TROOP DRAWDOWN

There has been a lot of fuss about this from all sides but one thing seems to have been ignored: We don't have a choice about it. Our ground forces are nearing the breaking point and we will have to draw down to save them. Here are six reports, one from over a year ago.

Transcript for Dec. 12 Meet the Press
Updated: 12:29 p.m. ET Dec. 12, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6702005/


GEN. McCAFFREY: Excuse me. Operational Iraqi Freedom--the fifth rotation will use up our National Guard and reserve. We have called up a couple of hundred thousand of these troops. By law, you can't keep them on active duty more than 24 months. At that point, the inadequate size of the active Army and not just combat battalions, the logistic structure to make it work, at that point, we're going over a cliff. A year out from now we're in trouble.
MR. RUSSERT: You won't have the Guard or reservists to fill the gap.
GEN. McCAFFREY: I don't see how we're going to continue it. At that point, you've got to tell General Abizaid just bring in CENTCOM commander--"Hey, we'll fight this war with two and a half Army divisions. That's probably what we can sustain."

MR. RUSSERT: Realistically speaking, do we need a bigger Army? General McCaffrey said we need 80,000 more Army, 20,000 more Marines. General Downing, do you agree with that?
GEN. DOWNING: I do. I think that the Army just cannot take on the missions that they have now and that we can foresee for the foreseeable future. I mean, Tim--and we've seen this thing probably for clearly for over a year.

For Army, it's Operation Stretch
As the military rushes to reorganize in a race against time,
the 3rd Infantry steels itself for a second deployment.
By Ann Scott Tyson Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the December 09, 2004 edition

Army leaders admit that at current levels they must rotate troops into war zones at a rate that is unsustainable in the long run. Warning of a force not yet "broken" but "bent," they are rushing to add 30,000 soldiers to the 482,000-strong active-duty force and increase the number of active brigades - from 33 when the Iraq war began to 43 by 2006, with another five possible by 2007. Only then might the Army hope to shorten tours to about six months every two years, which soldiers say is more bearable for them and their families.
Yet with more than 15 percent of soldiers in the Iraq war screening positive for traumatic stress, according to a December 2003 report chartered by the Army's surgeon general, it is not surprising that the looming deployment is highly troubling to some 3ID veterans.
Army psychologists aren't sure how those with combat fatigue will react to returning. "We're into really new territory," says division social worker Capt. Ronald Whalen. He says some soldiers are in aggressive treatment aimed at "finding out where [their] recovery has stalled out."

Military overstretched by conflicts, study says
THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/news/40352.php
9/24/04
WASHINGTON - A Pentagon-appointed panel of outside experts has concluded in a new study that the U.S. military does not have sufficient forces to sustain current and anticipated stability operations, such as the festering conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and other missions that might arise. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the report was an "excellent piece of work," and that he had ordered briefings on its findings for senior military and civilian officials. He quoted the report as saying that unless the United States scaled back its stabilization operations, it would have to reshape its forces to "trade combat capabilities for stabilization capabilities" or depend on contributions of troops from allied countries or the United Nations.

Army Plans To Keep Iraq Troop Level Through '06
Year-Long Active-Duty Stints Likely to Continue
By Bradley Graham
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33540-2005Jan24.html
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A01

By later this year, when the Army is scheduled to begin its fourth rotation of troops since the invasion in March 2003, all 15 of the National Guard's most readily deployable brigades will have been mobilized.

Army Considers Extending Reserve
Move Would Help Meet Iraq Demand
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 3, 2005; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58913-2005Feb2?language=printer

"Right now we have 650,000 soldiers on active duty executing missions worldwide, and many of them have met their 24-month cumulative time, so we'll have to address this," Gen. Richard A. Cody testified before the House Armed Services Committee.

Army study: U.S. facing hard choices
By Michael Kilian Washington Bureau
Chicago Tribune
Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:40 AM ET
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news3/chtr20.htm

"The challenge the Army faces is profound," senior RAND analyst Lynn Davis, lead author of the report, said in a statement accompanying the study.

According to the RAND study, the strain on the Army is so great that combat units are spending one of every two years deployed on overseas battlefields, instead of one of every three years, as called for in troop deployment guidelines.