Iraq war has me down; in another venue doing something positive to counter the malaise

Not the usual kind of content or material that I post to my Dying to Preserve the Lies blog. I have other blogs for other elements of my life, and sometimes there is a cross-over. Somehow, I think the post I'm sharing here is a crossover -- well, for me, and where I am with myself after 5 years of activism in trying to bring conclusive end to Iraq war. I'm activism weary, war-weary, military family weary, and in trying to resume areas of our lives that I've let drift in my activism intensity, I am reminded of old teachings about the need for balance in our lives in order to have the stamina, strength to pursue with passion the things we love.

Well, I surely don't love anything about the Iraq war, and I grow disheartened with the repetition in the activism activities seemingly not getting any better results in year 5 than in year 1 of the Iraq war. I never much liked politics and these days like it even less and yet politics governs aspects of our daily lives in powerful ways, that ignoring the fact of politics is perhaps why we find ourselves as a country and nation where we are now.

But in the feeling of defeat that direct activism, direct head on activism to end Iraq war, to get out troops home has not brought about that result, I am in need of finding things I can do that bring about positive influence. Being a young wife and mother in the 1970's, I appreciated the back to earth living principles of that time that are revived in 2000 with a whole new look - sustainable living. Before it was called sustainable living in reaction to global climate warming, it was known by other names; homesteading, spirit of independence within community, simplistic living, abundant living, meaningful living, reductionism, communes, living off the grid, communities caring for each other, self sufficiency and/or any other labels by which the lifestyle is called.

Before 2001, before this country's Administration decided to invade Iraq, I was on my own path towards reviving some of those old skills while we tried to fly in the face of the norm by reducing to a one-income household. And along the way, we kept up with that goal, but only with my half-hearted attention and not half the measure of the intensity and focus I was giving to my calling as a military family to speak out in opposition to Iraq war as exploitive of the principles our military holds dear.

My son-in-law says goodbye to his wife and children (my daughter and three grandchildren) to leave next week for his second deployment to Iraq. It will be another extended 'stop-loss' 15 month deployment for him. It is being whispered that it will be an 18 month deployment, a rumor prospect that once he and his unit arrive in Iraq, another 3 month extension, 'stop-loss' will be added on top of the already 15 month stop-loss deployment. I feel a deep sense of personal failure, a difficult sense of futility in not being able to do enough or the right kinds of things that would have prevented he and all the troops from having to do repeat deployments.

Out of that sense of futility, I find myself uninspired to participate with any of the planned 'anti-war' activist projects. I recognize this is not a good place to be with myself, personally. I also recognize that one of the strategies that does seem to be working in holding the supposed 'anti-war' movement in check is that activist will tire and get weary and lose stamina, lose intensity, lose focus, lose heart.

Much as I'd love to see a nationwide 'Consumer Strike' where no one purchased anything for a week or more; or everyone didn't go to work for several days; or everyone got out into the streets to express their concern with the multitude of current issues that are breaking down our country; or my deep concern that a military draft will have to be introduced at some point bringing about the furor of concerned parents and a military draft is not something I want to see but given that the current military is spent and exhausted and no end in sight to war in the Middle East.....

In turning my attention to some positive kinds of things we can do, with absolute results, I post the below as part of my own respite. How does this help ---- well for one thing it suggests in positive ways how to create and build community - commonality - communities caring for each other and looking out for each other, the foundation stones of stewardship for caring for our very home on this planet. Stewardship, caring, actively engaging --- all these are principles that, I like to think, can unite us towards life-giving pursuits, detouring us from this path of fostering hate-mongering and destructive pursuits.

Doing Something Positive - The Urban Pioneers are doing it, so can we!

Excellent video encapsulating wide array of concepts in Sustainable Living. These Urban Pioneers got a jumpstart back when it was called self-sufficiency- meaningful living, abundant living, simplistic living, getting off the grid. And they go even further back ... see the video below. Big hat tip to Path To Freedom Journal blog.



from the Path to Freedom Journal blog 'about us'
On 1/5th of an acre, this family has over 350 varieties of edible and useful plants. The homestead's productive 1/10 acre organic garden now grows over 6,000 pounds (3 tons) of organic produce annually,providing fresh vegetables and fruit for the family’s vegetarian diet along with a viable income.


In addition they have chickens, ducks, goats, brew their own biodiesel (made from waste (free!) vegetable oil) to fuel their car, compost with worms, solar panels provide their electricity needs, a sun and earthen oven is used to cook food in.

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Air Force fills out Army ranks in Iraq

[Excerpt]

AP Photo: Air Force Tech Sgt.
Shawn Foust and other members
of the 424 Medium Truck Division...

CAMP BULLIS, Texas - A row of rumbling flatbed trucks and Humvees outfitted with
gun turrets lurches toward a mock village of cinderblock buildings where
instructors posing as insurgents wait to test the trainees' convoy protection
skills.



The training range is Army, as is the duty itself — one of the most dangerous in
Iraq these days. But the young men and women clad in camouflage and helmets
training to run and protect convoys are not Army; they're Air Force. They are
part of a small but steady stream of airmen being trained to do Army duty under
the Army chain of command, a tangible sign the Pentagon was scouring the
military to aid an Iraq force that was stretched long before President Bush
ordered 21,500 additional U.S. troops there.

"What we've seen is the Department of Defense continues to find ways to meet the

AP
Photo: Air Force Tech Sgt.

Shawn Foust and other members

of the 424 Medium Truck Division...

requirements imposed by the commander in chief," said retired
Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a senior fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center in
the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

No plans to expand the Air Force's role in convoy operations have been announced
since Bush ordered the troop surge in Iraq, but Ryan said the Army and other
branches of service have been looking at every possible job that can be shifted
— from the Air Force performing convoy duty to the Navy setting up medical
facilities far from waterfronts.

"I can't imagine there are any jobs that they could be doing that
they aren't doing, but certainly, that doesn't mean they're not continuing to
look to find every possible instance where we can use the full military to solve
this problem and not just have this be an Army and Marine Corps issue," he
said.

Read the entire article at
Yahoo
News

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Gates extends deployments 90 days in Iraq, Afghanistan

Deployment extensions not going over well

Extended tours disappoint and irk isle military families

By Leila Fujimori and Gregg K. Kakesako
lfujimori@starbulletin.com | gkakesako@starbulletin.com

» Reserve and Guard could also get longer deployment

Some families do not like a new Pentagon policy that extends deployments by three months of Hawaii-based soldiers who will be going to or are already in Iraq.

More than 7,000 Schofield Barracks soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division will spend three months in addition to their standard 12-month deployment in Iraq, under the policy announced yesterday in Washington.

---

Families were displeased with news that Hawaii-based soldiers who face deployment to Iraq or are already there will have to wait an extra three months before coming home.

"I really don't like it," Ashley Cruz, 19, whose husband will be deploying in November, said at McDonald's restaurant in Wahiawa. "I don't think they should be there at all. They need to pull everybody out."

Cruz is expecting their first child in August, and the Arizona couple just arrived in Hawaii a couple of months ago. She's made a couple of friends so far and plans to stay in Hawaii.

The Pentagon announced a new policy yesterday in Washington that will result in the more than 7,000 Schofield Barracks soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division spending an extra three months in Iraq.

The soldiers, the majority of them assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team that left here last summer, are among the 15,000 troops affected by the policy announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Under the policy, all active-duty Army soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will serve 15-month tours, three months longer than the usual standard deployment.

Many Schofield Barracks soldiers and their families were expecting such an announcement after the Pentagon last week extended by 45 days the tour of the division's headquarters unit, which included its commander, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon. The Tropic Lightning soldiers deployed to Iraq last summer in what was supposed to be a yearlong assignment.

Yesterday's announcement covers all of the Schofield Barracks soldiers in Iraq, including Mixon's headquarters unit. The Pentagon's announcement does not affect the Marines Corps, the Air Force, Navy or the National Guard and Army Reserve.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the deployment extensions are a "difficult but necessary interim step" to stabilize Baghdad.

Celina Malone, 22, said she'll take her 1- and 3-year-old daughters home to Georgia when her husband leaves Schofield for his first deployment.

"We're going to miss him bad, but watching the kids missing him is worse," she said. "He's going to miss out on a lot."

Daughter MacKenzie Malone, 3, piped up: "I don't want him to get hurt."

But 22-year-old Spc. Mike Malone Jr. will leave his family sooner than November. He's off to California in July for training, returns in October, then deploys in November.

Hawaii Air National Guard Capt. Rosemarie Ader, 33, said she may volunteer to serve in Iraq to spare others who have deployed multiple times.

"My brother-in-law has been there three times and my sister has three kids," she said. "If I can bring a husband or a wife home, yeah, I'd like to do my part in the war."

Ader said the lengthier deployment is not fair to people like her brother-in-law, an Army ranger in the infantry, who is already slated to go a fourth time after his return in August.

Amber Marcotte, 21, whose husband deploys in November, is expecting their first child in August. "He's going to miss the first year of our baby," she said.

"I'm just waiting for him to get it all over with," she said.

Gates announces longer tours in Iraq

PAULINE JELINEK; The Associated Press
Last updated: April 11th, 2007 01:47 PM (PDT)

WASHINGTON - Beginning immediately, all active-duty Army soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will serve 15-month tours - three months longer than the usual standard, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.

It was the latest move by the Pentagon to cope with the strains of fighting two wars simultaneously and maintaining a higher troop level in Iraq as part of President Bush's revised strategy for stabilizing Baghdad.

"This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step," Gates told a Pentagon news conference, adding that the goal is to eventually return to 12 months as the standard length of tour in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said the new policy does not affect the other main components of the U.S. ground force in Iraq: the Marines, whose standard tour is seven months, or the Army National Guard or Army Reserve, which will continue to serve 12-month tours.

Gates acknowledged that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are making life difficult for many in the military.

"Our forces are stretched, there's no question about that," Gates said.

He said the new policy also seeks to ensure that all active-duty Army units get at least 12 months at home between deployments. He said it would allow the Pentagon to maintain the current level of troops in Iraq for another year, although he added that there has been no decision on future troop levels.

Soldiers will get an extra $1,000 a month for the three extra months they serve, he said.

Without changing the standard tour length to 15 months, the Army would have been forced to send five brigades to Iraq before they completed 12 months at home, Gates said.

Some units' tours in Iraq had already been extended beyond 12 months by varying amounts. The new policy will make deployments more equitable and more predictable for soldiers and for their families, Gates said.

"I think it is fair to all soldiers that all share the burden equally," he said.

There are currently 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and when the buildup is completed by June, there would be more than 160,000, officials are calculating.

Washington state media reports:

Seattle Times - Ft. Lewis to feel the strain of longer Iraq tours

Seattle Post Intelligencer - Soldiers' war tours extended
Most at Fort Lewis resigned to 15-month separation

Tacoma News Tribune (Tacoma, WA - Fort Lewis) - Longer combat tours announced today will hit home at Fort Lewis

The Olympian (Olympia, WA) - Two Fort Lewis brigades affected by tour extension

The Columbain (Vancouver, WA) - Ft Lewis Strykers will have their Iraq tours extended by 3 months

Tri-City Herald (Mid-WA, Richland, Pasco, Kennewick, WA) - Gates announces longer tours in Iraq

Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA) - Gates extends deployments 90 days in Iraq, Afghanistan

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21,000 more troops means longer tours, extensions, Natl Guard troops deploy again

Washington one of the states that will be sending in troops as part of the 21,000 surge (translation = acceleration of war in Middle East).

excerpt from AP article at yahoo

Affected will be units based in Minnesota, Kansas, Georgia and Washington.

According to the military official, who provided no dates,

_The 1st Brigade, 34th Infantry Division, National Guard Unit based in Minnesota, will stay longer than planned in Iraq;

_The 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kansas, will deploy to Iraq earlier than planned;

_The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., will deploy early;

• The 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., will deploy early;

• And the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Benning, Ga., will deploy early.

excerpt from AP article yahoo news;

Some units will have less time at home for rest and retraining between tours than their commanders would like. And the faster pace of deployments could force the Pentagon to call on National Guard and Reserve units more frequently — possibly to remobilize some that already have served in Iraq.

read more AP yahoo news Jan 10, 2007

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U.S. Army extends Iraq duty for 4,000 - 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division

U.S. Army extends Iraq duty for 4,000 - 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division

In a new sign of mounting strain from the war in Iraq, the Army has extended the combat tours of about 4,000 soldiers who would otherwise be returning home, defense officials said Monday.

The 1st Brigade of 1st Armored Division, which is operating in the vicinity of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, will be kept in place for several weeks beyond its scheduled departure, the officials said. The officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been formally announced by the Pentagon.

The brigade's home base is in Germany. The soldiers' families were notified on Monday that instead of going home in early January as scheduled, the brigade would be kept in Iraq until February — an extension of about six weeks, one of the officials said. Army officials also have notified members of Congress.

The brigade has about 4,000 soldiers in Iraq. They are not the first to be extended.

In late July the Army extended the Iraq tour of the Alaska-based 172nd Stryker Brigade. About 300 soldiers from that unit had already returned home and were required to go back to Iraq. The brigade is now operating in Baghdad.

The reasons for these extensions are different, but they both reflect the fact that the Army is hard pressed now to maintain rotations for Iraq and Afghanistan at the current pace. The 172nd was extended by four months in order to strengthen U.S. forces in Baghdad, where commanders are trying to avert a full-scale civil war.

The 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division was extended in order to allow its replacement unit, the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, a minimum 12 months between overseas tours, the official said. The 3rd Infantry has already served two tours in Iraq, including the initial invasion of the country in March 2003.

Last week, the top American commander in the region said the U.S. military is likely to maintain and may even increase its force of more than 140,000 troops in Iraq through next spring. Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the U.S. Central Command, said military leaders would consider adding troops or extending the Iraq deployments of other units if needed.

Until sectarian violence spiked early this year, Bush administration officials had voiced hopes that this election year would see significant U.S. troop reductions in what has become a widely unpopular war.

The Army has a stated goal of giving active-duty soldiers two years at home between overseas combat tours, but it is unable to achieve that "dwell time," as the Army calls, because it does not have enough brigades to meet the demands of simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would not be a problem now if the situation in Iraq had improved enough to allow the Army to reduce its presence as originally planned.

Army Secretary Francis Harvey told The Associated Press last week that the amount of time between deployments has shrunk this year from 18 months to 14 months. In the case of the 3rd Infantry, it appears at least one brigade will get only about 12 months because it is heading for Iraq to replace the extended brigade of the 1st Armored.

U.S. Army extends Iraq duty for 4,000
by ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

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A Father's Story: Donald Rumsfeld and the Families of the 172nd Stryker Brigade

Father's account of meeting with Donald Rumsfeld. Rich's son's second deployment to Iraq; 172nd Stryker Brigade and extended as was the entire 172nd Stryker Brigade. I met Rich Moniak via email exchanges, and we finally met in person at the VFP convention in Seattle, Aug 11, 2006. In my own family, we share this experience of having our two in last minute extended (stop loss) deployments in Iraq (1st Armored, March 2003 - April 2004 and extended thru July 2004).


A Father's Story: Donald Rumsfeld and the Families of the 172nd Stryker Brigade
by Rich Moniak
Published on Wednesday, September 6, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

During a sunny Saturday afternoon, about 800 people gathered in the gymnasium at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska on August 26, 2006 for a one hour meeting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Almost all were family members of soldiers in the 172nd Stryker Brigade. Our obvious concern was the drawn out deployment of our loved ones, still in Iraq after their one year tour was extended at the last minute.

Rumsfeld was in Fairbanks for the weekend. On Sunday he participated in the dedication of a memorial for the World War II lend lease program, the primary reason for his visit. The families, given a mere hour, came second behind trying to project an image of a respected leader.

The wounds of disappointment were still evident as soon as we arrived on base. Along a quarter mile on the road just beyond the main entrance, dozens of colorful welcome home signs clung sadly to a chain link fence. Many were personal greetings, a soldier's name spelled out as if seeing it on the banner could somehow bring him closer to the heart of the woman who missed him. Others expressed the obvious pride the collective family felt for the soldiers who were not only gone for so long, but stood tall among the daily dangers in faraway land. Like the spouses who hung them, the signs themselves didn't know why they were denied their day of celebration.

There was no ID screening of the audience as we entered the gym. The crowd filled the folding chairs spread out across the gym floor, then overflowed to the wooden bench grandstands on both sides.

The vast majority of the audience appeared to be wives. More than a few had children with them. Scattered among them were some older faces like mine, obviously parents or grandparents. Our needs were less personal than the wives, many with daily lives like a single mom but the added anxiety from the need to explain to a child that Dad was going to come home someday. A vague someday.

I was with Jennifer Davis, whose husband serves in the 172nd Stryker Brigade. We had driven 300 plus miles from Anchorage the night before, after my 1-1/2 hour flight from Juneau got in. We sat with Diane Benson, whose son lost his legs a year ago after a similar type of stop/loss holdover. We all met through the organization Military Families Speaks Out.

Reporters were expressly denied access by those hosting the meeting. Either the local military command, or Rumsfeld himself, made the decision and informed the news media before-hand that they would be barred from the building. So there were no reporters near the stage waiting with microphones to record for the nation how our Secretary of Defense would respond to the families whose lives he insensitively turned inside out. And no cameras for TV News stories. The photo op was Sunday.

A civilian administrator spoke first, explaining the house-keeping rules for the meeting. He introduced Colonel Dennis Dingle who set the underlying tone that seemed to subtly echo prior direction, telling the audience not to embarrass their soldiers. Only those who he had spoken with before might have understood what he implied after that, telling them they could ask difficult questions. How difficult? And what consequences were explicitly or otherwise implied in more private meetings between the brass and family members.

Photographs and video recordings were permitted. Many were brought out, and a few women moved to find better filming opportunities in the grandstand. I stayed out on the floor, nervously ready with my question, but hoping for a chance to speak. Diane had prepared one too, hoping to ask him if the draft was next.

Rumsfeld received generous applause when he was introduced. He told the audience he would explain the best he could the events that unfolded in the days leading up to the redeployment decision, then he would take the questions.

With smiles and a light hearted tone, he began with trivial observations, very much in command of the public persona that won the cheap affection of reporters around the country during the campaign in Afghanistan and the early stages of the war in Iraq. Then he shifted to his impressions of the highlights born from the administration's decision to invade Iraq.

He touted the efforts of the fledging Iraqi democracy as working diligently with our government. He touched upon the plans Iraqis have developed for a national reconciliation among the three primary religious sects.

Missing from this segment of his speech was the fact that during President Bush's visit to Iraq in June, President Jalal Talabani and Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi requested a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign forces. Missing were claims of the "free" Iraqi government expressed by their national security advisor that "the removal of foreign troops will legitimize Iraq's government in the eyes of its people". Missing was the fact that the 28 point plan presented by "free" Iraqi government was reduced to 24 points as they bowed to the will of the occupying nation.

Rumsfeld moved from the bigger picture of the mission to the personal issue on the minds of his audience. He gave a highly complimentary account of past successes that placed the Strykers on a tall pedestal of dedication to duty and success in their mission in Mosul. He offered positive news that the Strykers and Iraqi troops mobilized to Baghdad have significantly reduced the violence there in the brief time they've been on the ground.

Then his voice settled into a less charismatic level as he explained why the 172nd Stryker Brigade was denied the trip home that they were due. He portrayed that decision as being made only after careful consideration of a late developing need to address the rising sectarian violence in Baghdad. He admitted the difficulty of this mission given that our military is trained to fight armies of another nation, not terrorists or "insurgents" loosely formed around fanatical Islamic fundamentalists.

Then, in the classical manner that defines the weak heart of this administration that is afraid of losing control, he turned the fear card the other way, toward the families. The anniversary of September 11 was approaching. "I know that the people in this room all feel a sense of urgency. The thought of another September 11th, or a September 11th times 2 or 4 is not something anyone wants to contemplate...The fight has to be taken to the terrorists." He promised that when we look back in five, ten, fifteen years from now, the nation will recognize the worthiness of this cause.

Possibly hoping the fear he spoke to would tame the braver people in the audience ready to challenge him, he asked for questions. The first woman who spoke wanted her husband to get a vacation because this deployment extended his stay in Iraq from nine months to over a year, the magic number qualifying for time off. "He oughtta get it", Rumsfeld quickly answered with a smile followed by applause.

Next he was asked if he could guarantee that another brigade was being prepared so that if their mission wasn't complete in 120 days, the 172nd would be replaced and not extended again. Thunderous applause and foot stomping followed. Rumsfeld tried to diffuse the energy with humor, declaring his questioner hit one "out of the park". Then he proceeded with caution, failing to guarantee these people desperate to hear the certainty that it wouldn't happen again. The man in charge of the entire military role in the occupation could do no better than say he'd do everything possible to make sure they came home before Christmas. Why this effort had not yet been an order given with force to his subordinates didn't escape the crowd that responded with little to no applause.

Another difficult question was more of a courageous demand. Some of the brigade is without sufficient water resources to properly shower, a soldier's wife told him, and that was unacceptable. The audience again erupted. "A home run with the bases loaded" said the Secretary. He told her "we will find out what's going on and try to fix it". But the woman felt a need to reiterate the necessity to address this problem, revealing a lack of trust for the integrity of his word.

There was one more challenge to the rosy and hopeful picture that Rumsfeld tried to paint. Why, if the Strykers were there for their expertise, were they instead performing basic infantry functions clearing homes in the city?

Here Rumsfeld wandered around as if searching for an excuse for not knowing the answer, then placed the rhetoric of success in training Iraqi troops in contradiction to the necessity for the redeployment. "I could be wrong, but I would hope, that the actual task of house clearing, which is going on in Baghdad is being done at 95% by Iraqis, not by Americans."

It was the issue I wanted to challenge him on. How critical could the redeployment be with that kind of help from the new Iraqi soldiers? How could he have credited the Strykers as contributing to significantly reducing the violence in Baghdad if the Iraqi presence was that high? Why indeed was the 172nd needed in Baghdad? It doesn't add up. As his qualifier suggests, was he wrong? Or he been misleading us all along on the entire issue of training Iraqis that we always hear about?

About halfway through the meeting, Diane set aside her note pad and said "This is what he needs to hear, from the wives." Maybe she sensed my disappointment, but she certainly understood my feelings when she said "And from you too."

Rumsfeld took only 4 or 5 other questions. Some were of a personal nature. A few women made statements expressing unquestioning gratitude to the brass on base all the way up the chain. Only one person who spoke wasn't the wife of a soldier in the 172nd. A 12-year old quietly asked why her dad was in Iraq.

There were a few hands of other family members waving in the air. None of us were selected. But I also had a letter that Jennifer delivered with 5 others from wives who couldn't attend.

Rumsfeld played the charm card well, and America loves its actors. Donald Rumsfeld made himself a household name with a quick wit and smiling personality in the many press conferences he held during the days everything was going well.

The audience here was more difficult though than a room full of reporters competing to write stories of battles won. To them it was a job, whereas the war was personal to every person in this room, and the redeployment was not a story of success. We don't go home after the story is written. We are living a piece of the administration's failure every day.

The wives of the soldiers in the 172nd deserved their chance to question the Secretary. Still, the gymnasium was a friendly venue for him. Like all stage acts, it's easy to play the lead role when one believes the audience is not a room full of public movie critics professionally judging the performance and anxious to tell the world if he bombed.

After the meeting we attended a press conference organized by Military Families Speak Out. Several reporters from the national beat came, and we gave them the story our government wanted to deny them a chance to report on. We played a video tape of the meeting. It wasn't personal and private. That was a cheap and easy excuse to deny the press the freedom guaranteed by our Constitution.

Mr. Rumsfeld often speaks about the risks of cutting and running. That too is simple rhetoric to control the message and demonize those opposed to the administration's aggressive policies. But our civilian military leader practices the cut and run strategy every time he cuts short the list of venues he will speak at as he runs from the American public.

The rest of America deserves the chance to question our Secretary of Defense. I challenge Mr. Rumsfeld to stand before some his harshest critics, maybe a tenth the size of this audience, with the press present. There are a lot of real questions waiting, and all those who passionately oppose this war are Americans too. The stories we read that break the mold of noble purposes and promising progress aren't fiction dreamed up for a liberal cause. That they oppose the desires and impressions gleaned from the perspective of politicians isn't an opposite spin, but a wish to end all spin and deal with the full truth.

Stop running and hiding Mr. Rumsfeld. Show some political courage and hear our questions and grievances. Listen to our case in a public forum and then try to explain why the long occupation on the heels of an unjust war shouldn't end now.

Rich Moniak is a member of Military Families Speak Out from Juneau, Alaska. His son is a Staff Sergeant in the Army and was recently extended in Iraq with the 172nd Stryker Brigade. This is his second tour in Iraq.

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Beyond Stop Loss; Army Using Policy to Deny Reserve Officer Resignations

Army Using Policy to Deny Reserve Officer Resignations

The reserve has used the unpublicized policy, first adopted in 2004 and strengthened in a May 2005 memo signed by Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, its commander, to disapprove the resignations of at least 400 reserve officers, according to Army figures.

"I don't think during a time of war you would want to let people go when you have a shortage of people," Army Reserve spokesman Steve Stromvall said when asked to comment on the memo, which surfaced during litigation over the policy. At least 10 reserve officers have sued the Army, saying they should be allowed to get out because they have finished their mandatory eight years of service.

Blocking reserve officers' resignations is one of several steps the Army has undertaken in recent years to keep soldiers beyond their original terms of service, as today's wars place unprecedented demands on the all-volunteer force. Under another practice, known as "stop-loss," thousands of active-duty Army and reserve soldiers have been temporarily prevented from leaving the military, either because their skills were needed or because their units were going overseas. As of January, more than 13,000 soldiers were being kept in the service under stop-loss, a policy criticized by some as a "backdoor draft," which the Army says it seeks to end.

read more at Washington Post article May 11, 2006; Army Using Policy To Deny Reserve Officer Resignations;

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The 5 Rs for military families and the troops; Retention, Recruitment, Recovery, Replenish, Repolitics

I just learned we have another family member, National Guard, who deployed to Iraq this week. To my knowledge, we now have 4 in our family in military service, 3 have deployed to Iraq of which 2 are returning Iraq veterans facing second deployments to Iraq under Stop Loss. That is in my immediate family.



I'm in contact with many military families who share similarities in their family experience to my own. One family has a son going for a third deployment while the daughter returns from her deployment with yet a third son in military service. In yet another family, a son is extended in Iraq beyond his contract even though he has been wounded three times already.



If I tried, I could not make this up. It goes from incredible to incredulous for military families across the country. Borrowing from the words of other military families, and borrowing from what has already been written and published, a panoramic photo forms and solidifies. It becomes difficult to dismantle with the tired spin arguments for why our troops should remain in combat in Iraq or even why they are there in the first place.



But aside from the point / counterpoint abstract arguments that serve the ego of the point of view, what is to become of our loved ones deployed? Has this country abandoned them and their families to suffer the losses while the arguing continues until someone, anyone can figure out how to get it right?



On Retention, Stop Loss, Extensions, Repeat Deployments; see this article;'Mothers on Their Soldier Sons' and read a full discussion on same article content with military families sharing their experiences at 'Stories from the Front'



On Senior and Junior Officers Decline in the ranks; becoming a serious and under reported difficulty. Here is letter from a military mother describing the experience of her son, who is an officer. It speaks quietly yet profoundly to how the soldiers care about each other.



From Army Infantry Mom:



Everyday our son was over in Iraq I just prayed he would come home safe. He was injured but was sent back. He told us each day that he went out, he did not know if he would come back alive.



His men were more important to him than his own welfare. It was his job to keep his men alive, despite some of the orders he was given that put his men in direct danger.



Iraq has become a haven for terrorists everywhere in the Muslim world.



Because of the lack of experience in this type of war, the senior officers have no idea what is happening on the streets. This is a serious problem. The junior officers have very little say in what they do day to day. They are the ones on the front line, making life or death decisions. Seven out of eight soldiers in our sons group died not in fighting insurgents, but as sitting/walking targets.



This is happening all over Iraq. The psychological toll to junior officers is much greater than people realize. Their men are their responsibility, their loss is never forgotten.



The situation in Iraq is not getting better. It has deteriorated. Each new group that is sent over from the states starts from scratch, making the same stupid mistakes that the group they are replacing has made.



There does not seem to be adequate training for replacements in the states by people who have actually been in battle. Our son had to counter many of the things his replacements had been told to do. The junior officers who have been in Iraq should be the ones training the reservists and the National Guard. They essentially have no control, no say in how things are being run, yet they are the ones fighting in the streets everyday.



This coupled with long deployments away from loved ones, has made reenlistment for junior officers extremely undesirable. Our son did not know of any junior officers that planned on staying past their enlistment requirements. Many that he knew were extremely bitter about being stop lossed.



The responsibility of young men’s lives is too great to be taken lightly. When they see young men dying needlessly, it is unacceptable, yet they are powerless to do anything.



Our son does not want to see another soldier blown up because someone in headquarters thought it would be a good idea to check IED craters on the side of the road.



He does not want to see another soldier die or become injured permanently because headquarters want convoys to drive around all day as targets for VBIED's, or IED's.



He does not want to set up another checkpoint that does not catch insurgents, but lets units become targets for VBIEDs that drive up and blow themselves up.



Junior officers are responsible for their men. When they cannot protect their soldiers adequately from harm, they cannot do their job, nor do they want to.



There is no satisfaction in this war that is getting worse by the day. Our son said that he did not think that we had any business being in Iraq. Afghanistan, but not Iraq.



On Recruitment Practices; full scale market and research development tools in use now to attempt to overcome the current declining recruitment levels, targeting the younger generation. Read that as designed to tap your children for military service. 'An Army of (No) One: An Inside Look at the Military's Internet Recruiting War' and 'Cyberstalking the Recruitable Teen'



Excerpt: What the military truly values is green teens. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon pays companies like Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), which claims it offers its "clients virtually unlimited methods for researching teens," to get inside kids' heads. It was also recently revealed that the Department of Defense (DoD), with the aid of a private marketing firm, BeNow, has created a database of twelve million youngsters, some only 16 years of age, as part of a program to identify potential recruits. Armed with "names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers, individuals' e-mail addresses, ethnicity, telephone numbers, students' grade-point averages, field of academic study and other data," the Pentagon now has far better ways and means of accurately targeting teens.



Excerpt: What we do know, however, is that JAMRS is currently focusing on the following areas of interest in an attempt to bolster the all-volunteer military:



*Hispanic Barriers to Enlistment: a project to "identify the factors contributing to under-representation of Hispanic youth among military accessions" and "inform future strategies for increasing Hispanic representation among the branches of the Military."



*College Drop Outs/Stop Outs Study: a project "aimed to gain a better understanding of what drives college students to… ‘drop out' and determine how the Services can capitalize on this group of individuals (ages 18-24)."



*Mothers' Attitude Study: "This study gauges the target audience's (270 mothers of 10th- and 11th-grade youth) attitudes toward the Military and enlistment."



Excerpt: Additionally, eyebrows ought to be raised over a Pentagon that is looking at ways to influence the mothers of teens to send their sons and daughters off to war and at a military eager to study what it takes to get kids to "drop out" of school and how the military might then scoop them up.



On Wounded Soldiers, Veterans; facing the hurdles thrown up within the military systems that prohibit medical care they need to recover. See this newspaper article 'The Battle after the Battle'



Excerpt: The day before his 22nd birthday, a bomb hanging from a tree along a road near Fallujah exploded above Rory Dunn’s Humvee.



Dunn’s forehead was crushed from ear to ear, leaving his brain exposed. His right eye was destroyed by shrapnel; the left eye nearly so. His hearing was severely damaged.



Within minutes of the May 2004 explosion, he was strapped on a stretcher and flown by helicopter to a hospital in Baghdad – the first step in his 10-month struggle to recover.



Yet, even as Dunn fought to overcome his traumatic brain injury and other wounds, his mother, Cynthia Lefever, fought the Army to ensure her son continued to receive critical care from Army specialists. Lefever said the Army tried to pressure her son into accepting a discharge before he was ready – pressure other severely wounded soldiers say they’ve experienced, too.



Lefever and other critics say the Army’s medical system, particularly Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., has been overwhelmed by the number of wounded returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They accuse the Army of attempting to discharge wounded soldiers before their essential medical needs are met and transfer them to Veterans Affairs medical facilities.



Excerpt: Fernandez, the retired 1st lieutenant, was injured in a friendly fire incident in Iraq in April 2003. His right leg was amputated below the knee, as was his left foot. He was fitted with eight prosthetics before he found ones that were comfortable.



A graduate of West Point, where he captained the academy’s lacrosse team, Fernandez studied the regulations and was able to “push back” and fend off the discharge for months.



Excerpt: Former Staff Sgt. Jessica Clements of Canton, Ohio, suffered a traumatic brain injury when a bomb – the military calls them “improvised explosive devices” – detonated while she was riding in a convoy near the Baghdad airport. To relieve brain swelling, Clements said, a neurosurgeon at the Baghdad hospital clipped off a piece of her skull and temporarily inserted it into her belly for safe keeping.



“I could feel it,” said Clements of the piece of skull stored in her belly for four months before it was removed and reattached.



As she lay in a bed at Walter Reed, Clements said, she received repeated telephone calls from an Army official telling her she needed to start the discharge process



More on Wounded Soldiers; A snippet of Interview with Jack Robinson, legislative director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America of Dallas, Texas.



Question; What is the process involved when someone is badly injured in Baghdad?



Jack Robinson: They get processed. Then from Baghdad, they usually go to Germany and get transferred to another aircraft. Then they go to Walter Reed. From there, they are processed out to all 50 states in different hospitals and bases. When I was up in Washington, I asked Congressman Chet Edwards how many wounded they had so far because the count I got the year before was over 15,000 wounded and maimed. He said it was into the 40 thousands. Now this is accidents, trucks, everything. That includes mortars and roadside bombs.



Read more; Who Supports the Troops, Part 1 and Part 2, Stories in America



On Depleted Uranium Troop Exposure: Louisiana recently passed legislation giving all returning veterans the right to get a best practices health screening test for exposure to depleted uranium. 'Depleted Uranium: States Take Action to Protect Their Soldiers and Veterans'





My own opinion having researched depleted uranium and soldiers potentially exposed is that it would be wiser to err on the side of caution and heed the expert opinions. Experts say, while again arguments continue in a controversial swirl of is it or isn’t it actively radioactive, that immediate and long-term health consequences compromising genetic makeup will have far-reaching impact onto generations being born and yet unborn. See Traprock for much more detail on depleted uranium.



On Political Scene; politically just now the buzz over Karl Rove deliberately leaking identity of undercover CIA operative to media has uppermost attention on many fronts. Is it treason? Is it administrative complicity in giving aid to the ‘enemy’? Is it criminal? Is it an offense to be prosecuted? Will there be a spin that will enable Karl Rove to waltz around the issue and avoid personal responsibility and accountability? Will this Administration bite the bullet on this and step up to the plate to acknowledge the deception foisted on the American public about reasons for initiating war in Iraq? Will this Administration continue to stonewall on hard issues that perpetuate the continued death and carnage of our deployed troops and Iraqi people?



Whatever it is or is not; one thing is clear to me. It is related to why this country is in Iraq in the first place and at the very least it ought to have every citizen questioning why did we sent combat troops into Iraq and why are they still there and what are the objectives and goals in Iraq? It ought to be abundantly clear by now that the Bush Administration misled America into war in Iraq. In my opinion, with deliberate deceptiveness the Bush Administration pushed an agenda of war in Iraq and it is showing a destabilization of America on a scale yet to be felt and seen. I hope not irreparably, yet fear the damage is one to be born for our coming up generation and even into next generations.



Military families bear the brunt of the political tango being conducted by this President and his administration. It is not an abstract issue for the families with deployed loved ones. It is not an abstract issue for the new young being aggressively and sometimes deceptively recruited into military rank and file. It is not an abstract issue for parents who have pre-teen and teen age youngsters being courted with military recruitment ads on television, and on internet in active campaigns to program their thinking towards offering up themselves in sacrifice at the altar of the Iraq war.



It is not an abstract issue for the families of the returning veterans terribly mutilated, torn of the body by IEDs or torn of the mind by traumatic brain injury or torn of the soul by trauma of carnage, killing and destruction. And it most certainly is not an abstract issue for families of the fallen, ask Cindy Sheehan how abstract it is for her family.







The 5 Rs for military families and the troops; Retention, Recruitment, Recovery, Replenish, Repolitics

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Are our Military Forces Broken Enough Yet?

Some statistics taken from Salon article; ‘How many have Gone to War?’

By Mark Benjamin, published April 12, 2005





-- Well over 1 million U.S. troops have fought in the wars since Sept. 11, 2001, according to Pentagon data released to Salon.





-- As of Jan. 31, 2005, the exact figure was 1,048,884, approximately one-third the number of troops ever stationed in or around Vietnam during 15 years of that conflict.





-- During the 15 years of the Vietnam conflict, around 2.4 million troops served there, according to a study of Pentagon data by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis.





-- Of all the troops ever sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, one-third have gone more than once, according to the Pentagon.





-- In the regular Army, 63 percent of the soldiers have been to war at least one time, and almost 40 percent of those soldiers have gone back. The highest rate of first-time deployments belongs to the Marine Corps Reserve: Almost 90 percent have fought.





-- Among veterans who served in Iraq and are now seeking healthcare from the Department of Veterans Affairs, one in four is now being diagnosed with a mental problem, according to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine





-- There are no front lines in Iraq: Transportation companies, military police and civil affairs soldiers face the same risk of random ambush or death by roadside bombs. The stress goes on 24 hours a day for an entire tour..





-- In addition to troops getting treatment in military hospitals, nearly 50,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, including those discharged for wounds or injuries, are now out of the military and getting medical treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to V.A. data.





-- Around 25,000 troops have been medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon's transportation command.





-- Further, calls to the GI Rights Hotline, an 800 number set up by nonprofit groups for soldiers to get information on military discharges, have nearly tripled since the year 2000. The hot line got 32,200 calls last year from soldiers who don't want to go to Iraq -- or don't want to go back. "The majority of the calls are people who are trying to get out," said the hot line's manager, Steve Morse......





-- A February Harper's article said 5,500 troops have gone AWOL since the invasion of Iraq.





-- If you want to ask how to destroy the all-volunteer Army, the Bush administration has provided a textbook case," Lawrence J. Korb told an audience at a Center for American Progress debate on the draft this month. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, said the strain may soon become overwhelming -- and Bush is not doing enough about it. "It may be that at some point we have cracked the all-volunteer force so much, we will have to do something else." Korb said that he thinks that three combat tours is the breaking point. Some combat units, such as the Army's famed Third Infantry Division, are in Iraq for the second time now.





-- The Pentagon has moved to stop the bleeding, enacting "stop loss" policies that prevent some soldiers from leaving the military. They have tapped the Individual Ready Reserve, soldiers who thought they had severed ties with the military years ago. Critics have said these policies are part of a "back door draft." The Bush administration has agreed only to the temporary increase in the size of the Army until 2008 and is reconfiguring combat units to get more foot-soldier bang for its buck.





-- But recruitment is also falling, particularly for Army Reserve units. The Pentagon said last month that both the active-duty and reserve forces are behind on recruiting goals for this year. The National Guard is down 25 percent. The Pentagon is adding new recruiters to try to fill the gaps: The Army National Guard has said it will add another 1,400 alone. "This will be a very challenging year for recruiting for the reserve components," Charles S. Abell, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told Congress last month. That trend continues even as the military increases signing bonuses and lowers its standards for signing up. (Most recently, the government decided that a new recruit into the reserves could be 39 instead of 34.)





-- Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. -- a Vietnam veteran and an Army Ranger, respectively -- want to permanently increase the Army by 30,000 soldiers and add 3,000 Marines. The Bush administration has balked at such efforts, citing the $3 billion price tag. The most pressing issue may be the reserves. Fearing a political backlash if he deployed weekend warriors to Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson bypassed the reserves and used the draft instead. Indeed, slots in the National Guard were particularly coveted during that era, as the 2004 presidential election and the revisiting of George W. Bush's Guard record made so clear.





-- After Vietnam, the Pentagon reorganized the military so that it can't fight a big ground war without mobilizing the reserves. The idea was to block the president from waging a war without the full support of the American heartland. Active-duty Army units now rely on reserve units to perform vital functions in a major mobilization.





-- But the reserves are lagging the farthest behind in meeting their recruitment goals. The long deployments may have been particularly shocking for the troops, many of whom simply did not think they were signing up for this. The grind is wearing the reserves down, and fewer people are willing to sign up for it now. The Army Reserve's chief, Lt. Gen. James Helmly, wrote in a memo to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker late last year that the stress meant the Army Reserve was "degenerating into a 'broken' force."





-- Pike, from GlobalSecurity.org, said the situation for the reserves is dire. "The guard is broken and cannot be fixed," Pike said. "I don't think anybody would voluntarily, of their own volition, join the National Guard. I think they will have to come up with a new mission statement for the thing."



Salon.com News | How many have gone to war?

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Honesty and Stop Loss

Sent the following out to every Washington State Representative and Senator whose address I could find as well as the governor and others in authority.

Then sent it to every U.S. Senator and Representative whose address I could find as well as the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, and the Bush administration.

Dear Senator/Representative

I want to write and encourage you to explore legislation at the state or national level that requires a formal presentation of the Stop-Loss Pentagon policy as it is applied to enlistment contracts into the Guard, Reserves and active-duty of all military organizations.

When one buys a house or car the signing includes an assortment of paperwork that involves among other things a paper trail of full faith and disclosure. The idea is that the buyer or borrower is required to formally declare and acknowledge that he/she has had all the implications of the contract explained and understands them.

The issues brought up in the recent Santiago vs. Rumsfeld case magnify that - among other things - those who sign on the bottom line are generally in or just out of high school with limited experience in the world of employment, self-sustenance and dealing with the consequences of decisions which may or not be decisions of the moment driven by impulse.

As it is, our high schools have become something you and I never had to deal with in our lives - mandatory attendance and presence in what is literally shark-infested waters where military recruiters enjoy open-season with unrelenting aggressiveness towards our children at school.

I am employed as a social worker for the state of Washington. Last month I had occasion to interview a young man a year out of high school - a young man still considering college, trade school or immediate employment. I asked him how often recruiters contact him.

He did not hesitate. "2-3 times a day every day."

Recruiters hiding behind the No Child Left Behind and preying on families who are very poorly informed about opting out of recruitment efforts are more and more becoming the public face of a desperate and cynical Pentagon that appears more and more to be the senior hucksters trying to maintain unreasonable quotas at the expense of truth.

A "read-this-before-you-sign" requirement with its implied session of "truth-in-lending" would give greater credence to those who defend Stop-Loss with the disingenuous "They knew what they were getting into."

Further, it would remove some of the sense of victimhood presented by these young soldiers as well as the sense among their families that the soldier AND the family have been HAD.

Such legislation is very much in harmony with current tenets of American capitalism that facilitate aggressive marketing and public disclosure. It would also, I believe, help to inculcate among those who do understand Stop-Loss and go ahead and sign the enlistment contract a sense of genuine sincerity and appreciation of what they are laying on the line.

It would help the signing to become almost the commencement moment of an act of patriotism genuine in its purpose.

Again, I encourage you to work within your legislative houses to draw up and pass something that goes way beyond the simple and shallow "Support the Troops" bumper stickers and that involves recruits and their families more fully in such an important participative moment at a time of national emergency.

Otherwise, Stop-Loss as currently administered and justified is a simple and fraudulent deception with deadly consequences.

I'd be happy to discuss this with you at your convenience.

Arthur Ruger
Bay Center, WA

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Explaining Stop Loss practices : Emiliano Santiago v Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld lawsuit April 2005, Seattle, WA

Yesterday the 9th circuit district Federal court heard and ruled on Emiliano Santiago's lawsuit challenging his Stop Loss and orders to deploy to Afghanistan with his unit. Apparantly it was a 'no brainer' for the judges as they took only a couple of hours to come back with a denial. Friday, this week, Santiago is off to Afghanistan.

The particulars are that he is Oregon National Guard, completed his 8 year contract BUT got Stop Loss orders a couple months before his contract expiration date. Effect; he's 'extended' for as long as the Stop Loss is in effect. And since no one seems to know who calls the shots on how long a stop loss can involuntarily keep soldiers in combat, be they active, Reserve, National Guard or IRR; it would seem that any enlistment is of indefinite duration now. I will be having more to write on the Santiago trial, but am borrowing a nifty explanation I read today for how the Stop Loss works.

Stop-Loss gets you 3 months out and 3 months in

Legally, Stop-Loss has to be reviewed every single anniversary year from it's original date of enforcement.

3 months before a deployment/PCS/ETS...and 3 months after a deployment/ETS...if you're caught in stop loss, chances are you will not PCS...and even if you do, the stop loss applies to your next duty station as well...

The 3 months in/out comes in this way:

Say a soldier is scheduled to get out in July 2005, but orders to deploy come down in June...1 month away from the soldier's ETS date...well, stop-loss has him (since it applies to 3 months prior to the deployment or ETS date)..now, the army can let him get out...but they don't have to legally.


Now, let's say you just got back from deployment, have 5 months to go until your ETS date...but orders come down to deploy in the 2nd month after your return (within that 3 month window)...Stop-Loss has got you again...because it's still 3 months out/3 months in...Even though you now have 3 months to go before you ETS, orders that came within the 3 month window of Stop-Loss prevent you from ETS'ing. So you have to deploy...and your ETS date is put on hold for a year. (which just happens to be the length of your deployment)...

all the DoD/Pentagon has to do every year is say..gee, stop-loss is needed..and stop-loss gets renewed ...

the judge in this case is claiming it applies to the soldier because at the time the soldier was "active" when the orders came down...and it's the 3 months in/out that is the basis for that claim...

from the article

"In December, District Court Judge Owen Panner ruled in favor of the Pentagon, saying the Army's mobilization alert in April 2004 was tantamount to an order to active duty two months before Santiago's discharge. "

Oh, that outlandish, way in the future, date is SOP anytime Stop-Loss is put into practice...it's just CYA for the DoD...in theory, Stop-Loss can be indefinite... and if deployments orders are timed right, a soldier can serve for years beyond their ETS date...

the thing is...that 8 year obligation is a contract and one that was being upheld until they last few years...now the government is changing all that and effectively drafting those who have fulfilled their contracts. They are really screwing the guard and reserves with this the most but active duty is also being harmed by it.

Democratic Underground Forums - Pentagon's "stop-loss" policy on trial here


Article at Seattle Times;

Pentagon's "stop-loss" policy on trial here
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
By Alex Fryer
Seattle Times staff reporter

Emiliano Santiago, an Oregon National Guardsman, finished his eight-year enlistment last June.

But four months later the Army wanted to ship the Pasco resident to Afghanistan and reset his military termination date to Christmas Eve 2031.

Santiago, 27, decided to take it to court.

His lawsuit, Santiago v. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, will be heard today in a special sitting of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle.

It will be the highest court review of the Army's "stop-loss" policy, which affects about 14,000 soldiers nationwide.

Of the 4,200 citizen soldiers in the state's 81st Brigade Combat Team, the deployments of 412 were extended through stop-loss, according to National Guard officials.

Santiago's legal battle has attracted national attention but is most loudly trumpeted by groups opposing the war, adding a political dimension to what his lawyer says is ultimately a case about fairness.

In November 2002, the Army implemented stop-loss to ensure reserve units ordered to active duty would not lose key personnel.

Army attorneys say the law gives President Bush the ability to "suspend any provision of the law relating to promotion, retirement or separation" of any soldier who is deemed essential to national security in times of crisis.

Santiago, whose unit refuels helicopters, learned the Army had added 26 years to his enlistment. The date was selected for "administrative convenience," according to court papers. Most guardsmen extend their commitment from three to six years.


Pentagon policy blasted
In legal briefs, Santiago's legal team blasted the Pentagon's policy.

"Conscription for decades or life is the work of despots. ... It has no place in a free and democratic society," the team wrote.

"If the government can break its promises to young men and women like Santiago, then the bedrock of our all-volunteer army — trust in the government's promises — will crumble."

Although the National Guard has failed to hit recruitment targets recently, an Army spokesman said stop-loss was not designed to buttress thinning ranks.

"Bottom line is that stop-loss has nothing to do with increasing the number of people in the Army and everything to do with effective units," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman.

In December, District Court Judge Owen Panner ruled in favor of the Pentagon, saying the Army's mobilization alert in April 2004 was tantamount to an order to active duty two months before Santiago's discharge.

What's more, Panner determined that since other members of the Army National Guard had been serving on active duty since October 2001, the stop-loss policy extends to Santiago and every other citizen soldier.

Santiago appealed, and the three-judge panel is expected to rule in several months.

The case could go before the entire 9th Circuit or end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Unless the appeals court grants an injunction, Santiago, an electrical engineer, is scheduled to be shipped to Afghanistan within a week.

Santiago's lawyers initially tried to challenge the president's emergency mobilization to deploy troops in Afghanistan on the grounds that the country now has a democratically elected government.

Politics still part of case
Panner rejected that argument as political, and Santiago's attorneys dropped it. But politics are still part of the case.

Military Families Speak Out, formed in November 2002 to oppose the war in Iraq, is expected to demonstrate outside the courtroom.

The National Lawyers Guild, which called Bush's 2000 victory a "betrayal of democracy," has been involved in several stop-loss cases.

"We win if enlistment numbers go down," said Marti Hiken, co-chair of the guild's Military Law Task Force in San Francisco. "Military people won't go in if they can't get out."

Santiago's attorney, Steven Goldberg, a member of the National Lawyers Guild, said his client steered away from politics.

Santiago was traveling yesterday and could not be reached.

"I've not spoken about the politics with him," Goldberg said. "It's really about fairness."

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Another Reservist Suing Army Over Not Letting Him Out

Note as this article reports; The three conditions not met for keeping a Reservist beyond his contractual obligation; NOT MET;



-- He is not 'under investigation'



-- It is not a time of war (undeclared and illegal war in Iraq)



-- No National Emergency has been declared.



-- No other conditions identified which would necessitate this action.







By Rob Olmstead Daily Herald Staff Writer

Posted Wednesday, March 16, 2005



A decorated Army Reserve officer from Arlington Heights sued his commander Tuesday, arguing the commander's refusal to release him from service is a de facto "internal draft."



Maj. Richard Olejniczak, 35, says although there is no "stop- loss" order prohibiting his exit from the reserves, his commander, Col. John F. Hanley, twice denied his resignation.



Olejniczak, a West Point graduate who served twice in Kuwait, was honorably discharged from the Army in 1995 and then entered the Reserves, where he has served since. He is stationed with the 1st Brigade, 85th Division at Fort Sheridan.



"Petitioner has more than fulfilled his eight-year statutory military service obligation," wrote his lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell.



Fidell said Olejniczak serves voluntarily and has no agreement forcing him to stay in the military. The military has been having trouble meeting its recruiting goals since hostilities began in Iraq, and many reservists have been called for multiple tours of duty, Fidell said.



According to the suit, Army regulations say the only reason non-obligated officers cannot resign is if they're under investigation, in a time of war, a national emergency has been declared or "under other conditions which may necessitate such action."



Fidell said that none of those three conditions apply and Olejniczak should be discharged.



"He's not subject to any stop- loss order," Fidell said.



A spokeswoman for the Army's 85th Division said she would check into the suit and likely have a comment Wednesday.



Olejniczak could not be reached for comment. The suit said he has earned a Meritorious Service medal, three Army Commendation medals, seven Army Achievement medals, an Army Service medal, two Army Reserve Component Achievement medals and a Southwest Asia Service medal with a bronze service star.



"Mr. Olejniczak is extremely proud of his service," said Fidell.



Daily Herald

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He's going back to Iraq, 2nd Deployment + Stop Loss

had hoped to retire this blog, it served it's function at the time, yet, I have not lived easily knowing that the potential for another Bush administration was a possibility. While with every fiber of my soul and being, I worked against such an outcome, knowing it would mean more war in Iraq, more war in other countries, it looks like we have four more years with Bush at the controls. My kids, who already served in Iraq, will be sent again, I feared, and this blog has not yet seen it's end time.



I left it, rather unattended, to serve as a placemark and prayed never have to pick it up again and resume entries into this blog. It is a tragedy that I have to keep it going, as my loved ones are being sent back to Iraq for 2nd deployments.



My dear son-in-law, the mainstay and backbone of his family which are my daughter and their three children, my grandchildren....he's just received orders for redeployment to Iraq. On top of a second deployment, he also now is under Stop Loss orders. He was due to have his enlistment completed in 2005 and now with Stop Loss he would not be able to get out of military as scheduled. He has already served in Iraq 2003-2004 in a 15 month tour, 1st Armored, and was caught up as was all of the 1st Armored troops in a last-minute extension in April 04, at exactly the time he was scheduled to come home. NOT. Another three months in Iraq.



His cousin, my nephew, is awaiting orders now and is himself a husband, a father and they are expecting their second child. He also served 15 months in Iraq, 1st Armored, and was extended at same time as my son-in-law. He has served previously in Bosnia. He is awaitng his own orders for a 2nd tour in Iraq. Another tour in Iraq, and this is more war and combat than a young person should have to see or bear.



Both will do their mission, and I do not speak for them but I do speak up on their behalf and not necessarily with their permission yet they do know I have been doing all in my limited power as a military family, a mother, a civilian, to do what I can to halt the carnage and destruction that are the features of collateral damage, words used so impersonally to describe the stink and death of war.



What is appalling besides everything about how the troops needs are under-met, and how badly they are being exploited is that his choices now look like this:



Re-enlist in March. No, you don't want to re-enlist? Well you already have orders to redeploy to Iraq and you are already under Stop Loss orders so you won't be getting out any time soon anyway. If you don't re-enlist, you'll be serving anyway and in Iraq, while the rest of the guys get their bonus for re-enlisting, you won't be getting yours and will be serving beside them anyway.



What limited choices are these and does our public know that the all-volunteer military has fallen through trickery and deceit, misleading to even false information into an entrapment. They can't get out! That, friends, is a long way from "volunteer".



The troops cannot be recycled over and over again to Iraq without grotesque expense to themselves and their families which seemingly, if I am to judge by the civilian response in our country, is just fine so long as no one else in our country but the military families and troops have to bear the burden. That argument, "well they volunteered didn't they" doesn't carry water anymore. It may have started out that way, but so much has changed along the course, that this is a long, long way from anything resembling an "all volunteer military".



Not unlike the Iraqis themselves, our troops are trapped in a war-torn country in a war ordered and sustained by our own government and seemingly a majority of this country's citizens. Please, please tell me, WHAT is the reason now?



Having lived through almost 3 years of lies and deception spouted by the administration, I have endured listening to the citizens catch hold of propaganda and repeat it ad-nauseum with little thought to the words they are gleefully repeating . I have seen our mainstream news turn itself away from it's origins as news reporting to become more of the propaganda, lies, deception and treachery which keeps our kids (and our old men hauled back into active duty) in Iraq. But one by one the lies have come to light, yet our citizenry champions the newest and latest excuses for why we are there and why the troops must stay.



I had hoped to retire this blog when my son-in-law and nephew came home from Iraq. I built it only to give them a record to look at when they returned. Now they will be returning to Iraq in second deployments, in large part, thanks to the deliberate ignorance and willfulness of our own citizenry, my fellow countrymen, my neighbors. I do not thank you or excuse you for your part in casting the death warrant vote but I also know the singular accountability and responsibility lies at the hands of our own President and Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush.



So picking up where this blog left off, I will be recording again the conditions in our country, in our politics, in our citizen mindset, as our two loved ones are marched back to Iraq. To those so willing for this war, and the wars yet coming, as promised by the President in his Inauguration speech, I say, send your own if you are so committed to this man you cheer as your President, and bring mine home.





Operation Catch Up

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