Of all of Bush’s misstatements from the 2000 presidential election, one of the most obviously-false attacks was on military readiness. Indeed, then-Gov. Bush blamed Clinton and Gore directly for “hollowing out” the military. “If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, ‘Not ready for duty, sir.'” BC00 campaign aides later acknowledged it was a bogus charge, but that didn’t stop Bush from repeating it.
But as long as Bush wants to make military preparedness a key element of his presidency, it’s worth measuring his progress. Last summer, Bush told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, “We have a very strong military and we can deal with any threat to the homeland there is and will if we have to.”
Yesterday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff came to a far different conclusion.
Strained by the demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a significant risk that the U.S. military won’t be able to quickly and fully respond to yet another crisis, according to a new report to Congress.
The assessment, done by the nation’s top military officer, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, represents a worsening from a year ago, when that risk was rated as moderate.
The report is classified, but on Monday senior defense officials, speaking on condition on anonymity, confirmed the decline in overall military readiness. And a report that accompanied Pace’s review concluded that while the Pentagon is working to improve its warfighting abilities, it “may take several years to reduce risk to acceptable levels.”
Pace’s review, the AP noted, grades the military’s ability to meet the demands of the nation’s military strategy — “which would include fighting the wars as well as being able to respond to any potential outbreaks in places such as North Korea, Iran, Lebanon, Cuba or China.”
We are not, Bush’s claims notwithstanding, ready to “deal with any threat.” Christy Hardin Smith asks, “Can we officially say now that the Bush Administration has made us less safe in terms of our strategic readiness capabilities and the eroded level of response capability that we now have under George Bush’s watch?”
Apparently so.
Congress’s investigative arm has warned that sustained operations in Iraq are taking a toll on the military’s ability to respond to conflict elsewhere in the world, RAW STORY has learned….
“The Army, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force have drawn heavily from their prepositioned stocks to support Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom,” they write. “These sustained military operations are taking a toll on the condition and readiness of military equipment.”
Let’s be clear. Bush ran on a platform of military readiness, vowing to reverse the “hollowing out” of the military. Six years later, our over-stretched military may no longer be able to quickly and fully respond to another crisis.
And it’s under these circumstances that Bush wants an escalation in Iraq. From Speaker Pelosi’s office:
“This unacceptable state of readiness affected our military long before President Bush ordered an escalation of the Iraq war in January, but the escalation is making it worse.
“The harmful effects on the readiness crisis of the President’s escalation plan are just beginning to be seen. Two Army brigades scheduled to go to Iraq in the spring will do so without completing their normal training cycles and without all of the equipment required to do their jobs. We should not be sending troops to Baghdad unless they are fully trained and fully equipped. We already owe a great deal to our troops, and we do them a disservice by putting them in dangerous situations without being fully prepared.”
Stay tuned.