Tissue-thin Paper Tiger Army Can Only Mewl

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:41 PM Permalink

One of the most disturbing things done by a very disturbing maladministration is the reduction of the finest military the world has ever seen into a tissue-thin paper tiger, "A mere shadow of [its] former greatness…" to quote Howard Cosell. (RIP, Howard)

Despite the best efforts of the Department of Defense and despite the fact that the $630 billion dollar budget allocation for the DoD is the largest in history, overuse for all the wrong reasons has depleted our forces to the point that, aside from the brigades in Iraq, there is not but one brigade throughout the world ready for combat. That unit is permanently stationed in South Korea.

How pitiful is that? And what does it say about our leaders? How could this be? The answer to all these questions, of course, is Iraq, where bush's imperial desires to obtain control of Iraqi oil fields has blinded an already willfully blind maladministration to the damage they have wrought.

There is yet again another article regarding military readiness in the New York Times, where their reporter, David S. Cloud, offers these observations:

For decades, the Army has kept a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division on round-the-clock alert, poised to respond to a crisis anywhere in 18 to 72 hours.…Today, the so-called ready brigade is no longer so ready. Its soldiers are not fully trained, much of its equipment is elsewhere, and for the past two weeks the unit has been far from the cargo aircraft it would need in an emergency.…Instead of waiting on standby, the First Brigade of the 82nd Airborne is deep in the swampy backwoods of this vast Army training installation, preparing to go to Iraq.…Since President Bush ordered reinforcements to Iraq and Afghanistan in January, roughly half of the Army’s 43 active-duty combat brigades are now deployed overseas, Army officials said.…If ground forces were needed urgently, Army commanders said they could draw units quickly from Iraq and send them wherever they might be needed, rather than relying solely on the ready brigade to provide a fast reaction force.

The full article is rich in detail and greatly expands on the difficulties facing the military, but it is obvious that this illegal war in Iraq has come at a high cost indeed: the reduction of the world's greatest and most expensive military force into a tissue-thin paper tiger force that cannot even roar, only mewl quietly and hope no one notices how weak bush/cheney have made us.

Heckuva job, bush, to do something no enemy has ever been able to do, breaking the back of the U.S. military.

Labels: GWOT, Iraq, war