I'm getting a real strong wafting of a draft, folks!
REAL STRONG SHITSTINK!
"Military tells Bush of strain on troops; Iraq deployments called burdensome" by Robert Burns/Associated Press September 1, 2007
WASHINGTON - At a key juncture in the Iraq war, the military chiefs conveyed to President Bush yesterday their concern about a growing strain on troops and their families from long and repeated combat tours.
Bush met privately at the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in preparation for decisions about how long to sustain the troop buildup in Iraq, whether to change course this fall, and how to save the health of a heavily stressed Army and Marine Corps.
Indications are that Bush intends to stick with his current approach, at least into 2008.... There are more than 160,000 troops in Iraq, the most since the war began in 2003.
There are no signs that the Pentagon's top generals and admirals are pushing for an early end to the war, but they are concerned not only about strains on troops but also about the possibility that the heavy focus on counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq leaves the military ill-prepared in the event of a crisis elsewhere.
Without revealing specifics of the Joint Chiefs's remarks, Bush said afterward that they discussed preserving the military's war-fighting capability for the long term and "monitoring the health of our all-volunteer force" - the latter an allusion to fears among some that war strains could break the military.
Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said... Bush sought their views on how their forces are faring, more than four years into the war.
Bush did not speak in person after the meeting, but he issued a statement asking lawmakers to reserve judgment about the best next move in Iraq."
[How do you fix a broken military, kiddos?
That's right! A DRAFT!
I knew you could say it!]
