#5 "And President Bush, for his part, has so deeply committed the U.S. military in Iraq, and his administration has so badly fumbled the process of moving responsibility for Iraq security onto the shoulders of Iraqis, that it's hard to see how the U.S. military could, in the coming months or even year, have the manpower and resources needed to do more than strike some Iranian targets with air power if it had to." Oh, and how far along in the Korean Conflict were we in raising, equiping and training the Korean forces? Large numbers of untrained formations, suffering casualties which dwarf the American losses. Maybe we are treating the new iraqi volunteer like we treat our own spending the time and effort to train, train, train before being sent into the chaos of war.
As to available forces, just check the number of Regular Army and Marine maneuver battalions with leather on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan against the total available and that will tell you the available force package to do something with. Its up to the planners at Central Command to determine what they need and I suspect they are the ones with the intel and skill to know better than anyone else. |