The Daily Background

Congressman John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said today on CBS’ Face The Nation that he has heard rumors from military sources that the Pentagon is planning to extend the tours of duty for US soldiers in Iraq to 18 months– well beyond the current maximum tour length of 12 months.

Already on April 11th, Secretary of Defense Robert Gatse announced that the military was over-extendeding the standard 12 month tour of duty to 15 months, which experts say creates more stress among military members and ultimately leads to a lower quality Army.

Murtha, normally a conservative Democrat, is a former Marine and widely considered the member of Congress with the closest connections to the military.

Below is a video of Murtha revealing the rumor he has been hearing on Face The Nation, Sunday:

SCHIEFFER: Well, they also have a talking point that says members of Congress, people here in Washington, ought to not be trying to run the war and trying to take the job away from the generals. How do you respond to that, congressman?

Rep. MURTHA: Well, we have a responsibility under the Constitution to pay for a war. We also have a responsibility to make sure the troops are taken care of. One of the things we said in this legislation, plus the fact we gave them $4 billion more than they asked for for all the proposals that needed in this war itself, we fully funded everything he asked for.

We also said, ‘Look, the troops can’t be sent back before they’re home for at least a year.’ They finally decided to do that. We said you can’t extend them. Now I visited Fort Hood, Fort Bragg and Fort Stewart. The troops are burned out. They’re extending to 15 months. Bob, I hear rumors in the Pentagon they’re going to extend them to 18 months. They’re not going to be able to sustain these deployments. So they’re violating every guideline that the military has.

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