Over in the PIT I asked a question of** tomndebb** and of the board in general. My post got ignored in the pile on about “the troops atr criminals vs GWB is a crimial” or whatever, but I’d like some enlightenment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tomndebb
You seem to have missed a key element of my post. As far as I can tell, every combat grunt in Iraq has to have either enlisted ro re-enlisted subsequent to March, 2003, so we should no longer have anyone over there who signed up to “defend our country” (or “to pay for college”) who did not know at the time they signed their papers that they were going to go to either Iraq of Afghanistan.
I am open to correction on that point.
In 2002, we had an entire military filled with people who had signed up to defend the countru or for whatever reason. They could not have known that the fools in Washington were going to deliberately lie their way into a wasteful and immoral war in March 2003. However, the terms of enlistment for those personnel, even the ones who have been backstabbed by the current Stop Loss program, should have, by now, had at least one opportunity to look at the world news and decide “that is not defending my country” and decline to sign the papers.
Well, I personally know a lot of Reservists and Guardsmen who signed up a long time before 2002 who were called back to serve in Iraq. One is around my age, and is a Lt. Col. I think he joined up around the end of 'Nam. Yes, he has a “cushy office job”, but that isn’t all that safe in Iraq.
I am not sure if many Active military have been semi-“forced” into staying beyond their terms from 2002 into 2007, this wiki article is not clear.
I’d like to find out more on that myself.
This artilce is of course biased, but interesting none the less.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...n_of_the_draft/
"…is one of 40,000 troops in Iraq who have been informed that their enlistment has been extended until December 24th, 2031. “I’ve served five months past my one-year obligation,” says Qualls, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the military with breach of contract. “It’s time to let me go back to my life. It’s a question of fairness, and not only for myself. This is for the thousands of other people that are involuntarily extended in Iraq. Let us go home.”
The Army insists that most “stop-lossed” soldiers will be held on the front lines for no longer than eighteen months. But Jules Lobel, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing eight National Guardsmen in a lawsuit challenging the extensions, says the 2031 date is being used to strong-arm volunteers into re-enlisting. According to Lobel, the military is telling soldiers, “We’re giving you a chance to voluntarily re-enlist – and if you don’t do it, we’ll screw you. And the first way we’ll screw you is to put you in until 2031.”