida has rebuilt the sanctuary it lost when the United States invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
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"Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," warned an Atlantic Council of the United States report last week. The report was directed by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, the former top NATO commander. "What is happening in Afghanistan and beyond its borders can have even greater strategic long-term consequences than the struggle in Iraq."
....
"The Taliban in Afghanistan now control more of the country than at any time since 2001, and their confederates in the tribal areas of Pakistan are expanding their operations almost day by day. While our attention has been diverted by Iraq, we've overlooked a potentially far more serious threat to the security of all Americans," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., told McClatchy.

My emphasis. How come there are no questions concerning this from the press? How come nobody is asking the candidates about this? I guess it's not as interesting as, well, you know what I mean. Feeling safer yet?

Democracy Agenda?

My ass.

More Insight Into The National Disaster

...that is Bu$hCo. Josh Marshall is right about the cliche Afghanistan has sadly become, but nonetheless is shows how the administration created the clusterfuck that is Iraq. It is sad reading, really, particularly for the 3707 American deaths in Iraq since 3/19/03.

The claim that President Bush took his eyes off the ball in Afghanistan so he could rush into disaster in Iraq has been repeated so many times that it is almost a cliche. A true cliche. But something like a cliche nonetheless. It becomes shocking again, however, when you look at it up close. The most charged issue in the US -- at least at the headline level -- is the failure to bag bin Laden. But that's not the only issue, in some ways not even the most important one because actually transforming Afghanistan (if that was possible, which I won't pretend to know the answer to) would at least arguably have been of more consequence that killing or capturing this one man.

And as long as we're on the subject, let's track back to our earlier discussion of President Bush's bogus 'democracy promotion agenda.' Remember, US policy makers have always been happy to push democracy on enemy states or among friends where there were no potential adverse policy consequences. The rub is always balancing support for democracy and the rule of law with more immediate policy needs.

So who are our main allied states in the War on Terror and the Muslim Middle East generally? The answer? Unquestionably, I think, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- one military dictatorship (if one with semi-constitutional and parliamentary attributes), with a military with a long history of ties to radical Islamists and another hereditary despotism riddled with sympathizers with radical Islamists.

My emphasis.