Coming to a community near you. From CNN: Bush: ‘We do need to increase our troops’

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush asked his new secretary of defense to draw up plans to increase the overall size of the Army and the Marines, according to an interview with the president published Tuesday in the Washington Post.

“I’m inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops — the Army, the Marines,” Bush said. “And I talked about this to Secretary Gates and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea.”

Hmm, thought I felt a draft there for a moment. I can see the signing ceremony now, the president surrounded by his junta and idiot congressman Charlie Rangel selling the young men of his constituency down the Tigris and Euphrates. His excuse – it’s ok as long as the rich die too.

Here’s an idea, pull the troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and South Korea. We’ll be overstaffed then. You’ll have to cut back.

Senior administration officials said the timing of the president’s comments is connected with Washington’s oncoming budget season, and that the president intends for such plans to be part of the fiscal 2008 budget.

But the comments also come amid increasing warnings from officials and experts that the U.S. military is stretched too thin to cope with the stresses of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The draft will be his greatest gift to the American people —“ that along with…

“It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we’re in is going to last for a while, and that we’re going to need a military that’s capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace,” Bush told the Post…

Ah yes, the ideological war, the one where the increased troop levels will helpfully assert and sustain the priorities of the Administration during the canceled elections.

Sustaining our efforts? And whose would those be? I’m thinking that the vast majority of Americans now disagree with your ideological war Mr. Bush, you know, the war where you’re silencing critics like Flynt Leverett (also here and here).

As for peace:

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid.