Bury Me Broken

Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at Center for American Progress, explains why it is impossible for us to maintain present troop levels in Iraq.

From Newsday:

"The primary reason for the statements and Rumsfeld's silence is that even if we wanted to keep about 140,000 ground troops in Iraq through 2006, we cannot do so without breaking the all-volunteer Army.
[snip]

If Iraq were a war of necessity, the U.S. would simply send sufficient ground forces there for the duration. But, since it is a war of choice, fought by volunteers, the active-duty soldiers spend a year in Iraq and at least a year at home before going back.

And the Army does not want to order a soldier to be sent back a third time. By the end of this year, nearly every active-duty soldier will have spent at least two tours in Iraq.

Moreover, since the active-duty Army was too small to implement effectively Bush's preventive war in Iraq, the administration has had to rely unduly on the National Guard and Reserves. Part-time soldiers make up about 40% of the troops in Iraq. In order to keep so many reservists there, the Pentagon has had to violate its norm of not mobilizing reservists for more than one year out of five."

With this in mind, the situation with Iran is very simple. The president saying all options are on the table including military options is impossible because we don't have the troop levels for any type of offensive in Iran and after having gone it alone (Azerbajan does not a coalition make) in Iraq, the world is hardly ready to jump in line for another offensive against another Middle Eastern nation with no credible threat.

posted by niteskolar @ 11:18 PM