Jim Webb: “First, I would say to the Senator from Illinois just for factual clarification that Senator Hagel and I are the only two…”

“First, I would say to the Senator from Illinois just for factual clarification that Senator Hagel and I are the only two ground-combat veterans from Vietnam in the Senate, but I certainly do not want to in any way reduce my respect for the distinguished Senator from Hawaii who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II. The question the Senator poses is correct. What this basically says is that if you have been gone for a year, you deserve to have a minimum of a year back. And a lot of people misunderstand what dwell time is. Dwell time is not downtime. There is a workup cycle for these units before they go back, which is considerable. So even if we are giving them a 1-to-1 ratio here, this is not equal time down as compared to an equal time deployed. That is why the traditional goal is 2 for 1.”