I can’t believe I’ve missed this for over a week. From Conn. Senator Joe Lieberman’s office:

Congress, to the officials of the Bush Administration, and to all Americans to build support for an increase in the size of our army by an additional 80,000 soldiers over the next four years to an end strength of 582, 400. That is what the “United States Army Relief Act of 2005” will do. We take this action because:

We believe that the current pace of troop deployments to Iraq requires too much of the men and women of our Army. Too many of them have been sent there too often and stayed too long and that has had an undesirable affect on their families, their communities, and the capacity of the Army to meet recruitment goals.

We believe that greater Army end strength will give our war fighting commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq the capability they need to surge the number of troops on the ground there if facts on the ground require that.

We are concerned that if other crises occur elsewhere in the world in the years ahead we won’t have the appropriately sized Army trained and ready to go there to deal with these other crises.

And we are concerned that too much of the experienced institutional Army, that part that raises, trains, and supports the combat forces, is being reduced to make up for this combat troop shortage, depriving today’s soldiers of the highest level of training and education and support, and threatening to deprive tomorrow’s soldiers –including particularly tomorrow’s officers–of the knowledge and experience they will need to fight the wars of the future.

Indeed.