While the Army courts older recruits...

the Marines have been reduced to calling back some of their departed bretheren. No I don't mean departed as in dead; I mean departed as in Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). Here is how military service works. When you enlist, you sign up for an eight year enlistment. If you don't serve eight years on active duty - and many don't; I served a four year active enlistment - you still have to serve an amount of time that finishes out your eight-year enlistment in either the National Guard, the Ready Reserve, or the Individual Ready Reserve. If you are in the National Guard or the Ready Reserve, you do the one-weekend-a-month-two-weeks-during-the-summer gig. If you sign up for the IRR, you go home and go about your normal civilian life with no further training. However, until your eight year enlistment is up, you are subject to recall to active duty if the need arises. For the Marines, that need has arisen. This week, the Marines have started to call in IRRs because not enough active duty and reserve Marines have volunteered for duty to Iraq.

This parlays right into what I just talked about in the previous post. Now why do you think the Marines are having trouble recruiting? Could it have anything to do with the Camp Pendleton Eight, who are sitting in the Brig and facing a possible death penalty for killing the enemy? Could it be the flap over the continuing investigation of the Haditha (non)incident? Could it be the media's trial and conviction of the Marine who killed the Fallujah sniper who was playing possum? All of these events have no doubt caused a lot of second thoughts both to Marines who have come up for reenlistment, or for possible recruits who were going to go into the Marines, then decided not to when it appeared that they could be sold out by our cowardly and politically correct government so easily.

Good Day to You, Sir