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Pentagon says no plan to cut time between combat tours
2009-10-15
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon hopes to avoid cutting back the time US soldiers spend at home between combat tours but it remains an option depending on the demands of the Afghan mission, a spokesman said on Wednesday. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has sought to expand the time soldiers spend at home between deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan, and there were no plans to scale back what the military calls "dwell time," press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters. "I see no indication, at this point, that that would have to be adjusted," Morrell said when asked about the affect of the war in Afghanistan. "But I think we always reserve the right to make adjustments if that's what the national security dictates," he said. Currently soldiers are granted about 12 months at home with their families for a year spent deployed abroad, and military leaders have said they hope to eventually increase it to two years of dwell time. But with President Barack Obama weighing a request for tens of thousands of troops for Afghanistan beyond the 68,000 he has already approved for this year, the stretched US military is bracing to take on a bigger burden. A recent drawdown of forces in Iraq has eased the strain on the military somewhat but a serious buildup in Afghanistan would pile pressure on the armed forces, analysts say. General George Casey, the US Army's chief of staff, acknowledged earlier this month that a large injection of troops into Afghanistan could make it more difficult to preserve time between tours. Morrell said the Defense Department's "objective is still to work towards more dwell time than deployment time." The US president, Gates and military leaders were "very mindful of the continued stress and strain on our forces throughout these eight years and two wars," he said. Senior officers have blamed repeated deployments and relatively brief periods spent at home between combat tours for contributing to a spike in suicides among US soldiers.
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