When some bright person comes up with the recipe for that one we can slap a star on his ass and nominate him for the Joint Chiefs. Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath.

The “typical” Marine tour is 7 months.

The military is always ’stretched’ during a war, largely b/c of structural inefficiencies and institutional stupidity that it sure would be nice if we could eliminate but we can’t.

My brother was IA’d for all of 2007 into 2008. I didn’t understand the nature of the duty assignment from the outset – and he was not allowed to talk a lot about it, although I did know that he was given a little over 2 months of infantry training in preparation.

However, since he’s been back after a year in Africa, with about a month in both Iraq and Afghanistan thrown in, I’ve gotten to listen to talk between him and friends who are also Navy – and it turns out that some of the duty is not just “freeing up trigger pullers.” It was ‘in harm’s way” duty and my brother and his friends all have friends who’ve been hurt on this type of duty.

My thought on this is that it seems that few people know about the IA thing. It seems to verify what some people are saying about the military being stretched, particularly when sailors with almost 20 years service are IA’d to perform tasks more appropriate to younger infantry types.

I am going in June to Afghanistan. Tried to push it up to May but that would have taken a three stars nod. I am an Reserve ISC and the heat is on. Your chances of promotion are slim and none if you do not do an IA tour. The intel side is hurting manpower-wise but I can’t say it’s strictly from IA. My own personal opinion is that the intel need is great but it’s colliding with Navy’s desire to cut headcount. I have noticed more folks are going civilian intel that want to do this full time. Me? I am just happy as hell to contribute…