This from one of the more rational (and therefore former) voices of the Bush administration:

Powell said US troops should not act as policemen. He described the US army as “about broken”, with a shortage of equipment, officers going on repetitive tours and gaps in military coverage elsewhere in the world.

“The current active army is not large enough and the marine corps is not large enough for the kinds of missions they are being asked to perform,” he said.

Not like this is news or anything; just a few days ago I commented on this fact myself. But note what Powell said: that the current army and marine corps isn’t large enough to handle missions asked for today. This is significant. If you recall, the Clinton administration was harshly criticized by Republicans for not maintaining a military capable of handling two new theaters of combat. This from the military’s 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (PDF file):

For planning purposes, U.S. forces will remain capable of swiftly defeating attacks against U.S. allies and friends in any two theaters of operation in overlapping timeframes.

Of course, when it came down to it, the military Clinton maintained was able to go into Afghanistan and Iraq and swiftly command control of those countries. That they were unable to maintain a long nation-building phase while fighting substantial insurgencies armed with weapons looted because the administration allowed it and made dozens of other catastrophic strategic blunders, well, which military in the world could be asked to handle that? The point is, Clinton’s military was ready to handle the QDR challenge when it came down to it, despite all the whining right-wingers did about his stewardship.

Well, now it is Bush’s military. After six years of getting virtually everything he asked for in regards to the military (and just about everything else), he now owns the military; he can no longer blame Clinton for its state. And its state is now so weak and depleted that it cannot handle the missions it is being asked to handle today–much less meet the challenge of “swiftly defeating attacks” in a single new theater of operation, much less two. [And this is the military that right-wingers would have you believe makes tyrants of the world tremble, I would presume solely because Bush is at the helm.]

Bush was supposed to be the pro-military guy, the guy who would take the weakened and strapped military that Clinton had broken down, and build it up into a robust, bristling military capable of handling anything. The guy who bashed Clinton for nation-building and said that what he had been doing in Bosnia was depleting our forces. And now, this military genius has so depleted our forces that they can’t even handle the current mission, let alone any new threats.

So, why is almost no one commenting on this fact?

And hey, remember one of the main reasons why our military is stretching itself so thin in Iraq? We’re supposed to be building up the Iraqi military so “we can stand down when they stand up.” A bit more than a year ago, we actually saw Iraqi military readiness drop, not increase; and today, there is much evidence that this is still the case. And if you think that all this is a plot by liberal media or left-wing bloggers to fool everyone, why not take it from Iraqi Vice President al-Hashemi himself (again from the Powell article):

Yesterday Iraq’s Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, called for more US soldiers in Baghdad to quell sectarian violence. Mr Hashemi made the plea even though the Shia-dominated Iraqi government has proposed shifting US troops to the capital’s periphery and having Iraqis assume primary responsibility for security in the city.

“Who is going to replace the American troops?” asked Mr Hashemi, who met Mr Bush in Washington last week.

“Iraqi troops across the board, they are insufficient, incompetent, and many of them corrupted,” Mr Hashemi told CNN.

So it’s not just our military that’s broken.

And before some pissant right-winger comes along and tries to accuse me of blaming the troops (which is itself a roundabout way for right-wingers to blame the troops instead of Bush), let me make it clear that this is a failure of administration and policy, not the troops on the ground. Our military depletion is not due to our troops performing a whit below what they are trained for, it is due, fully and exclusively, to this administration’s incompetence.

So, all told, great job, President Bush!