Rangel once again proposes a new draft bill (hell no we won't go?)

Originally Posted by Dullenplain

Let's be intellectual now, guys, this is no epithet zone.

Sage advice.

Now everybody start following it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Arainach

Our own commanders have said we won't make any progress without 100,000 more troops. We're not going to get them through volunteering. You have to support either pulling out or a draft. Period. This bill just forces people to take a side.

They could concievably be obtained by taking men from the large majority of the Army that made up of is non-combat elements and turning them into combat infantry.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Arainach

Perhaps, but it's not like the non-combat troops just sit on their butts all day. The Armed Forces need people to do more than just fire guns. For day-to-day operations, the non-combat people are much more important than the combat ones, actually.

That may be true to a certain degree, but those 100,000 troops the commanders need that you mentioned aren't likely to be 100,000 more supply clerks.

Losing 2-3,000 troops in Iraq shouldn't be enough to seriously hurt the U.S. Army, which between the regular army, reserves and National Guard numbers over a million. But it has. The reason for this is the fact that those relatively few casualties predominantly fall on combat personnel, particularly combat infantry, which make up less than a third of the army. Therefore, those losses do more damage to the Army's ability to wage war than the numbers alone would suggest.

The army can concievably continue to operate with a larger percentage of its personnel transfered to the combat arms.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Watts, you're right. The number I used was just the dead, and doesn't include the vastly higher numbers of wounded.

However, that still serves to boost to my argument, as those wounded also come predominantly from the combat arms, which further degrades their units' fighting ability. And given that combat arms are such a minority of the Army's total numbers, to maintain troop levels we have to keep rotating combat formations back into Iraq, which does nothing good for fatigue or morale.

But still, it comes back to the relatively small number of actual combat troops among our army. Given their size, and that the vast majority of casualties will fall on them, each one represents a larger hit to the Army's fighting strength.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?