Iraq is making us weaker

Via Balloon Juice, here's a long and detailed report on how the Iraq occupation has decimated our Army's fighting capability. It was put out by Nancy Pelosi's office. Here's the intro:

The U.S. Army’s preparedness for war has eroded to levels not witnessed by our country in decades. As deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan continue unabated, there is a very real prospect that Army readiness will continue to erode, undermining its ability to meet the theater commanders’ needs and foreclosing any option for the U.S. to respond to conflicts elsewhere around the globe. The degradation of Army readiness is primarily a function of unanticipated high troop deployment levels to Iraq, chronic equipment and personnel shortages, funding constraints, and Pentagon civilian mismanagement.

Now I'm pretty anti-war in most cases. I require an enormous amount of convincing before I can come to believe that killing lots of people is the best available solution to a problem. But I do think having an army ready to fight is a good idea. Apparently, those who run our military do not. I guess that this is more evidence that the Bush administration doesn't even take war seriously.

We need to get out of Iraq, if only because we have to be ready to deal with an actual threat if necessary.