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October 5, 2006
 

"The Iraq War has Left Our Nation With a Broken Military Force."

Congressman Jack Murtha
Congressman Neil Abercrombie
 

 
Washington, DC -- Congressman Neil Abercrombie, Ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, and Congressman Jack Murtha (PA), Ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, held a videoconference today at the Prince Kuhio Federal Building to discuss the state of U.S. Military Readiness.  Rep. Murtha participated from his district office in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

 

“The cost — in financial and human terms — of maintaining the existing U.S. presence in Iraq is the primary contributing factor to a crisis in the nation’s military readiness,” reported two senior members of Congressional committees that deal with the armed forces.

 

“The Army’s readiness, in particular, has dropped to levels not seen since the 1970s, and it will continue to be stressed by the combat in Iraq, which falls most heavily on the Army and Marine Corps,” said Abercrombie.  “Congress—and the Pentagon—should be held accountable for allowing military readiness to drop to historic lows. This is absolutely unacceptable and must be addressed immediately through legislation.”

 

The two Representatives pointed to the alarming state of military readiness:

  • Only a handful of Army and Marine Corps units in the United States are fully combat ready.
  • The rest face severe shortages of equipment, personnel and training.
  • The National Guard has only one-third of its authorized equipment.  Two-thirds of all their equipment must remain in Iraq for the next unit deployed.
  • The Navy has had to cut back steaming hours, flight training and shipyard repairs.
  • The Air Force has cut back training flight hours for non-deployed units.
  • The Marine Corps is being forced to call back 2,500 reservists involuntarily - many of whom have already served in Iraq.
  • The Army and Air National Guards continue to miss their recruiting targets.
  • The active U.S. Army is only meeting its recruiting goals by significantly lowering its standards.

 

 

The gravest danger from this situation is that it leaves the U.S. with no strategic reserve. “The military available to face threats outside Iraq faces alarming shortages of people, equipment and training,” Abercrombie said. “This makes deployments impossible unless we are prepared to put our troops at risk.  It also makes conducting homeland security or disaster response missions much more difficult, if not unacceptable in terms of public confidence.”

 

Murtha and Abercrombie said the military readiness crisis can only be solved by:

  1. Getting our troops out of Iraq;
  2. Replacing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld because it is not possible to change defense policy without changing Defense Department leadership; and
  3. Repairing the broken force: restoring the United States Army and Marine Corps to their former status as the best trained, best equipped fighting force in history.

 

“But none of this will happen without our commitment to sustained and significant funding and the redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq,”  Murtha said.

 

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