Why do people think the US military is overstretched?

This is a good point. The military is purposely smaller then it was during the cold war, so if its "stretched", why don't they start recruiting more and lowering standards. Right now the standards of the military are pretty high, a lot higher then 20 years ago. Not to start a conspiracy theory or anything but it seems like part of the liberal media war against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Paint the military as stretched to the limit and it puts the conflicts in more of a bad light. Although, there are some troops who have deployed mulitiple times and some are probably stretched mentally/physically/emotionally themselves.