Pentagon Abandons Active-Duty Time Limit.

[crim son]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070112/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_military

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has abandoned its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty, officials said Thursday, a major change that reflects an Army stretched thin by longer-than-expected combat in Iraq.

[Little Wing]

1. Excuse my language, but HOLY FUCKING SHIT!

Here it is!

Until now, the Pentagon's policy on the Guard or Reserve was that members' cumulative time on active duty for the Iraq or Afghan wars could not exceed 24 months. That cumulative limit is now lifted; the remaining limit is on the length of any single mobilization, which may not exceed 24 consecutive months, Pace said.

In other words, a citizen-soldier could be mobilized for a 24-month stretch in Iraq or
Afghanistan, then demobilized and allowed to return to civilian life, only to be mobilized a second time for as much as an additional 24 months. In practice, Pace said, the Pentagon intends to limit all future mobilizations to 12 months.

Members of the Guard combat brigades that have served in Iraq in recent years spent 18 months on active duty — about six months in pre-deployment training in the United States, followed by about 12 months in Iraq. Under the old policy, they could not be sent back to Iraq because their cumulative time on active duty would exceed 24 months. Now that cumulative limit has been lifted, giving the Pentagon more flexibility.

The new approach, Pace said, is to squeeze the training, deployment and demobilization into a maximum of 12 months. He cal

[Little Wing]

2. And check this motherf*cker out!...

David Chu, the Pentagon's chief of personnel, said in an interview that he thinks Guard and Reserve members will be cheered by the decision to limit future mobilizations to 12 months. The fact that some with previous Iraq experience will end up spending more than 24 months on active duty is "no big deal," Chu said, because it has been "implicitly understood" by most that they eventually would go beyond 24 months.

[stevekatz]

3. people seem to think

that the 21thousand troop push is the big story,

but this is the one, and it slipped in right under the radar

[jannyk]

4. K&R n/t

[Vidar]

5. Slaves don't make very effective soldiers.

[sofa king]

26. Well, not if you want them to remain slaves, anyway.

One of the peculiarities of Islam used to be that it was a sin for Muslims to war against Muslims (obviously, that's not so today, somehow). So in the Middle Ages the caliphs came up with the bright idea of creating slave armies from captured and subjugated non-Muslims. These so-called Mamluks served as the goon squads for local religious warlords.

The slaves had no status in society, and tended to have high unit cohesion because they were taken from their families at a very early age and knew little but the military life and their own unit. That often made them quite superior to tribal armed forces which were loyal only to a particular local leader and had a habit of taking off when things got difficult--like when the Mamluks showed up.

So the Mamluks naturally developed a habit of kicking the shit out of their erstwhile masters and taking things over for themselves. By the 1300s, Mamluk leaders were assassinating other Mamluk leaders for control of large parts of the Islamic world. Islam had become the subject of its slaves.

They took over large swathes of India; after the great Saladin died Mamluk armies overthrew and ruled the Egyptian empire for 250 years until the Ottomans showed up. They repeatedly revolted against the Ottoman Empire in Egypt, then fought the French there, then fought the British there, and finally got a job with Napoleon, who liked their style.

The Mamluks were only one example in history of slave armies taking over. When things got desperate, the Spartans occasionally made the mistake of arming and training the Helots, who were effectively slaves to the Spartan oligarchy, then spent just as much time and effort figuring out how to keep the Helots from revolting against them. The Ottomans never learned from their mistakes and created the same problems with the Janissaries.

Slave armies that take over invariably prove to be harsh masters, for they have seen firsthand how effective brutality and total revocation of rights can be. They have no inclination to share or redistribute their newfound wealth, and they are usually highly unstable as the only career path for the ambitious lies through counter-revolt and assassination. If our American troops really begin to think they're being treated as slaves, we'll all suffer equally for it.

[saigon68]

6. Their wives and families are "Thrilled" at this news

NOT

[msanthrope]

7. K&R--This NEEDS to be front page!!!!!

[cap]

8. I wonder how this will impact the 80% support that GW has among

Republican voters?

[Tesha]

9. Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" comes true.

Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" comes true.

You've flown 25 missions and you think
your tour of duty is done?

Sorry, we've raised it to 35.

You've flown 35 missions?

Sorry, we've raised it to 50.

Tesha

[sofa king]

27. I actually met a guy....

About ten years ago I shared a dining table on a cruise with a couple who had been through World War II. The guy was a B-25 pilot in the 12th Air Force, flying missions out of Corsica--the same unit in which the young Joseph Heller served as a bombardier.

He said they really did that, bumping the number of missions as high as they needed to go to keep the crews in combat.

The couple arranged a code to get past the Army censors. Occasionally, the pilot would write to his wife, saying, "be sure to congratulate Bob and Edith (or whomever it was) on their 5th Anniversary." That meant five missions completed.

The wife wryly observed to me that in less than two years, 1943-1945, Bob and Edith went from newlyweds to celebrating their Golden Anniversary. The pilot finally got off the line somewhere beyond his fiftieth mission, his planes having been shot up more times than he could count and bringing at least one home so beat up it went straight from the runway to the scrapyard.

The couple was lucky to have emerged with their lives and their sanity. I feel almost as lucky to have met them.

[daleo]

28. He was an awfully lucky flier to last that many missions

Although there had to be some that did, and the fact that he lived to tell the story shows that he was one of the lucky ones. I once read that the chance of living through 20 missions was well under 50%.

[sendero]

10. The GOP has already lost ...

.. the civilian vote, now they are about to lose the military.

[rman]

11. "longer-than-expected" - BS

The neocons, including Pentagon boss Rumsfeld have made it very clear they plan on making it last for a long while.

[leesa]

12. Meeting their recruitment goals...

[NotGivingUp]

13. hey, problem solved i guess! must be easy to solve problems

when you can just change the terms of the agreement!

[htuttle]

14. Why anyone would take the king's shilling nowadays is beyond me

How many recruits will have any idea of the terms they're signing onto?

[AnneD]

15. This will mean a draft....

because they will have a harder time selling their snake oil to an informed citizen. This combined with the way Reserves and National Guard are supplied, paid , and recieve anemic benefits will kill off the desire to become citizen soldiers. It is really going to hurt in the event of a national emergency.

It was a bit of a joke around the Viet Nam era that with all the student riot-the guard saw more combat than the troops in VN. Hummmmm with no cats around, who'll guard the cheese.

[AnneD]

16. double post

but if I could K&R again, I would. This will handicap the military for years to come. Did I mention how much I hate this Chu fellow. He is a snake that bears watching.

[gratuitous]

17. See? No draft necessary

Honestly, I think these guys think this is a giant game of Risk, and the little pieces just come out of the box whenever you need them. Use them as long as you keep rolling 6s, and never mind that nonsense about rotations, time off, definite lengths of tours of duty, supply lines, and other boring stuff.

I see a LOT more troops coming home horizontally, many of them out of despair that they'll ever finish their hitches. From what I can glean, it sounds like the military is broken, and now the Bush administration is going for shattered.

[yellerpup]

18. Kick!

Everyone should know that our military is about to become slaves. A draft will have to come next. Impeach now! :kick:

[underpants]

19. Rules changed for Guardsmen too (LINK)

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2788778

Jan. 11, 2007 — While the President announced his plan to send more troops to Iraq, National Guardsmen and reservists learned that the rules about how often they can be sent to war are changing. The bottom line: They may be sent to war more often but for shorter tours.


Pentagon policy is to give Guardsmen five years off after a deployment. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he may not stick to that policy. "Today's global demands will require a number of selected Guard and reserve units to be remobilized sooner," Gates told a White House news conference.


A Pentagon spokesman went further. "The goal (five years between deployments) will not be met. … It's a temporary situation," said Bryan Whitman. To soften the blow of being sent to war more often, the Pentagon announced two other changes. First, rather than being called up to duty for as long as two years, Guardsmen and reservists will be activated for only one year. And if they are called up before their five years between deployments, they will get extra pay.


If the president's combat troop increase of 40 percent in Iraq lasts for a sustained period of time, Guard and reserve combat units will be recalled. And when will those call-ups begin? A senior military official said late Thursday that "by this time next year we will probably be calling on" Guard and reserve units.


But the National Guard got a lot of what it wanted in the announcement. It was calling for shorter tours, and that Guardsmen be mobilized as units rather than individuals. The president of the National Guard Association, retired Brig. Gen. Stephen Koper, said on first blush it looks as if "they did a pretty good job." But Koper worries about funding details and the strain the changes could place on families.

[Maine-ah]

20. kick

[crim son]

21. thanks, Maine-ah. n/t

[ama]

22. tell me please

I thought the National Guard was for guarding the nation here, at home

[xxqqqzme]

23. Originally, that was the idea.

Yet another one of those 'quaint' ideas whose time has expired.

[cwydro]

24. K and R

:kick:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

25. K&R!