We know that 12,000 National Guard troops just got their notice of a second tour, to maintain the surge levels.
Today CNN (Lou Dobbs and others) is reporting today that the Pentagon is considering extending the tours of 15,000 troops by 120 days (4 months for you non-ma'athists). Four ground combat brigades and one air unit. We don't know which units would be targeted, and how many rotations they have already made. But this is bound to have further emotional effects, cause further mental illness, family instability/divorce, etc. Desertions are up.
We are already sending troops who are wounded, not fully trained or equipped, more and more of whom have moral waivers.
Some are going back with shortened rest periods between deployments.
Not enough.
15,000 men is about ten percent of our force...half of the surge...That is a huge deficit. And this is the best way to keep up the force level, the surge that was carefully considered by Bush? The whole surge isn't even over there, and we don't have any more troops to send?!
So we're just keeping our kids there. That's it. Just stay there. 2/3 of Friedman. Maybe our president will announce this from his vacation home.
If this goes through, I would see it as the admission that we have run out of troops for Bush's fiasco.
I think we can anticipate Jack Murtha going balistic, but that's not enough. We need LTEs; it needs to echo across the country.