[af_vet_rr]

I thought it was congress that determined the size of the military. Certainly they control the appropriations for it.

Apologies for the late response, lost the thread in the shuffle. You are correct, only Congress can handle the appropriations for a larger military. However, Congress has made it clear they do so only at the recommendation of the Commander in Chief. He did not push for an increase in the size of the military, even though members of Congress made it clear they would have supported him on the issue and supported raising the caps (in fact I believe McCain was a very vocal supporter of this). It was very clear we were about to enter a war that was going to take a long time to fight and that after all of the cuts made with the first Bush and then Clinton, we were needing a lot more people. Instead, Bush has relied on stop-loss and on the IRR and on the active National Guard and Reserve components. That can only take us so far (and it has).

[prairiebreeze]

I’m wondering if Rumsfeld’s input carried quite a lot of weight during that time. I still have a lot of respect for Rumsfeld although he clearly made the wrong decision about the troops surge.

Perhaps he listened to poor advice from inside the Pentagon, I don’t know.