Thompson optimistic on Iraq
Posted: Friday, November 16, 2007 4:00 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-TreworgyPENSACOLA, FL -- Overlooking the Gulf of Mexico on the newly completed Plaza De Luna here today,
Thompson was optimistic about the situation in Iraq, but said that America needs to rededicate itself to improving the military.
"I see a scenario now where we can indeed see our folks start coming home as a part of a success scenario not a defeat scenario, and that's what we're all looking for," Thompson said. He went on to talk about the Dowds and the Ledeens, two families with children serving in Iraq that he and his wife Jeri keep in touch with. Michael Ledeen is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor to National Review.
"One family's got two who have re-upped in Iraq, and the other family's got one who has and they come back, we get to talk to them once in a while, but mainly we talk to the parents," Thompson said. "They all know what they're doing. They're all committed. They all know that they're doing something for the safety and ultimate interest, freedom of their country. And now we see that that commitment…is rendering success."
Pointing to his friends' stories of confidence, Thompson reiterated his call for a drastic increase in standing troop levels to a "million member ground force" to assist the military currently engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Our people are stretched too thin," Thompson said. "Few people are being asked to do too much. Our equipment's wearing out. A lot of it's already worn out…It's going to cost some money, and it's going to rearrange, cause a rearrangement of our priorities if we do what's right. People say, 'Well, Thompson you're saying we ought to be prepared to spend up 4.5 percent of our budget on the military. Where are you going to get that money from?' The real question is why are we spending that other 95.5 percent? Is that right? What about the pork in that?"
Thompson has yet to specify how he would fund such a drastic troop increase if elected, but recently in New York he said that it would be a "gradual" process and may not be completed by the end of his first term.
Tonight, Thompson will travel to southern Florida to address the Florida Family Policy Council, a group started by James Dobson -- the same James Dobson who threw Thompson under the proverbial Christian conservative bus in an email leaked to the AP earlier this year.
