Iraq troop boost will mean longer tours

[Barrett808]

Iraq troop boost will mean longer tours
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Thu Jan 11, 8:00 AM ET

WASHINGTON - The military's plan for filling President Bush's order for an extra 21,500 troops in Iraq will include only one major combat unit that was not otherwise scheduled to go.

The rest of the boost will come from sending a few brigades earlier than planned and extending the tours of others. Affected will be units based in Minnesota, Kansas, Georgia and Washington, said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been publicly released.

The White House said the Army would add 17,500 soldiers in Baghdad and the Marines would put 4,000 more in western Anbar Province, the center of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Whether the military push proves successful or not, it will have ramifications later for an Army and Marine Corps that already are stretched thin.

Some units will have less time at home for rest and retraining between tours than their commanders would like. And the faster pace of deployments could force the Pentagon to call on National Guard and Reserve units more frequently — possibly to remobilize some that already have served in Iraq.

(more)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070111/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_troops_7

[twilight_sailing]

1. "extending the tours"

There you are, counting the days till you get to go back to "the world". Then this happens.

It's Catch 22, baby.

It don't mean nothing.

[daleo]

2. Upping the odds of getting killed

These guys must feel like suckers for ever signing up.

[ninkasi]

3. So much about this administration

makes me angry, but keeping already exhausted troops longer, and making others go back before they should, is inexcusable. It's also inexcusable for the innocent citizens of Iraq to have their country torn to pieces in order to sate the Neocons lust for war and profits. This is all such a perverted, sordid affair that Bush and the PNAC members have foisted upon the world, that the sight or sound of Dimson makes me physically ill.

I can't watch him, or listen to him. It's all I can do to simply read about him. It's hard to accept that our country, flawed as it might have been at times, has now sunk to the very bottom, and is the world's biggest terrorist country. This is not the U.S. that my father and uncles, and my grandfathers fought for. This is something else, a nightmare, straight from the playbook of Nazi Germany. Is Bush trying to compete with Hitler as the most hated despot in history?

[sakabatou]

4. Great...

:eyes: