Gen. Barry McCaffrey formerly headed the U.S. Southern Command.
"The United States Army is stumbling toward the edge of a cliff. It's starting to unravel," McCaffrey told the Rocky Mountain News, prior to addressing the Homeland Defense Symposium at the Broadmoor Hotel.
"It has $61 billion in equipment shortages. It has a $50 billion shortfall in the vital equipment and parts you need to run a war," said the former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Southern Command. "I hope there's new thinking and new debate because the course we're on now won't sustain us for the next 24 months."
The 14 Army brigades now deployed in Iraq have their full complement of troops and "extremely competent" leadership, said McCaffrey, but "the other two-thirds of the Army's combat brigades are not ready to fight."
That's because many brigades leave their equipment in Iraq for their replacements when they return home and are rapidly depleted of manpower as returning soldiers complete their service and leave, McCaffrey said.
Any new emergency, he said, such as heightened tensions in Korea or Taiwan, a domestic terrorism attack or natural disaster, could push the Army beyond its limits.
"If the other shoe drops, we are breaking the U.S. Army," he said.
McCaffrey said the Army has been fighting "on a World War II footing" since 9/11, exhausting its capacity.
"I think it's irresponsible. I think we put the nation in the position of strategic peril," he said.
Col. Lee Packnett, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to discuss the specifics of McCaffrey's statements Tuesday, but said "that is the opinion of a retired general officer, and he is not speaking for the Army."
But the Army's own chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, refused to submit a required 2008 budget plan in August to protest what he considered inadequate funding proposed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Los Angeles Times reported last month.
Money for equipment and operations is not the only dangerous deficit for the Army, McCaffrey said. Manpower standards are falling in order to meet enlistment quotas, he said, citing the Army's own announcements.
As a result, he said, the enlistment age has been raised to 42, more recruits are being accepted from the lowest category of aptitude scores, and more morals waivers are being granted for recruits with arrest records.
McCaffrey assailed both the Bush administration and Congress for failing to mobilize the country to support its military.
But McCaffrey also cautioned that leaving Iraq or Afghanistan in the midst of turmoil would unleash civil war and instability.
He urged major new efforts to rebuild both countries' economies and initiate diplomatic efforts with neighboring countries to achieve stability.
