As evidence, Krepinevich points to the Army's 2005 recruiting slump _ missing its recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 _ and its decision to offer much bigger enlistment bonuses and other incentives.

"You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue," he said in an interview. He added that the Army is still a highly effective fighting force and is implementing a plan that will expand the number of combat brigades available for rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 136-page report represents a more sobering picture of the Army's condition than military officials offer in public. While not released publicly, a copy of the report was provided in response to an Associated Press inquiry.

Illustrating his level of concern about strain on the Army, Krepinevich titled one of his report's chapters, "The Thin Green Line."

He wrote that the Army is "in a race against time" to adjust to the demands of war "or risk `breaking' the force in the form of a catastrophic decline" in recruitment and re-enlistment.

Col. Lewis Boone, spokesman for Army Forces Command, which is responsible for providing troops to war commanders, said it would be "a very extreme characterization" to call the Army broken. He said his organization has been able to fulfill every request for troops that it has received from field commanders.

The Krepinevich assessment is the latest in the debate over whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have worn out the Army, how the strains can be eased and whether the U.S. military is too burdened to defeat other threats.

Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat and Vietnam veteran, created a political storm last fall when he called for an early exit from Iraq, arguing that the Army was "broken, worn out" and fueling the insurgency by its mere presence. Administration officials have hotly contested that view.

George Joulwan, a retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander, agrees the Army is stretched thin.

"Whether they're broken or not, I think I would say if we don't change the way we're doing business, they're in danger of being fractured and broken, and I would agree with that," Joulwan told CNN last month.

Krepinevich did not conclude that U.S. forces should quit Iraq now, but said it may be possible to reduce troop levels below 100,000 by the end of the year. There now are about 136,000, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

For an Army of about 500,000 soldiers _ not counting the thousands of National Guard and Reserve soldiers now on active duty _ the commitment of 100,000 or so to Iraq might not seem an excessive burden. But because the war has lasted longer than expected, the Army has had to regularly rotate fresh units in while maintaining its normal training efforts and reorganizing the force from top to bottom.

Krepinevich's analysis, while consistent with the conclusions of some outside the Bush administration, is in stark contrast with the public statements of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior Army officials.

Army Secretary Francis Harvey, for example, opened a Pentagon news conference last week by denying the Army was in trouble. "Today's Army is the most capable, best-trained, best-equipped and most experienced force our nation has fielded in well over a decade," he said, adding that recruiting has picked up.

Rumsfeld has argued that the experience of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has made the Army stronger, not weaker.

"The Army is probably as strong and capable as it ever has been in the history of this country," he said in an appearance at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on Dec. 5. "They are more experienced, more capable, better equipped than ever before."

Krepinevich said in the interview that he understands why Pentagon officials do not state publicly that they are being forced to reduce troop levels in Iraq because of stress on the Army. "That gives too much encouragement to the enemy," he said, even if a number of signs, such as a recruiting slump, point in that direction.

Krepinevich is executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit policy research institute.

He said he concluded that even Army leaders are not sure how much longer they can keep up the unusually high pace of combat tours in Iraq before they trigger an institutional crisis. Some major Army divisions are serving their second yearlong tours in Iraq, and some smaller units have served three times.

Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the private Brookings Institution, said in a recent interview that "it's a judgment call" whether the risk of breaking the Army is great enough to warrant expanding its size.

"I say yes. But it's a judgment call, because so far the Army isn't broken," O'Hanlon said.

To stop the atrocities, based on the Vietnam experience, now comes the hardest part of American civics -- convincing a clear majority of Americans, and then of Congress, that our national leaders have crossed a forbidden line. That line consists of repeatedly violating national and international laws on the conduct of military operations. And when that line is crossed, as the editors of In the Name of Democracy put it, Americans have a “duty to make our country stop committing war crimes.”

The focus of this book is public education followed by concerted public action. The materials marshaled include government documents, statements by government officials and war critics, news accounts and a Washington Post editorial that concluded in December 2004 that “violations of human rights … appear to be ongoing in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan. For now the appalling truth is that there has been no remedy for the documented torture and killing of foreign prisoners by this American government.”

The editors and contributors to In the Name of Democracy offer a variety of things to do to help create a remedy. These range from legal actions to civil disobedience.

“Difficult as it may be, our institutions of government can be pressured to do the right thing, and public and media insistence on through investigations and appropriate punishments for those responsible, no matter how high up the chain of command, could bring about those results,” Elizabeth Holtzman writes in an essay titled “Watergate and Abu Ghraib: Holding War Criminals Accountable in the U.S. Courts and Congress.”

Holtzman was a member of Congress who helped draft articles of impeachment against President Nixon, forcing his resignation from office over his imperious widening of the war in Indochina and misuse of government agencies to attack war critics.

“Gandhi pointed out that ‘even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.’ Such a resistance movement advances not so much by amassing power to itself as by withdrawing the elements of cooperation and acquiescence that give usurpers their power,” the editors conclude.

“When soldiers refuse to fight; youth refuse to enlist; activists interfere with induction centers; officials refuse to hide the truth; lawyers, judges, and elected officials refuse to accept abuse of government authority; and more and more ordinary citizens support such efforts -- the days of those who usurp legitimate authority are numbered.”

Click HERE to buy the book.

And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.

I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.

After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

The death of Mr Barber is one of numerous instances of Iraqi veterans who have taken their own lives since the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in spring 2003. Concern is such that the Pentagon has recently instigated new procedures for monitoring the mental health of returning troops. But his story would not have been told but for a group of determined activists and a British journalism student who was among the handful of people the reservist e-mailed just minutes before he killed himself.

Craig Evans, 19, a student at Bournemouth University, was working on a project about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and had been in regular contact with Mr Barber. But the e-mail message he received on Monday 16 January told him something was terribly wrong. It read: "I have nothing to live for any more - I am going to be checking out of this world." Mr Evans said he tried to contact the US embassy and some of Mr Barber's friends in the US to alert them to what he suspected might happen. "I e-mailed him back and wrote, 'I am going to ring you, don't do anything stupid'.It was an effort in vain: within an hour Mr Barber had used his shotgun to end to his torment.

Mr Evans said: "Doug said he wasn't the same person when he got back [from Iraq] - he was paranoid, had lost his social skills, his marriage was over, he couldn't walk down the street without worrying something was going to blow up. I made a promise to him that I would do everything I could to get his story out there."

Mr Barber was a member of the 1485th Transportation Company of the Ohio National Guard and was called up for active duty in February 2003. He arrived in Iraq in summer 2003, when the initial invasion had been completed and just as the insurgency was gathering strength.

He spent seven months in Iraq, driving trucks and trying to avoid the deadly perils that confronted him. He was haunted by the deaths of his colleagues and by the fear and desperation he saw in the faces of Iraqis. Like many reservists pushed into the front line, Mr Barber said he was not properly trained.

"It was really bad - death was all around you, all the time. You couldn't escape it," he said in an interview after he returned to Alabama with the campaign group Coalition for Free Thought in Media. "Everybody in Iraq was going through suicide counselling because the stress was so high. It was at such a magnitude, such a high level, that it was unthinkable for anyone to imagine. You cannot even imagine it." He was opposed to the war but felt obliged to go because he believed that without the experience his opinion would be invalid.

Friends said that when Mr Barber returned things started to fall apart and he split from his wife of 11 years. He had been prescribed clonazepam, an anti-anxiety drug that can cause depression. One friend of more than 13 years, Rick Hays, a minister from Indiana, said: "He was a really good guy, pretty level-headed ... He liked to have fun. But when he came back from Iraq the difference in him was so sad."

Charlie Anderson, of Iraq Veterans Against the War, said the federal Veterans Administration relied too heavily on the use of drugs for dealing with returning soldiers suffering from stress.

Mr Barber's sister, Connie Bingham, said a funeral was due to take place on Saturday.

'We live with permanent scars from horrific events'

Doug Barber wrote this internet article on 12 January, just before he died

My thought today is to help you the reader understand what happens to a soldier when they come home and the sacrifice we continue to make. This war on terror has become a personal war for so many, yet the Bush administration do not want to reveal to America that this is a personal war. They want to run it like a business, and thus they refuse to show the personal sacrifices the soldiers and their families have made for this country.

All is not OK or right for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers come home missing limbs and other parts of their bodies. Still others will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand. We come home from war trying to put our lives back together but some cannot stand the memories and decide that death is better. We kill ourselves because we are so haunted by seeing children killed and whole families wiped out.

Others come home to nothing, families have abandoned them: husbands and wives have left these soldiers, and so have parents. Post-traumatic stress disorder has become the norm amongst these soldiers because they don't know how to cope with returning to a society that will never understand what they have endured.

PTSD comes in many forms not understood by many: but yet if a soldier has it, America thinks the soldiers are crazy. PTSD comes in the form of depression, anger, regret, being confrontational, anxiety, chronic pain, compulsion, delusions, grief, guilt, dependence, loneliness, sleep disorders, suspiciousness/paranoia, low self-esteem and so many other things.

We are easily startled with a loud bang or noise and can be found ducking for cover when we get panicked. This is a result of artillery rounds going off in a combat zone, or an improvised explosive device blowing up.

I myself have trouble coping with an everyday routine that often causes me to have a short fuse. A lot of soldiers lose jobs just because they are trained to be killers and they have lived in an environment that is conducive to that. We are always on guard for our safety and that of our comrades. When you go to bed at night you wonder will you be sent home in a flag-draped coffin because a mortar round went off on your sleeping area.

Soldiers live in deplorable conditions where burning your own faeces is the order of the day, where going days on end with no shower and the uniform you wear gets so crusty it sticks to your body becomes a common occurrence. We also deal with rationing water or even food. So when a soldier comes home they are unsure of what to do.

This is what PTSD comes in the shape of - soldiers can not often handle coming back to the same world they left behind. It is something that drives soldiers over the edge and causes them to withdraw from society. As Americans we turn our nose down at them wondering why they act the way they do. Who cares about them, why should we help them?

The European Union and the United States have given backing to the plan.

However, the Iranian negotiator warned any deal would be scuppered if his country's nuclear programme was referred for discussion at the UN Security Council -- a move that would allow Western powers to press for sanctions against Iran.

"If the matter is referred to the UN Security Council or is used for political pressure, Iran will begin industrial enrichment of uranium," he was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS news agency.

At the request of Britain, Germany and France, the UN nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will hold an emergency meeting in Vienna February 2-3 to discuss the Iranian programme. The IAEA could decide to send Iran to the UN Security Council.

The European powers declared negotiations over the Iranian programme were at a dead end after Tehran on January 10 broke IAEA seals and resumed uranium enrichment work to produce material that could serve either as fuel for atomic reactors or the raw material for nuclear weapons.

The European Union and the United States are trying to convince key Iranian trading partners Russia and China to back a hard line against Iran, including the referral to the UN Security Council.

But diplomats said the two sides still disagree on the wording of a resolution that could be adopted at the Vienna meeting.

An important flurry of diplomatic activity is likely Monday when the foreign ministers of all five UN Security Council permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- meet in London. Germany's foreign minister will also attend.

Although in London for a meeting on Afghanistan, the officials are to hold separate talks about Iran and the upcoming IAEA meeting, the British Foreign Office said.

Larijani warned that referral to the UN Security Council "will not serve peace and security in the region."

Larijani also stipulated that many details still had to be worked out before the proposed Iran-Russia uranium enrichment partnership became reality.

"Russia's idea is good, but... favourable conditions concerning the time and place" of the uranium enrichment scheme have still to be worked out, he said.

Larijani also insisted that Iran had full rights to "carry out scientific-research work in the area of enriching uranium," saying that this differed from actual enrichment.

He reiterated Iran's willingness to negotiate with Europe, adding that "Russian efforts can help this."

Russia is Iran's main partner in the nuclear power programme, which Iran says it needs to boost energy supplies. Russian engineers are building a plant at Bushehr and Russia supplies the uranium.

However, Western governments and Israel say Tehran could be secretly aiming to build a nuclear weapon. This would upset the longstanding security balance in the Middle East, where Israel is the sole, if undeclared, atomic power.

Iran -- whose populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinjead has said Israel should be "wiped off the map" -- has warned that sanctions against Iran could drive up already sky-high world energy prices.

The United States has eased its opposition to an Islamic Iraqi state to help clinch a deal on a draft constitution before tonight's deadline.

American diplomats backed religious conservatives who threatened to torpedo talks over the shape of the new Iraq unless Islam was a primary source of law. Secular and liberal groups were dismayed at the move, branding it a betrayal of Washington's promise to advocate equal rights in a free and tolerant society.

Stalemate over the role of Islam, among other issues, meant last week's deadline was extended for a week. Outstanding disputes could produce another cliffhanger tonight, triggering a further extension.

The Bush administration, keen to show the political process is on track, has waded into negotiations and pressured all sides to compromise.

Administration officials have suggested that the number of US troops could be reduced next year if Iraq makes political progress and enough Iraqi troops are trained to take on insurgents. But yesterday, a US general said the army was making "worst case" contingency plans to maintain troops at the current level for another four years.

In an interview with the Associated Press, General Peter Schoomaker said the army had planned troop rotations up to 2009 to ensure enough soldiers would be available. But actual deployments will be decided by commanders in Iraq, if conditions allow, he added.

There are currently 138,000 US troops in Iraq, including 25,000 marines. President Bush has repeatedly denied that the US intends to "cut and run", leaving Iraq to the insurgents. "Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," the president said yesterday in his weekly radio address.

Conservative Shias, dominant in the Iraqi government, had clashed with Kurds and other minorities who wanted Islam to be "a" rather than "the" main source of law.

According to Kurdish and Sunni negotiators, the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, proposed that Islam be named "a primary source" and supported a wording which would give clerics authority in civil matters such as divorce, marriage and inheritance.

If approved, critics say that the proposals would erode women's rights and other freedoms enshrined under existing laws. "We understand the Americans have sided with the Shias. It's shocking. It doesn't fit with American values," an unnamed Kurdish negotiator told Reuters. "They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state."

Dozens of women gathered in central Baghdad yesterday to protest against what the organiser, Yanar Mohammad, feared would be a "fascist, nationalist and Islamist" constitution. "We are fighting to avoid becoming second class citizens," she said.

The US embassy declined to discuss the negotiations but a state department official in Washington told the New York Times that the draft document should be judged in its entirety.

There are conflicting signals about the prospect of a deal before the deadline, with some factions claiming divisions have narrowed, others saying they have widened.

If a text is not handed to parliament by midnight, deputies could be asked to repeat last week's vote and amend the existing law, which decreed the deadline, to extend it further.

The alternative would be to dissolve parliament and call an election, something the ruling Shia and Kurdish coalition wants to avoid.

If a text is agreed, there will be a referendum in October which - if passed - will pave the way for a December election.

Sunni Arabs, a dominant minority under Saddam Hussein and now the backbone of the insurgency, fear a constitution which cedes autonomy to Kurds in the north and Shias in the south, leaving central government too weak to funnel oil revenues to Sunnis in the middle.

The drafting committee's 15-member Sunni bloc said it had been sidelined in recent days and appealed to the US and UN to ensure their voice was heard. US and British diplomats have suggested that federalism will be fudged enough to bring mainstream Sunnis on board and drain support from the resistance.

Al Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups have threatened to kill Sunnis who register to vote, saying the political process is a US-orchestrated sham. Three Sunnis who erected posters in Mosul urging people to vote were murdered last week.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been due to visit the southern city where bombs exploded at a bank and government building, his officials said.

Ahmadinejad had been due to visit Ahvaz on Tuesday, but his office said he cancelled the trip on Monday night.

Differing reasons for the cancellation were reported: Reuters said it was due to sandstorms that would have wrecked his hallmark walks through the streets while the official Islamic Republic News Agency, quoted by The Associated Press, said heavy rain was to blame.

Ahmadinejad and his entire Cabinet had been expected to meet in Ahvaz -- a city with a history of violence involving members of Iran's Arab minority -- as one of a series of visits to regional capitals to address key local issues.

Lebanon's al-Manar television, run by the Hezbollah militant group, said earlier that Tuesday's bombs had been intended to kill Ahmadinejad. Its Tehran correspondent said the president had canceled his trip after a security tip-off.

Tuesday's explosions followed bitter exchanges between Tehran and London. Iran has accused Britain of provoking unrest in Khuzestan, which lies across the border from southern Iraq, where 8,500 British soldiers are stationed.

Britain has also opposed Iran's nuclear activities, supporting moves to refer it to the U.N. Security Council, and has accused Tehran of backing Iraqi insurgents in attacks on British soldiers.

Both countries have denied the claims and counterclaims.

Ahvaz city governor Mohammad Jafar Samari said Tuesday there was no word on who planted the bombs.

"The place where the bombs exploded was a long way from where the president had planned to make a speech," he told Reuters.

Iranian news agencies said the Saman bank was gutted by fire and broken glass littered streets near the blast sites.

Iranian authorities are sensitive about protests in Ahvaz and the surrounding province of Khuzestan, which sits on most of the country's oil reserves, the second biggest in the world.

Bombings took place in Ahvaz last June and October that the government blamed on Iranian Arab extremists whom it claimed were trained abroad and had ties to foreign governments, including Britain.

The October bombings killed six people and those in June killed at least eight. Britain denied any link to the unrest.

Nezam Molla Hoveizeh, a Khuzestan lawmaker, said Tuesday the bombers were "dissidents based outside our borders," IRNA reported, without elaborating.

A preliminary United Nations report said Arabs, who comprise about three percent of Iran's 69 million people, were discriminated against with regard to basic amenities, resources and legal rights.

Copyright 2006 CNN.

At least nine people were killed in yesterday’s two blasts in Ahvaz, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province which borders Iraq, police spokesman Mohammed Ali Pour said today.

Forty-six people were wounded in the explosions inside a bank and outside a state environmental agency building, the official Islamic Republic News Agency has reported.

Ahvaz has a history of violence involving members of Iran’s Arab minority. Last year, bombings in June and October killed a total of 14 people in the city. In April, residents rioted for two days over claims – denied by the government - that the state was planning to reduce the number of Arabs in the area.

Iran has repeatedly accused Britain of provoking unrest in the region, which borders Iraq near where 8,500 British soldiers are based.

Britain has denied any connection to the Khuzestan unrest.