Most conspiracy theories are ignorance on parade. One group of kooks claims we never went to the moon. Another groups claims that we did but quit because we were scared off by aliens. There are countless conspiracy books about the Kennedy assassination, and others claiming that FDR knew about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in advance but let it happen to get America into the war. The list goes on and on. The levies were deliberately blown up in New Orleans. The WTC towers and the Pentagon were brought down by controlled detonations rather than by aircraft. Jeez.

Sometimes, there are only a small number of companies that are qualified to do particular work. Take what I do as an example (create UML OO enterprise architectures for the DoD). There aren't very many people on Earth that do architectures the way we do, and a high percentage of them work for my company. If you want an OO DoDAF EA, you'll likely need to come to us. Likewise, how many companies are qualified to do massive work rebuilding a country's oil infrastructure? The list is pretty short, and some of them that are from France just aren't going to get US tax dollars because they pissed us off.

I hear people talk about having too few servicemen in Iraq but most of them don't understand how the military has to operate over an extended duration. Back in 1990 when we were building up for the 1991 Gulf War, we sent about 500,000 servicemen and women over for the invasion. I think that number includes Coalition forces but I'm not sure at the moment. Back then, we had over 2 million on active duty (including me), but even then, it was a surge operation. The mission was to liberate Kuwait, a relatively short term operation, so maintaining a large presence wasn't needed. The war was over in a few weeks (the ground campaign lasted 100 hours) and most of the troops came home quickly.

This time, the military was over 25% smaller than it was in 1991 due to over 500,000 people being forced to separate (including me). We didn't have as many coalition partners going in this time, either. On top of that, the mission was much longer - to depose Saddam and to help establish a democratic government. They knew going in that this would be a long term commitment, one that couldn't be handled on a surge capability. So, they went in with approximately 150,000 troops. They quickly deposed Saddam but the mission was by no means over. It isn't over yet, but the elections this week should prove to be a major milestone. This isn't a sprint, it's more like an ultra marathon.

When you're talking about protracted operations, you have to provide some means to rotate the troops in and out of the theater of operations. Units are sent over for varying durations (the Army typically sends them for a year, I think the Marine tour of duty is 6 or 7 months). After they return, they need some time to rest, repair their equipment, and retrain for the next deployment. Typically, only about 1/3rd of the force is ready for deployment at any one time. This isn't exactly new - even in WWII, units were periodically rotated "off the line" for rest and recouperation. Only, back then, they stayed in the theater instead of coming back to the States.

Those who call for more troops can't answer the central question, "Where will we get those extra troops?" The military is stretched pretty thin right now. In addition to the roughly 140-150,000 troops in Iraq and there are still a lot of people in Afghanistan. There are tens of thousands of troops in Korea, Germany, Japan, and dozens of other countries. In addition, not all military occupation specalities are needed in Iraq. For example, there isn't much right now for anti-aircraft units and even heavy armor and artillery units are of relatively limited use. Today, the big personnel need is for basic infantry, military police, logistics and transportation (being a truck driver in Iraq is a very dangerous job given all of the IED attacks) and the like. While all Army soldiers are given core infantry training during Basic, many have been actively involved in other jobs for years. You can't just plug and play soldiers. You have to cross train them and get them up to a level where they'll be effective. That takes time and money. Likewise, some military occupational specialties were transferred to the Guard and Reserves because there isn't a lot of need for them during peacetime. The Guard and Reserves are picking up a lot of the load because their special skills are in high demand right now.