Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Troops deployed in the war against terrorism should expect to be away from home longer than military personnel have at any time since World War II, senior Pentagon officials are cautioning service members stationed around the world.
In a radio address broadcast Wednesday night on military networks, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon is likely to discard the personnel rotation schedule used in peacetime that limits the time troops are separated from their families.
While a transcript of the radio address was not made available, a defense official said Myers told troops, "We’re going to do everything we can to manage this thing, but we’re in a brand-new situation, so buckle your chin straps."
The rotation schedule was adopted in the early 1970s — when the military was having trouble retaining its recruits — as a way of making life in the armed forces more palatable. It limits the time that Navy, Marine, Air Force and Army personnel customarily are deployed to about six months. Longer deployment requires special orders from a four-star general.
"I firmly believe that this is the most important tasking the U.S. military has been handed since the Second World War," Myers said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday. "And what’s at stake here is no less than our freedom to exist as an American people, so there is no option but success."
The statements are a sign of how thin the armed forces may be stretched as the Pentagon settles into what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday called a "long, unrelenting, global war on terrorism."
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