Monday, March 7 2005 16:16 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New York: Even if the insurgency in Iraq abates, the US military is not well prepared to get on with the task of nation building being plagued with lack of equipment, a media report said today (Mar 7, 2005) quoting Defence Department documents.

Much of this work would be the responsibility of the Army's civil-affairs and psychological operations (psy-ops) units, both of which are "undermanned and under-equipped", said a report in the upcoming issue of 'Time'. The report alleged that equipment remained a problem for front-line National Guard troops too.

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan held up photos of vehicles in Iraq sent to him by National Guard soldiers from the 42nd Infantry Division.

The vehicles still had not been fitted with armour, despite Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's promise that they would all have extra protection by February 15, 'Time' said.

General John Abizaid, US Central Command's chief, who was testifying, promised to investigate. "It's very frustrating," Ryan later told 'Time', "that we're still not protecting our troops."

"It's horrible," said a Pentagon official. "They're kind of a broken force." Civil-affairs soldiers rebuild public utilities and other civilian services in war-torn areas, and psy-ops specialists are in charge of propaganda.

Most of these soldiers, the magazine said, were reservists, but of the some 8,700 listed on the rolls, almost 1,200 are what senior Army officers call "ghosts" reservists without enough training to be deployed overseas or who have not attended monthly drills in about a year.