"TOO LATE"

The U.S. commander in chief raised eyebrows among many in uniform last week when he promised not to stretch the military too thin, even as some 500,000 troops find themselves deployed or assigned overseas.

President Bush, when asked in South Africa about the possibility of inserting peacekeeping troops into war-torn Liberia, made a simple pledge: “We won’t overextend our troops, period.”

“Too late,” says Sgt. Robert Page matter-of-factly...

Just how the military — particularly the Army — will be able to sustain even the current force levels in the Middle East remains to be seen.

“It’s going to be very tough,” said retired Lt. Gen. Theodore Stroup, now the vice president of the Association of the U.S. Army. “With five division flags there now, we have essentially half the combat power of the Army in Iraq.”

With 10 divisions in the Army, and one of those fixed in Korea, that leaves four divisions available to relieve the forces now in Iraq and to sustain operations in Afghanistan.

“Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army,” cautioned outgoing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, at his June 11 retirement ceremony in Washington. “Our soldiers and families bear the risk and the hardship of carrying a mission load that exceeds what force capabilities we can sustain, so we must alleviate risk and hardship by our willingness to resource the mission requirement.”

To maintain so many forces in Iraq, even for a few years, said Stroup, “the cost is going to be in morale and re-enlistment rates and recruiting. It’s something I know the leadership is worrying about.”

And few, if any, units have felt the strain of deployment more than the Georgia-based 3rd Infantry Division.

During his testimony last week, Rumsfeld said the division — whose troops have been in the Middle East for more than year now — has begun redeployment to the United States. But it will take until September before all those troops are home.

But wait - apparently after that story was put to bed, this story popped up.

Most of the war-weary soldiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which spearheaded the invasion of Iraq, will remain in the troubled country indefinitely, division officials announced yesterday, though Pentagon officials said they still hope to have the entire division home by the fall, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress last week.

Richard Olson, a spokesman at Fort Stewart, Ga., where the 16,500-soldier division is based, said two of its three brigades will not be returning home in August and September as scheduled.

Rumsfeld told Congress last week that one of the division's two remaining brigades would be home in August and the other in September.

So, were you lying to me then, or are you lying to me now?

This is just wrong. And it is happening for a couple of simple reasons.

Recall the fall of the Berlin wall. Recall discussions of a so-called "Peace Dividend" that would allow the USA to cut defense forces and spending.

That is the genesis of our ten-division Army.

No one knew what a post cold-war world would look like.

No one could predict the extent of the Global War on Terror.

Certainly nobody, but nobody could predict then, as we slashed the size of the US Army, that on July 15th 2003 the US Army would be performing missions worldwide in 120 countries.

One-hundred-twenty countries.

And one-half the Army is in only one of those.

America prides itself in having the best Armed Forces in the world. We got that way in part through the All-Volunteer Force. We obtained and maintained an Army of professionals. We don't go to war with a pickup team, unlike much of the world.

Our men and women in uniform are soldiers...and they will "soldier on". But they are men and women first. And over half of them have families. And families need their soldiers everybit as much as a nation does.

Our forces are fighting a global war today with force levels designed for a peaceful, post-coldwar, pollyanna vision.

America must be willing to pay the price to have what it expects.

Let's make no mistake about it...soldiers accept that service demands some time away for training and real-world missions. These are not in dispute.

But when time away exceeds time with family, well, don't you see that as being just a bit too much to ask?

In the end one or both will break: Forces, or familes...and who will decide which is worse for America.