Best Defense

Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Puzzlements: Why have so few soldiers and Marines deployed?

As we enter the seventh year of the Iraq war (sorry, that name is already taken), I don’t understand why two-thirds of the active-duty Army and three-quarters of the active Marine Corps have just one or even zero deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. Check out this chart from a Pentagon briefing: And just so you ...

587654_090316_active_duty_stats2.jpg
587654_090316_active_duty_stats2.jpg

As we enter the seventh year of the Iraq war (sorry, that name is already taken), I don't understand why two-thirds of the active-duty Army and three-quarters of the active Marine Corps have just one or even zero deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.

As we enter the seventh year of the Iraq war (sorry, that name is already taken), I don’t understand why two-thirds of the active-duty Army and three-quarters of the active Marine Corps have just one or even zero deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Check out this chart from a Pentagon briefing:

And just so you have it, here is the whole study from which that slide is taken.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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