Iraq

[den]

There is something I don't understand about the US troops in Iraq. They all appear to be reservists. Why are reserves in a battle zone? Does the US Army have any regulars over there? If not, why?

All the Australian troops in Iraq are Regs; Army, Navy and Airforce. Their job is full-time Armed Services. The Reservists are part-timers; two weeks training a year and they hold down jobs and support their families.They're called up when the Regs are in trouble, not INSTEAD of the Regs.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Comments

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

We're badly overextended, is what. A fair chunk of troops were deployed overseas doin' standard military stuff before anything happened. Then we sent a bunch to Afghanistan. Then we sent a bunch to Iraq--but not nearly enough, as a number of people tried to warn the administration. However, their call for more troops was discarded in favor of "shock and awe," because the administration was really big about getting into a fight and had no clue what happened after that point. The problem, of course, is that no matter how many BFGs you have, you still need meat on the ground to guard ammo dumps, and we just don't have it.

The actual body count is not all that tactically significant, however morally reprehensible it may be--we've had 6,000+ killed or wounded--but you just can't leave even healthy troops on the ground indefinitely. If we learned anything from Vietnam, it's that people who don't get a break go nuts. So they HAVE to rotate them out of combat eventually, and when most of your army is already in the field, who can you rotate in? They're going through reservists, they've instituted the backdoor draft to stop losses, but the simple fact is that we're runnin' out of guys.

I do think a draft is unlikely--it's such bad publicity, and it takes too long for a drafted soldier to become useful--but if it happens, I'm gonna gloat until the smugness centers of my brain overload, at the final sign of how badly Bush screwed up.