More dwell time soon, but stop-loss continues

[unhappycamper]

More dwell time soon, but stop-loss continues
By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Dec 2, 2008 18:46:51 EST

Deploying troops should start to spend more time back home starting as early as this spring, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said today. But the Army program known as “stop-loss” that forces soldiers on deployment orders who are close to their end-of-service dates to stay on duty, he said, will continue through 2009.

“I’ve pressed on stop-loss ever since I got this job, because I don’t like it,” said Gates, speaking to Pentagon reporters a day after President-elect Barack Obama named him as his choice to continue in the job he’s held the past two years. But when asked if he could foresee an end to the policy in 2009, he replied, “No. No, I don’t.”

The problem, Gates said, is that a “significant percentage” of those affected by the policy are noncommissioned officers. “And the concern of the Army is that if you don’t use stop-loss, you end up gutting a unit of its experienced leadership, senior enlisted leadership.

“I would at least like to see us start heading in the right direction,” Gates said. “And I think we have leveled off, and has begun to decline very slowly. I hope that very soon, and with the drawdowns in Iraq, that we will begin to see a further decrease in stop-loss.”

The Army has said the same thing; personnel chief Lt. Gen. James Thurman said in May that he hoped the Army could end the practice by the fall of 2009.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/military_gates_stoploss_120208w/%2e