More Signs of Dissent from the Military

What started out as a few retired Generals publicly criticizing the preparation leading up to the war has now spread inside the Pentagon. Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, who has in the past weeks made pointed criticisms, has refused to submit the Army's 2008 budget. After Secretary Rumsfeld limited the Army's budget to $114 billion Schoomaker responded:

On Aug. 23, at a speech before the National Press Club, Schoomaker publicly threw down the gauntlet: "There is no sense in us submitting a budget that we cannot execute … a broken budget."

The problems with Rumsfeld's budget cap?

A month earlier, Government Executive reported that Schoomaker had told a group of congressional staffers about grave backlogs at the Army's repair depots. Nearly 1,500 Humvees, M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, and other vehicles were awaiting repair at the Red River Army Depot in Texas. The same was true of 500 M1 tanks at the Anniston depot in Alabama. None of the Army's five largest depots was operating at more than 50 percent capacity—all because of a shortage of money.

The cost to repair the Army's equipment damaged in Afghanistan and Iraq is in excess of $17 billion. Due to the budget shortfalls the Army's 3rd ID, the group that so successfully charged to Baghdad currently faces a situation where half of it's brigades have no armored vehicles and only half it's troops.

The war in Iraq has taken a toll on this country, the loss of over 2500 young men and women, thousands more wounded. This war has become a recruiting poster for Al Qaeda, failed to find any of the WMDs that Iraq once had, and further destabilized the region. Now we are finding that it is eroding the military, leaving us with an Army that is increasingly struggling to meet it's duties, and leaving America less safe then it was before.

Does anybody really want to argue that the GOP is the party of national security?