No end in site Options

[Mommy]

I know we have to be there right now, but man this is scary, especially the first option the author mentions. I guess it just hits home even moreso now because my husband is in the army. He gets restationed in August, and there is a 20% chance it could be in Iraq. That's a pretty low possibility, but if we stay in Iraq for the next decade or so, I'm positive he will go sometime. Thoughts anyone? What do you see happening?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080318/ts_csm/airaqone

[impala454]

I hate to give you something to worry about, but I have pretty close ties to a similiar situation. My sister's husband is a captain in the army (out of ft sill, lawton, ok), and has spent 2.5 of their 8 years married overseas. 1 year in Korea and 15 months in Iraq. The Army was good to them though, as he was scheduled to deploy to Iraq in November 2006, and my sister had been scheduled to deliver their first child in November. The Army let him stay behind through Christmas and deploy end of December instead. So he did get to be there for his son's birth, but was gone for the first 15 months of his life. He just got home from Iraq in mid-February though, and supposedly will be able to stay stateside for a minimum of 3 years.

As far as the article is concerned, I see a few things that I suppose are kind of "scare" factors that really shouldn't be.

Overseeing all this are perhaps 30,000 to 50,000 US troops, deployed in Iraq for years, maybe decades.

This may sound terrible, but it is the norm with war. Not sure how accurate this is, but it shows we currently have 37,500 troops in Korea and 47,000 in Japan, wars which ended in 1953 and 1945 respectively. I don't think there is such thing as a war which is fought and won where the victors completely abandon the battlefield and leave it to the surrendered. I wouldn't imagine Iraq to be the first one.

[Mommy]

I hate to give you something to worry about, but I have pretty close ties to a similiar situation. My sister's husband is a captain in the army (out of ft sill, lawton, ok), and has spent 2.5 of their 8 years married overseas. 1 year in Korea and 15 months in Iraq. The Army was good to them though, as he was scheduled to deploy to Iraq in November 2006, and my sister had been scheduled to deliver their first child in November. The Army let him stay behind through Christmas and deploy end of December instead. So he did get to be there for his son's birth, but was gone for the first 15 months of his life. He just got home from Iraq in mid-February though, and supposedly will be able to stay stateside for a minimum of 3 years.

As far as the article is concerned, I see a few things that I suppose are kind of "scare" factors that really shouldn't be.

This may sound terrible, but it is the norm with war. Not sure how accurate this is, but it shows we currently have 37,500 troops in Korea and 47,000 in Japan, wars which ended in 1953 and 1945 respectively. I don't think there is such thing as a war which is fought and won where the victors completely abandon the battlefield and leave it to the surrendered. I wouldn't imagine Iraq to be the first one.

Well, I have heard rumors that families are allowed to go to Iraq now with deployed soldiers as long as they stay within certain areas at all times. Families are not allowed to go to Afghanistan or Korea though. That's just what I heard. Don't know the truthfullness of it. I don't think I would go to Iraq though unless he was going to be sent there for a year and a half. Most people in his MOS go there for 6 month tours.