It's been a relatively slow week, which means time passes more slowly. It is possible to be busy here as well as safe, so while I appreciate the sentiments that folks invariably have about how they'd rather I be bored here than having exciting experience, I'd prefer a happy medium wherein I'm busy and doing something useful, but not actively being attacked...

In other news, I heard from a friend of a friend (so, as far as I know this is true, but I can't directly quote) that an HRC General said (to a group of IRRs getting ready to come over) that basically the IRRs are the “third string” and that the “bench is empty”. He also said that his hands are tied until after Nov 2nd, but that there are already orders awaiting signatures for after that date which will convert the current partial mobilization to a full mobilization. Without doing some research I'm not sure exactly what that would entail, but I'm guessing it would have immediate impacts on the limits of how many reservists and IRRs can be called up, and it might even affect the 24 months in 5 years limit on deployments for reservists (if someone has the time/inclination to do the research, please comment on this post to clarify).

It's certainly no surprise that such callups would happen post-election, and it's something the Kerry camp has been making a big deal of (or was a few weeks back). The thing is, the additional callups are probably unavoidable due to our current mission requirements, so it's not really a political issue -- regardless of who is president, expect more troop callups in late 2004 or early 2005.