| Tour of duty extended reserve forces Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.boston.com/dailynews/252/region/Tour_of_duty_extended_for_Nati:.shtmlhttp://www.boston.com/dailynews/252/region/Tour_of_duty_extended_for_Nati:.shtml
Tour of duty extended for National Guard and Reserve forces in Iraq campaign By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press, 9/9/2003 08:02
WASHINGTON (AP) Like active duty troops held longer than expected in Iraq, National Guard and reservists also are having their tours of duty extended, defense officials said Tuesday.
With the Army stretched thin by the Iraq campaign, the global war on terror and other duty around the world, officials ordered that Guard and Army Reserve troops now in Iraq and surrounding countries serve 12-month tours.
The new order, signed Friday night and not publicly announced, covers some 20,000 people and means some of them will remain months longer than they thought they would, officials said.
There are 130,000 Americans including active duty inside Iraq and more than 40,000 more in Kuwait, Qatar and so on.
The subject of troop rotation has been a sensitive one in the Iraq campaign, with some soldiers and their families complaining bitterly about delays in their homecoming. Members of the 3rd Infantry Division, for instance, fought their way to Baghdad in late March and were told they'd be going home, only to remain in Iraq for months afterward because of continuing problems the coalition encountered in ending the violence there.
But officials said the Guard and reservists mobilized are still needed in Iraq to augment active duty troops in skills across the spectrum, including as military police, civil affairs officers and other duties.
Earlier in the summer, the Pentagon spent weeks struggling to come up with a troop rotation plan because the Army has become so stretched during the Bush presidency, with major commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq in addition to peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo and long-standing deployments in South Korea, Japan, Germany and the Sinai peninsula.
The Army, the largest of the armed services, has had portions of every major active-duty combat unit committed to either Iraq or Afghanistan, with the exception of the 2nd Infantry Division, which is in Korea.
In announcing the rotation plan in late July, officials said units that went to Iraq next were to serve one-year tours, with a few exceptions. One exception was the National Guard brigades, which will serve six-month tours.
In other words, Friday's order applies only to troops already in the theater of battle and not those scheduled to deploy in coming months.
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