President Bush at his press conference:
Q: Do you
feel, as you are confronting these problems, the number of troops
you’ve left tied up in Iraq is limiting your options to go beyond the
diplomatic solutions that you described for North Korea and Iran?THE PRESIDENT: No, I appreciate that question. The person to ask
that to, the person I ask that to, at least, is to the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, my top military advisor. I say, do you feel that we’ve
limited our capacity to deal with other problems because of our troop
levels in Iraq? And the answer is, no, he doesn’t feel we’re limited.
He feels like we’ve got plenty of capacity.
In the report, General Myers wrote, the military faces “moderate” risk in its mission to protect the United States, and he assessed the risk for preventing conflict – including surprise attack – as “moderate, but trending toward significant.” The annual “Chairman’s Risk Assessment,” which is required by Congress, warned that additional major combat operations “may result in significantly extended campaign timelines, and achieving campaign objectives may result in higher casualties and collateral damage.” That sounds like we’re limited to me — by definition, higher casualties and collateral damage limit the options of policymakers. Sure, we would eventually still win, but that’s a stupid definition. The point is that certain actions might not be undertaken that would have been if we weren’t so heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, Pentagon flunkies
Late Monday, a Pentagon official dismissed any serious contradiction between the president and the general. “The two comments are consistent in that no one in the military feels at all limited in the ability to respond to any contingency,” the official said. “What the risk assessment discusses is the nature of the response.” Another Pentagon official emphasized that the risk assessment should be understood as a rating of the military’s ability to successfully perform its mission based on a set of standards set by the Joint Staff, which is different from the broad statement of military capability given by the president at his news conference.
Though the general wrote that the military forces “will succeed in any” major combat operation, he added that “they may be unable to meet expectations for speed or precision as detailed in our current plans.”