Where have all the soldiers gone…

…long time passing.

When you hear about Petraeus planning troop reductions in the spring, it's not because he doesn't want them, it's because we don't have them.

The Army's 38 available combat units are deployed, just returning home or already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, leaving no fresh troops to replace five extra brigades that President Bush sent to Baghdad this year, according to interviews and military documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

I know it's heresy to some, but it may be that Bush and Rummy and their gaggle of trained Generalsn (most of the actual leaders are long gone) have broken their heralded all-mercenary volunteer military to the point where only a returned to the much maligned conscript Army of yore will save the Army at all.

I hate what they've done to my Army (which had an abundance of honorable, and sometimes heroic, conscripted soldiers).

A snappy salute to Fixer.