Military leaders call troops back to service

Sunday, August 20, 2006 The policy has been called a 'backdoor draft.' CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq (AP) — Spc. Chris Carlson had been out of the U.S. Army for two years and was working at Costco in California when he received notice that he was being called back into service. The 24-year-old is one of thousands of soldiers and Marines who have been deployed to Iraq under a policy that allows military leaders to recall troops who have left the service but still have time left on their contract. "I thought it was crazy," said Carlson, who has found himself protecting convoys on Iraq's dangerous roads as part of a New Jersey National Guard unit. "Never in a million years did I think they would call me back." Time left Although troops are allowed to leave active duty after a few years of service, they generally still have time left on their contract with the military that is known as "inactive ready reserve" status, or IRR. During that time, they have to let their service know their current address, but they don't train, draw a paycheck or associate in any other way with the military. But with active duty units already completing multiple tours in Iraq, the Pentagon has employed the rarely used tactic of calling people back from IRR status, a policy sometimes referred to as a "backdoor draft." According to the U.S. Army Reserve, approximately 14,000 soldiers on IRR status have been called to active duty since March 2003, and about 7,300 have been deployed to Iraq. The Marine Corps has mobilized 4,717 Marines who were classified as inactive ready reserve since Sept. 11, and 1,094 have been deployed to Iraq, according to the Marine Forces Reserve. The 1st Squadron of the 167th Cavalry RSTA, which is based in Lincoln, Neb. and oversees the New Jersey guard unit here in Iraq, has about 40 IRR soldiers within its ranks of roughly 1,000 soldiers, and officers in the squadron say the troops have merged into the unit without any problems. Notified and warned Jason Mulligan, 28, of Ridgefield, Conn., left the army back in 2002 after two years in the infantry. He was working as a painting contractor while studying wildlife conservation when he received his letter last fall alerting him that he'd been mobilized. The letter was followed up by another warning to Mulligan that if he didn't comply, the government would prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. "My family and my fiancée were telling me 'Don't report. Don't show up,'" said Mulligan, who also serves with a New Jersey National Guard unit as a gunner on a humvee helping patrol the territory around Camp Anaconda, a base about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "And I thought, 'Well I got that nasty letter saying they were going to put me in jail if I don't show up.'" Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington Institute, said part of the reason the military has called up so many people who were on reserve status is that certain skill sets such as military police or civil affairs were concentrated in the reserves after the Cold War ended. But he said the sheer numbers of IRR soldiers being mobilized also are a sign that the military doesn't have enough people to fight this war, now in its fourth year. "It seems clear in retrospect that the active-duty force wasn't big enough to sustain a long war against global terrorism, and also lacked the proper mix of skills to wage that war with maximum effectiveness," Thompson said. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.