Somebody in the bowels of the Pentagon responds

To my post about General Richard Cody emphasizing the 'All Volunteer' military.

Citiwindo, a blogger name created in April 2008 and whose ip address showed (s)he is connected to the Pentagon said this in comments:

The last thing GEN Cody wants is to bring back the Draft. If you look at all of his previous statements in hearings and in media - he STRONGLY opposes the Draftt. He served in a draft Army, and knows how bad it can get. He made that statement last week to get Congress to get off their duffs and give the Army the money it needs to win this War, and to take care of the Soldiers and families. Congress continues to underfund this Army and cut key programs, FCS, etc. His message has always been the same. Grow the Army, fund it appropriately in the BASE budget, and stop trying to win this war on the cheap thru supplementals.

He served in a draft Army, and knows how bad it can get.

What do you mean? Do you mean those people who don't volunteer tend to be hostile about fighting incompetently run wars? And volunteers apparently will go uncomplainingly and willingly to their deaths because they ... volunteered? Or do you mean the fact that activating the draft would bring the wrath of all voters down upon the heads of politicians? Or could it be you are suggesting the draft gathers up people who shouldn't be in the military? Kinda like those soldiers who won WWII?

He made that statement last week to get Congress to get off their duffs and give the Army the money it needs to win this War, and to take care of the Soldiers and families.

Hmm. I understand the statement about taking care of our soldiers, like not cutting veteran's benefits which Republicans have done several times during the Bush administration. Besides the Walter Reed scandal which was mirrored in every other VA hospital across the nation, just recently we found soldiers who were suffering traumatic brain injuries were being sent back to the war and that some VA employees were told to no longer help disabled soldiers with the filing their paperwork. Is that the kind of getting off of the duff you mean? Or could it be the wonderful new GI Bill Senator Webb is trying to get passed? Why isn't McCain supporting this?

And yet you are blaming Congress? Is it because it is now run by a Democratic majority? You're not blaming the administration that got us into this mess? Not the people who thought this war would be a cakewalk? Not the neocons who thought they'd take out Hussein and pop in Chalabi and everything would be over in six weeks? Not the idiots who try to stifle the soldiers voices when they come back to the US? You aren't blaming the Bush administration but Congress? How odd.

So the plan is to keep sending the volunteers back again and again on their third... sixth... twelfth deployment while they slowly go mad or die? Is your response: So?

We have lost trillions ... TRILLIONS of dollars in this unwarranted, unsupported, unnecessary war of Bush and Cheney's. The neocon wet dream of all wet dreams was to take out Saddam Hussein and wedge ourselves into control in the middle of the oil lands. Well, we are now wedged between Iraq and the Eternal War on a Noun with no clear way out.

So. Just how would more money solve this problem? What could be done with even MORE trillions tossed into the quagmire that we haven't yet tried?

Do you think you could define what winning this war would entail? How do we win the Iraq war which is actually about twenty different little wars: the sectarian vs nationalist war, Shiite vs Shiite factions, Sunni vs Shiite, Kurds vs Turks, Kurds vs Shiite and Sunni, tribal loyalities, revenge, Saudi Arabia vs Iran posturing, warlords jockeying for power and a say in the new government, and al-Qaeda vs everybody else?

I don't think I have ever heard anyone even good ol' Petraeus dare to even attempt to define what victory in Iraq would look like and how it could be achieved. It's always just six months away. Wait another few months, four months, six months.... wait until Bush is no longer President....

Can you define your statement: winning this war? Because, by defining victory, you must then explain the real reason we attacked and invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11.

I don't think you can.

Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody

Speaks his mind.

Eli of Multi Medium:

And then he added the kicker:

If unaddressed, this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the All-Volunteer Force and degrades the Army’s ability to make a timely response to other contingencies.

When Cody says “this lack of balance poses a significant risk to the All-Volunteer Force,” he’s really saying we have three options:

1. We can change course now and save everyone a lot of trouble.

2. We can maintain our current course in Iraq and watch the Army disintegrate as it did during and after Vietnam.

3. We can institute the Draft.

The adjective “All-Volunteer” is the key part of the statement. He’s implying that if the force were not all-volunteer, then there would be no “significant risk.” As no sane officer would accept the disintegration of the Army, Cody is saying that if we want to keep up this thing in Iraq, we’re going to have to move toward instituting a draft. It’s that simple.

It's hard to have an Eternal War on Terror that Defines the New Century when you are losing your all-volunteer army to mismanagement, incompetence, and indifference.

But no politician on earth will touch the draft third rail. So ... it must be a political war really. Odd.

You can judge a government

By the way they treat those in need, in their employ, in their military. Pale Rider of Blue Girl, Red State quotes a study:

A new military study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine says soldiers who suffered concussions in Iraq were not only at higher risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, but also that the depression and PTSD, not the head injuries, may be the cause of ongoing physical symptoms.

And then cites a story of how the military declares 'personality disorders' and denies medical claims of those soldiers who were wounded:

It is the use of the 5-13 discharge to cull injured troops from service and deny them future benefits through the VA.A 5-13 is a psych discharge.It brands the veteran as having a personality disorder, an Axis II disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association. Personality disorders are deemed pre-existing conditions, and therefore the military is absolved of all future responsibility to those veterans.

As if this is not horrible enough, here are some even worse statistics via Paul of Byzigenous Buddhapalian, John Cory of Hoffmania:

The folks who see profit and growth in the numbers of veterans of this war, the Health Care Insurers know an opportunity when they see one. In her December 2007 report Emily Berry for American Medical News gives us a tour by the numbers:

30,000 troops have been wounded in action.
39,000 have been diagnosed with PTSD.
84,000 vets suffer a mental health disorder.
229,000 veterans have sought VA care.
1.4 million troops (active duty and reserves) deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan so far.
Estimates run between $350 billion to $700 billion needed for lifetime care and benefits for veterans.

And now, making the rounds in Washington is a plan that has become known as “The Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007” which reaches out to the pharmaceutical industry to partner with the Department of Defense to use the drug Propranalol to treat symptoms of PTSD even before a soldier succumbs to full blown PTSD. An ounce of prevention after all is worth funding for experimentation, I mean research. A numb soldier is a happy soldier.

If you haven’t visited Penny Coleman you really ought to drop by and read up on her articles. Thanks to Penny and people like my friend Miss Remy, we learn the truth about the terrible sweet beauty we call war. The price – human toll – and numbers.

A CBS study of 45 states over the past 12 years reveals disturbing and tragic patterns of suffering veterans whether Korean War, Vietnam, or the newer versions, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2005 alone, there were 6,256 veteran suicides. That’s 120 every week or an average of 17 suicides every day.

The Bush administration has no waiting period to go to war, only waiting lines that take months to treat veterans and provide the health care they need. It is an amazing irony that Bush has presided over the longest delays and waiting periods for veterans in VA history and yet he has generated more veterans faster than most any other administration. As the Democratic Policy Committee pointed out in 2004: “During Bush's four years in office, the average millionaire has received a tax break of $123,000. In contrast, President Bush has broken all previous records for fees paid by veterans - proposing to collect $1.3 billion from veterans themselves in 2005, a 478 percent increase during his time in office.”

Be grateful for what NTodd and friends are doing to stop kids from signing up . If sources for the volunteer army dry up, there will have to be a draft. Politicians know that it is career suicide to activate it and will immediately focus the wrath of 70+% of Americans who are against this war. Because it does not weigh equally on all of us, the war grinds on and grinds up lives and treasury, but bring back the draft and this war will end.

Update: Molly Ivors of Whiskey Fire notes that the VA is being encouraged not to help vets with their paperwork:

One of the things they do--or at least have done historically, is help wounded vets apply to the DoD for the benefits they have coming. But here in upstate New York, that's no longer the case.

Army officials in upstate New York instructed representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork last year. That paperwork can be crucial because it helps determine whether soldiers will get annual disability payments and health care after they're discharged.

Now soldiers at Fort Drum say they feel betrayed by the institutions that are supposed to support them. The soldiers want to know why the Army would want to stop them from getting help with their disability paperwork and why the VA— whose mission is to help veterans — would agree to the Army's request.

Isn't it strange how some people rabidly support the war

When there is no chance they'll ever have to fight in it?

Glenn Greenwald of Salon has an article up about Romney's manly adventure cheering on the Vietnam War while doing all he could to stay far away from signing up:

More repugnantly still, both the NYT article and accompanying video contain all sorts of quotes from Romney and his co-missionaries complaining about how very hard life was for them in France because it was so difficult to convert people, without any sense of how that "hardship" compared to their fellow citizens' fighting and dying in the Vietnam jungle. It's hard to put into words what twisted self-absorption and lack of empathy is required to wallow in such self-pity -- exactly the same strain that led Romney earlier this year to equate his sheltered sons' work on his presidential campaign with other Americans' sons and daughters who are in the Iraq war that Romney so loves and exploits for political gain.

Romney's draft-avoidance isn't quite as shameful as Super Tough Guy Rudy Giuliani's, whose deferment request was denied in 1969, thus placing him at imminent risk of being drafted, when he somehow convinced the federal judge for whom he was clerking "to write to the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and reclassification as an 'essential' civilian employee." The very idea that a first-year judicial clerk, just out law school, is "essential" for anything is absurd on its face. Yet the swaggering tough guy Rudy Giuliani used that blatant lie to ensure that someone other than himself was sent to fight in Vietnam.

But Romney's record is hardly better. Although he claims he was ultimately convinced by his dad that the war was wrong, he spent most of the war cheering it on -- from the same safe and sheltered distance where one finds most of our right-wing tough guy warriors today, the ones who understandably recognize themselves in both Romney and Giuliani. Needless to say, a centerpiece of both of their campaigns is how "tough" and courageously pro-war they are.

The definition of insanity

Is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results -- Benjamin Franklin. Ben, I give you ... Iraq:

Against this backdrop, the U.S. military has been trying in vain to hold the country together. Even with "the surge," we simply do not have enough soldiers and marines to meet the professed goals of clearing areas from insurgent control, holding them securely and building sustainable institutions. Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances. Millions of Iraqis correctly recognize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet -- moving within Iraq or leaving the country entirely. Still, our colonels and generals keep holding on to flawed concepts.

U.S. forces, responsible for too many objectives and too much "battle space," are vulnerable targets. The sad inevitability of a protracted draw-down is further escalation of attacks -- on U.S. troops, civilian leaders and advisory teams. They would also no doubt get caught in the crossfire of the imminent Iraqi civil war.

Iraqi security forces would not be able to salvage the situation. Even if all the Iraqi military and police were properly trained, equipped and truly committed, their 346,000 personnel would be too few. As it is, Iraqi soldiers quit at will. The police are effectively controlled by militias. And, again, corruption is debilitating. U.S. tax dollars enrich self-serving generals and support the very elements that will battle each other after we're gone.

This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we tried to communicate up the chain of command. This is either what did not get passed on to our civilian leadership or what our civilian leaders chose to ignore. While our generals pursue a strategy dependent on peace breaking out, the Iraqis prepare for their war -- and our servicemen and women, and their families, continue to suffer.

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

America, it has been five years. It's time to make a choice.

This column was written by 12 former Army captains: Jason Blindauer served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Elizabeth Bostwick served in Salah Ad Din and An Najaf in 2004. Jeffrey Bouldin served in Al Anbar, Baghdad and Ninevah in 2006. Jason Bugajski served in Diyala in 2004. Anton Kemps served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Kristy (Luken) McCormick served in Ninevah in 2003. Luis Carlos Montalván served in Anbar, Baghdad and Nineveh in 2003 and 2005. William Murphy served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Josh Rizzo served in Baghdad in 2006. William "Jamie" Ruehl served in Nineveh in 2004. Gregg Tharp served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Gary Williams served in Baghdad in 2003.

Tell us again, Mr. Bush, just why we are fighting in Iraq? Not the first reason nor the 35th because you keep on changing your mind and the mission. 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq.

So just why are we there?

Update: an Iraq Vet responds and thanks the soldiers who wrote this.

Transformers!

More than meets the eye!

Mapaghimagsik of Drunk Duck shows us what would happen if we had a draft.

Hey!! There he is!

The War Czar! I wondered where he'd been hiding!:

In an interview with NPR, the White House’s “war czar” Gen. Doug Lute said that “it makes sense to certainly consider” a military draft. “I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table, but ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation’s security by one means or another.”

Well... I bet that's going over well with your superiors, War Czar guy!

Update 8/11:

Is it drafty in here?

Tengrain:
"The talking point of the moment, and the one that is sure to be adopted is called the Surge. The Surge, simply put, is bringing in a theoretical 20,000 to 50,000 additional troops. Never mind that the military already is stretched to the breaking point and recruitment has been underwhelming.

And please let no one remind the Brain Trust of Texas that last summer the same Surge plan was tried and the violence escalated. More troops = more targets. And no one will say how long the surge will last. My guess: 2008, when it can be some other president’s problem.

The Surge, we are told with a straight face, will secure Baghdad, kick some Islamb-o-fascist ass, train their troops and police force (Like Calliope weaving by day and unravelling by night, their police and military are thought to be largely composed of the insurgents themselves, but shhhhh, don’t mention that to the Decider), and secure Chimpy’s place in history. I think his rightful place is pretty much guaranteed already."

Morse thinks the draft is imminent:
"I think that Bush had a plan all along to reinstitute the draft. There's no other way he can sustain his failed war in the Middle East, and now with the talk of expanding the military in the wake of that fiasco, a draft is the only recourse.

This is how it begins. A few lower ranking administration officials floating a trial balloon, which the White House immediately backs away from.

President Bush's secretary for Veterans Affairs said Thursday that "society would benefit" if the country brought back the military draft, then clarified that he doesn't support such a move.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson spoke a day after Bush said he is considering sending more troops to Iraq. The administration has for years forcefully opposed bringing back the draft, and the White House said Thursday that its position had not changed."

Update: Watertiger notes how convenient the 2009 date for the draft is...Georgie will have been long gone and nobody will blame him for the wreckage.

Update: AOL has a poll.

When what you are doing is making you lose,

more of the same is always better.
"As President Bush weighs new policy options for Iraq, strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government."

Rook's Rant mentions the forbidden word: Draft.

The Draft.

When the military is spread too thin, overused, and resentful; enlistment is dropping, and the shine has gone from your latest war; how will you get enough cannon fodder for the latest planned adventure?

Update 11/22:
Charlie Rangel's mandatory conscription idea:
"Rangel is advocating a public debate about the costs of the war, with testimony from Administration officials, and he is advocating that war supporters in Congress make a choice between ending the war and commiting political suicide."