McClatchy: New military leaders question Iraq mission

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New military leaders question Iraq mission
By Nancy A. Youssef and Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Thursday, October 4, 2007


WASHINGTON — Four and a half years after the nation's top military leaders saluted and fell in behind President Bush's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, their replacements are beginning to question the mission and sound alarms about the toll the war is taking on the Army and the Marine Corps.

The change at the Pentagon is striking but little-noticed, in part because Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a longtime veteran of the CIA, is quiet where his predecessor Donald H. Rumsfeld was not.

"It's part of a sea change," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a national-security research center in Washington. "The ideologues have been replaced by managers who view Iraq not as a cause, but a problem to be solved."

Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Undersecretary for Intelligence Gen. James Clapper and other top officials also are concerned that the war may be crippling the military's ability to respond to other crises. They have allies in the congressional Democratic leadership — particularly House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri — who've been speaking out about that for months.

"I'm convinced we are in serious trouble readiness-wise," Skelton said this week in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. "Am I worried? I'm worried to death."

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