| WASHINGTON - A Democratic congressman's remarks about the military are damaging to troop morale and to the Army's efforts to rebound from a recruiting slump, the nation's top general said Thursday.
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked at a Pentagon news conference to comment on remarks by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a Marine Corps veteran who has become a leading voice in Congress advocating an early withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Pace was asked specifically about an ABC News interview this week in which Murtha, 73, said if he were eligible to join the military today he would not, nor would he expect others to join. "That's damaging to recruiting," Pace said. "It's damaging to morale of the troops who are deployed, and it's damaging to the morale of their families who believe in what they are doing to serve this country." |
Methinks Pace needs to listen to what Murtha is saying more closely:
| In a statement released Thursday, Murtha said: "The military had no problem recruiting directly after 9/11 because everyone understood that we had been attacked. But now the military's ability to attract recruits is being hampered by the prospect of prolonged, extended and repeated deployments; inadequate equipment; shortened home stays; the lack of any connection between Iraq and the brutal attacks of 9/11; and - most importantly - the administration's constantly changing, undefined, open-ended military mission in Iraq.
"I didn't have concerns like these when I enlisted in the Marines during the Korean War or volunteered to go to Vietnam," Murtha said. |
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