http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050908C.shtml
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/mideastemail/la-na-stoploss9-2008may09,0,4341624.story
By Julian E. Barnes
The Los Angeles Times
Friday 09 May 2008
The jump coincides with the extension of combat tours from 12 to 15 months.
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Washington - The number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army
involuntarily under the military's controversial "stop-loss" program
has risen sharply since the Pentagon extended combat tours last year,
officials said Thursday.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was briefed about the program
by Army officials who said that thousands of new stop-loss orders
were issued to keep soldiers from leaving the service after Gates
ordered combat tours extended from 12 to 15 months last spring.
The Army has resorted to involuntary extensions of soldiers'
enlistment terms to prevent them from leaving immediately before a
combat tour or in the middle of a deployment.
Army officials have argued that the policy is necessary to
ensure that they are not forced to send inadequately trained soldiers
and unprepared units into war.
However, many soldiers subjected to the stop-loss policy
consider it a backdoor draft. Critics argue that once soldiers have
completed the enlistment period they agreed to, they should be
allowed to return home. The involuntary retention program is so
unpopular that it helped inspire a recent movie called "Stop-Loss."
The number of soldiers held in the Army under the stop-loss
program reached a high in March 2005 of 15,758. That number steadily
declined through May 2007, when it hit 8,540. But since then, the
number of soldiers subjected to stop-loss orders began to increase
again, reaching 12,235 in March 2008.
In April 2007, Gates ordered combat tours extended to support
the U.S. troop buildup and to address concerns about uneven tour
lengths. But because many soldiers were due to leave the service at
the end of their combat tours, Army officials had to order them under
stop-loss provisions to remain.
In a news conference Thursday, Gates said he believed the Army
had good reasons for using the stop-loss policy.
"They don't like it any better than I do. But it has proven
necessary in order to maintain the force," Gates said.
Still, he said, use of the policy "is an issue. It troubles me."
Top Defense officials have pushed the Army to reduce the use of
stop-loss orders.
"When somebody expects to leave at a given time, and you tell
them they can't do that, it's got to have an impact on them. And
that's the part that troubles me," Gates said.
Soldiers subjected to stop-loss orders are often those whose
enlistment period ends during a combat tour or who are due to leave
within 90 days of the scheduled start of a combat tour. Without the
stop-loss policy, the Army would have to replace those soldiers with
new ones who had not trained with the unit.
Between 2002 and 2007, 58,300 soldiers were given stop-loss
orders, forcing them to remain in the service past the end of their
enlistment periods.
The number of soldiers serving under the stop-loss program will
begin to decline again in September, Gates said. By then, there will
be fewer U.S. troops in Iraq and Army combat tours will return to 12 months.
Army officials could not predict when they would no longer need
to resort to stop-loss orders. But as troop levels in Iraq and
Afghanistan shrink, the policy will become less necessary, officials say.
The Army first used a stop-loss program in 1990 during the
run-up to the Persian Gulf War. In 2002, the Army instituted
stop-loss orders for certain specialties, a policy that ended in
2003. The current stop-loss program was put in place just before the
invasion of Iraq.
Gates said that about half of the soldiers kept in the Army
under the stop-loss policy are noncommissioned officers who hold
important leadership positions, at the rank of sergeant and above,
and cannot easily be replaced.
"And so if you pull them, if they left a unit, it would leave a
pretty gaping hole while still deployed," Gates said.
--
julian.barnes@latimes.com
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