This picture hurts...

I guess if this admin won't support the troops, piles of sand will have to do.




Fatigue Cripples US Army In Iraq
by Peter Beaumont

Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare. Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis

Lieutenant Clay Hanna looks sick and white. Like his colleagues he does not seem to sleep. Hanna says he catches up by napping on a cot between operations in the command centre, amid the noise of radio. He is up at 6am and tries to go to sleep by 2am or 3am. But there are operations to go on, planning to be done and after-action reports that need to be written. And war interposes its own deadly agenda that requires his attention and wakes him up.0812 01

When he emerges from his naps there is something old and paper-thin about his skin, something sketchy about his movements as the days go by.The Americans he commands, like the other men at Sullivan - a combat outpost in Zafraniya, south east Baghdad - hit their cots when they get in from operations. But even when they wake up there is something tired and groggy about them. They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq.

Hanna and his men are not alone in being tired most of the time. A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad’s international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust.

Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq. ‘The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,’ says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the ’surge’ in Baghdad began.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/12/3129/

Sustained combat operations, no matter where you do them, will leave you worn out.

What we need is a bigger military as so that there is a longer stateside time between deployments.






I speak from experience as a combat veteran.

even more tuckered out.
Too bad not too many are willing to join so they can get over there and enjoy all that fun they're having trying to stay alive while having to look forward to less time between deployments.

I'm not going to fight with you about the legality or illegality of the war, because we will not convince the other validity of our respective positions.

As for the recruiting of new soldiers, the army is on pace to exceed its goals for the year (they are currently at over 1000 more recruits than they had forcast for this point in the year).

And if you ask me for my source for that info, here it is.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_6606568?source=rss