Jan 25, 2006 5:36 PM

Pentagon Study: Army Nearing Breaking Point

The all-volunteer Army -- overextended by troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan -- is in danger of collapse according to a report commissioned by the Pentagon.

The study's author, a retired Army officer, wrote that the service is in "a race against time" and risks "breaking" if it cannot head off a " catastrophic decline" in recruitment.

The report, obtained by the AP, also reportedly suggests that the Army "cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency," and that the troop reductions recently announced have less to do with any improvement on the ground in Iraq than with trying to save the force to fight another day.

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