U.S. Military: Combat-unready

Here's a surefire sign that our government doesn't really care about what sort of war we're fighting, just as long as we're fighting: According to USA Today:

"More than 43,000 U.S. troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the weeks before their scheduled deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 were sent anyway." Why? Well, Bobby Muller, president of Veterans For America, says it's "a consequence of the consistent churning of our troops," adding, "They are repeatedly exposed to high-intensity combat with insufficient time at home to rest and heal before redeploying."

Good to know it's not just felons and the functionally illiterate we're sending into war zones, not to mention the security contractors we're throwing money at to do the jobs for which the Army doesn't have enough troops.

Now consider that the Bush administration has not yet written off the possibility of a war with Iran. Last month, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted in The Washington Post saying that while he has no "expectations that we're going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future," we still have Navy and Air Force reserves. "It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability."

At what point can we expect our leaders to admit that we're in way over our heads in the Middle East, and that every day we insist on remaining in Iraq as an occupying military force is another day we're taxing an already exhausted military patched up with unfit recruits?