Pentagon Report Says Army at the Breaking Point

Posted on January 26, 2006

A report ordered by the Pentagon concludes that the Army can't keep up the demand for troops in sufficient numbers in order to defeat the Iraqi insurgency. The report was written by Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer. Krepinevich says that the decision to start drawing down troops is a direct result of a realization that the Army simply doesn't have the manpower to win in Iraq.

As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump � missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 � and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.
"You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview. He added that the Army is still a highly effective fighting force and is implementing a plan that will expand the number of combat brigades available for rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 136-page report represents a more sobering picture of the Army's condition than military officials offer in public. While not released publicly, a copy of the report was provided in response to an Associated Press inquiry. Illustrating his level of concern about strain on the Army, Krepinevich titled one of his report's chapters, "The Thin Green Line." He wrote that the Army is "in a race against time" to adjust to the demands of war "or risk 'breaking' the force in the form of a catastrophic decline" in recruitment and re-enlistment.
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Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam veteran, created a political storm last fall when he called for an early exit from Iraq, arguing that the Army was "broken, worn out" and fueling the insurgency by its mere presence. Administration officials have hotly contested that view.
George Joulwan, a retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander, agrees the Army is stretched thin. "Whether they're broken or not, I think I would say if we don't change the way we're doing business, they're in danger of being fractured and broken, and I would agree with that," Joulwan told CNN last month.

Rumsfeld, as usual, denied that the Army is having trouble meeting its recruitment goals and denied that the armed forces are having any trouble with troop morale or burnout.

One has to wonder how this would have played out had President Bush listened to Colin Powell and followed the Powell Doctrine. If he had, we would have gone in with overwhelming force with at least five times as many troops as we originally sent in. We would have secured the power stations, museums and ammo dumps. We would not have allowed looting. We would not have disbanded the Iraqi army, leaving thousands of angry young men jobless and open to the promises of violent leaders. Would things be different on the ground in Iraq today? We'll never know, of course, but one has to wonder.

Now if President Bush had just listened to his Daddy and not gone into Iraq at all, we know that things would be different today. For one thing, we wouldn't be running the biggest deficit in American history.