Word: iraq
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Shinseki has avoided the public eye since retiring five years ago. One month before the Iraq War began, he testified before Congress that several hundred thousand soldiers would be needed to secure Iraq after the U.S. invasion, far more than the Administration had said were needed. He supported the military tradition of preparing for the worst, deploying more troops than might be necessary and then bringing the surplus home. He accurately predicted that ethnic tensions would trigger violence in Iraq and require significant ground forces to contain. The war ultimately required a "surge" of 30,000 additional troops beginning...
President-elect Barack Obama has chosen retired General Eric Shinseki, who voiced the first, lone dissent of the Bush Administration's cut-rate plan for the Iraq war, to head the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The move shows Obama's deep concern for the needs of wounded veterans. More poignantly, it marks a comeback for an Army officer who was spurned by his superiors, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, for warning that the war's post-invasion phase would require many more troops than the Pentagon believed...
...praise for Shinseki, 66, needs to be calibrated. While he believed that more troops were needed in post-invasion Iraq, he didn't believe it strongly enough to lay down his four stars and resign. His supporters tend to overlook just how meek his public challenge to Rumsfeld was. He never volunteered it. Senator Carl Levin had to extract it from him, slowly and painfully, during a Senate hearing. That's when, in February 2003, Shinseki said he felt that "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed. Forty-eight hours later, it was the derisive...
...stress disorder among vets is now costing the VA $4 billion a year, which includes a hiring spike in mental-health professionals, from 13,000 two years ago to 17,000 today. And the VA's caseload is rising with the burdens of the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: Close to one million military personnel who have served in those countries have shed their uniforms, and about a third of that total have visited the VA for care or benefits...
...encouraged by the new Administration [vis a vis Afghanistan]? You have to be. Absolutely I'm encouraged. Afghanistan has been in the shadow of the Iraq war for a number of years. But I don't envy Mr. Obama his task in Afghanistan. The scale of the conflict has changed, and there's going to be no quick fix, no quick solution. I think we have to accept that we're going to be engaged there long-term. What long-term means, I don't know, but certainly years and possibly a decade...