http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06358/748757-85.stmJoe Kramer had done his four years in the Army, including a year in Iraq, when the order came -- as it had come to a couple of thousand others in the Individual Ready Reserves -- that Uncle Sam needed him back
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He enlisted out of college, the summer before the Sept. 11 attacks. Once in Iraq, he was proud of his 101st Airborne Division unit's ability to secure most of the cities it patrolled without gun battles.
He received a Bronze Star, however, for actions in a raid of a home in Mosul on Dec. 29, 2003, using a grenade to kill two enemy combatants who had wounded his squad leader. He feels a strong bond with other soldiers, and sympathy for those already required to make multiple tours of duty in Iraq.
But after leaving active duty in August 2005, he joined a group of veterans critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war. He served on the national board of VoteVets.org, a largely Democratic political organization that worked this year to unseat Republicans in Congress with close ties to President Bush. He took a job in September 2005 as an aide to state Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, a longtime anti-war activist for whom he previously interned when the senator was a city councilman. (Mr. Kramer's job must be kept open for him by law until his return.)
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The Kramers have joked that Joe's call-up could be retaliation for such public criticism, including the VoteVets activities, but they say they're not such conspiracy theorists that they actually believe it. In fact, Mr. Kramer's willing to go back to Iraq -- not that he has a choice -- if it means another soldier who already had two or three rotations there could be relieved of one more by his reactivation. One of his conclusions from his first tour was the U.S. military had too few troops to sustain its mission properly, whether one agreed with the mission or not.
I hope you come back safe Sgt. Kramer - we need people like you.
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