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Military Families Voice of Victory has this post up today, and while MurthaFokker™ is named, he isn’t even the point. They link to an opinion piece in, of all places, People’s Daily Online (a media outlet from China).

This piece, titled “US Army also seems to be weak and frail at times”, suggests we are sliding fast as the greatest military on earth, and quotes Murtha in making the claim:

Some US defense and diplomatic experts also noted that due to equipment shortages and other related problems, nearly two thirds of the active forces including the US Army and Marine Corps cannot plunged themselves in battles immediately once the wars break out. A prestigious, Marine-turned Congressman John Murtha said the United States is, in fact, unable to fight another war at all in such circumstances.

The lead-in to the tearing down of our Armed forces goes like this:

In early August, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged at a news conference in Pentagon that the US military has reported a shortage of equipment and a declining capacity of combat readiness after a prolonged war engagement. Recently, some US military personnel and members of the Congress have voiced their dissatisfaction with the heavy losses of the war.

US Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker said the present depletion rate of the Army’s equipment is four times more as originally envisaged. The military was obliged to “broaden sources of income and reduce expenditure”. One the one hand, they’ve actively prompted the Congress to increase the budget by another $17 billion as emergency appropriations and; on the other, they’ve decided to cut down non-war spending, for instance, canceling non-essential business trips, suspending the recruit of non-military staffers, and even dismissing some temporarily contracted civilian staffers.

Isn’t THAT depressing? As I read through the piece, there are several startling comments that just infuriate me solely because they are not true, and are intended only to serve to tear us down as a Military and as a Country. And, this, solely for the purposes of shoring UP our enemies. Consider this passage:

It seems that the US armed forces, the world’s top military power, have also been seen weak and frail in their performance as the US dollars did recently.

In the wake of the “9.11″ Incident in 2001, the United States has launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of “anti-terrorism”. It sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to overseas battlefields and input a huge amount of money beyond the capacities of any other countries. Although large-scale warfare in Iraq has ended, regional fighting and conflicts are still around. The loss of US military personnel and the depletion of military equipment have far exceeded their expectations, engulfing pack after pack of US dollars into bottomless holes. According to the estimation, the United States’ military spending in the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq is expected to top the $450 billion mark this year.

Compared with the competence of soldiers recruited in the past, the quality of the US soldiers has also slid because of lowered quality set for the recruitment. There is nothing new for the frequent occurrence of vicious cases in which US officers and soldiers are charged of committing rape and indiscriminate killing in addition to the deflated morale. These factors have, to some extent, negatively affected the US combat capability.

What trend to draw people’s attention today is that the US military and political authorities are now working actively to implement a redeployment plan on a global scale.. It plans to build a so-called “three-tier base system” overseas from 2006 to 2011. The Pentagon said bluntly this system can save a lot of money than any other setups of the past, and it will enable the United States to have a more flexible and effective control of the entire world. Although the US military shows its weakness for the time being, it does not seem to abandon its military presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and other strategically vital places, let alone giving up its set hegemony strategies.

There you have it. We keep being told dissent is patriotic, and that people have the right and freedom to speak “truth to power”. We are assured there is no harm, and instead only good, to be gleaned from an open discourse about the many issues we confront here at home.

Notice the glee of the Chinese? Any chance others such as Osama, perhaps Ahmadinejad, maybe even a Nasrallah or two, might think they are on the path to victory when enough American “experts” and so-called Politicians run their head long enough?

[note: haystack's hair is officially on fire!]