| Posted by fluffy ® , Sep 17,2003,11:01 | MetroBlab |
WASHINGTON - "Are we stretched too thin?" Time magazine thunderously asked on a recent front cover. "U.S. forces are straining to meet missions in Iraq, Pentagon officials tell Congress," according to a headline a few days later in The New York Times. Imperial overstretch is here.
It did not take long.
Only two years after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks of Sept., 11, 2001, and less than half a year after the U.S. Army and Marines carried off a lightning three-week conquest of Iraq with virtually zero casualties, the U.S. global military deployment is stretched dangerously thin, with dire potential consequences if a second full-scale conflict with a rogue nation such as North Korea should erupt.
Senior military officials and political figures openly admit that the U.S. Army Reserve and National Guard are seriously overworked. Senior Army officers are reported in the media as expressing concern that the massive strain of "overstretch" and rapid rotation into low-morale combat zones with escalating casualties might rapidly lead to a massive exodus of experienced veterans especially non-commissioned officers, the backbone of the superb, all-professional force.
A glance at U.S. global deployments makes clear where the "big, black hole" in U.S. global military over-stretch is: It is in Iraq.
Currently the conflict sucks up 161,500 U.S. troops, including 8,000 National Guardsmen -- and women -- and 12,000 Army Reservists. Excluding the Reservists and National Guard volunteers, that means 140,000 regular Army troops are still bogged down in Iraq, a nation of 25 million people, and Kuwait. That is a full 20 percent of the entire manpower of the U.S. Army.
Yet even with that relatively massive force there, the Army is critically undermanned for the job of maintaining security and rebuilding civic society in Iraq, as virtually all experts who are not government spokesmen agree.
Senior U.S. serving and recently retired officers speaking to United Press International on condition of anonymity have said at least twice as many, and perhaps more than three times as many troops -- 300,000 or 400,000 in all -- might be needed to do the job.
This is in large part, they say, because Iraq's long land desert borders are wide open to infiltration from neighboring Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and Iran, and Islamist jihad guerrillas and their supporters have been taking full advantage of the fact.
rest is here;
http://www.military.com/NewsContent?file=FL_army_091603