unfortunately. okay. i don t think anybody in washington will volunteer to go sit next to him. you may not be targeting. but i don t think if he sold the chair next to him he d get a lot for us. do you think the u.s. government should have informed more? i would have informed more. if it was as limited as i had hoped it would be, they clearly should have been telling everybody, you sometimes can t have consultation because you don t want to tip your hand. i don t think gadhafi was unaware this was coming. apparently, again, i was more favorable yesterday when i was asked by the boston globe than apparently i should have been. i assumed there was consultation, now hear that there wasn t. i just read last night in new york, i hear new jersey national guard is being mobilized. i don t understand what the new jersey national guard is going to be doing anywhere close to libya. let s move from libya to wall
committee on capitol hill, complaining about how the troops were stretched. how troop rotations were terrible, especially for men and women of the army. because 200,000 people basically taken out of the armed services in the early 1990s. we re fighting a war in afghanistan. we re fighting a war in iraq. we re now engaging in libya. how much longer can the united states continue to ask what it asks of its men and women in uniform? well, joe, you ask a fundamental question. you know, a strategy is a conceptual architecture matched by the resources to wary it out. and clearly right now, we ve got some aspects of the military, air force lift assets. especially operations units army and marine light infantry forces that are on their fourth, fifth, sixth combat tours. we ve had 48,000 killed and wounded. we spent a trillion dollars on these wars. it s tough.
the united states and other countries rely on will ab effected. the japanese brand internationally will ab effected in agriculture and all sorts of things. the japanese government still extraordinarily weak in dealing with this crisis hasn t figured this all out. what s the third story driving the week. it s ground zero for the double standard in our foreign policy. bahrain. i think this is the biggest challenge right now. even with the air war in libya, what s going on in bahrain where the saudis are participating, a repressed minority is asking for political rights. and the united states because of the strategic importance of the basis there is not engaged in an air war to try to liberate the people of bahrain to say the least. instead are quietly urging the government to not crack down. but they are and this is where all these factors come into place, stability versus freedom. the potential influence of the iranians. certainly we re just not
i m not suggesting that. there are a lot of people who don t have anybody in the military, don t know anybody in the military that, again, as colin powell said in the 1990s, look upon our armed forces as toy soldiers that they can move strategically across a map to make themselves feel better. when we can t cure all of the world s ill, so now our troops are stretched in iraq. our troops are stretched in afghanistan. now our troops are going into libya. the rotations, the troop row takings over the past 15 years, even before bush came in, even before bush came in, have been horrific. because there are politicians in washington, d.c. whose first instinct is to always go in. always ask for sacrifice for our men and women in uniform. always do it to feel good about themselves or to forward their own political agenda. it is our soldiers who have been suffering for 15 years and people i don t care whether it s on the left with samantha
we got the smallest navy in our history darn near now. having said that, look, libya is not exactly taking on the veramox. what we ve done so far is pretty effectively done. general mccaffrey on that note. thank you very much. andrea, thank you. andrea has a show at 1:00. andrea, can you stay? sure. one-year anniversary of the health care bill is coming up. we ll be joined by robert menendez and john barrasso to talk about what s next. first, reverend al sharpton is standing by in our green room. there s roger bennett. roger! keep it right here on morning joe. [ folk pop ]