The US army is being stretched, by its deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, into a "thin green line" in danger of breaking before the insurgents are defeated, claims a report commissioned by the Pentagon.
Andrew Krepinevich, a former army officer who wrote the report, said the army could not sustain the current pace of deployments -- which was likely in the end to discourage recruitment.
"This is the central, and as yet unanswerable, question the army must confront. Vigorous efforts should be made to enable a substantial drawdown in US force levels. The army ... cannot sustain the force levels needed to break the back of the insurgent movement," the report says.
Krepinevich, who runs a Washington thinktank, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, also suggested the administration lacked a clear strategy.
In his report presented as "an interim assessment" of Iraq, he writes: "Without a clear strategy in Iraq it is difficult to draft clear metrics for gauging progress. This may be why some senior political and military leaders have made overly optimistic or even contradictory declarations regarding the war's progress."
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said he had not read the report, but said from what he heard of it "it's just not consistent with the facts."
Rumsfeld said that there were 1.4 million Americans currently in active service, of which only 138,000 were in Iraq. He said the army was in the process of being streamlined to create a more agile and combat-ready force.
However, a group of senior Democrats issued their own report yesterday accusing the administration of President George W. Bush of putting "our ground troops under enormous strain that, if not soon relieved, will have highly corrosive and potentially long-term effects on the force."
The report, presented by Senator Jack Reed, the former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton's first defense secretary, William Perry, called for an increase in deployable army forces of at least 30,000 troops. It argued there was a danger that the US' enemies could exploit its vulnerable state.
"Although the US can still deploy air, naval and other more specialized assets to deter or respond to aggression, the visible overextension of our ground forces could weaken our ability to deter aggression," it said.
Rumsfeld rejected that claim, saying: "The force is not broken ... It is not only capable of functioning in a very effective way. In addition it is battle hardened. It is not a peacetime force that has been in barracks or garrisons."
At another point this report says the US has "only limited groundforce capability ready to respond to other contingencies. The absence of a credible strategic reserve in our groundforces increases the risk that potential adversaries will be tempted to challenge the US."
More than 70 percent of the troops due to be deployed in Iraq next year will be returning for a third time. Krepinevich argues that such continual deployments will take their toll on army readiness.
In a chapter in his report entitled "Thin Green Line," he writes: "If it rotates its troops too frequently into combat, the army risks having many of its soldiers decide that a military career is too arduous or too risky an occupation for them and their families to pursue."
He begins the chapter with a quote from an unnamed army officer returning from Iraq who says: "Nobody in the US is asked to sacrifice, except us."
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS