Fighting on Borrowed Time: The Effect on US Military Readiness of America’s post-9/11 Wars

(printable PDF version) (HTML version) by Carl Conetta, PDA Briefing Report #19, 11 September 2006. To sustain today’s wars, the Bush administration has adopted a policy of “risk displacement”. High optempo is maintained in Iraq and Afghanistan at the expense of readiness elsewhere and for other missions. The policy also saps future readiness. It may take the US military half a decade to recover.