US Military Capacity

In a press conferance yesterday with Sec of Defense Robert Gates and Chief of Staff General Peter Pace, NBC Pentagon correstpondent Jim Miklaszewski's questioning puts gave GEneral Pace the oportuinty to put to rest the myth that the US military is strecthed so thin that it is incapable of responding to additional threats.
The entire transcript is available here.

Miklaszewski: So what is this prolonged deployment in Iraq doing to the overall readiness of the force, and what is the state of the readiness of the force today?

Gates Reply.....

Miklaszewski: But in terms of readiness -- General?

Gen Pace:

.... But there's more than one audience here, so let me make sure I got -- I make sure our potential enemies also know that the United States armed forces have enormous power and capacity, and at any given time we have about 200,000 to 250,000 of our troops overseas out of some 2.4 million. We have enormous residual capacity. We have the vast power of our Army -- correction -- of our Navy and our Air Force still available to take on any potential foes. And it would take longer then for the reserve forces to be remobilized and to get to the fight, but there is zero doubt about the outcome. It would simply take us longer than we would like, or than it would if we were not doing anything else, to defeat any potential enemy.

Miklaszewski: Which would potentially increase the number of casualties of the West. ( I assume when he says west he is refering to the United States and Britain)

Gen Pace: You potentially increase the number of casualties on both sides and the amount of damage done on both sides, because you have some of your precision intelligence systems and some of your precision delivery systems already committed, and therefore, you may end up using more dumb bombs, for example, to get the job done. So you would end up using more brute force than you normally would if you could just start with nothing else going on and pick the exact units and exact weapons that you would use.