More Hyperventilating Pontification

Brought to you by the ever ready to screech New York Times.

It is bad enough for troops in Iraq to learn that their tours of duty have been extended. It is terrible for them to have to hear about it from loved ones at home rather than from their military commanders.

This is what happened to about 150 New Jersey National Guard troops who had been scheduled to return home in March after having served in Iraq for a year. Their tours of duty were extended for up to 125 days as a result of President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq.

A day after Mr. Bush announced the troop increase in a televised speech, the National Guard in New Jersey told family members that their relatives would have to stay on. The news quickly made it back to the troops in Iraq through anguished phone calls and e-mail.

Not until Sunday — four days after Mr. Bush’s speech — were the troops notified by their Army commanders, after Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey made two phone calls to Army officials.

Mr. Corzine, who had learned of the lapse from outraged family members, said that Pentagon officials expressed regret and blamed the delay on a “breakdown in the chain of command on the ground in Iraq.” The governor rightly called what happened “unacceptable.”

Did it happen to this unit? Quite possibly. Is it the norm? Well, it sure wasn't for my son's reserve unit. The Family Readiness Group (FRG) for my son's company purposely waited until four days after my son called me to begin making notification calls. That way they were sure the soldiers had enough time to make calls themselves. Is it always going to be done perfectly? No. There are a lot of individual units over there. Is it a huge thing to make a fuss over? Only to the clueless bloviators who write editorials for the NYT.

They give no context whatsoever. Was the unit in the field at the time? Had orders been officially issued? (My son tells me that his company commander still does not have the official written orders yet). My son also told me that this used to be more common than it is right now. The Army has been trying to avoid this sort of thing happening and has been working to improve the communications. I can see that on this end in the higher level of sophistication in the FRG with very close coordination of communication. It was less coherent on the last deployment.