After reading 11 pages of comments, I am amazed that Retired Military Patriot or Gary Owen has not cited the DD-214, the discharge paper given to every member of the U.S. Armed Forces upon leaving the military.

In a single, small-type page, the DD-214 notes every aspect of the military members' service, including ranks, education, tours of duty and commendations/medals earned, and specifically notes:

Date of Entering Service

Date Began Foreign Tour of Duty

Location of Foreign Tour of Duty

Date Ended Foreign Tour of Duty

Total number of months spent at each foreign duty post

The DD-214 could not specify those duty dates at discharge unless the military were keeping specific, daily track of each and every service member's time on duty at each separate location.

As a previous poster noted, this kind of duty/tour/time data has been kept on American service members since before there was a standing army, a Department of Defense (War) or even a United States.

Not to mention the DoD is infamous for detailed record-keeping that is the wet dream of any obsessive-compulsive.

Does someone like Kagan, who is always quick to deride Democrats and well the majority of Americans, as unpatriotic for not supporting the "troops" (neo-con speak for Bush's Iraq War), recognize the irony that he makes a statement that ultimately does not support the troops? How can someone who calls into question the patriotism of Americans who question the administration and the current plan in Iraq by using the generic, "You don't support the troops and give the enemy greater will", turn around and blame the troops for not winning the war they were sent to accomplish - for the troops to come home they should, "win the war we're fighting." Seems like he isn't supportive of the current efforts of the troops to fight in a quagmire they didn't make.

"War is sweet to those who have not experienced it"

Desiderius Erasmus

The Kagans should read up on their ancient history. This apparently is a well-known syndrome.

let's make it a requirement that you have to have served in the military to run for public office. Enlistments would go up since all the ambitious types would need service to get to the top.

Somebody should do some research into the role poor self-esteem plays in this sort of neocon chickenhawking. I would suspect that these guys feel, deep down, insufficiently masculine, and that this in turn has a lot to do with their bleating for endless war.

Physiologically, males most prone to irritability and aggressive behavior are those lacking in testosterone. Which explains Angry White Men - aside from the decline in testosterone from aging, the sedentary behavior of most self-satisfied white middle-aged men leads to increased fat and a relative decrease in male hormones and increase in female ones. As in everything else, hormones require balance. These guys are unbalanced in more ways than one. The fact that every single one of them looks like he's never been in a fight in his life is telling. I know some here thing Glenn is making the kinds of generalizations usually the specialty of wingnuts when he shows their pictures, but he is IMO right on.

Psychologically, they are obviously over-compensating. Verbally, not actively, of course.

So...

let's make it a requirement that you have to have served in the military to run for public office. Enlistments would go up since all the ambitious types would need service to get to the top.

-- tiberius

Also positions tied into age requirements, with ascending levels of public responsibility, and increasing numbers of mercenary paid troops, and power transfer with families...ah yes, tiberius, from your own family's turns as emperor, and later times, as Rome began its change from Republic to Empire, and then began its decline that made history.

"Somebody should do some research into the role poor self-esteem plays in this sort of neocon chickenhawking. I would suspect that these guys feel, deep down, insufficiently masculine, and that this in turn has a lot to do with their bleating for endless war."

A case study can be found in a review of Norman Podhoretz's World War IV. The reviewer, Iam Buruma, notes that Podhoretz used to get beaten up as a young boy in New York. Poor kid....

See: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20590

NO ONE said you can't comment or run for office without military duty. You can comment all you want, and run for offices as you wish. But then we get to comment on your chickenshit cowardly positions. You heard the old saw leading by example? You know if you overwhelmingly feel the need to protect the nation from impending doom you go out there on the front lines and set an example of heroism and self sacrifice? Or do you only like to fuk the ones who do take the step of self-sacrifice?

When promoting sacrificing other peoples lives while sitting on your hands, one of the risks of free speech entails getting described as a flamming ahole.

See free speech is wonderful.

[T]his amendment would actually require the Army and Marine Corps staffs to keep track of how long every individual servicemember had spent in either Iraq or Afghanistan, how long they had been at home, how long the unit that they were now in had spent deployed, and how long it had been home.

Did Kagan really say that? He's more reckless than I'd thought. The military is almost certainly keeping track of these things already, if only for payroll purposes (combat pay, temporary duty pay, etc.). In any event, they should be doing so, Webb amendment or no Webb amendment. It's one thing to send troops into combat zones for inhumanely long periods as a deliberate policy decision. It's quite another to do it because you've lost track of who's serving where.

let's make it a requirement that you have to have served in the military to run for public office. Enlistments would go up since all the ambitious types would need service to get to the top.

-- tiberius

That's a recipe for disaster. Reminds me of when the Courts Order dui offenders to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in order to avoid paying too big of fine or going to jail. The "Anonymous" Alcoholics at those meetings resent the courts and the 'reach around' dui offenders for showing up at their - key word "anonymous" meetings just to save themselves from having to 'do the time'.

People who join the military because they want to serve their country, or even to get an upper hand on bettering their selves later with discounted college expenses don't want opportunists of the worst kind using them and the military.

Besides, what makes you think you and "lets" could make anything a requirement. You've been happily turning over any say you might have had in anything over to GWB for as long as you have been posting here.