Tuesday, August 7, 2007

This is how the military convinces reservists and IRR members to go back to Iraq

I recieved this interesting email recently from someone at my old unit. Notice the last line in the first paragraph. I would translate it as, "volunteer now or get screwed later," or "If you don't volunteer now, you will have no control over 'what you may be doing' and will probably be burning shitters in Iraq for a year." I have deleted all the contact information for the good Colonel except for his email address. Feel free to contact him.

CAGster Alumi:

Myself and Col Latsko (on cc line with my personal email) have been assigned the critical IMEF recruiting mission. These jobs are MEF wide. Highest priority is IMEF recruiting for OIF. Deployment lengths range from a high of 12months and down, depending on billet need and availability of Marines willing to fill them. Contract lengths are between a high of 18mo-24month active duty contracts and down, again depending on billet and availability of Marines willing to take them. Active duty start times may also be flexible much depending if you are OIF full length, OIF tack 1 or tack 2. If you are interested, fill out the Reserve Qualification Summary (RQS) and forward it back to me with an explanation telling me what you would like to do and your preferred length of time you could go on orders and approximate start service date. Things are ramping up so if your interested or know you fall within an involuntary activation category, now is the time to move and take some control as to what you may be doing.

Even if your on active duty or retired and are looking for an adventure, just let me know and I will do what I can to match desires, times, and qualifications with billets to get you to the war. Everyone of you knows me or have worked with me, so if you have questions all you have to do is give me a call and I will provide you as much straight scoop as possible. If you know of some other hard charger that may be interested in coming on active duty let me know and/or forward the RQS to them and my contact information.

S/F

Col. Eric S. Erdmann
I MEF Training and Experimentation Group
eric.erdmann@usmc.mil

EDIT: Clarification: This email doesn't apply to me. It's interesting to note that they have not scrubbed their email list. Maybe they are hoping that guys who's IRR time has expired will be inspired to reenlist or something. Never mind that they could easily make four times as much money if they went to Iraq with a private security firm.