Mr. President: Stop Playing Games With The Lives Of Our Troops.

This morning, President Bush will make an announcement about the situation in Iraq. For every American who supports the troops, I hope that you will listen carefully when he announces that troops deployments are being reduced from the current back-braking 15 months to 12 months at the end of the summer.
In short this is a hollow political announcement

This announcement will do nothing to help the troops currently deployed for 15 months right now, some of whom will not return to the United States until summer 2009. Almost half of the active-duty Army’s frontline units are currently deployed for 15 months, HALF, and of those units, three are on their fourth tour and almost all have been deployed at least twice. We need to reduce everyone’s current tours to 12 months, right now.
From now to the end of this president’s term in office, the overwhelming majority of frontline troops scheduled to deploy are Army National Guard, and their scheduled tours are already 12 months, so again, the President’s announcement does nothing to help them even though many of these troops are scheduled for their second deployment, leaving jobs and families behind again, for  a full year.

15-month tours are just too long. DoD itself has found that 15-month deployments are dispiriting. Every day here at Veterans for America, we hear from Soldiers and their families reeling from the effects of 15-month deployments.  And we listen as no less an expert than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen says “the well is deep, but is not infinite.”   Our reports show that the consequences of churning our troops will be significant and even greater in the future.

Our troops need their commander in chief to fight for them. They need real help, and they need it now.