sisyphusshrugged | quel surprise

it turns out that Mr. Rumsfeld knows as much about running an army as he does about... well, running an army

Despite the strains of the Iraq war, the Army today is "vastly better" and more capable now than it was two to eight years ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

"It has much more equipment, much better equipment, and it's better trained and more experienced, and it is a better Army," Rumsfeld said, at a briefing at the Pentagon. "Notwithstanding the fact that it is possible to look at some charts and show that something has changed."

Rumsfeld's remarks came just one day after Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that more than two-thirds of the Army National Guard's brigades are not combat-ready primarily because of a $21 billion shortfall in equipment - most of it lost in the war.

Democrats in Congress are also sounding the alarm, accusing the Bush administration of not providing the Army with enough funds to cover operational demands and equipment losses. The Democrats say that a Bush administration cut of $4.9 billion from the Army's fiscal year 2006 supplemental request seriously undermines the Army's ability to replace equipment lost in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A letter released by Senate Democrats Tuesday from a national security group headed by William J. Perry, a defense secretary in the Clinton administration, said that none of the Army's available combat brigades are ready to deploy because of equipment shortages.

"The bottom line is that our army currently has no ready, strategic reserve," the group said. "Not since the Vietnam era and its aftermath has the Army's readiness been so degraded."

Separately, one defense analyst said Rumsfeld's comments gloss over how badly the war has affected the Army.

"Rumsfeld's assertion that this army is in a high state of readiness is yet another reflection of how detached he is from the realities of his own policies," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a policy research group in Arlington, Va. "Who can believe that this army is ready to take on additional responsibilities in Iran or Korea or any other place where it might be needed?

But Rumsfeld suggested that the problem was all a matter of perception.

but don't just take our word for it. Our Fearless Leader let us know what the benchmark for military unpreparedness is more than six years ago (via Brad DeLong)

Of all of Bush's misstatements from the 2000 presidential election, one of the most obviously-false attacks was on military readiness. Indeed, then-Gov. Bush blamed Clinton and Gore directly for "hollowing out" the military. "If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, 'Not ready for duty, sir.'"

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

Our military deserve better than to be thrown into the maw of the battle this administration is fighting with the defeat of their fever dreams by reality.