72% of Troops in Iraq Think U.S. Should Exit in the Next 12 mos.

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http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075

A new Zogby poll indicates that the troops are ready to come home.

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1. What Soldiers Are Saying/Blogging - From Daily Kos

Hate to play "KosFilter" but this is an extraordinary diary from a soldier on leave.

Why we need to leave Iraq ASAP-from someone who is over there.
by djtyg
Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 10:12:45 AM PDT

(Background: For the record, I'm actually on leave from Iraq. But if you think I'm going to post this from an internet room at my base's MWR, you're freakin' nuts. I've worried about Bush tapping those lines long before we found out he was tapping phones without a warrant in the good old US of A.)

djtyg's diary

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Currently our troop strength is bleak. Most of the "old Army" is gone now. Almost all of the Soldiers that I knew who had 15+ years in have since retired and left the military. They leave because they are tired of deploying and being away from their families. Now it's the rookies that are left fighting.It may have been Clinton's Army that toppled Saddam, but it's Bush's Army that is left with the insurgents.

When I first left for Iraq, we had that problem. Most of our leadership had left after our first stint in OEF. To fix the gaping hole in our leadership, the brass decided to do 2 things: 1. Slap some extra rank on Soldiers and give them a leadership position they weren't ready for. 2. Take Soldiers who did have the rank and leadership position and put them in a job they weren't trained for (example: Artillery being put in charge of MPs). As a result we have leadership that is too inexperienced and overwhelmed to do their job. But wait! It gets worse!

Soldiers are frustrated. Every soldier I have talked to says that they are getting out of the military when they get home. Every. One. Of. Them. Regardless of rank, experience, or time in, they all want out. There has not been a single Soldier I've talked to that says they want to stay in. This include officers, NCOs, and rookies who are on their first tour of duty.

If you could imagine the US Armed Forces being a fraction of what it once was, with old and broken down equipment, and with none of its divisions ready to go to war and provide for the national defense, you can imagine the nightmare that the US Military is becoming. We simply can't stay in Iraq and have a strong military at the same time.

{snipping here and there...for full article, follow the link in the diary title above.}

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2. I'm surprised they still get to blog

So many of our troops have been cut off from blogging.