Big news! The preznit announced the troop surge that everyone has known was coming for 3 or 4 months. The more cynical among us might think that the delay was some sort of stall tactic. Of course those same cynics probably believe that the surge itself is a stall to get dubya through the last 2 years of his presidency without having to learn any new speeches, but they're just a bunch of h8rz.

And lo and behold, it's a twofer. At a press conference this morning, Robert Gates, our new Secretary of Defense revealed the numbers for dubya's planned increase in overall troop strength. He wants to add 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines. That's 92,000 more troops that our military doesn't need. Here's the money quote:

The emphasis will be on increasing combat capability," Gates said.

Okay, I was never a big fan of Gates' predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld (gasp), but if there is one thing that dried-up, diabolically evil, nasty old bastard did right, it was the reduction in size of our military. Rumsfeld's "vision" was of a smaller, lighter, faster military possessing advanced technological expertise. The idea was to move away from a boots on the ground mentality and instead rely on vastly superior firepower. It was a very effective approach (see the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions) and as a bonus it reduced our casualties during any conflict. To me, an increase in overall troop levels signals the intention of our military leaders to reverse course on the Rumsfeld Doctrine. They apparently see a future of more missions like our current fiasco in Iraq. I see a lot more dead soldiers.