Guard families demanding answers to constant duty

[MaineDem]

Nancy Durst says she wants an explanation, and she may go to the Pentagon to get it.

Durst's husband, Scott, is a reservist in the 94th Military Police Company and one of about 5,000 part-time soldiers told this month to cancel plans for their long-awaited homecoming because they're staying in the Middle East for another three or four months. Scott Durst left his family and full-time job as a Maine Drug Enforcement agent in December 2002, about 17 months after returning from Bosnia.

"He's been deployed two-and-a-half of the five years we've been married," Durst said. "They signed up to serve their country. But the reason they are not active duty is that they have other civilian jobs to go to . . . They have done their time."

Why, Durst asks, are members of the Reserve and National Guard spending more time in war zones than some active duty units?

http://www.pressherald.com/news/state/040420families.shtml

[saigon68]

1. Sorry Bout that

These people are mindless sheep. What more can you expect from a Government of Draft Dodgers and Cowards

WHY OF COURSE SOMEONE ELSE WILL FIGHT AND DIE so the cowards make more money

SHEESH

[Ganja Ninja]

2. Isn't it obvious? These reservists have to go on extended ...

deployment so Bush doesn't have to restart the draft before the election. So the families should look at it this way. There loved ones aren't just serving America, they are serving the Bush election campaign. That should make them feel better when that special someone comes home in a box.

[boobooday]

3. I feel so bad for these people

How miserable.

There's your draft. At least that is the form it is taking right now.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[teryang]

4. Greater productivity from labor

Using part timers full time in a combat zone to minimize the cost of labor.

[ninkasi]

5. Adding insult to injury

The reservists have had enormous financial hardships, and taxpayer's money pays mercenaries around 1,000 a day. This whole war is an abomination to decency. The Bush administration is the most blood-drenched, corrupt, evil one since this country was founded.

We need to bring our troops home now.

[ljm2002]

6. Does anyone know...

...the relative cost of deploying National Guard troops vs. full enlisted military? I'm guessing that the cost to the gov't is much less for the National Guard deployment. That, of course, does not factor in the cost to the actual Guards and their families... but hey, who cares about that when they can make the numbers look good.

But the numbers don't look that good anyway; we have profiteering by the private sector, refusal to supply basics to the troops that were contracted for, and as another poster points out, we pay private mercenaries $1,000/day to be there.

So here we are, having transformed ourselves from a body politic to a sea of consumers, led around by the nose by the corporate elite who appeal to the common man and woman by sneering at the (strawman) intellectual elite, who are pretty much the only ones trying to call them on their nonsense. And we are showing our Secret, NOFORN reports to foreigners whose wives contributed to the 9/11 hijackers (a matter of record -- we can't prove that she knew who they were and what they were up to, but she did contribute $$), who also own upwards of $2 trillion of our national debt -- i.e. who own a big piece of US.

It's a sad time for the once proud USofA.

[seemslikeadream]

7. what those who didn't live during the Vietnam era may not understand

But what visitors won't see ---- what those who didn't live during the Vietnam era may not understand ---- is the palpable hurt that memories of the Vietnam War still inflict, and why a generation still needs something like the Wall to help it heal.


A Marine staff sergeant from the 3rd Marines during a search and clear operation in Vietnam in the Mai Loc area near the Laotian border. Photo taken by NCT staff photographer, Waldo Nilo in 1968.


A Marine from the 12th Maine Regiment guides a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter in at Fire Support Base Alpine in northern South Vietman near the Laotian border. Photo taken by NCT staff photographer, Waldo Nilo in 1968 during a tour of duty for the USMC. Nilo was a private first class at the time


A group of Vietnamese woman wait to be interrogated in a village near Quantri City in Vietnam in 1968. Photo taken by NCT staff photographer Waldo Nilo in 1968.

In 1975, the war finally ended when communist forces took Saigon and unified the country.

In all, more than 58,000 Americans and 2 million Vietnamese were killed.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter pardoned some 10,000 draft dodgers in an attempt to heal the war's still-lingering wounds.

Finally, in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial ---- the Wall ---- was commissioned.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/04/19/news/top_stories/21_11_154_18_04.txt