Friday, July 20, 2007
You know it's time to impeach the bastards
when it's the only option left on the table.
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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The Big al-Qaeda Question
No, not the question about whether this al-Qaeda is the same as that al-Qaeda.
I've been wonderin': If we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, and if they're really coming here to kill us, then why are we still fighting them over there?
Just wonderin'
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I've been wonderin': If we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, and if they're really coming here to kill us, then why are we still fighting them over there?
Just wonderin'
Monday, July 16, 2007
Losing the NCOs
A good LA Times piece looks at how the army is losing it's backbone, those experienced sergeants who the army counts on to train the next generation of new recruits.
But now that Guard and Reserve units are as likely to spend multiple tours in Iraq as their active duty counterparts, there really isn't much incentive for those good NCOs and officers to join Guard or Reserve units when they come off active duty.
As long as Bush-Cheney-McCain-Lieberman war continues, the net result will be a broken reserve component. Then the Pentagon is left with the decision of whether to keep the active duty units deployed without ever coming home, or sending reserve units at a readiness level we used to call non-deployable into combat, to be chewed up as IED and car bomb fodder.
The military really should hate this administration with all their hearts and minds.
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There is another issue the article doesn't address. I wrote about this a few years ago, early in the war. Much of the unit leadership in the National Guard and Army Reserve units is made of troops who have come off active duty. Maybe they got out to go to school, maybe to raise a family. They join a reserve component unit because they liked the military and they can use that extra paycheck.But the Ashbys are among the midcareer leaders the Army is having the most trouble holding on to — those torn between finishing a fight and raising a family. In this case, the Army lost twice: Bradford Ashby left in October, his wife the year before, because they didn't want to watch the children they plan to have grow up on video.
[ . . . ]
"But these guys had kids being born while they were gone, toddlers growing up. It's hard on the family. You totally understand why they don't stay."
But now that Guard and Reserve units are as likely to spend multiple tours in Iraq as their active duty counterparts, there really isn't much incentive for those good NCOs and officers to join Guard or Reserve units when they come off active duty.
As long as Bush-Cheney-McCain-Lieberman war continues, the net result will be a broken reserve component. Then the Pentagon is left with the decision of whether to keep the active duty units deployed without ever coming home, or sending reserve units at a readiness level we used to call non-deployable into combat, to be chewed up as IED and car bomb fodder.
The military really should hate this administration with all their hearts and minds.
