But I Joined The Navy To Avoid Ground Combat

That's what one of my friends told me in 1995 when he joined the United States Navy. He received an honorable discharge July 1999 so his desire not to see ground combat was fulfilled. I bet there are plenty of sailors out there who joined for the same reasons. They want to serve their nation and learn a new trade but they do not want to take part in ground combat. In Bush's America, things are changing fast. Check out this article from Stars & Stripes:

With more than 10,000 Navy “individual augmentees” deployed around the world, of which 7,000 are in the U.S. Central Command’s combat zones, the Navy is training its sailors like soldiers more than ever before.

“You take a sailor … who has lived on a 564-foot ship, and all of a sudden, you’re integrating him into a ground combat environment. It’s night and day for us,” said Master Chief Petty Officer Anthony Evangelista, fleet master chief for U.S. Naval Forces Europe/6th Fleet.

What Anthony would really like to say is that this will probably fail and result in more death. There's more:

“We’ve done a phenomenal job with taking a unit, prepping it, getting the ship ready, deploying it, and bringing it back. What we haven’t done so well, and are fixing, is the individual augmentee. We don’t train to do that as an organization.”

Not until recently, that is.

With the Pentagon’s call on the Navy to provide forces to ease the strain on Army and Marine Corps ground units, naval individual augmentees are flocking to South Carolina to learn the basics of ground combat.

During the 12-day training program, sailors are taught lessons that range from the proper way to carry weapons to basic warfare marksmanship, convoy operations, urban operations, battlefield first aid and land navigation, said Lt. Col. Douglas Snyder, battalion commander of Task Force Marshall and head of the Individual Augmentee Training Course at the Army’s McCrady Training Center, Fort Jackson, S.C.

Wow! 12 whole days for a sailor to transform into a soldier. They usually give the Army and Marines months of training before they ship them to Iraq. The sailors should receive the same type of training or they should cancel the program. It's time to bring everyone home and let the Iraqis take care of their own nation.