Forgive me as I try to recover from the massive case of cognitive dissonance that the reading of the following two stories in the same Reuters news email has brought on.
First of all, "the war" (or should it be "The War") was declared officially over more than a year ago, so this involuntary recruitment of retired and discharged ex-soldiers which is explained as a "management tool used in a time of war" doesn't hold any water. Our government knows this but still, I suppose that since our leaders have done such a marvelous job alienating most of the world and running Iraq into the ground pretty much ALL ON OUR OWN, we'll be needing the extra personnel so things don't get out of our control when the new interim government in Baghdad maybe has to defy U.S. authorities on key security issues to establish credibility among ordinary Iraqis.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army on Tuesday defended its plan to mobilize involuntarily 5,600 retired or discharged soldiers as nothing "new or unusual," but critics said it undermines the concept of an all-volunteer military.
The soldiers will be summoned from the Individual Ready Reserve, a seldom-tapped pool of 111,000 people who remain eligible to be called to active duty for eight years after completing their voluntary Army service commitment.
Army officials said these soldiers will be deployed this year to Iraq and Afghanistan to fill shortages in specific jobs such as military police and civil affairs.
"It's a management tool which we've always had available to augment our forces when we need additional personnel in a time of war," said Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon. "This is nothing that's new or unusual."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. administration's low key handover of power in Iraq, said by President Bush to usher in a new reign of freedom, leaves the Arab nation on a treacherous path to stability, U.S. experts said.
As Prime Minister Iyad Allawi mulled the possibility of martial law, experts said the new interim government in Baghdad may have to defy U.S. authorities on key security issues to establish credibility among ordinary Iraqis.
The violence that has racked the country in the last year could also worsen further as insurgents try to drive a wedge between the Bush administration and the country's new leaders over hot spots such as Falluja.
Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to President Gerald Ford and to Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, said that was one of two ways in which things could get worse in the country.
The other was a possible power struggle. "You may find an increase in violence among the factions as they jockey for power," the retired Army general said.
The Bush administration put a celebratory face on Tuesday's handover of power, which formally ended 14 months of U.S.-led occupation in a modest ceremony that was moved up by two days partly to foil possible guerrilla attacks.
Bush followed up the transition by renewing his call for countries across the Middle East to embrace democratic reforms. He had said ousting President Saddam Hussein was aimed at making the whole region more peaceful and more democratic.
Critics, however, said his Iraq policy was a diplomatic failure that tarnished U.S. relations with long-standing allies and stirred anti-American anger in the Muslim world. They said it could still result in civil war.
"The Bush administration should have thought two years ago that there actually could be worse things in Iraq than Saddam Hussein," said H.W. Brands, a political historian at Texas A&M University.
"Hope isn't quite dead, but it's sure on its last legs," he said. "What the president is learning is that there's this huge gap between what you can hope for and what you can expect in foreign affairs."
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