“THE HISTORY OF WAR proves that nine out of ten times an army has been destroyed because its supply lines have been cut off.” General Douglas MacArthur said this in 1950 before his landing at Inchon during the Korean War. It’s a thought that is definitely on the minds of Tommy Franks, Richard Myers, and Donald Rumsfeld as coalition forces are now stretched out from northern Kuwait to the outskirts of Baghdad, a distance of some 300 miles. The question is, are we stretched too thin?

As retired General John Coburn, former head of Army Materiel Command, told the New York Times, “You have your lines of communication extended, in some cases for hundreds of miles, and that makes this problem very, very difficult to manage. My guess is you’ve got shortages of parts, people repairing equipment right on the battlefield and constantly being forced to adapt to the combat commander’s maneuver plan.” Indeed, there are reports of fuel shortages within the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division as it spearheads towards the Iraqi capital–ultimately to face the Republican Guard’s Medina Division.