Pentagon Study: Army "Overextended", page 1

A 136-page report for the Pentagon has revealed that the Army is "stretched thin" due to a recruiting slump and that they're not sure how much longer they can keep up the unusually high pace of combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

news.yahoo.com
Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a "thin green line" that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon.

Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.

As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump — missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 — and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.

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Although I will admit that are troops are overextended and starting to wear thin, I believe that this is more of an underlying excuse to institute the draft.

Personally, I am undecided on the draft issue. On one hand, I think military duty should be a requirement, but on the other hand, I don't always agree as to why the "powers that be" would send our troops off to a battle.

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