in the past (three years ago). He wasn't advocating withdrawal at all, then, though--he was advocating plussing up the active component.
......"We need 80,000 or more troops added to the U.S. Army."
When a grass fire first starts, you can jump right in the middle of it and stomp it out. But if you wait too long, it just becomes uncontrollable. We should immediately jump onto the opposition and end it, and then launch smart diplomatic moves to get NATO and the U.N. and other Arab forces involved in a bigger way.
There are no more U.S. troops to send to Iraq. That's why we need 80,000 or more troops added to the U.S. Army. Congress is allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to dig in his heels and try to maintain a foreign policy based on a grossly undermanned U.S. military. The key question isn't whether the 1st Cavalry Division is going to get run out of Baghdad—it's not. The key question is, if you've got 70% of your combat battalions in the U.S. Army deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea and elsewhere, can you maintain this kind of muscular presence in that many places? The answer is no. But if we take action now to increase the size of the Army by 80,000 soldiers, we'll be able to handle this global reach. The key would be to activate nine National Guard brigades in the next 18 months and convert them into active-duty soldiers, allowing the reservists to go back to their communities. Colin POWELL has used similar language late last year:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/12/17/powell-surge/Powell Opposes Surging More U.S. Forces Into Iraq, Says There Are ‘No Additional Troops’ To Send
Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he did not support surging tens of thousands more troops in Iraq, a plan that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) supports and that President Bush is expected to carry out. “I have not seen a case that persuades me that would be better” with more forces, he said.
Powell also pointed out that the military has no more troops to send. “There are really no additional troops. All we would be doing is keeping some of the troops who were there there longer and escalating or accelerating the arrival of other troops.” The transfer of political authority on June 30 is extremely premature. By that date, there will not be a sovereign government with any political legitimacy. And here's another challenge we face: we need to put the training of Iraqi security services—the police, army, border patrol and others—solely under the control of the U.S. military instead of the Coalition Provisional Authority and give these Iraqi recruits more money. Iraq is costing us $4 billion a month, and only a tiny percent of that has gone directly to support the creation of Iraqi security forces. We should also transfer authority for security policy in Iraq from Rumsfeld to Secretary of State Colin Powell because the most important tasks are now diplomatic.
We need to invest two to 10 years in Iraq, and we'll have a good outcome. But if we think we're dumping this responsibility in the coming year, we're going to end up with a mess on our hands that will severely impair our international role for the coming 20 years.
— By Barry McCaffrey
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040419-610008,00.htmlMost recently, this guy's been screaming for more assets:
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-iraq12may12,0,6940484.story?coll=la-home-centerBAGHDAD — The commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said Friday that he did not have enough troops to deal with the escalating violence in Iraq's Diyala province, an unusually frank assertion for a top officer and a sign that American military officials might be starting to offer more candid and blunt assessments of the war.
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