WASHINGTON
One week before a potentially critical round of hearings on the future of the U.S. mission in Iraq, the vice chiefs of all four military branches warned senators Tuesday that the fighting to date has seriously strained the services and limits their ability to respond to crises that may arise elsewhere.
"Our Army is out of balance," said Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's second-ranking officer. "Our readiness is being consumed as fast as we can build it."
Cody and Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, said their services are billions of dollars short of the funding they need to replace or repair tanks, trucks and other equipment lost in the fighting.
And because the corps is focused on preparing Marines for the counterinsurgency operations they'll have to conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan, training for other types of fighting is getting relatively little attention, Magnus said.
The Navy also is feeling the strain, said Adm. Patrick Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, even though ground forces are doing most of the fighting. The sea service has assigned thousands of sailors to support jobs ashore in the Middle East, using them to fill jobs that normally would be done by soldiers.
Walsh warned that the Navy's ability to maintain ships and aircraft will be imperiled unless lawmakers soon provide billions in extra funding sought by the Army and Marines to continue operations in Iraq. Without that money, Pentagon leaders will tap Navy and other noncombat accounts to pay war bills, he suggested.
The Army is seeking an additional $66.5 billion and the Marines $1.8 billion this year for war-related expenses.
The military leaders' testimony at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing fit a pattern of increasingly blunt warnings from the Pentagon about the war's toll on military families and equipment.
The Bush administration began reducing the U.S. force in Iraq late last year, but Gen.
David Petraeus, the top American commander there, is expected to recommend a pause in the drawdown when he testifies next week before House and Senate committees.
Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com
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What's the solution??
As a retired vet and the father of an airman deployed to the Middle East (for the 2nd time in 3 years), I can't understand why no one seems to have the answer to this. Our military leaders tell us that that the services are being stretched too thin. We seem to have plenty of politicians, candidates and talking heads pushing for continued involvement in Iraq along with expanded military engagement with other adversaries (Iran springs to mind, but there are others to consider), but I haven't heard a realistic answer to this problem. Basically, the response seems to boil down to "Suck it up!". Whatever your view on this, we owe our military a better answer than that.