IRAQ: US engaged in Iraq longer than it was in the second World War The US military machine is being broken by the war in Iraq in ways the Bush administration could not have imagined, argues Tony Kinsella
The US has been engaged in Iraq for longer than it was in the second World War, in the longest conflict it has fought with an all-volunteer force since the American Revolution and in a war its army was never designed to fight.
This places terrible strains on forces who spent almost 50 years preparing for war with the Soviet Union.
The army's core armoured punch was state-of-the-art vehicles, the M1 main battle tank, its lighter cousin the Sheridan and a range of Bradley armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs). These heavy-tracked vehicles were never designed for their Iraq mission - providing rapid mobility and close-quarter protection in an urban environment.
The Humvee is an unarmoured vehicle. Although later models have had some armour added, it has been outpaced by the development of Iraqi roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the biggest single source of US casualties in Iraq.
US armed forces have been all-volunteer or professional since 1973. Various formulae have been employed by different US administrations, with the Bush White House applying the 10-30-30 approach.
This meant that US forces should be ready to deploy within 10 days, should complete their mission within 30 days and be ready to undertake a different operation within another 30 days.
In athletic terms, this is a sprinter's approach, but Iraq is a marathon.
The implicit political compact was that Washington would build a large conscript force should the US decide to engage in a protracted war. It is a compact that remains unhonoured.
Modern soldiers are highly-trained professionals who should, at most, spend a third of their time on active or "hardship" deployments. The other two-thirds of their time is dedicated to training, refitting and recuperation, not to mention their family and community lives.
Reserve or National Guard units need more pre-deployment training and are prepared for a maximum deployment of one-fifth of their military service periods.
US experts calculate that under these ratios, the US could sustain active deployments of 13 regular and reserve combat brigades, current deployments amount to 19 such brigades.
A fortnight ago the US army chief of staff Gen Peter J Schoomaker warned that the pace of deployments now meant that units were spending one out of every two years in Iraq. Unit training and refitting is suffering, with all home-based brigades officially listed as "unready to deploy".
The Pentagon's own inspector general reported in late 2006 that many soldiers have had to deploy without enough guns, ammunition and supplies to "effectively complete their missions".
The army has had to deal with significant equipment shortages. It has met these by stripping equipment from units based in the US - about 40 per cent of US army equipment is now in Iraq working five times harder than it was designed for.
Maintenance and repair services have fallen ever further behind. Serious work requires that equipment be shipped to three specialised centres in the US. Last December more than 3,000 tanks, AFVs, Humvees and trucks were awaiting major repairs at those centres which were still only ticking over on their peacetime budgets.
Soldiers do no better than their equipment. The Washington Post has revealed in two major front-page articles last month that the US is also failing its military casualties. Post reporters spent four months, without official approval, among the 700 or so outpatients lodged for up to two years in an array of buildings at the Walter Reed military medical centre, less than 10km from the White House.
If Walter Reed's 42 surgical patients receive some of the best trauma care in the world, the rest of the centre is symptomatic of what Bush's Iraq war is doing to US forces.
Improvements in battlefield medicine mean that many who would previously have died now survive. The army has to deal with more and more severe casualties. As a professional army, it processes each survivor to determine who is fit to return to active service.
Those deemed unfit then go to further processing to determine their level of invalidity and the degree to which their injuries are war-related - something of critical importance in a country without a public health system.
Walter Reed faces a much greater and significantly more complex outpatient task, but has not been given additional resources - and the outpatients suffer.
The Washington Postfound outpatients living in rodent- and cockroach-infested buildings. While services in a couple of buildings are excellent, others have no administrative, medical or catering services. Amputees are supposed to hobble across icy roads to other buildings for their meals and to fall-in every morning for parade on frozen exercise yards.
On Thursday, the army acted by removing Walter Reed's director, Maj Gen George Weightman, from his post.
Under-staffed administrative services with outmoded computer systems have broken down, stranding some soldiers in a forgotten half-world. A recovering soldier needs to submit 22 forms to 16 different military administrations, most of whose computer systems cannot communicate with each other.
Sgt David Thomas of the Tennessee National Guard lost a leg and suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iraq. Combat medics saved his life, but cut away his bloodied uniform. At Walter Reed, army administrators could find no record of his Iraq posting and so refused to issue him a new uniform. He spent three months in a Red Cross-donated T-shirt and sweat pants - a 42-year-old decorated war hero denied underpants by his army.
Although secretary of defence Robert Gates has ordered an investigation into conditions at Walter Reed, the reality is that Bush's war-on-the-cheap is straining the US army to breaking point and failing to take care of its veterans.
US forces may leave Iraq in 2008, but it will take years to restore the army. Many injured veterans will have to rely for decades on the support of their families and the charity of their communities.
The American Iraq trauma is only beginning.