Posted at 11:20 a.m., Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Cheney says Hawai'i soldiers re-enlistment rate up
Advertiser Staff
ABOARD AIR FORCE TWO — Vice President Dick Cheney indicated that re-enlistments by the Hawai'i-based soldiers are much higher than they had been despite the burden of longer deployments to Iraq.Cheney spoke to reporters aboard his plane Monday at the end of his six-day Middle East trip. A transcript was released by the White House.
He said he had talked to soldiers in Iraq without their officers present and found them "amazingly positive, certainly believed in what they were doing."
He also talked with Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, based at Schofield Barracks on O'ahu. Cheney said that Mixon told him, "In six months, they had achieved a re-enlistment level that in the past had taken a full year to accomplish.
"Obviously the extension of 15 months places a burden on the troops and their families, although there appeared to be pretty widespread understanding why that was necessary and I didn't receive a lot of complaints about it."
