Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Examining the details

Mac Owens at the Corner peals back the layers of mystery surrounding the Pentagon's announcement that they will begin activating Marines in the IRR to fill a shortfall of approximately 2,500 resulting from decreased re-enlistment numbers. Had I the time, I would have mentioned this yesterday as yet another reason "we're losing."

Anyway, Mac explains:

This call up isn't as bad as Reuters makes it sound. Out of a total of 59,000 members of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), the Marines MAY call up to 2,500 back to active duty for up to a year. They will not be activated all at once, but in groups of 60-100, and activation will be determined primarily by rank and military occupational specialty (MOS). What this means is that there is a short-term shortage of folks in certain critical MOSs. I doubt we are talking about involuntarily activating "thousands" of "grunts," i.e. infantrymen, and shipping them back to Iraq for a fourth tour, as the Reuters piece suggests.

No comments:

Post a Comment