Yes, but not ours.

scarecrow @ 170

Margot @ 167

scarecrow,
You may be right, but my son’s friend says he may be called back for a 3rd tour in February…and he has been out of the Marines for a year now.

Yes. It seems that the Generals are fearful that they can’t sustain extended tours for those on active duty, so they are calling back those who recently got out but are now in Ready Reserves (which is where you are for a couple years or so after you get out. I remember being in Ready Reserves for 2-3 years after Viet Nam.)

scarecrow,
You may be right, but my son’s friend says he may be called back for a 3rd tour in February…and he has been out of the Marines for a year now.

Yes. It seems that the Generals are fearful that they can’t sustain extended tours for those on active duty, so they are calling back those who recently got out but are now in Ready Reserves (which is where you are for a couple years or so after you get out. I remember being in Ready Reserves for 2-3 years after Viet Nam.)

Badly EPUd here, but “stop loss” needs to be factored in. To say nothing of begging the dead and wounded to re-up….

Onward zombie so-oldiers…

Cujo359 @ 152

Where courage was required, and sadly lacking, was in his fellow Democrats, who should have stood up and explained what liars the swiftboaters were in unambiguous terms. They were similarly cowardly in the latest incident about the “lack of education” thing. Of the Presidential hopefuls, Clark and Edwards came to his defense, and Obama eventually amended an earlier statement to say he thought Kerry had been misquoted. Hillary Clinton took the opportunity to torpedo Kerry. As far as I’m concerned, with the exception of Kerry, who at least learned his lesson from before but was acting in his own self-interest, that incident separated the wheat from the chaff in the Democratic Presidential race.

Obama and Clinton feckless? Shocked, I am!

Yes, it was mostly a Claude Raines (sp) moment for me, as well. Still, you’d have to think that they would have realized that one of the motivations behind that campaign was to tar the Democrats as not “supporting the troops”, and at least serve their own best interests by calling them on it. Obama apparently got that eventually, but Clinton’s still in the dark, it would seem.

After a lengthy “DUH” period, I finally came to realize that there is a fairly simply math associated with any surge/escalation, and the three surge scenarios the Administration is talkinga bout all adhere to this math.

There are only so many combat brigades available, and we’ve more or less had them all in constant rotation in/out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Assume we have about 135,000 troops in Iraq. Assume they are there for average one-year tours, and then must be replaced. That means that each month, on average, we have to rotate in/out of Iraq about 11,000 troops, not all of them combat bridages, just to stay at 135,000 total. Each month you bring 11,000 troops in, and you take 11,000 troops out. You do that every month and you maintain the 135,000 more or less constant.

If you reduce the rotation time at home by one month, you can “surge” but you quickly exhaust that capacty. The only way to sustain a surge is to delay the rotation out of troops already there. One month delay (a 13 mo. tour instead of 12 mos), while you bring in the normal 11,000 will give you a “surge” of 11,000. But only for one month. To sustain the 11,000 increase, you have to increase every combat brigade’s tour by one month. If you want a 22,000 surge, you extend everyone’s tour by two months.

I think this is what they’re doing. Saying they’re bringing in another couple of brigades really means that they’re delaying the departure of troops already there, because otherwise, the new brigades would just replace those leaving and not increase the total level.

colon powel enumerated that very scenario, telling us there are no additional troops, what’s inteneded is keeping soldiers there scheduled to leave and moving up soldiers schedule to get there

that’s why I think it does NOT serve us well to call this an “escalation”

this is a surge, we are borroing from paul to pay peter, a “surge” is a MUCH WORSE scenario then an “escalation” and we really shouldn’t be putting the “escalation” face on it

for instance, we HAVE to point out that this surge is depleting our assets, it isn’t adding to assets as an escalation would indicate, it’s depleting assets that are already stretched too thin

surge is the right word and it’s an indictment of this president’s military forsight, escalation is the wrong word and it indicates the troops are available which they are not

I don’t think there’s any connection to St. Lucia, who shows up on Dec. 13…

http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/lucia.htm

But beyond that I’m in deep weeds. My old parish in NYC always used to have a candlelight service on Jan. 6, so go with the candles and have a ball!

After a lengthy “DUH” period, I finally came to realize that there is a fairly simple math associated with any surge/escalation, and the three surge scenarios the Administration is talking about all adhere to this math.

There are only so many combat brigades available, and we’ve more or less had them all in constant rotation in/out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Assume we have about 135,000 troops in Iraq. Assume they are there for average one-year tours, and then must be replaced. That means that each month, on average, we have to rotate in/out of Iraq about 11,000 troops, not all of them combat bridages, just to stay at 135,000 total. Each month you bring 11,000 troops in, and you take 11,000 troops out. You do that every month and you maintain the 135,000 more or less constant.

If you reduce the rotation time at home by one month, you can “surge” but you quickly exhaust that capacty. The only way to sustain a surge is to delay the rotation out of troops already there. One month delay (a 13 mo. tour instead of 12 mos), while you bring in the normal 11,000 will give you a “surge” of 11,000. But only for one month. To sustain the 11,000 increase, you have to increase every combat brigade’s tour by one month. If you want a 22,000 surge, you extend everyone’s tour by two months.

I think this is what they’re doing. Saying they’re bringing in another couple of brigades really means that they’re delaying the departure of troops already there, because otherwise, the new brigades would just replace those leaving and not increase the total level.

I think if you do this with money it’s called ‘kiting’.