Iraq - The interminable deployment

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Jeff Danziger
Special to the Los Angeles Times

In 1969, it took between 10 and 18 hours to get to Vietnam on the Flying Tiger contract planes. A long, numbing flight to a war with no liquor, not even a beer. The stewardesses, who were the last American women we thought we would see, served low-bidder airline meals, a little sorrowfully I thought, treating us like doomed children. Stops were made in Hawaii, where a special lounge separated us from the tourists and honeymoon couples.

At Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, the main entry point for American troops, the first whack of reality was the heat. We walked down the stairs from the plane into the boil of the Saigon humidity, weighted by duffel bags and weapons, swaddled in fatigues and canvas boots.

This was going to be awful. But the one thing that kept us mildly sane was the knowledge that it would last only a year. That was guaranteed. You could, you told yourself, put up with anything for a year. Three months later, especially in combat units, you weren't so sure. Even so, it was the knowledge that every day brought you closer to deliverance from the heat and the noise and the violence and the death that kept most of us from losing it.

Two weeks ago, the Pentagon informed the 3rd Infantry Division troops in Iraq that they would not be going home on the dates previously promised. In fact they will be extended in their duty "indefinitely."

-more-

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001293013_troops29.html

[efhmc]

1. Bless you for serving in that horrile mess. Glad you came home okay.

I think that to keep the military there indefinitely is torture.