There are bound to be more and more and more deaths……. these soldiers have to be so very spent.

An Army already stretched painfully thin is now being asked to find the additional 25,000-plus troops to man President Bush’s escalation in Iraq and, it’s now obvious, prepare for additional combat rotations next year.

All the easy sweeping up of manpower already has been done. All the obvious moves to rob Peter to pay Paul have been carried out just to keep this unending war going.

Now comes the hardest part: Units that are completing their second or third yearlong combat tours are being extended for another four or six months. Other units, now home for their promised 12 months with their families, are being told they will go back to combat sooner than that.

Army National Guard units that’d already served the maximum time on active duty, in combat, are being told that the rules have changed, and they’re again being called back for Iraq service.

It doesn’t matter that those Guard units were ordered to leave virtually all of their equipment in Iraq and have had none of it replaced so that they might actually train for the eventuality that has befallen them. Nor does it matter that there may not be equipment and vehicles waiting for them in Iraq when they get there.

Nor does it seem to matter that, four years into this war, there still aren’t enough sets of body armor to provide one for every soldier sent to Iraq in this escalation.

Or that in the fervent search for bodies to fill the quotas the Army has begun combing the lists of wounded soldiers and re-evaluating their fitness to return to the war, rating some soldiers who are no longer physically able to even wear the 35 pounds of body armor good to go.

That might be one solution to the scandalous treatment of soldiers on outpatient status at Walter Reed Army Hospital - rate them good to go and send them back to Iraq.

Read more at Military.com