Here’s what else “tells us something”: the fact that you have to stand on your head and search to find this news. Yes that also tells us something. It tells us that the liberal media doesn’t want us to know about this. So I think it’s actually two extremely important facts, neither of which the liberal media wants us to know about.
I found the story on FoxNews.com, but it was an Associated Press story.
Army Meets Annual Re-enlistment Goal Early
WASHINGTON — Staff Sgt. Michael Obleton has already done two tours in Iraq, dodging roadside bombs as he drove trucks in Army convoys across the hostile countryside.
He may even return to the front again — a possibility that never occurred to him when he first joined the active Army in 1997, long before the 2003 Iraq invasion and the onset of what has become an increasingly unpopular war.
Obleton knows about the Bush administration’s often-touted long War on Terror, and he’s seen the Iraq insurgency up close. But he’s determined to continue the fight. So on Thursday he will stand by the flagpole at Kentucky’s Fort Campbell, raise his right hand, and swear once again to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies.”
As he recites his oath of service, administered by the Army’s No. 2 ranking officer, Gen. Richard Cody, Obleton will become the 64,200th Army soldier to re-enlist this year — allowing the Army to meet its retention goal a full month before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
[…] retention rates have even gone up for some of the military’s high-profile units — such as the 82nd Airborne or 101st Airborne divisions — when they return home from Iraq or Afghanistan.
Both the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve expect to meet their re-enlistment goals for this fiscal year, which are 34,875 and 17,712, respectively. Both totals are slightly higher than last year’s goals.
The number of expected and confirmed re-enlistments dipped in 2003, the year the war began, but has increased since then.
[…] Back in 1996 when [Staff Sgt. Michael Obleton] joined the Army reserves or a year later when he moved to the active Army, going to war wasn’t an issue. But in January 2003, he was sent to Kuwait and was among those first units traveling back and forth across the border into Iraq in Army convoys.
He was there for seven months and then went back in June 2004 for a full year. The second tour, he said, “was more intense. You felt the threat.” But, unlike many units, everyone in his company came back alive.
And once he finishes school, he would be happy to make a third trip to Iraq.
“These are the things we’re trained to take on,” he said. “We’re still there. Our mission isn’t complete.”
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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