Army expected to keep ‘stop-loss’ policy in effect despite concerns

[Breeze54]

http://thehill.com/business--lobby/army-expected-to-keep-stop-loss-policy-in-effect-despite-concerns-2007-10-10.html">Army expected to keep ‘stop-loss’ policy in effect despite concerns

By Roxana Tiron
October 10, 2007

The Army will likely continue employing a controversial “stop-loss” policy intended
to keep soldiers in war zones beyond their original commitments due to demands placed
on the troops, according to Secretary of the Army Peter Geren. Defense Secretary Robert
Gates issued a directive earlier this year to minimize and eventually eliminate the use
of stop-loss. But the Army cannot easily predict when it 'can do away with the
controversial practice, which is keeping 8,000 soldiers in the service beyond the end
of their enlistment, according to Geren.

“With the demand on the force that we have today, we are unable to not use stop-loss,
in order to make sure that we are able to deploy fully manned and trained and properly
prepared brigades to the theater,” Geren said Monday during a press conference at the
annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army. “With the increase in the
length of deployments, it increases the number of soldiers on stop-loss.”

Geren stressed that the trend of employing stop loss has gone down over the last couple
of years. The policy allows the Pentagon to keep soldiers on — even when their enlistment
is due to expire — if it needs to maintain troop strength and unit integrity. The practice
has garnered widespread congressional criticism and brought several lawsuits from members
of the military. “We certainly share Dr. Gates’s goal of eliminating stop-loss, and
continuing to work toward that end,” Geren said. “Without being able to predict the future,
with certainty, there is no way to predict when we would be able to do away with using that
as a tool for force management.”

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Note to those of you that have stated that there is no 'stop-loss' policy; I say BS!