The heroes come home to roost.

When Atrios went on vacation, he called up the reserves, and his subs arrived fully trained and ready to serve. My guess is that given the chance, they'd happily re-up. Not so for the troops returning from Iraq, though, according to this item supplied by Eschaton reservist Holden.

JASPER, Ind. -- Almost two-thirds of Indiana National Guardsmen in a battalion that spent a year in Iraq chose not to re-enlist when their service time expired.

Over the past 21 months, the service contracts of 102 soldiers in the 1st Battalion of the 152nd Regiment expired. Of those, 32, or less than one-third, chose to re-enlist.
The unit typically keeps 85 percent of its members, a sergeant in charge of retaining members said.

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"What killed us was the stop-loss," (Sgt 1st Class Gary) Love said. "There wasn't a whole lot we could do."

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But the stop-loss order, which lasted 18 months, meant some battalions, instead of spreading manpower losses over a manageable period, have dropped members all at once.
Eighty percent of the unit's soldiers affected by the order - 59 of 74 Guard members - did not re-enlist, Love said. The goal was to keep at least half of those troops, he said.

What this portends for the areas served by that Guard unit the next time the area is hit by a natural disaster...well, I shudder to think. What it portends for regular Army units is more second and third tours in Iraq, as Guard and Reserve units find it increasingly harder to maintain a deployable troop level. And it's only just begun.

How long will it take the military to recover from the debacle of the Bush/Rumsfeld regime? Too long. By their policies, they've managed to simultaneously put the nation at increased risk while weakening our defenses.

Why do Bush and Rumsfeld hate America?