Yesterday, acting Secretary of the Army Pete Geren testified that the Army may have to extend combat tours beyond the current 15 months. According to an Army spokesman, this would be the last option on the list. It’s a pretty meager list though.
Geren said the Army is reviewing other options, including asking other services to increase their participation and drawing more heavily on Reserve and Guard forces. Each service determines its deployment policy, leading to large disparities. For example, a deployment longer than 6 months is rare for Air Force personnel, while a deployment of less than 12 months is increasingly rare for Army or Marine troops.
Geren also told the Senate Armed Services committee that it “would certainly be valuable” to have more help from other departments in Iraq. The State Department has received such a request from the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq and is even considering adding more personnel in Baghdad, noting that they already have 10 diplomats there. There are about 156,000 troops in Iraq.
The other day, I attended a seminar on diversity management and discrimination. One of the speakers told of a worker who questioned whether being forced to work in 125 degree temperatures constituted an unsafe workplace. The speaker’s organization assured the poor worker that such conditions were in fact deemed unsafe. I thought back to the 135 degrees in Iraq in the summer, before taking into account the body armor and the fact that people are trying to kill you. As rough as that would be for one summer, imagine doing it for two. Or more.
