Freshman Reps. Betty Sue Sutton (OH-13), Mazie Hirono (HI-02), Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01), John Yarmuth (KY-03), and Steve Cohen (TN-09) have joined 16 other Congressional Democrats in introducing legislation that, according to the Army Times, "is at least a symbolic sign of support for giving extra cash to people whose military service is involuntarily extended by stop-loss orders."

The Army Times story continues:

The bill, HR 6205, is an exact duplicate of the Stop Loss Compensation Act of 2008 that was introduced May 22 in the Senate.

The bills hold the promise of $1,500 for each month of extended service for anyone whose retirement or separation was delayed by stop-loss orders since Oct. 1, 2001.

More information follows below.

Veterans for America (VFA) strongly applauds Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH) for introducing H.R. 6205, the Stop-loss Compensation Act, which requires that U.S. servicemembers whose tours of duty are involuntarily extended, commonly known as "stop-loss," receive special pay for the duration of their extension.

AP: A Marine reserve battalion that suffered heavy losses in Iraq in 2005 is sending out members for training before expected assignment in Iraq.

Greetings Everyone

This is not a report, but a question and call for information.

I was in a meeting yesterday afternoon when a colleague took a call.  She, a mom, was visibly and verbally upset.  She also blurted "I hatee Bush - I can't believe I voted for that son-of-a-bitch!"

The exclamation would be funny except that...

....she shared with the rest of us that her son was going back to Iraq.  He had already served 6 years and been honorably discharged with much of that being in Iraq.  

Her son had recently been working for a contractor involved in Iraq as well.

Democrats introduce a common-sense bill to compensate service members affected by the President's excessive use of the "stop loss" policy:

Service members whose military careers are involuntarily extended by stop-loss orders would be compensated $1,500 a month for each additional month of service under a bill introduced Friday in the Senate.

The bill, S 3060, would not only affect the estimated 4,000 soldiers now affected by stop-loss, but also would retroactively apply to the more than 58,000 people whose retirements have been delayed or whose enlistments have been extended because the services decided they were needed on active duty.

The $1,500 payment would be paid for serving even one day of a month beyond the period when service was supposed to end.

The average stop-loss has forced service members to remain on active duty for an additional 6.6 months, which means that the bill, if it were to become law, would result in average payments of $10,500 to those whose lives have been changed by the policy.

The bill is being introduced by Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ), and is cosponsored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Casey (D-PA).

In 2004, when John Kerry was calling out President Bush on his abuse of the military's stop-loss policy, John McCain joined Kerry in calling the process a "backdoor draft." Stop-loss, McCain said, "a terrible thing for morale." Meanwhile, in this election season, John McCain's military advisor, Ralph Peters, has claimed that stop-loss is "a myth of the left."

So how will the "new" John McCain vote on this bill, if he shows up to vote at all (let us remember that McCain failed to even show up for the vote on the Senator Webb's GI Bill). Given his track record, a "yes" vote from McCain on this would be a pleasant surprise. As Matthew Yglesias notes:

It's worth noting that not only did John McCain oppose Jim Webb's bill expanding educational benefits for veterans, but he has a long track record of fairly stingy behavior on veterans' issues. As Hilzoy puts it "McCain has supported basic appropriations for vets. However, when there are two competing proposals, he generally chooses the cheaper one, and often, when only one proposal to increase benefits is available, he opposes it."

Here are the top stories this week related to our soldiers here and abroad, taken from the Our Troops Newsladder.

USA Today found that the Pentagon knowingly sent 43,000 troops to Iraq and Afghanistan that were determined to be medically unfit for combat in the weeks prior to their deployment, another sign of the unprecedented stress on our military. (usatoday.com)

In an article in the L.A. Times, Julian Barnes brings an increase in the use of stop-loss orders to our attention.

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.

Though the article is a good one, Barnes is actually missing the point here a bit.

I wanted to share this message from a youtube friend who made some supportive comments about my political parody videos. I found this to be a real kick in the ass, as well as extremely moving.

I've been so wholly out of sorts since Sunday night that I could barely enjoy the start of the baseball season.  Sure, I basked in the Nationals' fans loud booing of W.  The crack of the first pitch as it hit Paul Lo Duca's glove sent chills up my spine.  But my mind was distracted, elsewhere.

Distracted, primarily because of the disturbing images and stirring message contained in the first major motion picture centered around the Iraq war, Stop-Loss.

Iraq war films have been a box-office bust so far, but the previews for Stop-Loss gave the impression that it might end the losing streak of films like "Lions for Lambs," "In the Valley of Elah," "Redacted" and "Rendition."

So in spite of its mediocre 61% tomatoemeter score, I headed out to the 10:00 show at the Lincoln Square.  I felt somewhat of an anti-war, anti-administration patriotic duty to see it, and add at least one to the weekend gross.

The show was pretty full, though not sold out.  But of course, we're talking about the People's Republic of the Upper West Side here.  As for the film itself?  Very good, but not great.  Certainly worth seeing.  (Some more, with perhaps a moderate spoiler, below the fold.)

So I was watching TV the other day and stumbled across the trailer for the movie Stop-Loss:

With Bush, Cheney, and McCain once again equating Democratic opposition to the war with lack of support for the troops, Salon's Mark Benjamin has produced yet another bombshell report on the Administration's callous neglect of those wounded in the war!

Am I the only one who's sick to the teeth of Imus and wants to get back to more down to earth discussions around here?

Sure it’s important to get a dialogue going regarding the incredibly sexist and racist comments of Imus’ – but how many diaries do we really need on that one issue?  Does anyone seriously think they’ve come up with a new angle on this story after a week of hashing it out?

Meanwhile, there are a few really great diaries getting lost in the mix around here, and some issues I have yet to see discussed lately.  Links and other stuff below the fold...

Yesterday, I wrote the following diary:

We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Republican Administrations!

It was a brief explication of the Reagan and Bush Administrations' ever shifting allegiances, between Shia and Sunni militants and militaries, the enemies of our enemies continually proving to be our enemies, no matter how much we sometimes supported them, both politically and militarily. These Republican Administrations have been just plain stupid as they supported various armed factions which, inevitably, turned those arms on our men and women in uniform. The ultimate example is, of course, New Yorker columnist Seymour Hersh's discovery that Bush is now "pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight" to "three Sunni jihadist groups" who are "connected to al Qaeda."

Meanwhile, in non-Saddam news out of Iraq...

Iraq frees Iranian operatives arrested in raids, angers U.S.

Car bomb kills 31, wounds 58 in Iraqi town

December deadliest yet for US troops in Iraq

10 dead in suicide bombing, Shia cleric, members of family slain

WaPo returns to death of reluctant soldier James E. Dean

No diary could possibly cover everything the Iraq War has cost this nation-- the billions of dollars, the thousands upon thousands of lives, the innumerable hours of manpower, America's credibility, the loss of our security, the loss of our morale, the havoc wrought upon the Iraqi people, the several-hundred-fold increase in global terrorism, the grief and suffering.  

This is just an attempt to cover a small part of the gigantic toll Iraq has taken on America-- specifically, in the strength of our military and America's ability to defend itself.

More below the fold...

He walked into the mini-mart with his Class A uniform on, specialist, with three rows of medals and a mountain division patch.  I asked if he was stationed at Fort Drum, he was.  Asked if he was deploying to Iraq again, and he is.  Two tours already completed, he's going back over on the exact date he's scheduled to leave the Army for good.  No orders have been issued pertaining to his seperation date, as 'stop loss' has become an assumed reality for thousands just like him.  His unit doesn't talk about it, in typical Army fashion it's treated with the same "suck it up and drive on" explaination given to any situation where the government is responsible for most, if not all, of the bullshit a soldier is being forced to deal with against their will.

There have been many letters to Stripes over the past two to three years complaining about stop-loss.  "Stuck in stop-loss" is the most recent.  

Compare the above soldier's letter to earlier Stripes letters concerning stop-loss, low morale, and bringing the troops home, found in full here, the week of June 29-July 5, 2003.  I've excerpted the key letters below.  Note that in 2003, the troops had no inkling that the US would still be in Iraq 2-1/2 years later, let alone a generation from the initial assault, as Bush has finally made clear is part of the grand scheme.