Steve said:
but the "generals" asked for 31000 troops.. then Obama fired General David McKiernan,
Like Shinseki, McKiernan doesn't think the war can be won on the cheap.
Where they going to find these troops :???:
In the Congressional Hearings I've watched- all the Generals and Military leaders say that the US Military is stretched to its utmost- with all kinds of suicide, divorce, and discipline problems because of extended and multiple tours in Iraq...Which have left the moral the lowest its been....
I even heard they locked an army base down the other day until they could get some counselers in there because of the high suicide rates...
Testimony by Gen. Casey was that Gates and Obama are now trying to add additional forces/brigades- to the point they can get guaranteed two years rotational time home - except in emergencies- but it will take time....
Rummy's smaller/lighter/faster military idea- along with fighting wars we shouldn't have been in- didn't work....
But nothing that crew said was going to work did :roll:
"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine." –Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying before the House Budget Committee prior to the Iraq war, Feb. 27, 2003
"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." —President Bush, discussing the Iraq war with Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, after Robertson told him he should prepare the American people for casualties
"I would be surprised if we need anything like the 200,000 figure that is sometimes discussed in the press. A much smaller force, principally special operations forces, but backed up by some regular units, should be sufficient."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02
"I don't believe that anything like a long-term commitment of 150,000 Americans would be necessary."
- Richard Perle, speaking at a conference on "Post-Saddam Iraq" sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, 10/3/02
"I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required."
- Gen. Eric Shinseki, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 2/25/03
"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/27/03
"I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us keep [troop] requirements down. ... We can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark...wildly off the mark."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03
"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to image."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03
"It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could be six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/7/03
"The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 11/15/02
"I think it will go relatively quickly...weeks rather than months."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03