WASHINGTON, March 19 (UPI) -- U.S. troop and supply demands in Iraq and Afghanistan limit the military's ability to engage in another conflict, Pentagon officials told the U.S. Congress.
"The readiness continues to decline of our next-to-deploy forces," the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Richard A. Cody told the House Armed Services Committee's readiness panel last week, The Washington Post reported. "And those forces, by the way, are ... also your strategic reserve."
Cody described the U.S. Army units' level of readiness as "stark."
The Post said that when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace was asked by a House panel last month whether he was comfortable with Army unit preparedness, he replied, "No ... I am not comfortable."
"You take a lap around the globe -- you could start any place: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, back around to Pakistan, and I probably missed a few. There's no dearth of challenges out there for our armed forces," Pace said, the newspaper reported.
