Gen. McCaffery: Congress should use Constitutional powers to protect the military

[RamboLiberal]

MSNBC's Willie Geist interviewed military analyst General (ret.) Barry McCaffrey on Tuesday about the current state of the war in Iraq. McCaffrey told Geist that Congress needs to take action to prevent the US military from breaking under the strain of the next set of troop rotations, due in April 2008.

"We simply cannot sustain this rate of deployment," he said. "I think the Congress, under Article I of the Constitution has to get involved and try to ensure that we don't unravel the US ground combat capability."

On July 31, McCaffrey testified before the House Armed Services Committee on the "disastrous state of America's ground combat forces," saying that "Congress has been missing-in-action during the past several years while undebated and misguided strategies were implemented by former Secretary Rumsfeld and his team of arrogant and inexperienced civilian associates in the Pentagon. ... The Army is starting to crack under the strain."

McCaffrey recommended that, as a solution, "We must increase the active duty US Army strength by 150,000 soldiers in the coming 36 months. We must increase the active duty Marines by 25,000 troops."

Overall, though, McCaffrey was far more downbeat with MSNBC than he had been with Congress. He told Geist that between Iraq and Afghanistan, "the burn rate is $12 billion a month. ... We're essentially pushing 32,000 killed and wounded. The Iraqi government of this poor Mr. Maliki is in total meltdown. ... It's hard to know the way ahead."

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Gen._McCaffery_Congress_should_use_Constitutional_0807.html

[Vincardog]

1. Duh, they can't meet recruiting goals now. How are they going to get 175.000 MORE?

[aquart]

2. Financial incentives to the Crips and the Bloods?

And all the automatic weapons they want?

[Vincardog]

3. They are already in.