We need a bigger army

That's the drum that Tacitus has been beating.

Here's more evidence that he's right:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon may be forced within several weeks to alert a large number of additional National Guard and Reserve troops for duty in Iraq, a senior general said Wednesday.

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more reservists could be called upon if other countries do not soon pledge thousands more troops to form a third multinational division in Iraq.

"We need to be making decisions about alerting reservists over the next four to six weeks," he said. "I would think that by around the end of October or the beginning of November we should be alerting those forces that may need to be called up to relieve or be prepared to relieve (troops there now) if we don't have specificity by then on a third" multinational division.

He said the Guard and Reserve troops should be notified about four months before they would need to ship out because they require some training time.

There's a fair chance that we're going to have to have a large troop level for foreign deployments for the foreseeable future. We can't keep doing it with reservists and the Guard indefinitely.