SOURCE: "The Stars and Stripes", military newspaper for soldiers

Lawmakers appear resigned to strains of war, By Tom Philpott, Special to The Stars and Stripes, Pacific edition, Saturday, March 1, 2008

Soldiers and families whose lives have been strained beyond imagination by multiple combat tours — the reality of being volunteers in an undermanned Army during a protracted war — might expect lawmakers to still be tossing fire and brimstone on their behalf at Pentagon witnesses.

But a sense of resignation characterized Wednesday’s hearing of the House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, even as the Army’s personnel chief gave his strongest signals yet regarding the depth of stress being felt by his soldiers and their loved ones.

The service personnel chiefs and Dr. David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, appeared before the subcommittee to discuss recruiting and retention challenges, especially for the Army.

The session was oddly cordial, given the cost being paid by exhausted forces, as though lawmakers and witnesses both understood that only political will, not bigger budgets or new authorities, will bring relief.

The two-hour hearing was 90 minutes old before Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., the subcommittee’s new chairwoman, asked Chu and Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for personnel, how close we are to “doing long-term damage to the Army.” Davis even prefaced her question by citing a recent news magazine item that said Congress is reluctant to ask tough questions about the war for fear of being seen as not supporting the troops.

Chu good-naturedly challenged the accuracy of that contention, and Davis laughed. Then Chu explained in all seriousness that the end of 15-month tours is tied to three factors: how quickly the Army can grow, stability in Iraq and the absence of another event that requires U.S. forces to deploy.

“We are hopeful that we will get to this goal but it would be rash to make any promises at this juncture,” Chu said. At a Senate hearing held that same day, Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff, said he hoped Army deployments could return to 12 months starting this summer, though that depended on conditions in Iraq and the risk of further drawdowns there.

Rochelle told Davis that senior Army officials are asking how close conditions are to doing long-term damage to their service.

“We don’t know the answer just yet because it’s not quite as clear as pointing to a statistic or a single metric of many that we track and monitor such as divorces, separations, obviously attempted suicides, suicides and alike — all of which (are up and) alarm us greatly.”

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History shows, he said, that an army can suffer long-term damage “before we realize it, and we’re trying desperately not to let that happen.”

Only Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., a former military spouse, brought tough questions, pressing Chu hard on a couple of points including a continuing drop in Army recruit quality. Chu at one point put much of the blame on parents and other “influencers” of young adults who are advising them to avoid the military today.

Shea-Porter also challenged Chu’s claim, which he based on Army “research,” that recruits being brought in with moral waivers for past arrests, crimes or admitted drug use, are performing as well as, sometimes better, than recruits who need no waiver.

Chu credited this “counterintuitive” phenomena with the more rigorous screening process associated with moral waivers. A full day after the hearing, Army officials had no study or research data to share on this claim.

To another Shea-Porter question, Rochelle said about 8,000 soldiers at any given time are being kept on active duty beyond their service obligation through “stop-loss” orders. He conceded that, “at the individual level,” this does harm morale. But echoing Army officials back to 2002, Rochelle said his service does want to eliminate stop loss “as quickly as we possibly can.”

Rochelle noted that the best Army in the world is now in its “seventh year of war, the third longest period of armed conflict in U.S. history” and “there’s no question that our army is out of balance.”

He referred to “tremendous burdens” on soldiers and families. He said the Army needs to regain its “boxer’s stance” to be ready for other contingencies. For that it needs to grow by 65,000, to reach 547,400 troops “as soon as possible.” The actual target date is by Sept. 30, 2010.

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Panel members reacted as though they had heard it all before. Rochelle even suggested that they had. This is, after all, America’s long war.