AND MORE ON THE ROTATION PLAN.

Hello, I must be going.

With more than 60 percent of the Army's active-duty combat force deployed in Iraq, Army planners were forced to abandon six-month tours for most overseas deployments in favor of year-long assignments to sustain a force of that size.

The last time the Army used year-long deployments was Vietnam, except for one peacekeeping rotation in the Balkans in 1995.

But defense officials said the year-long tours at least will give soldiers and their families predictability in terms of how long they will be away from home.

The lack of such predictability recently became a contentious issue for soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division, who fought their way into Baghdad in April. They were led to believe they would soon be going home, only to have their tours repeatedly extended without a specified end date.

But let's take a look at the rest of the story from the perspective of soldiers and family members.

The mission of the US Army, quite simply is "To fight and win our nations wars."

To do that mission requires that our Army constantly train the skills needed to do just that.

For the year that any US Army units are on Peacekeeping missions in Iraq they are not training to fight and win our nation's wars.

So guess what that means. Upon return from Iraq soldiers and family members can expect that soldiers will pack off to the National Training Center (NTC) or Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in the USA or to the Combat Maneuver Training Center (CMTC) here in Germany.

In a normal year CPT Patti's unit can expect to spend at least 5 months at the CMTC. More if the leadership determines the unit to be rusty in warfighting skills (which are NOT the same as peacekeeping skills) or if the unit is likely to deploy within the foreseeable future.

So - even though the rotation plan says X Unit rotates "home"...even when the soldier is "home", the soldier may be on a 3 month rotation at a training center.