Washington Post: Army Will Face Dip in Readiness
This blog thinks Donald Rumsfeld Needs to Step Down
4 Divisions Need to Regroup After Iraq
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01
From the article
"....Four Army divisions -- 40 percent of the active-duty force -- will not be fully combat-ready for up to six months next year, leaving the nation with relatively few ready troops in the event of a major conflict in North Korea or elsewhere, a senior Army official said yesterday."
"...Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, a former division commander and staunch advocate of more Army forces, said four to five divisions below the C-1 rating "means literally half the Army is broken and not ready to fight."
Only two Army active-duty divisions will be available to fight in other parts of the world.
Extreme weather in Iraq and the unprecedented magnitude of the planned troop rotation have contributed to division-
"re-setting" slowdowns. Once divisions return from Iraq, Army readiness will be at its lowest point since the end of the Gulf War. Since then, Army officials have tried to keep divisions at the highest, (C-1) readiness level.
Ironically, President Bush had been known to sharply criticize the Clinton administration during the 2000 Presidential campaign for allowing two Army divisions to fall to the lowest readiness category in the late 90s because of peacekeeping obligations in the Balkans. Has Bush set a political trap for himself? Will he have Donald Rumsfeld to thank?
Should Donald Rumsfeld be fired, as suggested many times in the recent past, by the likes of Democratic candidate Howard Dean and so many American newspaper-editorials?
Will Capitol Hill be pushing for an increase in Army troops (as Senator John McCain has been saying for a while now?)
"....The article says "members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that they, along with Rumsfeld's staff, are still trying to determine whether the requirement for Iraq, which now stands at 130,000 soldiers, is a "spike" that will soon come down, or an ongoing commitment.
If it is a spike, they said, increasing the size of the Army may not be necessary..."
This tiring hedging, hemming, and hawing is nothing more than evidence of further misleading and lying
by the Bush administration.
We will need to be in Iraq for many years if our mission is to be accomplished. We'll need far more troops if that mission is proven worth our while and especially if we fail to get further international respect and cooperation.
The Bush administration can't seem to adequately support our troops because of their own worries about Bush's re-election. If these political election-related worries cause President Bush to continue to mislead and/or lie to his own people at the expense of those precious troops, I would not only call him a poor leader. I would call him ruthlessly and negligently anti-American.
Look, I'm just one citizen sitting here able to foresee a tremendously dismal and dangerous National Secuity future for our nation with the way Rumsfeld has handled his Secretary of Defense duties.
It's time for our Representatives and the press to wake up (as the Post has done in this instance) and keep Americans informed of the danger we face because of horridly irresponsible Defense Department decisions.
Ask yourself:
If your son or daughter should be called to duty, would you trust these shady, misleading, irresponsible characters
in the Bush administration with your children's lives?
If you cannot answer with a resounding YES, then it's time to let your Representatives know that you think Rumsfeld should go. Our troops need your good and true support now more than EVER.
League of Liberals Saturday Spotlight:
From the Pages of Jesse Gotham at Gotham City 13
credit: Gotham City 13
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Common Sense for a New Century
addressed to the Citizens of America by
Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
December 2003
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
Thomas Paine
“Are the special privilege boys going to run the country, or are the people going to run it?”
Harry Truman
“Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.”
Barbara Jordan
“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
Thomas Paine
Poll shows Dean edging past
Edwards in S.C.
UTICA, N.Y., Dec. 5 — Howard Dean's presidential campaign
continues to gain steam, with the former Vermont governor moving to
the head of the pack in South Carolina's Democratic race, according
to a poll released Friday. link
~~~~~~~~~~~~
From Talking Points Memo:
"...I had lunch today with someone who is not a politician but a fairly prominent Washington Democrat -- certainly not someone from the party's liberal wing. And in the course of answering a question, I said "If it [i.e. the nominee] ends up being Dean ..." At which point, with the rest of my sentence still on deck down in my throat, my friend shot back : "It's Dean."
It was effortless. He wasn't happy or sad about it. He wasn't trying to convince me -- more like letting me in
on something I apparently wasn't aware of yet...."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clinton blasts Bush for trying to 'undo New Deal'
"This administration is in danger of being the first in American history to leave our nation
worse off than when they found it."
Senator Hillary Clinton
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Salon.com: Is Dean Stoppable?
"...if Dean knocks them out clean after the first two rounds, it's going to be very hard for anyone to stop him at that point, because there will be two big nights with balloons and everyone rallying to the front-runner..."
~~~~~~~~~
Miserable Failure? Google Trick Says It's Bush
Google-bombing: the latest craze!
~~~~~~~~~
Jimmy Breslin:
"Not only will Dean win the nomination but he will take over the Democratic Party, or whatever there is of it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stem-Cell Research:
Bush's logical incoherence betrays moral insincerity in favor of pure political gain
Michael Kinsley asks if this pandering moral fakery, in light of the lives that are waiting to be saved, is good enough reason for some to dislike him personally.
From the article:
"....Bush cannot possibly believe that embryos are full human beings, or he would surely oppose modern fertility procedures that create and destroy many embryos for each baby they bring into the world...You cannot logically outlaw the one and praise the other. And surely logical coherence is a measure of moral sincerity..."
"If the president is not a complete moron—and he probably is not—he is a hardened cynic....."
*hmm..we just don't know for sure, do we?*
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I tried helping a rookie blogger this week. An act of reaching out to show we libs aren't all that bad.
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In this Sunday's NY Times Magazine:
The Dean Connection
By Samantha M. Shapiro
Published: December 7, 2003
"Teachout says she has been wanting to do something like this since March. ''When I was falling in love with our grass roots,'' she says, ''I thought, If I get fired, I am going to go on the road and meet all of them. Once the idea occurs to you, how can you resist?'' Teachout says she would pore over pictures that people posted on the Web from Dean meet-ups, just ''to get a sense of the characters involved.''
I ask her if the people she hopes to meet on her trip are her friends.
'' 'Friend' is an odd word,'' she says slowly. ''I mean, these are the people who populate my imagination.''
