i m veronica de la cruz. a short time ago, president obama spoke in phoenix, arizona, as part of a three-day swing through five battleground states. he reiterated some of the themes in his state of the union speech like creating jobs for the long term and reviving america s manufacturing base. he pointed to the comeback of general motors saying what happened in detroit can happen elsewhere. punishing rains and winds battled central texas earlier. trees and power lines were down in the area which also saw massive flooding. roofs were ripped right off of houses. at least three tornadoes reported. and the u.s. army is reportedly planning to cut the number of combat brigades to as few as 32. according to the associated press, it s part of a strategy aimed at cutting costs and the overall size of the service by about 80,000 troops. the pentagon s 2013 budget is expected to include $260 billion in cuts over the next five
malle i cm maliki administration from permitting u.s. soldiers to stay. what about the factor of iran and what it can do? well i think one thing we ve shown over the past months is exactly that. we don t necessarily need five and six or ten brigades to be able to impact how things are working, when you look at particularly how things happened with the arab spring, when you look at some of the targeted hits that have been made over the past six months. i think the united states and the coalition forces have been very clear, that they re able to push forward a support policy without necessarily bringing in a large footprint. secretary cohen makes an absolutely, you know, spot-on point, where he s saying ideally we would like to have soldiers that could continue to take on some type of presence but the fact remains is that since august of 2010, we have not had technical combat operations going on in iraq, so the fact that we ve had anywhere from the equivalent to six to ten combat briga
camera. not me, this. a massive cliff along the coast of england is no longer. oh, my god! bill: there was one. this video captured by geologists serving the site. the city officials able to close the path before anyone got hurt. they are a-okay. martha: all right. well, a top army commander is warning that spending cuts could cause the military to cut back on combat brigades. general ray odierno says $450 billion in cuts will have a severe effect, he believes, on our troops in iraq and afghanistan. so let s talk about that, what the ramifications might be, a retired four-star general and a fox news military analyst, very impressive titles, and we re
very happy that you made time for us today, general. good to see you. it s good to see you, martha. good morning. martha: obviously, there s cuts across the board, and the military has to, basically, cut $350 billion over the next ten years. do you agree that it s impossible to do that without some of that coming from these combat brigades? well, the intent is to cut some force structure out of the army. the challenge we have, martha, is that the army already is too small. that is the reason why there s been so much stress and strain on our forces by these continual rotations. we would not have had to send our troops as frequently if we had a larger army coping with the longest war in our history. martha: how do you change that situation? how do you get a bigger army and find ways to cut the budget overall? first of all, general odierno will not be able to grow the army, that argument will not hold. he ll have to fight to keep the army at its current size and not have it diminish
good to have you back with us here on the ed show. when president obama took office in 2009 he doubled, he doubled the number of american combat brigades in afghanistan. later that year he announced a surge of 30,000 additional u.s. troops with the condition that they begin to withdraw in july of 2011. with his own deadline just a month away, president obama will address the nation tomorrow night to announce a draw down that is expected to bring 5,000 troops home tomorrow andรง 5,00 troops home by the end of next spring. also according to senior u.s. defense officials the president is also considering recalling an additional 20,000 troops by late 2012 or early 2013. the top u.s. commander in