U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie believes there's little chance of the Army shortening combat tours in Iraq from 15 months to one year because rested and fully trained and equipped forces are still in short supply.

"There's not a unit in the Army that is at full readiness — not one," the Hawai'i Democrat said.

Meeting with the editorial board of The Advertiser, Abercrombie again said the United States should get out of Iraq and questioned tactics that include paying Sunni tribal leaders to keep the peace, adding that the troop surge was a "surge of money."

"Even if you want to do that, we don't have the guns, we don't have the equipment, we don't have the training time," he said last Monday. "We've had to add a week extra in training time now. I don't think a lot of people know that — they've had to add an extra week because we're bringing people in that otherwise would have been rejected."

The Army in November increased basic training from nine to 10 weeks.

Abercrombie is co-sponsoring a resolution that highlights the impacts of continued deployments and high operational tempo on U.S. forces.

"The reason for this bill is to try and focus the country's attention, as well as the rest of Congress' attention, on the realities of what has taken place over time with the endless deployments into Iraq and now Afghanistan," he said.

A report released Dec. 10 by the Center for American Progress, said after four years of war in Iraq and six in Afghanistan, the U.S. military is facing a crisis not seen since the end of the Vietnam War.

"Equipment shortages, manpower shortfalls, recruiting and retention problems, and misplaced budget priorities have resulted in a military barely able to meet the challenges America faces today and dangerously ill-prepared to handle the challenges of the future," the report said.

America remains a power without peer, but the country's military is being ground down by low-tech insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the report issued by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Abercrombie said unit readiness in Iraq has been sustained through the use of emergency war prepositioned stocks of equipment that have not been replenished, and that National Guard units, on average, have only 40 percent of their prescribed equipment.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. last month told the Senate Armed Services Committee that while the Army remains a resilient and committed professional force, the service is "out of balance."

"The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply," Casey said.

Abercrombie said he wants to try to make the military readiness issue a central topic rather than have it exist on the periphery.

"There's more concern about the BCS championship than there is about whether or not we have sufficient equipment in the field for the troops that are deployed right now," he said.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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