And hopefully this will be the last we ever hear of this silliness.

But don't you feel bad for the poor XO of the brigade in which this captain served? Poor guy... we bet he was pulling 24-hour duty for a good three days responding to requests for information from the U.S. Army Chief of Staff about his unit's readiness four years ago when he was off doing Lord only knows what in some other unit far far away from Fort Drum. Now the unit's readiness in 2003/2004 is suddenly his problem. Bless.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Gen. George Casey, the Army's chief of staff, said Tuesday he has no reason to doubt Barack Obama's recent account by an Army captain that a rifle platoon in Afghanistan didn't have enough soldiers or weapons.

But he questioned the assertion that the shortages prevented the troops from doing their job.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Casey said the incident would have occurred in 2003 and 2004 following the Iraq invasion. He said he remembers it as a ''difficult time'' trying to rush armor and other equipment to the troops.

''I have no reason to doubt what it is the captain said,'' Casey said. ''This was 2003 and 2004, almost four and a half years ago. We acknowledge and all worked together to correct the deficiencies that we saw in that period, not only in Afghanistan but in Iraq. It was a period that we worked our way through.''

[snip]

Casey said the Army has purposefully not tried to seek out the captain individually. But he did contact the platoon's brigade commander, which belonged to the 10th Mountain Division, and reviewed the division's readiness reports.