[GAsux]

Sorry I'm not all about quoting and what not because then posts become 20 times longer than necessary. I know what I said. People who read what I said know it also so you don't need to state it back to me.

I'm not sure why you started by explaining how stop loss works to me. I'm well aware of it. I'm still active duty. I know how the process works. And I agreed. Stop loss sucks donkey dicks. It has a negative impact on morale and recruiting and retention in the long run. Agreed. That's done.

My point was, the blame here does not necessarily rest solely on the shoulders of the administration. Your assertion that those in command who did request more troops were merely stifled by the service chiefs is heresey that you cannot defend in my opinion. It may or may not be the case but proving it is impossible.

As for end strength, how can you say that's not a factor? If Congress approved higher end strength numbers, forces would not be subject to such long deployments because they could better rotate units in and out. If I'm not mistaken there are currently roughly int he nieghborhood of about 250,000 in the region now, which is not far from the GW1 number. Regardless, you cannot add anouther 100,000 to the region without significantly boosting end strength numbers.

Those bodies have to come from somewhere. That's my point. Without an authorization of a larger military force overall. Stop loss is not happening because there aren't enough troops on the ground in Iraq. It's happening because there aren't enough troops across the board to distribute the load. The President has made the decision to commit troops in more places. Congress needs to make the decision to fund more troops. Its that simple.