If it weren't for the election, they'd be drafting troops now

In 2000, the Republican Party promised "help is on the way" for the U.S. military. I wonder if the Republican-leaning officer corps still leans that way? Telegraph | News | US commander will not take blame for unrest:

America's top commander in Iraq has warned Washington that he will not be "the fall guy" if violence in the country worsens, it emerged yesterday, as word leaked out that US generals are "outraged" by their lack of soldiers.

America's generals consider current troop strengths of 130,000 in Iraq inadequate, reported the columnist Robert Novak, a doyen of the old-school Right in Washington.

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But officers who will not speak out in public let it be known that major reinforcements might be impossible to find. US forces are so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that "there are simply no large units available and suitable for assignment", Novak wrote in his column in The Washington Post.

The leaks have revived memories of the bitter debate that raged in Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, as uniformed chiefs clashed with Mr Rumsfeld and his aides, who predicted that US forces would be welcomed as "liberators", allowing troop numbers to be reduced rapidly.

Relations between the uniformed military and the Pentagon's civilian chiefs are currently worse than at any time in living memory, Novak wrote, citing a former high-ranking national security official who served in previous Republican administrations.

Many still in uniform bitterly recall the public dressing-down earned by the then army chief of staff, Gen Eric Shinseki, when he told Congress a month before the invasion, in February 2003, that "several hundred thousand troops" might be needed to occupy Iraq.

That estimate was slapped down as "wildly off the mark" by the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. Thomas White, the army secretary and a former general himself, publicly backed Gen Shinseki. Mr White was sacked shortly afterwards by Mr Rumsfeld.

A new account of the war, In the Company of Soldiers, reveals that in May 2003 Pentagon planners "predicted that US troop levels would be down to 30,000 by late summer [of 2003]".

The Republican Platform for 2004 should read: "The Bush Administration: where wishful thinking prevails."