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Solnac

Join Date 12/2004

The Real Losers of the Iraq War Try to Win...

...Soldiers fight stop-loss policy.

Full article below. From NY Times, where you do have to register (it is free, tho'.). If you'd rather not take my word for it, here's the link: Link

8 Soldiers Sue Over Army’s Stop-Loss Policy
By MONICA DAVEY

Published: December 6, 2004

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

ORRILTON, Ark., Dec. 3 - The eight soldiers come from places scattered across the country, from this small town an hour northwest of Little Rock to cities in Arizona, New Jersey and New York. In Iraq and Kuwait, where they all work now, most of them hold different jobs in different units, miles apart. Most have never met.

But the eight share a bond of anger: each says he has been prevented from coming home for good by an Army policy that has barred thousands of soldiers from leaving Iraq this year even though the terms of enlistment they signed up for have run out. And each of these eight soldiers has separately taken the extraordinary step of seeking legal help, through late-night Internet searches and e-mail inquiries from their camps in the conflict zone, or through rounds of phone calls by an equally frustrated wife or mother back home.

With legal support from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a liberal-leaning public interest group, lawyers for the eight men say they will file a lawsuit on Monday in federal court in Washington challenging the Army policy known as stop-loss.

Last spring, the Army instituted the policy for all troops headed to Iraq and Afghanistan, called it a way to promote continuity within deployed units and to avoid bringing new soldiers in to fill gaps left in units by those who would otherwise have gone home when their enlistments ran out. If a soldier's unit is still in Iraq or Afghanistan, that soldier cannot leave even when his or her enlistment time runs out.

Since then, a handful of National Guardsmen who received orders to report for duty in California and Oregon have taken the policy to court, but the newest lawsuit is the first such challenge by a group of soldiers. And these soldiers are already overseas - transporting supplies, working radio communications and handling military contracts, somewhere in the desert.

"You should know I'm not against the war," said David W. Qualls, one of the plaintiffs and a former full-time soldier who signed up in July 2003 for a one-year stint in the Arkansas National Guard but now expects to be in Iraq until next year.

"This just isn't about that. This is a matter of fairness. My job was to go over and perform my duties under the contract I signed. But my year is up and it's been up. Now I believe that they should honor their end of the contract." Some military experts described the soldiers' challenge as both surprising and telling, given the tenor of military life, where soldiers are trained throughout their careers to follow their commanders' orders.

These soldiers' public objections are only the latest signs of rising tension within the ranks. In October, members of an Army Reserve unit refused a mission, saying it was too dangerous. And in recent months, some members of the Individual Ready Reserve, many of whom say they thought they had finished their military careers, have objected to being called back to war and requested exemptions.

Mr. Qualls, 35, who says he sometimes speaks his mind even to his superiors, is the only one among the eight whose real name will appear on the lawsuit against the Army's military leaders. The rest, who fear retribution from the Army - including more dangerous assignments in Iraq - are described only as John Does 1 through 7.

Aside from the shared expectation that they would have gone home by now, these soldiers' situations could not be more varied, as interviews with their families made clear.

One is a member of an Army band, ordered to travel Iraq this year performing music. Another is an Army reservist in a New Jersey transportation company with 18 years of service behind him. Another is an Arizona National Guardsman in his 20's, whose wife says he sounded subdued, even tearful, when she spoke to him in recent days on a phone line from Kuwait.

"The whole morale in his unit is on the floor," she said on the condition that she not be named, to avoid revealing her husband's identity.

Although Army officials said they could not comment on a lawsuit, particularly one they had not yet seen, they described the stop-loss policy, which was first instituted during the first Persian Gulf war more than a decade ago, as a crucial lesson learned in Vietnam, where troops were rotated out just as they had become acclimated to a treacherous environment.

"If someone next to you is new, it can be dangerous," said Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman. "The bottom line of this is unit cohesion. This way, the units deploy together, train together, fight together and come home together."
Some soldiers like Mr. Qualls, though, say they wonder if the rule is not just another way to keep troop numbers high, particularly at a time when the military has been stretched thin and the number of troops in Iraq is expected to rise still more, to 150,000, in the coming weeks.

In recent months, at any given moment, the stop-loss policy has affected about 7,000 soldiers who had been planning to retire, leave the military or move to a different military job. The rule affects soldiers whose enlistments are scheduled to end within 90 days before their unit is deployed, those already deployed, and those whose term would end up to 90 days after their unit returns. On Friday, Army officials said they did not know the total number who had been affected so far. No date has been announced to end the policy.

Jules Lobel, a lawyer for one of the eight soldiers, described the central complaint this way: They were fraudulently induced to sign up, Mr. Lobel said, because nothing in their enlistment contract mentioned that they might be involuntarily kept on.

But experts not involved in the case say the government has generally been granted broad legal authority when it comes to the obligations of soldiers in matters of national security and times of conflict.

"The courts have traditionally ceded to the military," said Gary D. Solis, who teaches law at the United States Military Academy at West Point. "Even if the gents win at the trial level, the government is not going to quit. They cannot afford to. There is a potential cascade effect here."

Phillip Carter, a former Army captain and an expert in military and legal issues, said: "Rarely have we seen people win such cases. At best, this is symbolic protest."

The soldiers and their families, however, say they do not see it that way. Their hopes are far more practical. They want to go home.

Mr. Qualls was one of the first soldiers to find Mr. Lobel and Staughton Lynd, another lawyer now working with the Center for Constitutional Rights on the case and whose antiwar activities date to the Vietnam era. As Mr. Qualls wandered the Internet one day in Iraq, he said, he came across news reports of a National Guardsman in California who this summer had become the first to challenge stop-loss in court.

Mr. Qualls said he immediately began sending e-mail messages that guardsman's lawyer, Michael S. Sorgen, and was eventually referred to Mr. Lynd and Mr. Lobel, who were separately beginning to hear from other soldiers who had found them in recent weeks in a variety of ways.

Some of the soldiers e-mailed or called the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force or the G. I. Rights hot line and were referred to the lawyers, Mr. Lynd said. The wife of one soldier said she handled all the research for his case herself, studying his enlistment contract and newspaper clippings and finally coming across Mr. Lynd's name. And a 54-year-old mother from Long Island said she began making calls on her son's behalf, first to her representatives in Congress and later to anyone she could find.

"My son," she said, "is not someone afraid to follow orders and fulfill his obligation. He's a very compliant soldier, but he feels like he's being stabbed in the back."

One soldier's wife, from New York City, said she received an e-mail message from Military Families Speak Out, an antiwar group, about the possibility of a lawsuit, and urged her husband to be part of it.

Asked whether antiwar forces were instigating this lawsuit, Mr. Lobel, who like his co-counsel describes himself as openly opposed to the war in Iraq, laughed and said no. The soldiers and their families came on their own, he said.

"They were desperately looking for some way to solve their situations, and it looks like most of the people they found who were trying to counsel or represent people in their situation were antiwar people," Mr. Lobel said. "But to me, the most interesting aspect of this whole thing is that it's not a question of antiwar or pro-war. It's not a question of red states or blue states. This stop-loss question is just about fairness."

As part of a rest-and-relaxation leave allowed some soldiers, Mr. Qualls arrived at his modest Morrilton home just in time for Thanksgiving supper with his wife, Cheryl, and their daughter, Kelly.

Seated at his computer on Friday, he fiddled with a pen as he pondered whether he might face retribution for taking legal action, something he says he told his unit commanders nothing about before he left. He said his family had struggled financially and emotionally with him gone, and he has to put them first now.

"The other thing," Mr. Qualls said, "is you've got thousands of people over there in the same situation as me and somebody's got to do something. Why not have it be me? I can't worry about what people will say."

Mr. Qualls is due back at his radio post on a base north of Baghdad this coming weekend. He said he hoped a judge would issue a temporary restraining order and allow him to stay home. But if he loses, he said, he will get on that plane.

There's a personal issue involved with this article that I'm not going to touch: No one wants to hear it, I believe, and I don't really have any compelling need to say it. What I will say is this: we must be fair to those who fight for us. There is bravery in doing what is right even if it means creating a situation in which it could possibly cause us to 'lose a war'. They're tired, they've been attacked, they've served their time, they've been dirty, bloody and God only knows what else, and they want to go home. The only thing that's stopping us is fact that we've convinced ourselves we must win this war. I understand that when they put their name on the dotted line, their personal life ceased to be their own. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. However, they did it with the understanding that when their tour was over, they would be sent home. America owes them a debt of gratitude and a plane ticket home.

I don't understand military tactics, and I do understand life isn't fair. But the country that we all profess we love, the soldiers we profess we support need us to send a message to the government that there should be no more stop loss, that we should of planned before we sent troops close to going home to Iraq, that this draft by fiat needs to end. And when they come home, we'll be with them.

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
- Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Wishing They Were Here, the wolf dragon/AWM,

Sol

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I've also read that most enlistees are not signing up for the National Guard anymore, the way they used to. All these kids were trying to do the right thing. Their government sold em out to win a war we never should have started, and one that cannot be won. It's so sad. I just feel that, as a nation, this administration screwed all of us by causing so many deaths, and making us much less safe than we were before. Remember, we were attacked on their watch. How we could believe we'd be safer if they remained in office just boggles my mind.

I feel bad for these soldiers. They served already, likely above and beyond the call.

Support our Troops. Let them come home.

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Solnac...I just posted an article based on this story. Sorry...I didn't see your post before I posted mine. Just wanted to let you know that I wasn't trying to "step on" your article's toes!

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Reply #1 By: dabe - 12/7/2004 7:21:35 AM
I've also read that most enlistees are not signing up for the National Guard anymore, the way they used to. All these kids were trying to do the right thing. Their government sold em out to win a war we never should have started, and one that cannot be won. It's so sad. I just feel that, as a nation, this administration screwed all of us by causing so many deaths, and making us much less safe than we were before. Remember, we were attacked on their watch. How we could believe we'd be safer if they remained in office just boggles my mind.

I feel bad for these soldiers. They served already, likely above and beyond the call.

Support our Troops. Let them come home.

BS!!! We've had this discussion before. No one sold them out, these idiots did NOT read their contract! When you enlist you do NOT enlist for just 1 year! Uncle Sam has you for *at least* 6 years total! And up until the end of that they can pretty much do what they want with you.
BTW, Bush had nothing to do with the attack on us. Answer a straight question. Have we been attacked since then on american soil?
I grabbed this reply from TBone's post

Reply #2 By: ParaTed2k - 12/7/2004 11:44:40 AM

All military enlistments are for 8 years. The enlistee agrees to a certain number of years on active duty (Regular, Reserve or National Guard). After the number of years agreed to are completed, the troop either re-enlists or goes into the Individual Ready Reserves (IRR).

Members of the IRR are still in the military and subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They can be recalled at anytime.

This is on all military enlistment contracts, talked about openly by recruiters and by troops, NCOs and Officers once you are in.

These lawsuits shouldn't be taken seriously by any court, lawyer or judge. Unfortunately, being in a society where McDonald's can be held accountable because some braindead customer doesn't know her coffee is hot without a warning label, anything can happen.

It will be interesting to see how these lawsuits turn out

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Solnac...I just posted an article based on this story. Sorry...I didn't see your post before I posted mine. Just wanted to let you know that I wasn't trying to "step on" your article's toes

*long suffering sigh* ...Can I go to your thread and delete mine? I've only three replies and it's already becoming World War 26 against the liberals and the conservatives.

I'll probably be reposting these comments I'm about to make on T-Bone's thread, so pay attention folks, I'm not going to waste more than two posts saying it: This lawsuit will raise awareness of how stop loss is being used, which will then bear the question out, "Are we using it properly?" The fact of the matter is, many of us who cover the stop loss issue aren't pinko communist liberals that have missed the point; we just believe that stop loss was started to use for America's security. Many of us don't, and haven't seen the point in stop loss on units fighting in a non domestic war that has: a) dubious whether or not American security was the issue in the first place, (and I'm not getting into that!) and/or

doesn't seem to have too much of a lasting effect on how American security on the long run. The judge should not only have to monitor the letter of the contract, but the spirit of the contract as well. I'm sorry if we've offended anyone by running this on our blogs, this is news with commentary, after all.

BTW, Bush had nothing to do with the attack on us. Answer a straight question. Have we been attacked since then on american soil?

That's a fallacy. Until we catch a terrorist in the act, and prove that they were performing a terrorist act, the fact that we've not been attacked since 9/11 has nothing to do with our security. I could use that reasoning and say since techinally there's been no foreign terrorist attack on our soil before 9/11/2001 since our inception, we were safest right up to the point 9/11 happened. It's like saying everytime I go to bed at night, I ring a bell to keep tigers away. Since no tigers have attacked me, it must be working.

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Thank you, Solnac. Drmiler is hell-bent on believing all the propaganda spewed by the bushies, that he just rebuts the same points over and over and over. Also, one can even argue that since we got attacked on the bushies' watch, they must have led to our insecurity, if you use the same argument that drmiler keeps barfing up.

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Reply #5 By: dabe - 12/7/2004 6:02:10 PM
That's a fallacy. Until we catch a terrorist in the act, and prove that they were performing a terrorist act, the fact that we've not been attacked since 9/11 has nothing to do with our security. I could use that reasoning and say since techinally there's been no foreign terrorist attack on our soil before 9/11/2001 since our inception, we were safest right up to the point 9/11 happened. It's like saying everytime I go to bed at night, I ring a bell to keep tigers away. Since no tigers have attacked me, it must be working.

Thank you, Solnac. Drmiler is hell-bent on believing all the propaganda spewed by the bushies

And your just as hell bent on saying that "everything" Bush says is a lie. And BTW all this crap started way before Bush. Can you say Clinton? Sure, I knew you could.

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and you dabe are a tratorious b....h that should move to iraq where you can spout all yer liberal crap just before some terroist cut yer brainless head off on t.v.

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And your just as hell bent on saying that "everything" Bush says is a lie. And BTW all this crap started way before Bush. Can you say Clinton? Sure, I knew you could.

uh huh drmiler the lunyleft has the convienient memory lapses. ie: not remembering all the attacks on american embassys, ships ,people ,barracks on CLINTONS WATCH WITH LITTLE OR NO RETALIEATION which by the way embolded them to do the 911 thing. much as I liked clinton {yes I voted for him twice} he fell asleep at the wheel and opened the doors for 911

buyt I am sure that brain dead people like dabsy wabsy opsy poosy dipst goil wont remember any of this..

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Reply #16 By: T_Bone4Justice - 12/8/2004 3:17:43 AM

dharmagrl: "Here's the thing: it's in the contract. I'm soooo tired of hearing "but i only signed up to get money for school" or "they said I was going to be here 90 days and they extended me"...yeah, well, that's life in the military. You enlisted, you were warned and told about extensions and stop losses yet you chose to sign the contract you were offered. You weren't drafted, you weren't coerced."

While I agree that the terms of the contract must be upheld, I would remind people that we do not have these PARTICULAR contracts in front of us so I think we should refrain from assuming that we know precisely what they said.

We don't have to assume we know what the contracts said. We KNOW what they said! Do you think they write a custom contract for each individual? NO WAY! They *only* difference in the contracts would be from one branch of the service to another. And even then the language and terminology remains the same. Enlistment contracts have not had *any* signifigant cchanges in a long time!

And before you ask, yes I brought this in from TBones page. Since he won't let me comment anymore, I brought it here. I'm sorry but I couldn't let this go. It was just plain bad information. Sort of like what Bush got from the CIA.

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You're welcome, but all I was pointing out is that the argument he chose was a logical fallacy.

and you dabe are a tratorious b....h that should move to iraq where you can spout all yer liberal crap just before some terroist cut yer brainless head off on t.v.

That was rude and uncalled for! Post any personal attack against anyone like that again on my blog and you'll hit my blacklist before you know what happened. You may even get away with bashing liberals on this blog in my comments section, and I even let you call me a 'pinko-commie' liberal (really, you guys should come up with a new line, that's tired) but I'll damned if you use profanity in a such a matter to insult and degrade another user. She's entitled to agree with me, you're entitled to disagree with me, but you don't have to be crude about it. Consider this a warning.

I personally wasn't using that point at T-Bone's page, but it's somewhat valid and fair enough. You're entitled to that. I think stop-loss needs to be paid attention to and how we use it.

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your right, your blog and I apoligize.

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your right, your blog and I apoligize.

Thank you, I'm glad cooler heads have prevailed. If you want to call dabe that on your own blog, I don't care (and I won't stop you, it's your choice). Just keep the more inflammatory crap such as profanity out of here, ok? I appeciate and accept your apology.

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Reply #10 By: Solnac - 12/8/2004 5:29:02 PM
Thank you, Solnac. Drmiler is hell-bent on believing all the propaganda spewed by the bushies, that he just rebuts the same points over and over and over. Also, one can even argue that since we got attacked on the bushies' watch, they must have led to our insecurity, if you use the same argument that drmiler keeps barfing up.

You're welcome, but all I was pointing out is that the argument he chose was a logical fallacy.

and you dabe are a tratorious b....h that should move to iraq where you can spout all yer liberal crap just before some terroist cut yer brainless head off on t.v.

That was rude and uncalled for! Post any personal attack against anyone like that again on my blog and you'll hit my blacklist before you know what happened. You may even get away with bashing liberals on this blog in my comments section, and I even let you call me a 'pinko-commie' liberal (really, you guys should come up with a new line, that's tired) but I'll damned if you use profanity in a such a matter to insult and degrade another user. She's entitled to agree with me, you're entitled to disagree with me, but you don't have to be crude about it. Consider this a warning.

We don't have to assume we know what the contracts said. We KNOW what they said! Do you think they write a custom contract for each individual? NO WAY! They *only* difference in the contracts would be from one branch of the service to another. And even then the language and terminology remains the same. Enlistment contracts have not had *any* signifigant cchanges in a long time!

I personally wasn't using that point at T-Bone's page, but it's somewhat valid and fair enough. You're entitled to that. I think stop-loss needs to be paid attention to and how we use it.

Most of what their calling stop-loss is merely enforcing the ffine print sections of their contracts. IE: until your contract is up, you will go where we put you. As far as getting out of Iraq by re-enlisting is concerned that's another bunch of hogwash. What's going on is *standard* re-enlistment procedure. You re-enlist, you get a set of PCS orders (PCS= permanent change of station). So what it boils back down to is there are a bunch of whiners crying about being in the service.

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