yetanotherjohn - Clinton had 8 years to shrink the military and Bush has had 8 years to build it back up - and Bush has barely expanded the military - that shot at Clinton is getting old - besides didn't the Repubs own Congress most of that time?

Perhaps you've not heard; There's a war on.

One additional point (I'm working on a post on this subject): on a per soldier basis it costs about three times for us to keep a soldier in Afghanistan than it does in Iraq. That says nothing whatever of the value of doing either. The key point is that, not only will we not “bring out soldiers home” by moving them to Afghanistan, we'll spend a lot more money, too.

There are several places where one can find where all the $ in DOD budget goes. Single largest portion goes into pay with R&D for & buying of weapons the next big slice. There is also a large portion for facilities as we are moving over 50,000 troops from Europe and Korea into US (thus Army needs $ for barracks, ranges, etc). The money sent to Iraq is not from DOD budget but from a specific supplemental budget. And that DOD budget represents 3.5% of GDP which is down to pre-WWII levels.

13 brigades in Iraq, 2 in Afghanistan.

But why can't the global response force, homeland defense, Ft. Riley trainers not be manned by those in their "rotation period" (I can understand on Korea as it is considered a hard ship post and family can't be there). Those three brigades count for about 12,000 (16,000 if you included Korea). So allowing for leave, equipment refit, handing over assignments, etc. It would seem that it would not be flat impossible to find another 7,000 troops. Difficult, yes, but not impossible.

Also, remember that under Clinton, the US military was reduced by about 450,000. If the cuts hadn't been so deep, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

All the other Army brigades are either between deployments or in their 12-month downtime periods, having fulfilled their 12-to-15-month deployment tours.

That there is the answer to "how can we do it?" If something big happens, or McCain (or possibly Clinton) gets elected, expect to see those downtime periods get stepped into and those deployment tours kicked back up into the 15-18 month range.

It's not that we _can't_ do it, but how long we can do it for before our military collapses.

Meanwhile, the surge in America continues. The surge in gas prices, health care costs, food costs, cuts in public services, education... and so on.

FWIW, the US spending more on its military than all the other countries in the world combined is probably a good thing, even if it is an apples to oranges comparison. US $1B goes a lot father in say, Paraguay than it does in the US.