MG Rick Lynch to Americans:Quit Complaining

Ft. Stewart general says time to 'quit complaining' about Iraq

FORT STEWART, Ga.
The commanding general of the Army's Third Infantry Division says war-weary Americans should "quit complaining" and prepare themselves for the conflict to continue for years.As his troops head into a third combat tour in Iraq, Major General Rick Lynch spoke to reporters today at a news conference.

Lynch said it's not soldiers and their spouses who are complaining about the war, but rather people in outside the military.

More than four-thousand soldiers from the Fort Stewart division's First Brigade Combat Team deployed earlier this month to Kuwait and will soon begin moving into Iraq. The division of 19-thousand troops has already served two tours, including the 2003 invasion.

Two other brigades of the Third Infantry are scheduled to follow in March and May, their deployments accelerated by two to three months because of President Bush's plan to send 21-thousand, 500 additional U-S forces to Iraq.

Lynch cautioned that Americans shouldn't expect the troop surge to bring a quick resolution to the war. He said success in Iraq could take more than twice as long as the nearly four years American troops have already spent there. He said that historically it takes at least nine years to complete a counterinsurgency operation.

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