Well, I do. Here are excerpts from article in ‘American Conservative Magazine” – Do you agree with the conclusions they have come to about Bush and the War in Iraq?
Granted, President Bush never passes up the chance to pose with the troops or express his warm regard for those who serve and sacrifice. But to judge by results rather than posturing, no commander in chief in American history has cared less about the overall health of America’s Armed Forces.
President Bush will hand over to his successor an Army and Marine Corps that are badly depleted and verging on exhaustion. The real surge is not the one that involves sending more U.S. troops to Baghdad. It is the tidal wave of unsustainable demands that are now engulfing America’s ground forces.
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The stress of repeated combat tours is sapping the Army’s lifeblood. Especially worrying is the accelerating exodus of experienced leaders. The service is currently short 3,000 commissioned officers. By next year, the number is projected to grow to 3,500. The Guard and reserves are in even worse shape.
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To sustain the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has resorted to a variety of management techniques, all of which have the effect of increasing the strains on the force and watering down its quality.
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As the Army depletes its inventory of equipment—some $212 billion worth has been destroyed, damaged, or just plain worn out—the best of what’s left ends up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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There’s also a second shell game. The Army is incrementally easing its recruiting standards, enlisting thousands of volunteers that the service would previously have classified as unfit.
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Perhaps most troubling is the increase in “moral waivers” issued to would-be recruits with criminal records, a history of drug use, and the like. Between 2005 and 2006, the number of waivers that the Army issued to convicted felons jumped by 30 percent.
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President Bush has nickeled and dimed the nation’s fighting forces to the verge of collapse. Even today he remains oblivious to the basic problem that his administration has confronted for the past four years—too much war and too few soldiers.
The president’s attitude seems to be: sure, the military is overstretched, but let’s see if we can stretch it just a little bit more. Perhaps he figures that when the rubber band breaks, dealing with the consequences will be someone else’s problem.
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