Quote Originally Posted by Ron Humphrey View Post
Do you think those who need to are going to get that or not?
in Viet Nam to get enough Civilians there, in Iraq it took about four (acknowledging there's still a shortfall), so we're getting better. As this LINK shows, this administration is at least trying to get on the stick. We'll see what the next few years bring.

One minor worry, to me, is the folks within DoD who will want to keep the job as military as they can for control (and comfort) purposes. That was a part of the problem in Viet Nam. In my view, that would be very short sighted; the Armed Forces must be able to handle the short term effort, no doubt -- but the long term will be better if mostly civilian. Seems a shame to train troops to fight wars and put them on non-warfighting tasks when it can be avoided. Fortunately, this time nothing else requiring Troop presence elsewhere intruded; I'm unsure that can be relied upon in the future.