There was consensus on increasing the size of Army and USMC

Rowan Scarborough:

President Bush only acceded to a jump in the number of U.S. Army and Marine Corps ground troops after intense pressure from senior officers, active and retired, including the Joint Chiefs, defense sources said.
Mr. Bush, who announced Wednesday that he will increase an active force that now stands at 1.4 million personnel, this month heard about the stressed Army and Marines Corps from a group of retired officers at the Pentagon.
But the deal-clincher came when he traveled to the Pentagon and met with the six-member Joint Chiefs inside the super-secret "tank."
There, the commander in chief listened to a request for more combat forces from Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, and Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, said defense sources briefed on the meeting.
The Army, with a little more than 500,000 active soldiers, is pulling the brunt of the war on terror both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Army combat brigade teams only receive about a 13-month home-base stay before deploying again. What's more, the Army is fast wearing out its inventory of armored vehicles and weapons and needs replacements fast, Gen. Schoomaker has said.
The Marines, who patrol the al Qaeda-infested al Anbar province, west of Baghdad, send 1st and 2nd expeditionary forces on seven-month rotations. Marine officers have complained of insufficient troop numbers to control the Sunni Muslim province.
The messages on a larger armed forces, but not necessarily a troop increase for Iraq, came in rapid succession earlier this month. On Dec. 11, Mr. Bush welcomed to the White House two outside military analysts and three retired officers, including former Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a critic of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Gen. McCaffrey said in a previous interview that the Army should be increased by 80,000 soldiers.
"We have inadequate Army and Marine Corps combat power to sustain this level of deployment," said Gen. McCaffrey, who led the 24th Infantry Division in Desert Storm.
Two days after he met with the retired generals, Mr. Bush went to the Pentagon and later called the discussion "candid." A day later, Gen. Schoomaker told a blue-ribbon commission on the Guard and Reserve that the Army "will break" unless the active force is bumped up. He suggested 6,000 more soldiers per year.
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This is a change that Rumsfeld had resisted as too costly in the long run, but the cost to current operations was also adding up. I think he resisted too long. The fact is that the Clinton cuts in military strength were a huge mistake and we should have started rebuilding the arms forces in 2001.