U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday dismissed the conclusions of a new study that suggests the U.S. military has been overstretched by continuing wars.

Speaking at a Pentagon briefing, Rumsfeld said the U.S. military is "enormously capable" and "battle hardened," not "a peacetime force that has been in barracks or garrisons."

A day earlier, U.S. media reported that a Pentagon-commissioned study concluded that the U.S. army is being overextended to a " breaking point", mainly by the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It warned that as a result, the U.S. military may not be able to retain and recruit enough troops to defeat the insurgency in Iraq.

The conclusions were echoed by Democratic lawmakers, who said in a statement that the U.S. military is under severe stress.

However, Rumsfeld said the "breaking point" assertions don't reflect the facts, noting that the U.S. troops in Iraq-- now totaled at 136, 000-- only account for a small portion of the combined force of over 1.4 million active U.S. troops and some 2 million reserve troops.

He also cited changes such as the ongoing efforts to reorganize the U.S. army into smaller brigade combat teams to make the country's fighting force more flexible.

The U.S. army used to be organized in division-size groupings of about 15,000 soldiers each, but under Rumsfeld's reorganization plan, it is now moving toward brigade-sized units of roughly 3,500 to 4,000 troops each.

Rumsfeld said because of the changes, in the future about 75 percent of the army brigades will always be combat-ready in case of any crisis.

Source: Xinhua