1115.org

On April 11, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made some promises and issued some guarantees. They were the sugarcoating he applied to the news that tours of duty in Iraq were being extended from 12 months to 15 months:

…what we’re trying to do here is provide some long-term predictability for the soldiers and their families about how long their deployments will be and how long they will be at home, and particularly guaranteeing that they will be at home for a full 12 months.

Ever since, the Pentagon must have been engaged in a race against time. It was close, but they managed to break their promise and renege on this guarantee within 30 days.

This gets better as it goes along.

One, Stars and Stripes reports that:

The Army is sending a company of Europe-based soldiers back to Iraq before the unit has had a full 12 months of “dwell time,” or at-home rest.

Members of the 1st Armored Division’s 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, Company A, learned Tuesday that they are scheduled to head back to Iraq in November, just nine months after the 150-soldier company left the combat zone in February after a 13-month deployment.

Two:

… asked late Wednesday about the situation, Gates said he could not explain why the Army was sending back the company from Germany just nine months after its last Iraq deployment.

“I’ll be very interested in finding out more about that,” Gates said. “We just need to find out about that, because I made it clear that people would have 12 months at home.”

The Secretary is always the last to know, I guess. Maybe Karl Rove and some Harriet-Meirs-surrogate are running the Defense Department too, through some Sampson-Goodling clones?

Three:

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed Wednesday that “there are some people, just by the nature of transferring units and things like that may not end up with the full 12 months.”

“The United States military is not a static organization,” Whitman said.

The Army, Whitman said, is “managing intensely” “individuals in units, and assignment policies, and rotations and things like that.”

“But it’s not going to be 100 percent, or you would have to basically, you know, lock down the Army, and nobody would transfer from one combat unit to another combat unit,” Whitman said.

Whitman is conveniently ignoring the fact that the entire 150-soldier company is being redeployed back to Iraq after just nine months. Presumably, a naked woman with a well-developed chest was supposed to dash through the room right after Whitman made that statement?

Four:

Rather than a guarantee, Whitman said, the 12-month dwell time between deployments “is a goal, to have units and individuals to have an appropriate amount of time for recovery and for stability purposes at home station and to be able to be with their families.”

Whitman is apparently authorized to overrule Secretary Gates. Gates was given every opportunity to disavow the word “guarantee”. He failed to do what he had obviously been instructed to do. Leaving Whitman with no choice but to take matters into his own hands.

The only downside is that now everyone knows who’s been running the Defense Department. I imagine they’re consoling themselves with the thought that at least we still don’t know if he was doing it alone.