Letting down the Guard

[OneBlueSky]

With 200 dead in Iraq, morale in the tank and reenlistments threatened, the Army National Guard and Reserve are facing a crisis.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/30/guard/index.html
(if not a member, you have to sit through an ad to read the article . . .)

(snip)

Ominous signs that the occupation of Iraq has convinced an unprecedented number of Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers to quit have been surfacing for months. It's a prospect that military experts fear may soon threaten the future of the United States' mission there. Eighteen months of occupying Iraq, they say, has brought America's Army closer to exhausting its supply of volunteer soldiers than at any point since the end of conscription, and placed more of a burden on Army guardsmen and reservists than they or their commanders ever expected.

But unless the next administration, whether George W. Bush's or John Kerry's, can find a way to make the current number of forces stretch further, it will soon face a choice between not sending fresh troops overseas or the politically unthinkable -- resurrecting the draft.

Morale among reservists today is simply in the tank. Reservists who expected to spend six months overseas have had their tours extended to 12 and then 18 months, and cumulatively, more than 410,000 reservists have served since Sept. 11, 2001, and 158,000 are currently on active duty. Many, with expertise in military policing, civil affairs or other specialties in short supply are on their second, or sometimes third, tour. As the insurgency has grown, guardsmen and reservists have accounted for an increasingly higher percentage of American fatalities. Two hundred have died in Iraq, making the Guard and Reserve the active-duty Army's full partners in even the darkest sense.

- much more . . .

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/30/guard/index.html

[kurtyboy]

1. In Vietnam, where 58,000 servicepersons lost their lives

Only 94 Guardsmen paid the ultimate price.

For * to exploit his guard duty THEN as equivalent to Guard duty NOW, is a shameful load of crap.

Shit, I did my six in a Guard uniform (I made all of my drills), but I never put myself in same league as the poor SOBs that had to go overseas.

F%%% BUSH, in the words of Eminem, let him impress daddy by actually fighting with a weapon.....in country!