I have to admit that even cynical, jaded, disgusted me is surprised that more of a stink has not been raised about this:
The military announced Wednesday that most active duty Army units now in Iraq and Afghanistan and those sent in the future would serve 15-month tours, three months longer than the standard one-year tour.
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who announced the change at a news conference at the Pentagon, said that the only other way to maintain force levels would have been to allow many soldiers less than a year at home between combat tours.
Mr. Gates said the problem was evident even before President Bush ordered an increase in troops for Iraq this year. Officials said the change became inevitable as the numbers of extra troops that were needed — and, most likely, the time the extra forces would have to stay — increased.
“This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step,” he said. “Our forces are stretched, there’s no question about that.”
This is beyond a big deal, and the impact this will have is enormous- on morale, on readiness, on equipment, on mission performance, and on families. You will hear talk about how this will make things more “difficult,” but it is far beyond making things a little more difficult.
I don’t think people appreciate the mental toll this is going to have on our guys and gals on the front lines. They wake up every day, face unspeakable horrors, and there are but a few things that keep them going- their buddies, their since of mission, and the notion that in 42 days and a wake-up, they are out of this shithole and on their way home. Tacking on another three months is enormous, and not because they are cowards (really, the thing that makes them so brave is that they are afraid, as anyone with a brain would be, but keep going out there every damned day), but because it takes away the hope, instills a degree of cynicism, and erodes trust.
And that isn’t even taking into consideration the maintenance rotations on the gear. Or the juggling that will have to be done again in a few months should we not bring more brigades online. Or the flight from the Guard and Active Duty that this sort of thing inevitably will increase.
This tour extension is big- bigger than just three months.
Zombie Santa Claus
We’re going to have to rebuild the entire military after this fiasco is finally over with. I don’t know what form it’ll take, but it’s hard to imagine that the current model will suffice in the next decade (or whenever the fuck we get out of Iraq).
Slide
and yet… depite all Bush and company have done to negatively impact the lives our our military personnel (Stop gap order, repeated deployments, lack of body armour, lack of uparmored humvees, Walter Reed, cutting the Veteran’s budgets, etc. etc.) they still have the audacity of suggesting it is the Dems that “don’t support the troops”
Unfuckingbelievable. I would like to see some recent polls on what our men and women in uniform now think of the Bush Crime Family Administration.
Dreggas
Like I said on the desperation move thread:
Not to criticize this guy, since he is a great guy but he’s a freaking teacher.
Nicholas Weaver
Not to mention the rational is so that units can have a full 12 months between rotations. When they were SUPPOSED to have 24 months between rotations.
Who would enlist now?
cleek
between the lines: we’re in Iraq for at least another 15 months
Jake
Yes, and why is it necessary? It couldn’t have anything to do with some dumbshit idea called The Surge would it? And how is that working out?
Not just inside the Green Zone but inside the fricking Parliament building. But hey, The Decider decided the soldiers have to keep pushing this big bloody boulder up the hill, so push the damn boulder they will.
Gee, this acknowledgment of reality makes it all better.
Blackwater USA.
carol H
John,
Thank you for posting this. I post here occaisionally and read frequently because I like the intelligent and reasoned comments made by the posters here. My son is currently deployed in Ramadi, originally set to return home in August. He called me yesterday to confirm that he has been extended and will be returning home in November instead. Before he called me he called his young wife to give her the bad news. She has been posting a countdown of his remaining days on his MySpace page, now she will have to add 120 days to it. You are right about the toll on soldiers and their families he told me that he is seeing the beginnings of stress responses in himself. It became obvious to him when he and the rest of the members of his unit became edgy during a thunderstorm, he had to remind himself that it was just thunder, not an IED or mortar. His unit was one of the first at the site of the truck bomb/chlorine bomd that went off in Ramadi last week and it described it as a horror. He said he walked on something squisy and looked down to see someone’s stomach under his boot. Now he has another 120 days? It’s beyond words, really.
David
15, months, huh? Hey, what happens in 15 months? Something important, it’s on the tip of my tongue…
ThymeZone
Not to worry, the War Czar will straighten this all out.
As soon as we can find a general stupid enough to take the job.
Dreggas
Talking to the friend I mentioned above the “shooters” as he calls them, ie the guys in the trenches are not happy. Their commanders are none to happy either, at least the lower level ones.
ThymeZone
Looks like Bush was against the extension, before he was for it.
grumpy realist
John, I think no one has raised a stink about this because this sort of “oops, sorry, we’re going to have to shift yet another burden onto you” has now become Business as Usual.
This is starting to remind me of the Roman legions who were ordered to march east into Asia and never come back.
I honestly think that neither Bush nor any of the people surrounding him care a cent about the situation. If all the soldiers in Iraq were to die, continually picked off one-by-one, the only thing Bush et al. would worry about is how it would play with the public. The fact that this sort of continual extension of troups, stop-lossing until eternity, etc. is the worst sort of abuse of our troops doesn’t even enter their minds. As far as Bush sees, he’s “the Deciderer” and the only role the rest of us have is to carry out the demands he places on us.
Grrr
For Slide, from Military Times, Dec. 29, 2006:
This was asked of 6,000 active recruits, 52% of which still approved of Bush’s performance as president.
IIRC, attempts were made to strangle this poll in the crib. Ostensibly because the Army Times Publishing Company is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of that hippie commune Gannett Company, Inc.
Faux News
Clearly this thread is in desperate need of a Darrell hijack. I’m always up for hearing more about Global Warming on Mars and Venus.
OK, I miss Darrell. I will even settle for “IT’S CLINTON’S FAULT FOR DECIMATING THE MILITARY WHEN HE WAS PREZIDENT”!
And by the way Paul L. will NOT do! I need my Darrell fix.
Rome Again
Yes, Yes, doesn’t it though?
tBone
No one is surprised by it. It takes a lot to get the ol’ outrage meter to move after 4 years of this shit. And it just makes official what was happening anyway – I have a buddy in the Guard who was supposed to be home last month, but they got extended for three months right after the surge was announced in January.
Now that Bush Co. has nearly completed the task of grinding the Army down to a nub, I don’t want to hear wingnuts fucking whine about Clinton’s “hollowed-out” military ever again.
Punchy
I forgot who said this recently (Cole? Andrew?), but it really is one scandal a day, for the past month. Yesterday it was this, today it’s the emails “deleted”. Unreal.
I cannot imagine being in some shithole for a year, counting both the days left and the number of fatalities in your company, and then hearing this. 3 extra months in which to get shot and blown up.
stickler
Grumpy realist:
Wrong. That was Russian Czar Paul I in 1798. Infuriated by a tarnished button on a soldier’s coat, he ordered the regiment to march to Siberia. They marched off dutifully and were never heard from again. (Given the conditions of service in the Russian army at the time, they might have seen the order as an opportunity to go AWOL for good, and I wouldn’t have blamed them.)
____
The story of extending tours to 15 months intrigued me; I wondered how Bizarro World was going to whitewash it. Strangely enough, they have no mention of it on the front page. Odd, that.
Dreggas
our outrage meter needs to be changed to one that goes to 11…
28 Percent
I was all ready to launch a truly wild spectacle of conflicting batshit resolution, covering such points as:
1. The drive-by media is making Iraq out to be worse than it is, Detroit, etc.
2. All the troops are doing over there anyway is sitting around drinking designer coffee
3. Any true patriot would be happy to do whatever, denigrating their sacrifice by implying that it’s made unwillingly yada yada yada
4. Extended deployment is actually a perq, as it’s really just more chances to see the world and possibly be the first eyewitnesses to the Rapture.
But then Carol posted that gutwrenching post about her son and I just can’t bring myself to do it. Kudos.
George "Man Child" Bush
Suck it up, troopers! Get out there and make me look good, or we’ll make it a SIX month extension! Now — As you were! And fuck you very much!
Ron Beasley
As a Vietnam era vet I know that the only thing that allowed any moral at all was the fact that unless you volunteered to go back you would spend 12 months in Vietnam – period. The multiple tours were bad enough but 15 months at a shot!
Bubblegum Tate
There’s no need to read between the lines–Bush has already stated that it’s going to be up to the next president to decide when to leave Iraq.
TZ: The analysis I’ve seen is that it wasn’t so much that Bush was against the extension before he was for it, but that he wanted to be able to blame the Democrats for it–hence all his bitching about not getting a “clean” bill (read: A bill that gives him everything he wants with absolutely no accountability therein). The plan was supposed to be for him to be able to say, “I got a bill I didn’t like, I just had to veto it, and now, our troops will have to suffer tour extensions. Bad Democrats!” but the timing got all out of whack.
And finally, CarolH: All the best to your son and your family. Here’s hoping he comes back in November safe and sound.
Bruce Moomaw
“This tour extension is big- bigger than just three months.”
Well, yeah, but remember that we’ve passed the point at which Bush and Cheney are trying to CONCEAL any of their actions — they’re simply saying, “Yeah, we’re gonna do such-and-such. What you gonna do about it, since you can never rake up the 2/3 of the Senate needed to remove us?” Nor, obviously, do they care what happens to the GOP afterwards. Well, Bush warned us right after his narrow reelection: the voters had officially approved of everything he’d done up to then, and also of everything he might do over the next 4 years, and he would act accordingly.
The central response to this administration should be to make modifications in the seriously flawed US Constitution to ensure that nothing like its artificial accumulation of power can ever happen again — starting with a provision for a no-confidence Congressional vote requiring a special Presidential election, and another one requiring a supermajority to approve (and periodically reapprove) the Attorney General. But no one in either party is talking about the urgent need for this, since (as de Gaulle pointed out) American worship their current Constitution as blindly as the Israelites worshipped the Golden Calf.
Zombie Santa Claus
Oh, Jesus fuck. So our next Army is going to be half-mercenary, half cyborg-killbot? Wonderful. Thanks, Rumsfeld! If the terrorists attack us again on September 11, 2011, we’re not going to have the capability to invade Bermuda.
I’m sorry about your son, Carol. I hope he’ll be okay.
Pb
All true, but… how is this different from everything else they’ve done, again?
Tsulagi
Well, there has been more important things in the current news cycles. Like finding who’s the daddy of ANS’s baby and MSNBC shitcanning an old fart.
Yep.
If I was the next president, first thing I’d do is activate GWB’s ass. Let PVT Bush become an integral part of his most excellent adventure in Iraq. MOS? Bomb disposal sounds good. Tour length? He’d be the last man out.
grumpy realist
Carol, I really hope your son will make it back ok.
Bush et al. are treating the soldiers as if they aren’t flesh-and-blood. How many times can soldiers go through these cycles before totally breaking? Humans aren’t made for permanent levels of stress, and this dangling-hope-than-snatching-away-again set-up is the absolute worst of all worlds. At some point we’re going to see a breakdown worse than what happened in Vietnam. It CAN’T go on another 2 years–I doubt it can go on for another 6 months.
What’s surprising is that more Republicans aren’t screaming bloody murder over all of this. There are these “reassuring noises” about No, Really, This Is The Last Chance We’re Giving Him, In August We’ll Have To Do Something Else, but I’m cynical. What do you want to bet that when August rolls around, the administration apologists will point at some tiny shift in statistics as proof that The Surge Is Working and we’ve got to stay there another 6 months to make things better?
I’d love to see some Republican politican pull an anti-McCain, stand up to Bush, tell him “this isn’t working–you are not going to break the US military on our watch get the troops out of Iraq NOW.”
Too bad no one has the balls to do so. Which leads to the question–what does Rove have on all of them? Why is the present-day Republican party so willing to stampede over the cliff following Bush?
Kirk Spencer
While I’m as appalled, I want to point out that this time it’s not as amazingly unique as previous idiocies.
Read Catch 22. Notice how many successful missions are required to come home. Notice how it keeps increasing. And for the truly insightful, notice the effect on the crews.
Tulkinghorn
Since Bush et alia intended to go to war back in 2001, how can we be short on soldiers now? Even if you buy the line that they thought it would be quick and easy, why have the not even started to expand the military since then? This is a policy decision that falls squarely on Bush – how can Congress anticipate troop needs several years out?
This can’t be an accident – too many people worked long and hard to create this exact manpower shortage, a crisis that has been widely anticipated. And if this is not negligence, it must be intentional. I hate to trot out the ‘treason’ charge like some dime-store wingnut blogger, but I can’t avoid it.
ImJohnGalt
Aside from the actual issue being posted about, this kind of rhetorical bullshit pisses me off.
I think a great many people appreciate this. They’re all the people who have been mocked at their anti-war protests, spied upon by the FBI, and ridiculed by the right-wing bloggers as pussies. Oh wait, they’re people like Cindy Sheehan.
All due respect to John, who I’m sure wasn’t thinking about that when he wrote this, but I get so angry at this. The administration *has* to know about this, they just don’t care.
Barry
cleek Says:
“between the lines: we’re in Iraq for at least another 15 months”
It’s been clear for at least the past year that Bush’s “plan for victory” consisted of (1) f*cking things up in Iraq for the rest of his term, (2) handing a thoroughly f*cked up situation and thoroughly broken Army/Marine Corps to the next president and (3) saying for the next thirty years that ‘he was winning; the Democrats lost Iraq’.
What I’ve wondered, with this new ’15-months in Iraq/maybe several months Stateside’ program is if he can even get to the end of his term without it all crashing down on us?
Rome Again
Is this payback for Clinton & Friends supposedly removing certain keys off of the white house keyboards? Hmmmmmm.
neil
Even worse, they were planning on sitting on the announcement for.. how much longer? Surely they have known that it was in the pipe since the Surge was announced. But why wouldn’t they disseminate the information sooner rather than later? I wonder?
Oh. That.
Jake
If it does he will blame it on Iran (again) and Pelosi’s trip to Syria. I wouldn’t be surprised if some impatience with the soldiers slipped from the Exective Lips before this is all over.
Remember when the standard was “Plausible Deniability”?
Now we’re on to “Nuh-uh! A little boy who looked just like me did it and ran away!”
scarshapedstar
You’ve got a long way to go, baby. Some of us have been staring at a naked Emperor for six years now.
Rome Again
Yup, in a pretend military uneeform, with pretty badges and colorful bars that just AREN’T there for some reason (oh yeah, and lots of little transparent ropie thingies, gotta have those ropie thingies).
chdb
A quick survey of the major milbloggers shows that their anger is directed at – wait for it – the media! Who leaked this development before the military could tell the soldiers themselves that they were fucking them over.
I wish I were kidding.
HyperIon
exactly, T-horn. people have been saying for several years that the ground forces are stretched real thin. (most of the military experts have said in the past “not broken now but if this goes on..” and of course it HAS gone on..and on.
MANY people voiced skepticism about where the surge troops were coming from when the idiotic idea was being “debated”. so the necessity for this action is no surprise. and i share your reticence to be confused with a wingnut, but COME ON, enough is enough.
the whole thing is a sham. and i doubt that extension to 15 months is the end of it. how can any soldier fail to feel betrayed by this policy. and who would believe that they will actually get to spend a whole year at home before the next tour?
there are simply not enough soldiers to implement the surge beyond last week.
only repubs who fear for their political future can stop this moron-in-chief. QED we are screwed.
VidaLoca
chdb,
Would these “major milbloggers” be the ones that wear uniforms or the ones that, um, don’t?
Jake
I swear to God, Rice must be competing to be named the Biggest Fuckwit on the Planet:
Really Madame Secretary? Gosh, we wouldn’t have noticed. Perhaps you could tell us how many times under the old strategies someone was able to get themselves and a Boom-Belt into the Iraqi Parliament’s cafeteria. Or the Iraqi Parliament for that matter. Or maybe you could explain why the other “processes” divised by the President didn’t work.
EARLY IN THE PROCESS? EARLY IN THE FUCKING PROCESS?? What the hell does she call the preceeding three years? A dress reherasal?
How the hell can she say shit like this without ripping out her own tounge?
Rome Again
Is this her M.O. or am I listening to a broken record?
Richard Bottoms
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Tim F.
Just remove the peg and treat it like a bathroom scale. For each full rotation, add ten.
Richard Bottoms
Here’s my response to the tour extension:
DYVFGW?
Did You Vote for George Bush?
Well then, best of luck.
Detlef
Richard Bottoms wrote:
Sorry, I can´t. And I am a citizen of one of those “Venusian, Old European, chocolate making” countries.
Believe me, I would like to. Especially remembering all of the insults coming from Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and their friends in 2003 and 2004.
But I can´t. I read Carol H´s comment and I want to weep. It didn´t have to be that way. For myself I´m blaming the whole Bush administration, the Republican party AND the American MEDIA for it.
Especially the American media. Most of them didn´t do their job. According to them I was an anti-American in 2002, 2003. While I was simply anti-Bush administration back then.
However I would feel perfectly fine if young supporters of the Republican party suddenly felt an urge to volunteer for th American armed forces. :)
Young Republicans staffing the CPA in 2003 come to mind. Or contributors to “NRO” or “Pajamas Media” for example. Unless of course they have different priorities….
Simply put, I´m tired and sick of “Pajamas Media”, “NRO”, “Weekly Standard”, “Red State”, “Little Green Footballs” etc. urging other people´s children to sacrifice and die while they sit behind their keyboards.
Sorry about it. I did serve two years in the German armed forces in the early 1980s when we still thought that the Warsaw Pact might attack us. Probably destroying the whole of Germany even if we won. I don´t have that much patience with people sitting in their living room and urging others to sacrifice.
Captain Avatar
I didn’t vote for Bush. Not in 2000 or in 2004.
Some of my buddies who didn’t make it may have. But that doesn’t mean they deserved to die in that shithole.
You’re an asshole Richard.
VidaLoca
Richard,
With all due respect to the contributions you’ve made to this discussion, in particular your “rather eat ground glass than vote for a Republican”, I can’t agree with you here.
I recognize that a lot of folks in the military come from the South, come from small towns, come from a conservative culture that I don’t even understand, probably voted for Bush in 2000 and even 2004. A lot of them on the other hand were probably too young to vote in either election and indeed the only reason they’re in the military is that they didn’t have the money or the educational preparation to get into college, get out of rural America any other way. Still others maybe were gung-ho on the idea of making Iraq safe for “democracy” and the rest of the crap they were sold. I don’t care.
Nope. I’m not going to toss them the anchor. They’re not my enemies. They’re Americans, dammit, I don’t care how they voted; I did a lot of stupid things in my 20’s but I didn’t deserve to get killed for them. They don’t deserve it either.
Gotta get as many of them out of there as fast as possible, get them back here and get started putting the pieces back together.
searp
John misses one aspect of the “surge” that isn’t discussed much.
Living conditions will suck – the logistics chain isn’t set up to absorb these people. It is 90 degrees in Iraq, heading towards 120. There won’t be enough of anything, including trailers. Lots of people will be sleeping in tents for a long time. Security may be poor until more FOBs can be built. Lots of time will be spent waiting (in tents) in the Kuwaiti desert. MREs and tents in a furnace, possibly for months.
This is clearly an unplanned desperation move.
Richard Bottoms
Well best of luck, but George Bush seems rather determined to keep them there.
Richard Bottoms
Really?
Last time I checked it was the Democratic Party leading the charge to end the war. You know, the party I belong to.
How’s things over on the Republlican side? I hear the are doing their best to paint anyone opposed to the war as traitors and weaklings.
But then what do I know? I only voted against the asshles who have been busy destroying the military the last four years. And I also pointed out anyone who cast a vote for Bush was going to regret it.
As in dumb motherfuckers who vote for bible thumping, fag bashing, Teri Schiavo exploiting, water polluting, war bungling assholes kind of desrve what they get.
Richard Bottoms
Well I spent the better part of 10 years in Germany so I fully understand the concept of cannon fodder. Can you say Fulda Gap.
And in late 2003 I even tried to re-enlist, but they weren’t taking anyone we both eyes and two legs who can find the recruting office like they are now.
Fuuny how Sean Hannity can’t seem to find that office… but I digress.
proud wife Davis
So what do we do about this b/s extension? From what I understand H.R. 1951, that will be vetoed, includes language that army tours cannot extend 355 days. I’m looking for guidance as to whom to contact to keep this language in the new bill. We (my husband, our daughter, & myself) are affected by the extension (he is also in Ramadi), this is his second tour, his platoon sergeant was just blown to pieces by an IED as he rode next to him, & my heart was just ripped again this morning as I sent him back to that hell after two weeks home for R & R. Any info would be greatly appreciated.