Pentagon fearing falling morale, enlistments, plans massive troop rotation in Iraq
The Pentagon is preparing to rotate a quarter of a million troops into and out of Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan early next year in a massive and risky undertaking that could leave them highly vulnerable to attacks during the changeover.
“They’re driven by the fact that though they claim this was a war of necessity, it’s really a war of choice,” said Lawrence J. Korb, who was assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. “Because it’s a war of choice, if they don’t get those troops out of there they are going to cause long-term problems for the U.S. military, because they will have horrible reenlistment rates.”
So, to prevent falling reenlistments, they will deliberately pull out troops, putting them at risk while doing so, replacing them with even less experienced forces. Sounds like a politically driven decision that is guaranteed to kill US soldiers.
Not that the Pentagon appears to care much about their troops anyway.
In an example of the kind of administrative logjam — and resulting soldier distress — that worries Army authorities, about 630 Army National Guard and Reserve troops at Ft. Stewart, Ga., were on “medical hold” for months this year awaiting medical or dental care. They were living in substandard barracks meant for short-term training, lacking climate-control systems and indoor toilets.
Unbelievable. Solidiers in Georgia for months with no air conditioning or flush toilets. Yeah, I bet those solidiers are just lining up to reenlist.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. William “Gus” Pagonis, who directed military logistics during the Persian Gulf War, said Army experts are preparing complex computer models and gaming out scenarios to smooth the obstacles of the move.
“Even if in the U.S. we tried to move 220,000 people out of one airport, it would be a nightmare,” Pagonis said. “The magnitude of all this happening simultaneously, there in Iraq, is just overwhelming.”
Can you say ‘disaster waiting to happen”? I knew you could.