Maybe the time has come for the president to give George Lucas a call. It seems the United States has tried just about everything to increase its military manpower, short of commissioning Industrial Light & Magic to create some more troops using CGI.

An article on www.indybay.org, titled “US Soldiers Forced Into Service By The Military: The Unofficial Draft,” lists several actions our military has taken in hopes of plumping up its forces. The article does not mention the military’s more amusing offers to help recruits get a career in the music industry or pay for their breast implants, but it does note the recent advent of the stop-loss order, Individual Ready Reserve, and the latest claims by currently serving U.S. soldiers that they are being coerced to re-enlist.

According to the Global Security website, we currently have over 100,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq. The Friends Committee on National Legislation states:

“In November 2003, a Congressional Budget Office analysis indicated that ‘the active Army would be unable to sustain an occupation force of the present size [150,000] beyond about March 2004, if it chose not to keep individual units deployed to Iraq for longer than one year without relief — an assumption consistent with the Department of Defense’s (DOD) current planning.’”

The FCNL website indicates the discrepancy between the claims government officials are making about the feasibility of continuing the American occupation of Iraq with a minimal number of troops and the reality that American troops who are preparing to come home will be increasingly difficult to replace.

How, and from where, are the extra soldiers going to come?