Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Military Service Extensions

Tech Central has an article relating to extensions of military service for all levels of the military.

The article quotes a Hard-Ball interview of Schwarzkopf. Here's a gem of a quote:

MATTHEWS: Let‘s talk about this tricky situation with the individual ready reserve. The sound of it sounds like if you‘re in an active or ready reserve, you have to expect in the worst circumstances of war, that you‘ll be called back to duty whether it‘s a guy who fought in World War II, like a lot of our fathers and uncles, who fought in World War II, and all of a sudden they find themselves back in North Asia fighting in the cold of Korea few years later. This happened to a lot of guys.
Is this something that military people should expect? We have people out there fighting it now. We‘re going to be talking to one of those people in a minute who successfully fought being called back. Is this part of the military culture to just say no, I don‘t really want to go back into the front?
SCHWARZKOPF: Well, I don‘t think so. I think it is pay back time for an awful lot of these people who are in the IRR. They‘re in the IRR, because they were active in other times and held very good positions and got a lot of benefits from it. We can‘t have a standing army, a huge standing army. The nation can‘t afford one. And that‘s why they have the I.R.R. which are group of people that in the event of a national emergency, we can call them up to fill certain vacancies out there that otherwise, we don‘t have continuous people in them
.

Not sure I like the ideas floated by Schwarzkopf or the article, but it's legal and in the contract that soldiers sign when joining.

Look at these and see what you think.

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