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Marines to reactive thousands reserves { July 2006 }

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   http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4135179.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4135179.html

Aug. 23, 2006, 7:10AM
Marines to reactivate thousands in reserves

By JULIAN E. BARNES
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON - The Marine Corps said Tuesday that it would begin calling thousands of Marines back to active-duty service on an involuntary basis to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan — the latest sign that U.S. armed forces are under strain and a potential signal of the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war among young veterans.

Marine commanders will call up formerly active-duty service members now classified as reservists after the Corps failed to find enough volunteers among their emergency reserve pool to fill needed jobs in combat zones. The call-ups will begin in several months, summoning as many as 2,500 reservists at a time to serve for a year or more.

The military has had to scramble to meet the manpower requirements of the Iraq war, which have not abated in the face of a continuing insurgency and growing civil strife.

•Earlier this year, the military called forward its reserve force stationed in Kuwait, sending one battalion to secure Baghdad and two to Ramadi.
•Last month, the yearlong deployment of the Alaska-based 172nd Stryker Brigade was extended by four months in order to provide extra troops to roll back escalating sectarian violence in Baghdad.
For much of the conflict, the Army has had to use "stop-loss orders," which keep soldiers in their units even after their active-duty commitment is complete, and involuntary call-ups of reservists to supplement their forces.

The call-ups and the stop-loss orders have been criticized as a "backdoor draft" and are unpopular with service members, many of whom believe they have already done their part.

"You can send Marines back for a third or fourth time, but you have to understand you are destroying their lives," said Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "It is not what they intended the all-volunteer military to look like."


Typical enlistment 8 years
Marines typically enlist for eight years. Most serve four years on active duty then enter the reserves, either as part of a unit that has a monthly drill or as a part of the "individual ready reserve."

The ready reserve was designed to be a pool of manpower that the armed services could draw on in a time of national emergency. But the Iraq war has forced the Army, and now the Marines, to rely on the ready reserve to fill holes in the combat force.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said the call-up of the Marine ready reserve was an example of the wear and tear inflicted by Iraq on the armed services, a stress that could hurt the military in the months and years to come.

"The right way to address the issue is to increase the size of the military so you do not have to rely on the call-up of the individual ready reserve," Reed said. "We should have raised the strength of the Army and Marine Corps three years ago."

Although the Marines have for the most part avoided forcing reservists to serve in Iraq against their will, as the war has dragged on, volunteers have been harder to come by.

"We have been tracking our volunteer numbers for the last two years," said Col. Guy A. Stratton, the head of the Marine Corps' Manpower Mobilization Plans section, who briefed reporters Tuesday on the reserve plans. "If you tracked it on a timeline or a chart, you would see it going down."

The Marines last did an involuntary call-up of members of their individual ready reserve before the initial invasion of Iraq.

Although 2,658 involuntary orders were issued at the time, far fewer Marines ended up serving in Iraq.

The reservists in the new call-up will be drawn from a pool of 59,000 members of the individual ready reserve.

The Corps will exempt Marines who are in the first and last year of their four-year reserve obligation.

Stratton said the manpower needs were the greatest in the fields of communications, engineering, intelligence and military police.



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