Defense cuts may extend combat tours
Fox News reports that Army chief of Staff Ray Odierno announced that troops may have their combat tours to Afghanistan extended next year so that the Defense Department can save some money;
“We will try to divert money so we do not have to extend people in Afghanistan,” Odierno told a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “That’s a very big concern of mine.”
He said that right now the Army is facing a shortfall of as much as $8 billion in operating funds for Afghanistan, and there could be an additional $5.4 billion in cuts if Congress can’t resolve a budget standoff and automatic reductions — called sequester — go into effect.
Yeah, that whole “we won’t balance the budget on the backs of veterans” thing is looking more like complete bullshit everyday. Maybe they’ll come up with a shiny new medal for folks who were screwed because our government can’t balance the budget.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Big Army
The very possibility of extending tours b/c of sequestration sickens me. If I could, I’d send Congress, the president, the vice president, and all of their advisors and lapdogs to Afghanistan and say, “No one comes back until you work this out.” I tell you, they would have it done w/o ever boarding a plane for the ME.
I think most of us have been aware that it was a crock from the get-go. The big three services are facing cuts that go beyond “trimming the fat”, and the Marine Corps, never flush with cash to begin with, is being forced to look at cuts that will be headed straight into the bone and muscle.
They’re doing this to avoid breaking sacred rice bowls. Retire a bunch of flag ranks and a bunch of the mandarins in the executive GS levels. There’s lots of fat to be cut that’s located far from the sharp end.
I’ll give the AF Reserves some credit – they’re shutting down the band, but between the AF and Air Guard there are another 25 bands. The Army has 34 bands, and another 69 between their Reserve and Guard components (according to wikipedia).
Combat tours will be extended to save money, but don’t you dare cut the billions we are spending on green energy and biofuels for the military alone.
Eggs does have a good point that it is time to realize that military bands are not critical to the mission.
Replace the bands with one piper and one drummer per regiment. Retain sufficient trumpeteers to provide “Taps” for military funerals.
Dump 80% of the flag officers along with their aides, toadies, and baggage handlers. Jeebus, that alone should finance an entire mech heavy corps.
Yeah, GOD forbid that the politicians suffer or sacrifice anything when we Vets, second or third-class peons to them, can be made to suffer instead.
This is the classic European model of dismantling the military in order to shift future spending towards social programs which aren’t result orientated. The Obama administration is actively trying to marginalize and dismantle the U.S. military.
The Army would never permit soldiers in combat to go without. It will do the usual: moo like a cow to be slaughtered (pity the poor combat troops! soon to have zero ammo cuz of budget cuts!) while the Army moves the money from veteran, retiree, and family accounts.
Some of the troops are reportedly no longer being served breakfast in the Rock Pile. Now, they will face longer deployments. This is bullshit. All because old Nanny Piglosy said it would be embarrassing to have congressional pay cut. Really?
Let’s see her go a year without seeing her family. Let’s see her go a year without wearing anything besides a dusty uniform. Let’s see her go a year sleeping on a cot whether she had a bad back or not. Let’s see her go a year with four to five hours of sleep a night, or having to sleep during the day with people walking and talking in the tent because you pull the night watches.
These poly-tick-ians think that the people serve them. They believe that the troops are to do what they want. Well, if the shit hits the fan and they order the troops to fight against the people, who do you think the troops will side with? The people who love and support them or the people who cut their pay, cut their benefits, and leave them to rot in another country?
This whole mess just sickens me. Maybe if Piglosy can get Reid to, I don’t know, follow the law and actually pass a fucking budget, this whole mess could be avoided. But, since budgets can only come out of the House, and the house is Repub majority, that would be bad for the Democrat (or National Socialist) message that the Repubs are not doing anything to help.
@4 Eggs
The military has more people serving in bands…than the entire State Department has on the payroll
And we wonder why the military has to be forced into the roll of nation building
Anybody for having a “National Beat a Politician Month”? Hey, it’s the thought that counts, ain’t it?
As I recall, the funding for Afghanistan comes out of a contingency fund that is off the budget and is not directly affected by sequestration.
I wonder how much of that funding for Afghanistan ends up in the pockets of a bunch of worthless shits that hate us anyways, rather than feeding the troops breakfast.
@13. The funds at risk are those that would be used to train and ready troops and units for future deployment. If the money isn’t there and cannot be diverted from elsewhere, then there will be a shortage of forces to relieve those there now and those who will be there in the near future. Some 5.4 billion is lost for this purpose thanks to sequestration.
No breakfast? What’s nex? No lunch? What are these people supposed to run on? Air?
The story about no breakfast is bunk; there were some bases in RC East being shutdown and the guys had to eat MREs instead of hot meals. Does it suck, yes; did they eat, yes. One of the guys had sent a nastygram home complaining about it and his family reported it to the news, who being the paragons of investigation printed it and then it made its way into social media where it really blew up.
TLDR; politicians screwing SMs over 101
MRE’s, Meals Rejected by Ethiopians, or Mostly Recycled Entrails!
You guys do know that MREs were invented to feed Napoleon’s army, don’t you?
Ex-PH2, tastes like it! lol
@20 – 🙂
This is shit I do not want to hear while waiting for my Smallpox to finish… Yeah, guess what. Turns out that stuff is only good for ten years so us Iraq vets get inoculated with Smallpox again. Lot of guys got tattoos over the last scars so sucks to have to see what chunk falls off this time. I am so glad that if they extend this tour they STILL have to send me home, so I can retire.
That also applies to afghan vets; that fight having started before Iraq. With 10thMTN being the most deployed division since the mid80s it stands to reason you’d deploy again. Since you’ve already had the inoculation before, your response will be attenuated and the resulting scar rather small unless you don’t take care of it right.