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Wow. If General Cody is representative of the quality, insight, and intellect of our military leadership, then we are DOOMED!

wait, did you really let him off the hook by saying vets can go Walter Reed??? a Washington Post investigation would beg to differ. you lost a golden opportunity to ask him about that.

Hey Brian, softball season is over! 19, 19, and 20 year-olds are not mature enough to join the military any more than they are mature enough to drink. Who over-25 can not agree they are "kids"-- you hear it all the time and no one bats an eyelash. Ergo they are certainly not mature enough to "volunteer" their liberty and becoming unwitting pawns in undeclared wars... when they do so they wield far bigger influence on policy than any fully adult citizen has with his or her vote. When one loses a leg, an arm, an eye, a life... I see equal part tragic hero and equal part victim of child abuse. What else can you call it when a de facto minor* who's barely been kissed falls prey to a high fructose heavy metal marketing campaign? No one should be allowed to sign their liberty away and make a full military commitment until they are fully mature in the eyes of the law and society, which is the age of twenty-one. (*Not mature enough to drink alcohol or rent a car, as two glaring examples.)

Urgent - RE: Limited Availability of troops?Don't we have 100s of thousands of troops stationed in relatively more peaceful Japan, Korea and Germany? Why cannot some of these troops be sent to Iraq so we have less need to send National Guard and Reserve?

General Cody says the army is growing 8,000 per year? Franklin Roosevelt put 10 million people in the army in 18 months! Guess what, we won that war. This war was lost for many reasons, including having 1/3 the nunmber of troops we needed

OMG. He thinks the Iraqis are free of a tyrant, when more have died & been displaced in 4 years of U.S. occupation than in over 40 years of Baathist rule. Guess he never talks to any Iraqis.

I think in this country, we've warped the image of the soldier so drastically as to make it a worthless comparison to reality. Some have idealized them and others have demonized them.

I have many friends and acquaintances who have joined the Army and the Marines, and some are good guys, at least one of them (not a friend obviously) tortured animals in high school and joined the Marines so he could kill some "towelheads". All of them however joined because they felt lost and confused in their own lives and saw these people in these military commercials who seemed to have it together. None joined to sacrifice for their country.

I am confused. The General keeps referring to the "all volunteer army". Aren't all of the "soldiers" paid. Are they not employees of the US military? Can he address how this affects the performance and/or dedication of the "troops".

Can this general be any more vapid?

If the General graduated West Point in 1972, why did he not go to Viet Nam? At what level did he experience combat? Is he more than an Army politician?

Growing the military???? Huh??? With criminals & high school dropouts if what I read is accurate.

Sorry to be churlish on veterans day, but I don't see how the military can be proud of their service. After all the most powerful country in the world is tied up like Gulliver in Lilliput, defeated by a bunch of little insurgents.

Another irony. The fact that the wars consume so little of national income & people makes it much easier for policy makers to get the country into ill-concdeived wars.

Two points of interest:

1. I heard a Stanford history prof say that if Vietnam era medicine were still in use in Iraq, there would be 20,000 dead. Deaths have the power to focus attention on the war, which long-term disabilities do not. Irony?

2. The most appropriate way to commemorate Veteran's Day is to make a donation to your nearest homeless shelter. Vets comprise about a tenth of the general population by over a quarter of the homeless.