McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef has a big story: as a dividend for leaving Iraq, the Marines will spend twice as much time at home as deployed in a combat zone, reaching the desired two-to-one so-called “dwell to deployment” ratio that the Army won’t see until at least 2012. As the Marines More…
I had to staple my hands to my desk to prevent from facepalming after reading this account of a recent talk from Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, about his 2010 priorities and now it’s hard to type:
Restore balance to the Army: Casey discussed the need
It’s been about a month since Adm. Michael Mullen conceded that a Defense Department initiative to expand so-called “dwell time” between Army deployments would be delayed. Today, Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pegged it to a date: 2012 or 2013.
During a lecture at the More…
Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he would put in place a plan to expand the time that soldiers spend at home between deployments. By 2011, Gates said, he and Army officials wanted to give war-weary soldiers two years at home for every year deployed, up from the More…
The progressive Iraq/Afghanistan veterans group VoteVets has been, to the best of my knowledge, supportive of a properly resourced and focused Afghanistan strategy for quite some time. But it surprised a lot of people when it announced that it couldn’t support the Obama administration’s “extended surge” on Tuesday. That’s because More…
John Soltz of VoteVets makes an absolutely crucial point in an interview with TPM’s Christina Bellantoni:
Soltz said VoteVets members are worried the policies such as the 2-year dwell time between deployments are “at risk” because “the math doesn’t add up.”
This is an under-noticed shift that I noted More…
If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002.
According to More…
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