Army to Call Up Recruits Earlier
New York Times

In what critics say is another sign of increasing stress on the military, the Army has been forced to bring more new recruits immediately into the ranks to meet recruiting goals for 2004, instead of allowing them to defer entry until the next accounting year, which starts in October. 

As a result, recruiters will enter the new year without the usual cushion of incoming soldiers, making it that much harder to make their quotas for 2005. Instead of knowing the names of nearly half the coming year's expected arrivals in October, as the Army did last year, or even the names of around one in three, as is the normal goal, this October the recruiting command will have identified only about one of five of the boot camp class of 2005 in advance.

* * *

Pay problems plague deployed Army Reservists
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Ninety-five percent of soldiers at eight Army Reserve units sent to Iraq and other Middle East bases experienced significant problems getting paid, creating stress and concern about the financial well-being of their families back home.

The soldiers were overpaid or underpaid or paid late, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office, and the problems in some instances persisted for more than a year.

Soldiers involved in the investigation said the pay issues hurt morale and the Army Reserve's rate of retention.

"You never want to mess with a soldier's money. That's a cardinal rule," Army Capt. Orlando Amaro said. "When a soldier has financial issues, the morale just goes through the floor."

* * *

Pentagon is considering extending the tours of National Guard troops in Iraq who are nearing the 24-month active-duty maximum
Los Angeles Times

In yet another sign of the strains on the U.S. military in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war, the Pentagon for the first time is considering extending the mobilization of National Guard soldiers who will soon hit the federal limit of 24 months of active service, defense officials said Tuesday.

Initially, the decision would affect about 450 soldiers of the Arkansas National Guard who are in Iraq with the 39th Brigade Combat Team. The soldiers, mobilized after Sept. 11 and first sent to the Sinai Peninsula on a peacekeeping rotation, are the first group of National Guard troops to approach the 24-month limit that the Pentagon established days after the terrorist attacks in the United States. 

Ultimately, however, waiving the limit in this case might lead to extended deployments for thousands of other reservists and National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan, and provide ammunition to critics in Congress who are pushing the Bush administration to increase the size of the military. 

"Every day it seems to be another improvisational attempt to stretch forces that are already stretched very thin," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former paratrooper with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and an advocate of bolstering the Army's ranks.

* * *

Basic Training Doesn't Guard Against Insurance Pitch to G.I.'s 
New York Times

Nicholas Stachler was 19 years old when he reported for basic training with the Army at Fort Benning, Ga., before shipping out for 11 months to Iraq.

A gentle, trusting man, he had only weeks earlier graduated from high school with a handful of trophies in hockey and soccer, middling grades and hardly a clue about how to handle his money. He had held only casual jobs baby-sitting and mowing lawns and had never opened a checking account. The bus trip to boot camp, from the foothills of the Appalachians in southern Ohio to the kudzu-covered fields of western Georgia, took him farther from home than he had ever been.

About six weeks into his training - six weeks of combat drills and drummed-in lessons in Army ways - he tasted one of the less-honorable traditions of military life: a compulsory classroom briefing on personal finance that was a life insurance sales pitch in disguise.

* * *

Guardsmen choose not to re-enlist
Indianapolis Star

Almost two-thirds of Indiana National Guardsmen in a battalion that spent a year in Iraq chose not to re-enlist when their service time expired.

* * *

Soldiers praised for using resourcefulness amid war
Los Angeles Times

American soldiers who defeated the Iraqi regime 15 months ago received virtually none of the critical spare parts they needed to keep their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles running. 

They ran chronically short of food, water and ammunition. Their radios often failed them. Their medics had to forage for medical supplies, artillery gunners had to cannibalize parts from captured Iraqi guns, and intelligence units provided little useful information about the enemy. 

These revelations come from the Army itself. In the first internal assessment of the war in Iraq, an exhaustive army study has concluded that American forces prevailed despite supply and logistical failures, poor intelligence, communication breakdowns and futile attempts at psychological warfare. The 542-page study, declassified last month, praises commanders and soldiers for displaying resourcefulness and resiliency under trying conditions, and for taking advantage of superior firepower, training and technology. But the report also describes a broken supply system that left crucial spare parts and lubricants on warehouse shelves in Kuwait while tankers outside Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, ripped parts from broken-down tanks and raided Iraqi supplies of oil and lubricants. 

* * *

U. S. Troops Are Paying the Price for Bush's Arrogance
Salon

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin and former Air Force Gen. Tony McPeak had some choice words for the president a day after the Bush Administration announced that it would dip into the Inactive Ready Reserve to fill gaps in active military units. 

On a Kerry campaign conference call, both described it as a "failure of planning," calling the Administration's approach to preparing for reconstruction "faith-based." Levin accused the president of "trying to [rebuild Iraq] on the cheap," and hit home the inconsistencies between Bush's campaign rhetoric in 2000 and his practice after his inauguration. 

Remember how Clinton had "hollowed out" and "overextended" the armed forces? As Levin puts it, "if it was overextended then, it is way, way overextended now." The Michigan senator also complained about Bush's past resistance to increasing the size of the armed forces.

* * *

'Back-Door Draft' Raises Questions
CBS News

Since March of last year, Brett Donald’s oldest son, Brent, has been serving in Iraq with the Army’s First Armored Division. As the driver of a Bradley fighting vehicle, Brent has put in 16 months in the combat zone, making countless raids in and around Baghdad. 

Three times now, Brent has been promised he's coming home. And each time, he's been called back into combat 

Back when his son joined the Army, Brett Donald was happy he’d be earning money to pay for college and proud of his Brent’s choice. But now, it doesn’t seem like such a good deal. 

"The tricky thing is," says the father, "once you sign the dotted line, there's not a whole lot of say that you have."

* * *

Stretching The Troops In Iraq
Time Magazine

The army has spent much of the past several months, in the words of a senior Army officer, "looking under rocks for every spare soldier" to send to Iraq. It took formal action last week to stretch its troop strength as far as possible. 

According to the so-called stop-loss order, soldiers will be kept in uniform for an extra three months before and after their units' one-year stint in Iraq or Afghanistan. By unilaterally extending their enlistments by as much as 18 months, the policy will force tens of thousands of soldiers to put personal plans on hold. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry calls it a "back-door draft."

* * *

Fighting in Iraq on overtime
The Oregonian (commentary)

When Spc. Eric McKinley was killed in an explosion near Baghdad on Sunday, he should have been back in Corvallis, kneading bread at the bakery where he used to work. McKinley, 24, had fulfilled his six-year commitment to the Oregon National Guard in April. 

He had done his duty. 

Yet Sunday, McKinley was still patrolling the violent slums of Baghdad with the Oregon Guard's 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry. McKinley was still there because just as he was preparing to come home, the Pentagon expanded a stop-loss policy requiring soldiers to keep serving even after their enlistments end or retirements come due. 

* * *

U.S. force in Iraq to grow as Marine deployment pushed up General: Corps badly stretched
USA TODAY

The Pentagon will increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to about 145,000 this summer, from the current 140,000, in recognition of the continued difficulty coalition forces are having in providing security leading up to the hand-over of political power to Iraqis on June 30.

The 5,000 new troops will come from the Marine Corps. A deployment originally planned for this fall will be moved up to August. The first troops in that contingent -- 2,200 Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit -- have already left their home base in San Diego for Iraq. The remainder will come from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based in North Carolina.

* * *

Wars Put Strain On National Guard: Fire, Flood Relief Efforts Threatened
Washington Post

With almost 40,000 troops serving in the unexpectedly violent and difficult occupation of Iraq, the National Guard is beginning to show the strain of duty there, according to interviews and e-mail exchanges with 23 state Guard commanders from California to Maine.

The Iraq mission is placing new stress on the active-duty Army as it leans more heavily than it has in decades on the Guard -- which, with 350,000 troops, rivals the active force in size. That new reliance, in turn, is raising concerns about the Guard's long-term ability to recruit and retain troops, and it is provoking more immediate worries in states that rely on the Guard to deal with fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

Some Guard commanders are beginning to say they simply can't deploy any more troops. "As far as New Hampshire goes, we're tapped," said Maj. Gen. John E. Blair, that state's adjutant general, or Guard commander. Of his 1,700 Army National Guard troops, more than 1,000 are in Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or on alert for deployment. And to get units fully manned to head overseas, he said, "we've had to break other units."

Blair, who piloted a medical evacuation helicopter in the Vietnam War, said he informed the Pentagon's National Guard Bureau two weeks ago that "before you call us again, you've got to know that we are at our limit."

* * *

For Some Soldiers the War Never Ends
The New York Times

Many Americans, feeling that we did not have enough troops in Iraq, were pleased when the Defense Department announced last month that 20,000 more soldiers were being sent to put down the insurgency and help rebuild the country. Unfortunately, few realized that many of these soldiers would serve long after their contractual obligations to the active-duty military are complete. In essence, they will no longer be voluntarily serving their country.

These soldiers are falling victim to the military's "stop-loss" policy - and as a former officer who led some of them in battle, I find their treatment shameful. Announced shortly after the 9/11 attacks and authorized by President Bush, the stop-loss policy allows commanders to hold soldiers past the date they are due to leave the service if their unit is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Military officials rightly point out that stop-loss prevents a mass exodus of combat soldiers just before a combat tour.

* * *

Refill the tanks
Baltimore Sun (commentary)

The Bush administration sent the Army into Iraq to destroy the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein and save the Iraqi people. Soldier for soldier, this was the most capable and ready force this nation has ever fielded.

But because of how the administration handled the war and its aftermath, it may end up undermining the effectiveness of the Army and jeopardizing our national security.

The Army is stretched very thin.

The Bush administration decided to remove Mr. Hussein in the fall of 2001, shortly after attacking Afghanistan and about 18 months before the invasion. Because it needed Army troops to wage the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida and meet Army commitments in the Balkans, the Sinai and Korea, the administration should have used that time to increase the size of the active Army from 10 to 13 divisions (up to 15,000 troops are in a division). It still resists adding them.

Instead, the administration decided to fight in Iraq on the cheap.

* * *

Recruiting pitch called scare tactic: Reservists pressured to re-enlist
Chicago Tribune

MariAnn Curta said she was "freaked out" during much of her son's recently completed nine-month tour of duty in Iraq, where he drove a fuel truck in the Sunni Triangle.

But when she got the call from a recruiter last weekend warning that her 22-year-old son, Bill, now on the Army's inactive reserve list, could be headed back to Iraq quickly unless he enlisted in the Illinois National Guard, her emotion changed from fear to rage.

"It's devious, it's deceptive, it's dishonest, it's valueless," Curta said. "I can't believe they'd pull this kind of fast trick on kids who have already served."

As part of an aggressive effort to bolster the dwindling pool of available reservists, Army and National Guard recruiting units throughout the country have called thousands of inactive reservists in hopes of persuading them to re-enlist in the active reserves or join their local Guard units.

If they don't, many recruiters warned, they could soon be headed to Iraq. The warnings come by telephone, and they have been concentrated in four areas: Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis and Louisiana.

* * *

Iraq-bound soldiers may stay longer in military, Army rules
Associated Press

The Army will prevent soldiers in units set to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan from leaving the service at the end of their terms, a top general said today.

The announcement, an expansion of an Army program called "stop-loss," means that thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will have to stay on for the duration of their deployment to those combat zones.

The expansion affects units that are 90 days away or less from deploying, said Lt. Gen. Frank L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel.

* * *

Suicide Watch: Iraq reveals mounting mental health problems in our military
Working for change

Over the past year there have been an unusually high number of suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq, and hundreds of soldiers experiencing psychological problems have been evacuated from the country. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's recent announcement authorizing the extension -- by at least three months -- of the tours of duty of some 20,000 soldiers set to return home, and the possibility of intensified urban warfare, may add to the stress suffered by soldiers serving in Iraq.

In response, the U.S. has increased the use of combat stress control teams, established a toll-free crisis hotline for service members having problems dealing with stress, and set up recuperation centers where soldiers can chill out for a few days before returning to the front lines. Questions about whether these actions are too little too late, and how the soldiers will be treated when they return home, remain to be answered.

* * *

Parents Try to Protect Their Son in Iraq, Any Way They Can
The New York Times

Before his unit shipped from Kuwait to Iraq in March, First Lt. Christian Boggiano, 23, made a special appeal to his mother, Mary, by e-mail message. Please, he asked, scrounge around for a few old police bulletproof vests and mail them to me.

"Once I get up north, we'll use them on the doors and floors of the Humvees so when roadside bombs go off they'll catch a lot of shrapnel," wrote Lieutenant Boggiano, a 2002 graduate of West Point.

His request created a home-front, mini-crusade to help protect American troops in Iraq. It started in the Jersey City Police Department and eventually stretched to the state police and about 50 other police departments across New Jersey. Mrs. Boggiano, a speech therapist in an elementary school here, and her husband, Richard, a Jersey City detective, started the campaign by sending fliers soliciting vests to the police precinct houses here. Then their friend, Brian O'Neill, a Jersey City police lieutenant with a nephew in Iraq, took the appeal statewide by sending a request for old vests over a police teletype that reached all departments in the state, Mrs. Boggiano said.

Over the last two months, state troopers and police officers around New Jersey have donated about 1,000 outdated, surplus bulletproof vests they owned, all in the spirit of making the thin-skinned, vulnerable Humvees safer for the soldiers and marines who ride them, Mrs. Boggiano said.

* * *

Far From Ready for More War
Los Angeles Times

From their first days as "Screaming Eagles," the 18,000 soldiers of the Army's 101st Airborne Division are taught to be ready for anything. As the force's proud creed goes: "First in, last out."

But at its sprawling home base — after a long year in Iraq that wreaked havoc with the blades of its helicopters, the sights of its guns and the nerves of its soldiers — the 101st is as far from ready as it has ever been.

Outside a gun locker the other day, a soldier used a bristled brush to scrape out Iraqi sand lodged in the seams of his rucksack. In the motor pool, mechanics pulled the transmission from a bomb-battered Humvee. At a social worker's office, a soldier ticked off the names of buddies he had watched die and mourned the breakup of his romance back home.

The 101st has no choice but to fix itself. And fast. With Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saying this week that the U.S. military presence in Iraq will stand at 135,000 troops for the foreseeable future, the Pentagon must prepare these soldiers to return to the fight.

What the 101st is going through is a microcosm of what lies ahead for the entire Army. Iraq is its biggest test since Vietnam, and the rigors of fighting a counterinsurgency have demolished much of the Army's equipment and allowed its soldiers' skills to atrophy. For the first time, three Army divisions — more than a third of its combat troops — are classified as unfit to fight.

* * *

Army may send special reserves to active duty involuntarily
Knight Ridder

The U.S. Army is scraping up soldiers for duty in Iraq wherever it can find them, and that includes places and people long considered off-limits.

The Army on Tuesday confirmed that it pulled the files of some 17,000 people in the Individual Ready Reserve, the nation's pool of former soldiers. The Army has been screening them for critically needed specialists and has called about 100 of them since January.

Under the current authorization from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Army could call as many as 6,500 back on active duty involuntarily.

"Yes we are screening them and, yes, we are calling some of them up," an Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, told Knight Ridder. "We need certain specialties, including civil affairs, military police, some advanced medical specialists, such as orthopedic surgeons, psychological operations, military intelligence interrogators."

* * *

Vest drive gets in gear: Humvees may already be 'up-armored'
Ocala Star-Banner 

Law enforcement agencies from around Florida contributed Wednesday to a campaign spearheaded by Marion County Sheriff Ed Dean to collect used bullet-proof vests that Army Reserve troops in Iraq could use to pad Humvees against enemy fire.

Dean sent out an appeal for the vests after receiving a letter from 1st Sgt. Fred Chisholm, a member of the 351st Military Police Company. Chisholm, a Marion County deputy when not on military duty, asked Dean to send the Kevlar vests to help protect soldiers traveling in Humvee military vehicles.

Marion deputies collected 514 vests Wednesday, and were scheduled to pick up an additional 340 today, Dean said. The Sheriff's Office is trying to make arrangements with the military to fly the vests to Iraq, he said.

The vests, while still usable, were slated to be retired from service because they were outside the manufacturer's five-year warranty period, Dean said.

In his letter to Dean, Chisholm said the vests would be used to line the insides of the Humvees to help protect against homemade bombs and flying shrapnel.

* * *

Broken promises betray soldiers longing for trip home
Chicago Sun-Times (commentary)

President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have broken their promise to our troops in Iraq. Although they assured them that they would serve only one year in the war zone, Rumsfeld recently announced that 20,000 of them will have to stay for another three months. 

Some of them were on the way to the airport when they were told that they would have to stay. This extension of time is disastrous to the morale of the troops and their families and reduces their effectiveness.

* * *

R&R slots for 1st ID troops cut by nearly 85 percent through mid-June
European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

The 1st Infantry Division has announced that rest-and-recuperation slots for its soldiers have been cut by nearly 85 percent for the period May 1 through June 15.

In an unsigned “talking points” memo distributed this week to rear detachment commanders, the division said it had expected to be able to send 80 soldiers per day home to the United States or Europe for 15 days of midtour R&R under a program begun last September. That comes to a total of 3,600 soldiers. But Combined Joint Task Force 7 told units in Iraq two weeks ago that it would be sharply cutting back the R&R slots for all units because of “operational requirements in theater,” according to the 1st ID memo.

“These requirements caused a strain on theater air transportation assets, limiting our ability to send Soldiers on R&R,” the memo continued.

Following a query from Stars and Stripes last Friday, the task force was unable to make a spokesman available to discuss the impact of cutbacks on units other than 1st ID. But according to an article in the latest edition of the Desert Voice — an Army command publication circulated on bases in Kuwait — the total number of R&R slots available to all troops was cut from 470 per day to 85 per day for May 1-June 15.

* * *

Army provides no funds for vaccine care centers
GovExec.com

The Army has not budgeted any money in fiscal 2005 for a widely praised chain of centers for treating soldiers with serious complications from military-administered vaccines, even as the network expands this year.

Exactly why is not clear. The Army offered no direct explanation, instead it forwarded requests for information to the spokesman for the Vaccine Healthcare Centers (VHC) Network. Army Col. Renata Engler, who runs the network, cited Army budget constraints and the process of Army budgeting.

Critics of the Defense Department's vaccine policies have questioned whether there is a strong commitment in the Army and the Bush administration to the network, which by the nature of its work generates evidence of illnesses potentially caused by already-controversial vaccines.

* * *

IRS May Help DOD Find Reservists
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

The Defense Department, strapped for troops for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has proposed to Congress that it tap the Internal Revenue Service to locate out-of-touch reservists.

The unusual measure, which the Pentagon said has been examined by lawyers, would allow the IRS to pass on addresses for tens of thousands of former military members who still face recall into the active duty.

The proposal has largely escaped attention amid all the other crises of government, and it is likely to face opposition from privacy rights activists who see information held by the IRS as inviolate.

For it to become practice, Congress and President Bush would have to approve the proposal, which would involve amending the tax code.

* * *

The Human Cost
Newsweek

The inaugural mission of the 1st Cavalry's 2d Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment was, in its humble way, a bid for hearts and minds. It was to safely dispose of Iraqi sewage. Having arrived in Iraq in late March, a 19-man patrol from the battalion, traveling in four Humvees, had just finished escorting three Iraqi "honey wagons" on their rounds in the grim slum of Sadr City, where vendors stash eggs and chickens in bamboo crates next to puddles of viscous black mud. ("You're lucky if it's mud," joked one U.S. officer.) 

Suddenly the street became "a 300-meter-long kill zone," recalls platoon leader Sgt. Shane Aguero, courtesy of gunmen from the Mahdi militia of Shiite rebel Moqtada al-Sadr. The Humvees swerved and ran onto sidewalks, rolling on the rims of flat tires, as gunmen kept up the barrage of bullets. Sgt. Yihjyh (Eddie) Chen, gunner in the lead vehicle, was shot dead. Another soldier was hit and began bleeding from the mouth.

* * *

Chinks in Our Armor: The Army's chief weapons tester said Strykers were not safe against RPGs. Then the Army shipped them to Iraq
Newsweek

Tom Christie was worried. It was the fall of 2003, and the Pentagon's chief weapons tester had noted problems with the Army's pride and joy, the new Stryker Armored Vehicle. The $4 billion program was seen as the vanguard of the lighter, high-speed Army of the future. But even with new add-on armor, the Stryker "did not meet Army requirements" against rocket-propelled grenades in tests, Christie wrote in his 2003 annual report. Now the Pentagon was about to deploy the first 300 Strykers to Iraq while an insurgency raged.

So Christie did something unusual: he sent a classified letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office urging the military to be very cautious about where in Iraq it deployed the Stryker. The response? "I was slapped down," says the straight-talking Christie. "It was: 'What are we supposed to do with this [letter]? ... Are you trying to embarrass somebody?' "

There may be embarrassment to come. Six months after that exchange, the fighting in Iraq has called into question not only the Stryker's effectiveness but the Army's shift toward a lighter, faster infantry. With a record 138 U.S. soldiers dead in April, some inside the Pentagon are asking why the Army spent billions on new wheeled vehicles like the Stryker when commanders in the field are crying out for old-style treaded vehicles — tanks and personnel carriers — that are better protected and armed.

* * *

National Guard Officer Offers Criticism of Bush's Iraq Plans
The New York Times

A National Guard officer from Manhattan who recently returned from combat in Iraq delivered the Democratic Party's response to President Bush's radio address yesterday, saying that while progress was being made in Iraq, the American effort was poorly planned and poorly executed.

The officer, First Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, spoke in a radio spot usually reserved for members of Congress and political figures.

"The people who planned this war were not ready for us," he said in his address. "There were not enough vehicles, not enough ammunition, not enough medical supplies, not enough water."

Lieutenant Rieckhoff's address was broadcast on the first anniversary of Mr. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech and came directly after the president's weekly radio address.

* * *

Reservist's mother voices equipment concerns
The Providence Journal

Last week, Joyce Cushman took a wartime journey that thousands of other families have taken this year. The Wickford woman and her husband, Dan Cushman, drove to an Army base to see their son, an Army reservist, leave for Iraq.

Maj. Jeff Cushman, 42, a father of three children, left Fort Benning, Ga., for a year-long tour in Iraq. A full-time police officer in Livingston, N.J., Cushman will serve with a new unit, training Iraqi soldiers, his mother says. The future of the Iraqi military is vital, as the United States prepares to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis in about two months.

Joyce Cushman is a proud, but admittedly anxious, mother. And the more she learned about her son's preparations for his departure, the more concerned she became. Cushman said she learned that her son and other members of his unit had to buy their own Global Positioning Systems, which are vital navigating tools.

She was told that none of these reservists, including officers like her son, would be issued side arms. Some of the men were concerned that they had been given older M-16s, she said. And if they wanted night-vision goggles, the reservists would have had to buy them for more than $2,000 apiece, she said. The men decided against it.

"I would have taken out a home equity loan to buy them those goggles," said Cushman, who is a retired secretary. "This isn't right. If we want them to go out and do a job, they should have everything they need to do the job. We are supposedly the best army in the world. Are they disposable?"

* * *

A determined band of Illinois families is appealing to the Pentagon to bring home the 333rd MP National Guard Company, a unit that was headed to the U.S. before being ordered back to Iraq.

The unit's citizen-soldiers--activated in February 2003 and dispatched to Iraq last May--had already sent home much of their gear before arriving in Kuwait on Easter.

They had expected to head home from Kuwait within days.

Instead, the unit's troops were among 20,000 soldiers whose deployments were extended 90 days by the Pentagon as violence surged in Iraq.

A captain in the unit said the soldiers themselves are "rightfully upset" but prepared to fulfill their mission.

On the homefront, though, families have mounted a letter-writing and petition campaign to get the unit's remaining troops--about 150--airlifted to the U.S. immediately.

* * *

Citizen Soldiers: Called to Fight, On the Cheap
The Oregonian (commentary)

Shut up. Suck it up. And don't write your congressman.

For every citizen soldier called to serve in the war in Iraq, Afghanistan or the broader war on terrorism, that's an order.

So when the Oregon National Guard's 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry, ran low of ammunition, fuel, soap and even toilet paper while training for war in shabby Fort Hood, Texas, the soldiers complained only to their spouses.

So when another Oregon Guard unit was ordered to report to Fort Bragg, N.C., just three days before Christmas, even though the base would be nearly empty for the holidays, the citizen soldiers started packing their bags. However, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and acting Adjutant Gen. Raymond Byrne Jr. insisted the Oregon soldiers would report after the holidays. Byrne called the Pentagon. "I said, 'They ain't coming.' "

So now that tens of thousands of citizen soldiers are leaving their civilian jobs to serve alongside active-duty soldiers with better equipment, including stronger body armor, and more extensive health care and retirement benefits, most of them are just sucking it up.

* * *

Frantically, the Army Tries to Armor Humvees
MSNBC.com

The week before he died, Army Pfc. John D. Hart called his parents in Bedford, Mass., from his base in northern Iraq. Amid the joy of hearing familiar voices, the 20-year-old paratrooper told his dad that he felt exposed in the soft-skinned Humvee he and his comrades rode into battle each day.

“The full consequences of what he was telling us was not obvious at the time,” Hart’s father, Brian, told a news conference a few weeks after his son’s death. “The concern was genuine and very real.”

When Hart died in a small-arms ambush in mid-October, the Army had no official plan to “retrofit” most of the 12,000-odd Humvees in Iraq. This in spite of continuing attacks on convoys and complaints from combat units that they were taking unnecessary casualties in the thin-skinned Humvees.

There is no official figure on how many of the 728 U.S. combat deaths might have been prevented by better armor. Yet as attacks on convoys escalate, an increasing number of the deaths and injuries are being sustained in vehicles. That, combined with public pressure from bereaved parents like the Harts and their representatives in Congress, pushed the Army into action. In late March, the Army told its commanders to make “hardening” of their Humvees a priority.

* * *

U.S. Troops, Parents Confirm Humvee Risks
MSNBC.com

A response from readers to the article above.

* * *

“Bush Has Failed His Troops”
The Times (New Jersey)

Mildred McHugh and her family are living in almost constant fear - fear of the news a phone call or a knock at the door of their Pennington home may bring.

It is a nightmare shared by thousands of families across the country who have loved ones in the military serving in Iraq, like McHugh's son, Steven, a 21-year-old private in the Army.

Fear for her son's safety and anger over what she considers an unjust war prompted McHugh to take part yesterday in a protest in Washington, D.C., where demonstrators unsuccessfully tried to deliver to the White House letters urging President Bush to end the conflict in Iraq.

* * *

GAO Says Army on Road to Ruin
Wired

It's been called the most ambitious military effort since the Manhattan Project, and the centerpiece of Donald Rumsfeld's plans to overhaul America's armed forces: a $92 billion push to change almost everything about the Army by 2010, from the guns GIs carry, to the officers they salute, to the tanks they drive.

A new congressional report is alleging that the Future Combat Systems program is poised for major delays and a financial train wreck. Worst of all, the report claims, the Army knew this was going to happen all along.

"Army officials acknowledge that (2010) is an ambitious date and that the program was not really ready for system development and demonstration when it was approved. However, the officials believe it was necessary to create 'irreversible momentum' for the program," reads the report (PDF) from the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigational arm. "FCS is at significant risk for not delivering required capability within budgeted resources."

The Army and Boeing, one of Future Combat Systems' two main contractors, both say the sprawling project is on track. They assert the congressional report is off-base.

"We have a good plan in place to address the concerns over technology maturity," said one Army source close to the project. Congress was "fully briefed up front" about the risks and pace of FCS' development.

But outside military analysts and former Pentagon officials are inclined to agree with the GAO's take on the Army effort. And they see it as the latest case of the military pouring countless billions into weapons systems before they're ready to go.

* * *

Pentagon delays U.S. troops' trip home
USA Today

A decision by the Pentagon to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is a reversal of its plan to steadily reduce the U.S. force level there.

Since the war began a year ago, senior military leaders have given frequent assurances to troops and their families that Iraq duty would be no longer than a year.

Now, those assurances have met the reality of Iraq, where military leaders are planning for the possibility that anti-U.S. violence will spread. U.S. troops are stretched thin around the world, and the Pentagon has few options to increase the force in Iraq if necessary.

On Monday, a senior official with U.S. Central Command said that the return home of about 24,000 U.S. troops who were scheduled to leave in the next few weeks would be delayed as their replacements arrive. Central Command's responsibility includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Bush's Odd Warfare State
The Progressive

Here's one way our President proposes to "support our troops": According to his 2005 budget, the extra pay our soldiers receive for serving in combat zones -- about $150 a month -- will no longer count against their food stamp eligibility. This budget provision, if approved, should bring true peace of mind to our men and women on the front lines. From now on, they can dodge bullets in Iraq with the happy assurance that their loved ones will not starve as a result of their bravery.

Military families on food stamps? It's not an urban myth. About 25,000 families of servicemen and women are eligible, and this may be an underestimate, since the most recent Defense Department report on the financial condition of the armed forces -- from 1999 -- found that 40 percent of lower-ranking soldiers face "substantial financial difficulties." Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, reports hearing from constituents that the Army now includes applications for food stamps in its orientation packet for new recruits.

The poverty of the mightiest military machine on Earth is no secret to the many charities that have sprung up to help families on U.S. military bases, like the church-based Feed the Children, which delivers free food and personal items to families at twelve bases. Before 9/11, trucks bearing free food from a variety of food pantries used to be able to drive right on to the bases. Now they have to stop outside the gates, making the spectacle of military poverty visible to any passerby.

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Despite U.S. promise, soldiers in Iraq still buying their own body armor
News Tribune (Missouri)

Soldiers headed for Iraq are still buying their own body armor -- and in many cases, their families are buying it for them -- despite assurances from the military that the gear will be in hand before they're in harm's way.

Body armor distributors have received steady inquiries from soldiers and families about purchasing the gear, which can cost several thousand dollars. Though the military has advised them not to rely on third-party suppliers, many soldiers say they want it before they deploy.

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Support troops in Iraq with more than praise
Palm Beach Post (editorial)

U.S. soldiers heading for Iraq are so skeptical of the government's ability to provide essential equipment that they are buying their own body armor before leaving.

Distributors report a steady stream of inquiries from service personnel and their families about ordering the ceramic-plated jackets that can cost between $1,000 and $3,000. The Pentagon has assured the troops that they will have the gear in hand before they land in Iraq. But soldiers have reason to be skeptical. Last fall, about one-fourth of American forces deployed in Iraq did not have the armored vests that can stop bullets and shrapnel. Congress has noticed the Pentagon's inadequate response, too. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would reimburse soldiers who have had to buy their own armor. Consideration should take all of five seconds.

A government that planned for months to invade Iraq should have had its troops properly equipped. The failure has exacerbated the serious morale problems the Pentagon acknowledges it has.

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Reserve Chief Wants Changes
Associated Press

The Army Reserve's top officer said Tuesday he wants to change the mobilization system so members may be called to active duty for nine to 12 month periods every four or five years.

Currently there is no official regularity to reserve callups, and some who joined without expecting to ever be mobilized have been shocked to find themselves in Iraq for full-year tours. There currently are about 66,500 Army Reserve members on active duty, both at home and in Iraq and elsewhere abroad. That is about one-third of the entire Army Reserve of 205,000 people.

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, the Army Reserve chief, told reporters his proposal would give reservists a clearer idea of when they might be pulled from their civilian lives to serve on active duty.

"The culture in the Army Reserve is changing," he said. "We're changing from a force in reserve in which people believe they will never get mobilized, to telling them upfront: The intent is to prepare you and your unit for mobilization and the likelihood is you will be mobilized."

He was speaking for the Army Reserve, not the National Guard, which is managed differently, although officials said the Guard also is considering changing its mobilization system.

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Families stunned, angered by units' deployment extension past one year
European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

Tuesday night’s e-mail spread the dreaded news quickly across the home front in Giebelstadt: one year from the date their husbands deployed to Iraq, the men of the 3rd Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment still will not be home.

“This is the worst news,” said Jessica Corey, 29, whose husband flies Black Hawk helicopters for the unit. “Besides being absolutely stunned, we’re completely heartbroken, too.”

The Pentagon announced this week that 1,500 soldiers, National Guardsmen and reservists would be forced to stay in Iraq beyond their one-year rotation dates. About 1,000 of them come from Europe. More than 600 of those soldiers belong to two units from Giebelstadt: the 3/158 Aviation, a UH-60 Black Hawk unit; and the 7th Battalion, 159th Aviation Regiment, an aviation maintenance support unit.

“Everyone’s having a hard time with this last bit of news,” said Jennifer Groncki, 28, wife of a 3rd Battalion pilot. “People are very upset. They feel like the end was in sight. Now it’s been taken away.”

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Stretched US pilots may quit military
Sydney Morning Herald

Another US helicopter has crashed in Iraq, killing all nine soldiers on board and fuelling Pentagon fears that some of the military's most experienced pilots might quit after prolonged deployments to dangerous hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq.

With the first of 118,000 US troops leaving for Iraq in a rotation aimed at replacing war-weary soldiers, analysts said the US military is overstretched by deployments in Iraq and elsewhere. They said this was forcing the Pentagon to keep thousands of soldiers and reservists in uniform long beyond their release dates, with potentially dangerous effects on morale.

"There is no question that the force is stretched too thin," said David Segal, director of the Centre for Research on Military Organisation at the University of Maryland. "We have stopped treating the reserves as a force in reserve. Our volunteer army is closer to being broken today than ever before in its 30-year history."

At least 14 US helicopters have crashed in Iraq since the war supposedly ended last May, claiming some 58 lives and underscoring the vulnerability of an essential cog in US military operations there.

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Army trying to keep troops from leaving
Associated Press

About 7,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan who were planning to retire or otherwise leave the service in the next few months are getting new marching orders: Stay put.

The Army is expanding what it calls a "stop loss" order to keep soldiers in uniform - even those who have met their contractual service obligation or are scheduled to retire - during a rotation of tens of thousands of troops that begins this month and is scheduled to finish in May.

Col. Elton Manske, chief of the Army's enlisted division, said Monday that the move was deemed necessary to maintain the cohesion and combat effectiveness of units now operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He did not explain why the Army cannot manage the readiness of its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan without forcing soldiers to stay in the service beyond their scheduled retirement or enlistment period. Critics say it is because the Army has too few soldiers and too many overseas commitments.

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Uncle Sam wants you. Again.

As the Pentagon digs deeper into its pool of civilian soldiers, retired res