Sunday, April 06, 2003

Overextended Military Reserves
A recent Congressional report suggests that harried, overused reservists are experiencing personal and professional problems that could eventually drive many of them out of the service. This is partly because the country has faced the challenge of maintaining its traditional military obligations around the globe while adding new missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. These new commitments were made as the Pentagon was shrinking the military by moving what were thought to be nonessential forces into the reserves.

Now military intelligence, for example, cannot staff its offices without constant help from the reserves. When planning for the war in Iraq — an arid nation with a history of using chemical weapons — the brass found that its water supply battalions and chemical brigades had to be called up from the reserves. The same was true of military police, medical brigades and the civil affairs officers who will teach the Iraqis how to build and run civic institutions that include police forces and courts.

The reserves are meanwhile treated less well than the full-time soldiers for whom they stand in. A report by Representative John McHugh of New York complained that reservists who had volunteered for a second year of service in Europe — and had moved their families at their own expense — had to pay tuition to enroll their children at schools run by the military. On a tour of such bases, Mr. McHugh's group encountered reservists who had not been paid for as long as six months because of defects in the computerized payroll system.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/06/opinion/06SUN1.html

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