The idiots can't even get it right in extending deployment of soldiers

By Lee Russ

Saturday, January 27, 2007 at 12:32 PM

If I had any lingering doubt whether the current government was 100% incompetent, or only 98.6% incompetent, this pretty much decided it for me: the Dept of Defense has apparently screwed up extensions of service in Afghanistan so badly that some soldiers landed in the U.S. only to be immediately told that they had to get on the next plane and return to Afghanistan.

So much for the welcome-home a Collinsville family was planning for their soldier, Army Cpl. Dwight Smith. He returned to Fort Drum, N.Y., last week after a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan, only to be told on Wednesday that he would have to go back as soon as a plane became available.

Smith was among an advance group of about 50 soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division who arrived at the Army base in upstate New York. The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that tours of duty for about 3,500 soldiers from the brigade will be extended for four months. That includes Smith, who called his mother, Sharon Smith, shortly after hearing the news.
...
Although most of the soldiers were still in Afghanistan when the announcement came, several hundred were already in transit and were to be turned around and sent back, said Ben Abel, a spokesman at Fort Drum, where the division is based. All had been scheduled to be home by Feb. 11.

Phillip Baldwin of Roxana, who served with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, was stunned by the news. Extended tours are an Army-wide phenomenon, but the "spur of the moment" feel to this announcement sets it apart, said Baldwin, who was seriously wounded during a firefight with Taliban fighters last June.

This is beyond atrocious.  There should be  an immediate and thorough investigation of this travesty, and whoever is responsible should be sent packing to the unemployment line.

And that includes Pentagon brass if, as I suspect, they simply dawdled and screwed around during the process of deciding how the existing forces needed to be allocated in order to fill our strength requirements.

This is truly a gang (White House and the entire next several layers of Executive branch government) that can't analyze, can't plan, and can only execute in the context of carrying out capital punishment.

And these are the patriotic geniuses who are always worried about whether their critics are adequately supporting the troops.  I've been a "troop" and I was a whole hell of a lot more worried about being sensibly supported by the military hierarchy than I ever was about some citizen in Nebraska's attitude toward me.

If only there was a way to get Bush, Vice-Bush, and all the little Bushelettes in uniform, full dress with body armor, and ship them off for a little democracy building exercise in a nice, warm climate near the Arab Gulf.