Dang it. I'm actually in a pretty good mood.

Are you trying to bring up my blood pressure and ruin my day with these links?

I reenlisted to stay in the Army long enough to make sure I'd make it to the war, and just reenlisted to go back. Done rather well on bonus money both times to stay with the 101st.

Lots of people reenlist to stay in, and those are the people you want to keep. An E-4 with a combat tour under his belt already is usually a better guy to have behind you than a brand-new E-1. The longer this goes on the more experienced and therefore more lethal a force we put on the ground.

When do you go back?

And why the bleeding holy hell isn't the media interviewing guys like you?

Our troops were always the best trained and equipped, but now they're seasoned. They are the world's baddest guys.

Some tinhorn dictator or mullah might think about biting off a piece, but I guarantee you when it gets down to the ranks, they want none of this.

I BLAME CINDY THE PEACE MOM!!!

Thank you, SGT Dan, for your service to us and our country. :)

The combat units have always been popular during this war. It's the support stuff that had recruitment issues.

If the basis for this information was the article in the NY Post or Rush Limbaugh's subsequent pumping of that article, you should all know that the Post has printed a retraction on the numbers, which it now admits were wrong. The Pentagon states that recruitment is down across the board and they think it will be worse next year. Overall, none of the branches have met recruiting requirments this year. It's hard for me to believe that people around here could convince themselves of something so intuitively wrong. Current polls show less than 30% of Americans "strongly approve" of the handling of this war. There's about a 60% disapproval of the war in most polls. How could recruitment be up in an environment like this?

Gee, I'm sorry. I guess I spoiled the party. Hey, reality bites.

Bill polls. sheesh. Bill, I would be counted as one of those who "disapproves of the way the President is handling the war".

Cause I think we need to do more.

The Pentagon states that recruitment is down across the board and they think it will be worse next year.

Maybe you missed a very important word, Bill.

Re-enlistments.

Not "recruitment."

If I'm not back there by 15 October I'll be shocked.

Why do we not get interviewed? One, guys like me really don't like reporters much so we avoid them. We KNOW all the MSM reporters don't like us anyway. When the war started in Afghan in late '01, our green-hat wearing neighbors were heavily engaged, and there were news vans and satellite trucks outside the main gate in the US Cav store's parking lot constantly. Some carloads of off-duty soldiers were throwing things at them to get them to leave, and almost no one wanted to be interviewed.

Two, we're not comfortable being interviewed because if we're honest, we get twisted out of context and look like war criminals. If we lie and tell them what they want to hear, we just cement the MSM's prejudices and people who watch the MSM as their sole source of information stay stupid.

Then you have the fringe media like Phil from the NRA, and they don't have enough circulation to change anyone's mind. The sort of people who NEED honest stories on the modern American military are not going to read American Rifleman and Soldier of Fortune. They aren't going to be surfing too many military/conservative blogs either.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you Dan from a grateful American.
God Bless you and your family.

Hey, when all this is over, and after reading the sci-fi thread I missed with last week's workload, anyone want to have an Ace Of Spades Club week-long gaming party/weapons shoot someplace? Drink, play Battletech, run DVD's nonstop, and expend a bunch of ammo?