fuq iraq

[dragonlady7]

i wasn't going to talk about the war anymore on here, but i'm sleepy and depressed and i just thought maybe i'd say just a couple little things.
sigh.
this past weekend i got to see my sister katy, who's a captain in the army. her branch is ordnance: in short, bombs and trucks is what they do. she's recently married another captain, who's military police. they're being posted together to ft. stewart, near savannah, georgia. they'll both be in the 3rd Infantry Division, a venerable old unit dating from I think WWI, but don't quote me on that. They most recently found fame in being the first and only division on the ground (before the tardy arrival of the 4th, which was slated to land in Turkey and floated around on ships for a month before the bloody turks made up their mind to not let them land there) in Iraq, and thus the division that did most of the actual fighting in the push for baghdad.
The 3rd is being sent back to Iraq early next year, and so Katy and Adam will both be serving their second tour there.

Now, we knew that was going to happen, so that doesn't bother me too much. Well, it does. Both of them got shot at last time, and Adam came within ten feet of tripping an Improvised Explosive Device. Which is a hell of a thing for your nerves. (Katy did all the paperwork for the soldiers who mostly got arms and legs blown off by those things. Lots of amputees, this war-- bulletproof vests save lives but not limbs. So the Army is making great strides in prosthetics, on the upside.)
But, anyway. My sister and brother-in-law will be spending 12 months over there, and because of the Army's current overtaxed state, they may well not be let out of the service when their contracts are up, but may be forced to stay in. (I didn't know this, but if an enlisted woman becomes pregnant, she is always given the option to leave the Army, because while the medical benefits are sweet, the schedule sucks; one of Katy's friends has just missed her daughter's entire fourth year of life. But officers are not given that option. They can ask to leave the Army, but the request can be denied. Why? Officers are expensive to replace, and motherhood is no excuse. I know, suck it up and be responsible, but that sucks-- either you wait until you're old to have kids, or you wait until you're old to meet your kids.)
Speaking of getting old, now I'm onto what upsets me slightly more.
My father.
My father is a Chief Warrant Officer and works in a Military Intelligence unit-- corps command or division command, i don't recall. he's with the 42nd National Guard division. For a year or so, he's been working on paperwork with them. See, the Army mandates that you have to retire at age 60. If you're older than 60, you shouldn't be running around with a pack and a rifle, or so their policy says. However. They have precious few warrant officers with combat experience, and my father's been in the army continuously since 1967, and has trained in all kinds of crap. he's the only person I know of who has been a commissioned officer, an enlisted man, a noncommissioned officer, and a warrant officer. In that order, I think. Yeah, I know.
Well, he and the Army decided he could get an extension and not retire at 60. I don't know whether this was his idea or theirs. It's just like him to want this kind of thing, though.
They wanted him and his unit to go to Kosovo sometime next year, to work on the stuff we're still doing there. (Remember Kosovo?)
Well, as of this last weekend, it's official-- Kosovo is cancelled. Freakin Kosovars can sort things out themselves. My dad's goin' to the DESERT.
Yes. Probably Baghdad.
Sigh.

So much for being retired and learning to putter. He was developing into quite a cute old man. He'd even gotten himself a pair of baggy sweatpants.
But no.
Ah well. he still gets perfect scores on his PT tests. He survived the mechanized infantry in Vietnam. The ay-rabs can't be that bad.

This worry was brought to a head by the fact that the aforementioned sean, whose mother died in my last post (cheery, no?) was only home on emergency family leave, and now that that's over, they'll be shipping him to Iraq as well, probably on fairly short order.
so...

All I have to say is, y'alls who are running this war better be fucking serious. These are people I love, all right? don't be fucking sending them out in the sand unless you really fucking mean it.