http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/10/readiness.htmlCombat-Ready? Sir, No, Sir.
October 9, 2007
Army Chief General George Casey admitted yesterday at the first Family Forum of the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting that the army is “out of balance” and requires at least three or four years to regain the levels of training, troops, and equipment needed to be fully operational. The U.S. Army is overworked and overextended, and despite the Bush administration’s rhetoric, the lack of resources and faulty policies that put troops in danger are too often over-looked.
The Center for American Progress has been sounding this alarm for the past year and a half. The army—composed of active units, the Army Reserve, and the National Guard—has not been this stretched since the Vietnam War. As of now, over 3,800 troops have lost their lives and over 25,000 have been wounded.
To reduce more tragic loss of life in Iraq, the Center for American Progress recommends Congress take the following actions:
* Require that the president provide Congress with written justification whenever he deploys forces classified as “not combat ready.”
* Clarify the law that allows the president to mobilize Guard and Reserve units and make it clear that deployment time cannot exceed two years in total without congressional approval.
* Require that the president also supply written justification whenever an Army unit is deployed more than 12 months or a Marine unit is deployed more seven months.
* Amend the supplemental budget to revoke “stop-loss” policy. Stop-loss prohibits military personnel from leaving their units from the time of deployment notice until three months after the deployment ends. It functions as a backdoor draft, since personnel whose terms of enlistment have expired cannot leave during the deployment time frame.
These actions are critical for the restoring the readiness of our armed forces. Although the four-year conflict in Iraq has caused significant damage to our military, the surge of five brigades, or 30,000 troops, this summer only strained the forces further. Worse, the surge has failed to meet the political objectives it was designed to hasten.
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