Don't Mess With Galloways

We all remember George Galloway's glorious showdown with the US Senate. Well, now comes this slugfest with Joe Galloway - no relation, I assume - and outgoing DoD press spinner Larry DiRita. Some condensed excerpts:

Di Rita: Anyway, I think your columns have been representative of a school of thought within military circles that I don't believe is particularly widespread. The army is so much more capable and suitable for the nation's needs that it was 5 or 10 years ago. [???!!!] To my mind, the voices your columns represent missed the forest for the trees.

Galloway: the army you describe as "so much more capable" than it was 5 or 10 years ago is, in fact, very nearly broken. another three years of the careful attention of your boss ought to just about finish it off. this is not the word from your anonymous officers; this is from my own observations in the field in iraq and at home on our bases and in the military schools and colleges.... you can sit there all day telling me that pigs can fly, with or without lipstick, and i am not going to believe it.

DiRita: Time will tell. The army is faster, more agile, more deployable, more lethals. At least that's what schoomaker thinks. The army of 2000 could not have sustained rotational deployments indefinitely.

Galloway: my response: neither can the army of 2003 or the army of 2005 or 2006. it is grinding up the equipment and the troops inexorably.