Of course they want the government to pay for all that expensive training.
I love how Cheney's idea to save money was to have a private company steal all the best trained at very high cost to the taxpayers soldiers then pay them 5 times as much plus millions in profit to the company. Having all the truckers and cooks be
from a for profit company that has to pay them enough to work in a war zone as well. I am SHOCKED it did not work.

I would have done things differently but no one asked me.

I would have had everything done by the military ,rebuilding ,trucking everything.
No extras like icecream or fast food etc. All that stuff needs to be brought in on covoys which is at risk and takes lots of manpower. Instead I would have it very rough but rotate them out a lot more often. Now that they are letting the military rather than the neocon politicians run the Iraq war the US is kicking [censored].

The pay would stay how it is but the equipment and especially the medical and care for the families while guys are overseas would be so good it would be almost silly. The conditions in the green zone would not be nearly as nice but you would not be there as long and when you talked to your wife and kids they would tell you how great they are being treated by the army.
Medical care for wounded soldiers should be the best in the world with an eye to getting them back as a useful member of the service. Maybe they could not rejoin their unit in the field but they should be give the option to retrain for units and specialities where their injuries are not a issue.

I would set it up so that instead of giving a multiple amputee a motorized wheelchair we hook him up with a 50 ton battle tank. You could hook in up in ways you could not do with a healthy soldier and it would be a much better life still being in the army and doing something cool rather than being a invalid.
People with more minor wounds could be armourers drivers etc. The soldiers should be treated like family. If something happens they can't do their old job ,you find a new one they can do.

Sorry for the rant this has been on my mind recently as there was just a guy o the news the last couple nights from the J2 unit(Canada's SAS) who quit because of how incredibly badly his wife was treated by a clerk while he was in Afghanistan.

I know that this won't be popular, but I would extend deployments rather than rotate troops home during actual combat operations. I remember seeing an interview with a high ranking Vietnamese officer, possibly even General Giap, where he explained that one of the biggest advantages that they had was how quickly the US forces were rotated out. By the time they learned what to look for, they were at the end of their tours. It would seriously suck for the ones deployed, but your casualties will be much lower if your line troops are veterans.

That being said, we are well beyond what I believe should be considered "combat operations" -- there is no opposition army to fight. Once the Iraqi military was defeated, the US should have redeployed to secure the country's borders and make the Iraqis police their cities. Our armed forces should never be used as police or for "Nation building". That line about, "We expected to be greeted as liberators" indicates that US leadership had no clue about attitudes toward Americans in that part of the world. I don't know if they're lying when they say things like that, or if they're just dumber than rocks.

It is always worth a try. Just send Patti an email so if she has anyone change their order you could be in line. I suspect that this wont happen as fast as these went but I have been wrong before. There realy is no down side to sending a PM...for what its worth

Dan