"This letter," one senior officer told me, "can be summed up as saying, 'Throw more money and bodies at the problem,' period. It addresses nothing that's really causing problems and has to be addressed to be fixed. And I love the line about 'insist[ing] that we act responsibly to create the military we need to fight the war on terror and fulfill our other responsibilities around the world.' These are the last people I'd look to to do that. I seem to recall these were the folks talking about the future of war being high-tech planes and weapons. Nice that they finally remembered the importance of the soldier, but too late."

Beyond the letter's lack of attention to detail, others in military policy circles note that it stands as something of a monument to the notion that Democrats as well as Republicans should effectively reward the Bush Administration for poor planning on Iraq and poor stewardship of the military.