Washington ? The U.S. Army is “about broken.”

That’s according to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is casting doubt on a plan under consideration by President Bush that would increase troops in Iraq. Powell was the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman for the first President Bush during the 1991 Gulf War.

“The current active Army is not large enough and the Marine Corps is not large enough for the kinds of missions they’re being asked to perform,” he said. “And the Congress has a serious task ahead of it, to make sure that the Army and the Marine Corps get the funds they need to sustain themselves and to sustain their equipment and their ammunition.”

There are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and about 5,000 advisers. Combat troops make up less than half of U.S. forces in Iraq.