Via Helena Cobban in Just World News, the right-wing Washington Times features a column by Major General Robert H. Scales, former commander of the Army War College, entitled Is the Army Headed for Collapse?

Scales says yes, the Army is broken:

If you haven't heard the news, I'm afraid your Army is broken, a victim of too many missions for too few soldiers for too long. Today we have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan all of our fighting brigades, both active and reserve. Every brigade save one in Korea has spent time in combat.

The essence of Scales's argument is based upon the necessity of keeping 2 brigades at home for every one in the theater of war. One of the home brigades would be recovering whicle the other would be training and otherwise preparing for combat. With such an arrangement the Army could keep one brigade in combat indefinitaly. After the surge, according to Scales, the nation will have to keep 33 brigades of 3000 troops each in Iraq, thus requiring a total of 99 brigades to sustain the fighting. There are only about half that number in the Army, which makes a sustained effort impossible in the long run.

This is not news to anyone who has been following the way the administration has been treating the troops during this war. Our nation is in a very perilous situation with respect to its military strength and unless there is relief soon our Army will cease to exist as an effective fighting force. In the international situation that Bush has created over the past six years, that is a bad position for our nation to be in.