Mid-2006: ’Army Is Broken,’ Says General

A retired Army general tells authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein: “The Army is broken. It will take decades to fix.” A Pentagon veteran of the Gulf War who declines to allow his name to be used, he says of that period: “It was different then. The staffs were apolitical. And the military was taken care of. If we made a mistake, we did no irreparable harm. [Vice President] Cheney now seems oblivious to what the military needs. That’s because he trusts [Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld.… So we have an army that is broken. The DOD [Defense Department] is broken. And the process is broken. Rumsfeld has left us with the smallest army since before 1941. First time in the history of the country that we haven’t surged up the Army in time of war. We have never not surged up the Army in time of war. So we redeploy, and redeploy, and redeploy, and break down the Army.… They’re not surging up, and they’re burning through equipment in Iraq. [Cheney and Rumsfeld have done] irreparable harm” to the Army. Larry Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, agrees: “They have gone through so much equipment in Iraq,” he tells Dubose and Bernstein. He says the true test the military will face will not be on the battlefield, but in Washington. “The first challenge is going to be the reconstruction bill that will confront the next president. I mean bringing the ground forces, and to a certain extent the Air Force, back to levels pre-Iraq. They have burned up Abrams tanks, Chinook helicopters, all very expensive hardware, at a rate which is astronomical.” Wilkerson believes the Army will also find it very difficult to find large numbers of new recruits to replenish the ranks. [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 221-222]