"... deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war..."

DOD/ here

Q You expressed concern about the rate at which you can get forces and their equipment into Afghanistan, given the terrain. Can you give us some sense of how important it is to you that whatever is decided in the coming weeks will happen quickly? And are you confident that the stuff can get in there as fast as it needs to?

SEC. GATES: Well, let me make a couple of comments and then invite the chairman to comment.

First of all, the situation in Afghanistan is very different than the situation we faced in Iraq in the sense that we do not have the same kind of transportation access to Afghanistan that we did in Iraq, where we were able, over a five-month period or so, to bring in five brigade combat teams. So almost everything of consequence has to go in by air.

We are in the middle of major drawdowns in Iraq. We are replacing forces in Iraq. We are replacing forces in Afghanistan. And so the ability of the receiving end to receive significant quantities of equipment and people in a relatively short period of time is very different than the situation in Iraq. So that's the challenge we basically face in terms of just the logistics of the issue.

I think that -- first of all, let me -- let me be clear. We identified weeks ago the critical enablers that could be sent to Afghanistan before the end of the year. There were roughly 2,700, 2,800 of them. We have sent all of those in. So no critical medical or route clearance, counter-IED [improvised explosive device], ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] assets have been held up by this review process. And I anticipate that as soon as the president makes his decision, we can probably begin flowing some forces pretty quickly after that. But it is a bigger challenge than certainly was the -- was the case in Iraq.

Says Nathan Hodge at DangerRoom, "That’s an understatement. Earlier this week, Spencer Ackerman crunched the numbers on possible Army deployments. “If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002,” he wrote..."