Army chief says troops strained, calls pace 'unsustainable'

The Army's top general Tuesday acknowledged that his soldiers and their families are "stretched" and "stressed" by six years of war and will need a steady commitment of increased funding to keep the Army from sliding into the "hollow" force of the 1970s.

Gen. George Casey said the fight between Congress and the White House over the supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan makes his job more difficult and sends "a terrible signal" to the troops fighting the war.

In a presentation to the Brookings Institution, the Army chief of staff appeared to try to strike a balance by giving a candid description of the problems facing his service and what it needs to recover while denying the more dire warnings from some analysts and critics. But Casey emphasized that the strain on his troops and the wear and destruction of equipment from the current pace of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are "unsustainable."

Casey predicted a decision in three or four months on whether the Army troop level in Iraq could be reduced below the current 15 combat brigades.

Even if the commitment to Iraq is reduced and the Army can meet its goal of adding 74,000 soldiers, he said it would take three or four years of effort and increased funding to restore a force that is capable of meeting the full range of military challenges.

Noting the additional $17 billion in Army funding that Congress provided last year to improve readiness, Casey said: "Getting the resources to reset the force is the difference between a hollow force and a force that's ready to do the next thing."

Asked about the ongoing dispute between President Bush and the Democratic leaders in Congress over providing $196.4 billion in additional supplemental war funding, Casey stated the obvious that "not having predictable, timely funding makes it harder for me to do my job." And, he added, "What's going on now sends a terrible signal to my soldiers and their families."

Casey noted that thousands of soldiers are returning from 15-month combat tours while Pentagon officials are warning about ending services at their home bases to divert money from the normal budget to the war.

Bush issued another demand Tuesday that Congress approve the additional war supplemental without the timeline for removing U.S. combat forces from Iraq that Democratic leaders are demanding.

The general, responding to a question, acknowledged that the Army is granting nearly twice as many "moral" waivers for recruits as it did five years ago, but said 80 percent of those are for misdemeanor offenses. "The notion out there that we're enlisting felons is not true," he said.

Casey stressed the need to reduce the pace of deployments so his troops could remain home more than a year. With such a rapid turnaround between combat tours, the Army is unable to train for anything but the current counter insurgency operations, he said.

It would require at least 18 months between deployments for the Army to train a force able to handle "the full spectrum of combat," which would include a conventional conflict against a major adversary, Casey added.

Traitorous, seditionist, power-mad Socialists in DC- they should be charged with, not just treason, but HIGH treason...

We need to bombard their offices - ALL of them, particularly those running for office this go-round - each and every day.

Set up an email, a snail mail, and a phone call for each and every morning - grab your coffee and DO IT each morning.

The only thing they care about is keeping their personal power = let’s let them know it can end. This is the small part we can do to support our troops, many of whom are under fire each and every day - let's remember that when we have our morning coffee. They need to know that WE THE PEOPLE are behind them... We MUST NOT let these traitors pull off another Vietnam

Here’s the full transcript of his speech:

“There’s no question that the army is stretched as a result of more than six years of war. And as a result of that stretch, the force and particularly the families are stretched. And I wrestled very hard to find the right word to describe the condition of the army that was stretched and stressed. And the term I came up with was “out of balance.” That the army today is out of balance. We’re consumed by the demands of the current operations and as a result, we’re not able to do the things to prepare for the future and to sustain the all volunteer force. ...

“We’re deploying at unsustainable rates. Several months ago, we increased our deployment—“our boots on the ground time” we call it—to 15 months. We needed to do that to support the requirements of our commanders, to give our soldiers and families some predictability and mostly to ensure that the soldiers that were deploying had at least 12 months at home so that they could properly prepare to go. Now, we did that with the full understanding that it was temporary. We can’t sustain that, we have to come off of that and we’re working that very hard and I think you can understand that when we decide to come off it, we going to be darn sure that we don’t have to go back. And so I expect an announcement on that here in the next three or four months as we watch the situation there on the ground. ...

“We are entering a period here that I would call “persistent conflict.” It may not seem to you day-to-day but we are at war against a global extremist’s network that is out to attack and destroy our way of life. Read their writings. This is not a foe that’s going to quit and go home easily. They’re going to have to be defeated and it’s a long-term, ideological struggle. ...

“Competition for water, resources, food is going to increase the international friction. Estimates are that energy supplies are not going to equal demand even if you count in what people are trying to do in the interim to increase it or look for alternative sources. Climate change [and] natural disasters create friction, create tensions and population movements and pandemics. And the two that worry me the most: the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their use by terrorist organizations …people ask me what keeps me up at night that‘s what it is. ...

“My personal view is, in the near term, the likelihood of major state-on-state conflict is very low, that’s my personal view. But let’s talk a little bit about future conflict…think back to that definition of protracted conflict. We’re going to be dealing with, I think, more non-state and individual actors than we are with state actors. That creates a degree of complexity all itself. They’re not deterrable. And, if you figured out a way to deter a non-state actor that doesn’t have anything to hold hostage, I’m happy to listen to you. They don’t operate by the laws of war, they don’t operate by international conventions. It makes our job combating that much, much more difficult.”

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