Army Capt. Jeanne Hull put in her walking papers after 10 months in Bosnia and logging back-to-back stints in Mosul and Baghdad that ran two years.
Tired of war and ready for something new, the West Point graduate set her sights on graduate school. She wasn’t alone.
“A lot a lot of my classmates, if they are not out already, a lot of them want to get out,” said Hull, 27, of Colorado Springs, Colo.
The Army expects to be short 2,500 captains and majors this year, with the number rising to 3,300 in 2007. These officers are the Army’s seed corn, the people who 10 years from now should be leading battalions and brigades.
“We’re ruining an Army that took us 30 years to build,” Republican maverick Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told a group of reporters at a recent conference.
Gee, ya think, Chuckie boy? Ruining our Army? What a surprise. By the way, Chuck, just how have you voted recently? Supported President Bush lock, stock and barrel, have you? Sorry then. You don’t get to qualify as a maverick.
I don’t know, I think Hagel can qualify as a maverick without turning against Bush, but he has to actually attempt to solve the problems he sees instead of bitching about them like someone else is to blame (without even naming Bush, Rumsfeld and company; I’m sure this is somehow the fault of powerless Democrats just like every other problem in Washington).
Hagel is partially at fault along with every other member of Congress for the disintegrating state of our military. Don’t pretend like someone else peed in your sandbox while you weren’t looking, accept your share of the blame and propose a workable solution.