Realistically, in what condition is our military right now ?

[kentuck]

What and how would they invade Iran if they wanted? How much longer can they keep sending troops back to Iraq? For 5 or 6 tours? What kind of luck is the military having recruiting troops in Phillippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and other places? Can we make it with a mercenary army? Also, we hear that the recruiting numbers are down for the Army and the Marines.

Even with the hefty bonuses and promises, the military is having a difficult time right now, it seems to me. Most young people are savvy enough to see what is happening in Iraq and have not bought the lie that has been sold to the American public? How much damage has been done to our military?

[acmejack]

1. Tremendous damage!

We will continue to spend obscene amounts on weapon systems to counter nonexistent threats. They will, in all likelihood, need a draft if they ever expect to be the military complex we once were.

I am definitely not touting that course of action. The transfer of public wealth through a flawed and corrupted defense acquisition process is unconscionable.

[BOSSHOG]

2. The Army is wore out

I read a retired Army 4-Star say that in 24-months the "wheels are coming off the Army" if we continue at the current pace. The desert environment is hell on the equipment and the personnel.

If one were to take an objective realistic view, one would come to the conclusion that the republican party is not supporting our troops, it is wearing them out with no plan and no relief in sight. Just smiles and hand picked audiences.

[DemoTex]

10. I think Gen. Barry McCaffrey made that comment ..

.. about the wheels coming off the US Army. Seymour Hersch contends that McCaffrey ordered a massacre against a retreating 5-mile line of Iraqi soldiers two days after the cease-fire ending Gulf War I.


Highway of Death


McCaffrey

[TahitiNut]

3. War trains the trainers.

Our military personnel are currently very well-prepared to form the cadre of a draft army -- an essential prerequisite to a draft.

I can easily foresee a situation where reserve and guard members are used to do stateside training and regulars form the overseas cadre. Such a strategy would permit rapid a fourfold increase in the size of the military. Such a move would make BRAC moot.

[kentuck]

4. Good point, 'Nut..

A lot of drill sergeants in the waiting...

[madrchsod]

5. dam near impossible to fight a major war

our hardware is being ground into dust by the iraqi sand. everyday our troops are becoming more demoralized by the chaos around them. important development money for our future weapon systems is being used in a pointless war. the young men and women do not want to die for this president no matter how much blood money is paid.
the chinese and russians decided to cooperate instead of going to war with each other, it seems we should be more worried about that than iraq

[kentuck]

8. Sort of reminds you of Russia in Afghanistan....

doesn't it?

[pauldavid]

6. No way could they invade Iran

We would just bomb them from the sky. The problem is when iran fights back in iraq.

[DinahMoeHum]

7. If what Stan Goff said in a TruthOut interview awhile back is true. . .

the military is in real deep shit, and too dependent on high tech/gee whiz weapons and air power at the expense of trained personnel on the ground:

Link:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/printer_073103A.shtml

(snip)
"...I tell people not to buy into the hype about US military invincibility. Person for person, and dollar for dollar, the US military is the most inefficient in the world. And the most fragile. They are fragile because of their overwhelming dependence on high technology, and fragile because the troops come out of a pampered consumer culture where real physical hardship is anecdotal. Sustained hardship, as we are seeing in Iraq now, devastates morale..."
(snip)


:grr:

[punpirate]

9. There won't be an invasion...

... my bet is on a massive attack from the air. The Air Force and Navy are being lightly used right now, so my guess is that if there's military action against Iran, it will be from the air, combined with CIA/MI/SF actions on the ground to attempt to destabilize the government.

From everything I read, though, a ground invasion is out of the question. The country's too big, too spread out and their military is functioning--something that was not the case with Iraq.

The question becomes one of whether or not Cheney's plan to use nukes in an attempt to destroy buried facilities will prevail. If it does, the likelihood of significant quantities of fallout causing large numbers of deaths from radiation poisoning goes way up.

I haven't been able to find a second source to confirm this, but I read, a couple of weeks ago, that they're contemplating using much larger nukes than those proposed for the so-called "bunker busters" now under conceptual study. The latter were conceived of as around 4kt to minimize fallout (a silly notion, since the bombs can't be buried deeply enough to prevent the creation of large amounts of fallout). The rumor is that if nukes are used on Iran, they will be around 1.4 megatons, in order to dig out the deeply-buried facilities, which will create huge amounts of fallout.