And now the answer you've all been waiting for.

[lady_kishiria]

My unit are not, repeat NOT scheduled for Iraq in the foreseeable future. Individual soldiers have gone, but not the unit itself for whatever reason. One of my AIT comrades who is in one of the other units out of my USAR centre says it's because our company's too new.

The trick they're playing, says Sgt. Dimaandal, is that they now tell reservists, "Oh, you can go *straight* to IRR (inactive ready reserve) if you want." People go for this because they think, "I don't ever have to go to drill for 8 years? Sweet!" They are, of course, the first ones to get called up for deployment. I actually *want* to go to drill (hey, I want to go Regular Army) so that's not even a temptation anyway.

Only one drill day, and it's this coming Sunday. We're going up to Battalion in Irvine for a class A inspection. Mine are still there in their garment bag, so that's no hardship for me.

After checking in, I drove over to the Del Mar beach, which is the beach on board Camp Pendleton. I got out of the car and walked across soft, shifty sand to the waves. I waited for one to wash up to me, dipped my fingers in the Pacific, and knew I was home.

Comments

[helenkacan.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for reconnecting with your roots, er, ripples.

Much luck.
And love.
And hugs.
H.

[shadowcell.livejournal.com]

Mm. I doubt they'd want to send more troops, since the war's already incredibly unpopular and the last thing Bush and Friends would want to do is get up and say "OMGLOL HAY 3V3RYONE W3RE GONG 2 SAND MORA TROPS 2 IRAK KTHXBAI!1!1!one!!1"

Since there's a congressional election coming up, I'm guessing we'll see more troops coming home than going out, since we sorta don't like this whole Iraq thing anymore, and since we have to wait until 2008 to take it out on the administration, we're going to take it out on Congress.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

...or so I hope...

[shadowcell.livejournal.com]

The reasons they went in were political, so I have no doubt that the reasons they pull out will be political as well. Especially now that the universe has taken on a keen disliking to George W Bush. He's lost most of his support on this whole thing, regardless of what's actually going on over there.

[electorprince.livejournal.com]

We're not even going to try and fool ourselves. We're in this for the long haul, always have been, and no matter who is sitting in the White House, there will be no withdrawal from Iraq. Even a minimization is dangerous to contemplate. I have every expectation of being back in Asia Minor come this time next year.

The reason we'll stay is even more political than why we went in.

[youngfreud.livejournal.com]

Here's hoping you don't get deployed to the Big Sandy anytime soon. Welcome back.