http://starbulletin.com/2004/12/02/news/index2.html6,000 Hawaii-based troops will stay in Iraq longer than expected
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Nearly 5,000 soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division, 2nd Warrior Brigade, who were expecting to come home in January also got the bad news yesterday.
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Kerrie Griffin, another Army wife, said she had heard rumors about the extended deployment since Friday -- "but I didn't get the official word until 7:30 last night (Tuesday)," she said.
Her husband found out a half-hour later, and he did not take it too well, she said. "He didn't know he had been extended," Griffin said. "When he called back, he seemed down in the dumps, but he knows he has a job to do."
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The order affects the 25th Infantry Division, 2nd Warrior Brigade, which has been in Iraq since January, and 1,000 Kaneohe Marines assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, which arrived in Iraq in October.
The soldiers of the 25th Division were supposed to return home in January. The Kaneohe Marines were supposed to return at about the same time. Now, both groups are expected back sometime in mid-March.
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An additional 1,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division in Fort Bragg, N.C., will be sent to Iraq this month. The Associated Press reported that Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy operations director of the Joint Staff, said that these moves would increase the size of the American force in Iraq from 138,000 today to about 150,000 by January.
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