Matt Ortega

President Bush plans to expand the size of the military, the Washington Post reports. No specifics on numbers were discussed but the president acknowledged that the U.S. military is heavily strained.

President Bush said today that he plans to expand the size of the U.S. military to meet the challenges of a long-term global war against terrorists, a response to warnings that sustained deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the armed forces to near the breaking point.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Bush said he has instructed newly sworn-in Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to report back to him with a plan to increase ground forces. The president gave no estimates about how many troops may be added but indicated that he agreed with suggestions in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill that the current military is stretched too thin to cope with the demands placed on it.

There is Democratic support on the Hill for an expansion of the military.

The incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee spoke out forcefully today for increasing the size of the Army and Marines, noting that their leaders describe the services as “stretched and strained.” “We’re going to have to pay attention to this,” Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) told reporters. Saying the two services are “bleeding,” he added, “I think we have to apply the tourniquet and strengthen the forces. I think that will be a major part of our work.”

However, President Bush contines to be in a state of denial.

… Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that “the active Army is about broken.”

[…]

Asked about Powell’s assessment, Bush chose a different term. “I haven’t heard the word ‘broken,’ ” he said, “but I’ve heard the word, ’stressed.’ . . . We need to reset our military. There’s no question the military has been used a lot.

It seems that Americans can add Sunday morning talk shows to the list of things President Bush doesn’t do.
President Bush is committing the same errors that exacerbated the extremist threat, as outlined in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that said Iraq was a “cause célèbre.”

Updated 12/19/06 at 5:52pm: Atrios reminds us that co-chairman to the Iraq Study Group (and 9/11 Commission) Lee Hamilton said that the “next three months [in Iraq] are critical.”

The next three months are critical. Before the end of this year, this government needs to show progress in securing Baghdad, pursuing national reconciliation and delivering basic services.

That was three months ago. And Atrios astutely asks:

But, unsurprisingly, those things haven’t happened. So now what?

“Now what?” indeed.