I posted a story a few days ago about the military extending service duty tours in Iraq. A few military (and ex-military) personnel have posted comments to the blog and said essentially that this is an up front expectation when you join up–no one should be surprised about this. That’s good to know. I had felt that our servicemen were being taken advantage of, but if it’s something that they know about as a possiblity from day one, then it’s a much different (and better) situation.
Of course, opinions by people like me (who aren’t in the theater of operations) wouldn’t really hold much weight compared to someone in the service.
I hope when we pull out that the whole country doesn’t collapse. I think we’re holding their utility infrastructure up by force of will right now until more contracting work is done.