U.S. REP. JIM COOPER: Time to draw down troop levels in Iraq

[babylonsister]

Time to draw down troop levels in Iraq

By U.S. REP. JIM COOPER • April 18, 2008


There is a big fight going on inside the Pentagon between the highest levels of the Army. It is a gentlemanly fight — no one is killing each other — but the stakes are very high. The outcome does affect how many more soldiers will die.

Two top Army generals and their allies (in one case, the president, and the other, the secretary of defense) have fundamentally different views on whether we need to draw down our troops in Iraq. Neither side wants to, but one feels that we must because our soldiers are overstressed.
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Gen. David Petraeus and President Bush support keeping troop levels in Iraq as high as possible — about 140,000 — for the foreseeable future. General Richard Cody and Secretary Robert Gates think the Army is losing morale and is unprepared for other possible conflicts. They have advocated a drawdown to roughly 100,000 troops (although Gates recently admitted we can no longer reach that target by the end of the year). This decision directly affects, for example, how many Tennessee National Guardsmen deploy (again) to Iraq. It also affects whether we remain the strongest nation on earth, or only in Southwest Asia.

The pressures on our military personnel are real. Most top Army generals have warned that our Army is close to "breaking" by this April. Tens of thousands of soldiers and their families have already endured their second, third, or even fourth tour in Iraq during six years of war. Stop-loss orders have created a back-door draft. Our most elite soldiers, West Point-trained officers, are quitting the military in record numbers. Recruiting standards for soldiers have fallen. Today you can be a 42-year-old grandmother and enlist in the U.S. Army.

Rising star vs. a warhorse

Petraeus and Cody are not trash-talking each other but, within the confines of the Pentagon, they might as well be. Petraeus is the rising star who wants to prove that the surge is working (or, at least, that a longer surge could work) and probably wants Cody's job. Cody is an older warhorse in charge of the entire Army, and on the verge of retiring. Petraeus is so fit he can outrun his troops; Cody is built out of concrete blocks.

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http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080418/OPINION01/804180418/1008

[spanone]

1. k&r

[Fireweed247]

2. no more funding!

:applause:

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