Casey: Afghanistan to be a 'long haul'

[unhappycamper]

Casey: Afghanistan to be a 'long haul'
April 22, 2008
Knight Ridder

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army's chief of staff, came to Fort Benning on April 21 to recognize the winners of the annual Best Ranger Competition, a pair of 24 year olds who have been deployed 11 times between the both of them.

Not surprisingly, Casey, who celebrated his first year on the job earlier this month, was asked about the number of deployments today's Soldier has faced and will face in the future.

"The Army is stretched thin," Casey said after posing for a picture with Best Rangers Staff Sgt. Michael Broussard and Staff Sgt. Shayne Cherry, instructors at the Regimental Special Troops Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment. "We're an Army at war and our Soldiers are remarkably resilient. But we have to increase the amount of dwell time. And we will, gradually."

Gone, he said, are the 15-month combat tours, like the one that Benning's 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team is about to finish in Iraq. That rule goes into effect Sept. 1.

But until the Army increases its size and adds more combat brigades, units such as the 3rd Brigade could be deployed again within a year.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/casey-afghanistan-to-be-a-long-haul.html

[DrDan]

1. well - with such nebulous missions as "the war on terror" . . .

how can we ever expect to get out of Afghanistan.

What does that mean - how is success defined. Until Gates and the resident-idiot-in-the-white-house come to grips with that, we will never see the light at the end of the tunnel.