Quote to remember

Everyone is focused on Wisconsin, but I'd say that Florida is ground zero for Republican mismanagement. In 2012, I'm pretty sure that the Republican presidential candidate won't even want to be seen with most of the GOP governors that were elected in 2010.

They so wanted Obama to say he was wrong about opposing the surge

That they cropped his quote. What was actually said:

O'REILLY: You and Joe Biden, no surge.

OBAMA: Hold on a second, Bill. If you look at the debate that was taking place, we had gone through five years of mismanagement of this war that I thought was disastrous. And the president wanted to double down and continue on an open-ended policy that did not create the kinds of pressure on the Iraqis to take responsibility and reconcile.

O'REILLY: But it worked. It worked. Come on.

OBAMA: Bill, what I said is -- I've already said it succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

O'REILLY: Right. So why can't you say, "I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge"?

OBAMA: Because there's an underlying problem with what we've done. We have reduced the violence --

O'REILLY: Yeah.

OBAMA: -- but the Iraqis still haven't taken responsibility, and we still don't have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, $10 to $12 billion a month.

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.