Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.Why would this General go against the Bush policy of perpetual war? General Pace understands that this war and its long deployments has stretched the military to a breaking point. He realizes that we could not respond to events in other parts of the world without some drastic changes to the military such as a draft.
Petraeus is expected to support a White House view that the absence of widespread political progress in Iraq requires several more months of the U.S. troop buildup before force levels are decreased to their pre-buildup numbers sometime next year.
I believe that Bush's speech comparing the Wars in Iraq and Vietnam was done to lay the groundwork for a return to the draft. Military leaders must realize that our forces are broken and that we simply can not keep up deployments without a draft.
The issue is that they can not publicly say they support a draft for what that would do to Republicans in 2008. The next president will be left to clean up the mess in Iraq and restore our military. They are hoping the choices that will need to be made will be so unpopular that they would regain the Presidency in 2012. It is a gamble they seem willing to make but one I think they will lose in the end. Americans will understand that it was the ill advised war in Iraq that brought our military to the breaking point and they punish the Republican party for it.
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