A neat column from the Web site antiwar.com encapsulates a lot of my feelings on Operation Iraqi Freedom. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas reaffirms his longstanding opposition to this affair and offers a good critique of the spending bill passed last week by the House, which added more than $120 billion in spending to the mess.

 Coupled with any spending increases, the U.S. Marine Corps has announced that it has recalled 1,800 of its own from the Individual Ready Reserve list.

 Given the presence of as many as 140,000 American armed forces personnel in Iraq at one point, the 1,800 who have been called up hardly seems a significant number, particularly because many of these people will remain stateside and may not have any direct connection to the Iraq conflict. I don’t know if that is any consolation to some of them, who upon getting their letter may have said, “fuck!”.

I suspect many, if not most expected this could happen and won’t complain about it. It’s times like these were I’m really glad I never chose the military.

The majority of those called up will work in aircraft maintanence it appears though some have been called up to directly support the ground forces.

Who knows if any of these men or women will get popped if they end up over in Iraq. I suppose being Marines, they’ll be prepared for it. Still a waste in my opinion. 

— 361 Aviation Maintenance
— 225 Logistics and Support
— 223 Infantry, Tanks and Artillery
— 178 Motor Transport
— 97 Communications
— 95 Intelligence
— 21 Military Police