June 9, 2009: Starting next year, the use of Stop Loss (American soldiers involuntarily kept on active duty), will cease. Meanwhile, starting two months ago, soldiers subject to Stop Loss began receiving an additional $500 a month for as long as they are on Stop Loss status (usually no more than a year). A new law will also provide the $500 a month bonus retroactively all Stop Lossed soldiers. The army wanted to continue paying the $500 a month bonus as a way to get troops to volunteer for Stop Loss status, but Congress refused to go along.

In any event, the U.S. Department of Defense planed to halt using "Stop Loss" in two years (except for a few emergency cases) anyway. Over the last year, about 12,000 soldiers have been affected by Stop Loss (kept on active service despite scheduled retirement or discharge) at any given time. Many officers and NCOs believe that the end of Stop Loss will cause more casualties, and make units less effective in combat. That's because key people will no longer be going into combat with their units.

Use of Stop Loss peaked in 2005, at 15,758 troops a month. The lowest number held was in May, 2007 (8,540), but climbed back to 12,000 a month because of the demands of the build up for the Surge Offensive in Iraq that year. On average, over the last eight years, about 6,500 soldiers were on stop loss status at any given time.

There are still 139,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and 32,000 in Afghanistan ( being increased to nearly 50,000 this year). But this year, at least 12,000 troops will come home from Iraq, and not be replaced. However, many soldiers that previously would have gone to Iraq, and recently returned, are now headed to Afghanistan. Thus the continued use of Stop Loss, at least until the end of this year.

continued...

Congress is preparing to decide the fate of a critical bill that would provide almost $5,000 in retroactive payments to troops who have been stop-lossed. Please take a minute to call your Senators, and tell them to support its passage.

Talking points

When your Senator’s staff answer:

* Introduce yourself by name and tell them where you live, and that you're an IAVA Supporter. Your Senator is more likely to listen to you if they know you live in their state.
* Tell them you are calling about HR 2346, the 2009 War Supplemental Appropriations, and that you want your Senator to include retroactive “stop-loss” payments in the war supplemental. Servicemembers involuntarily extended to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan deserve to be compensated for their sacrifice.

You usually don’t need to say more than that. At this point the staffer will likely thank you for your time and you are done. If you do get into a conversation with the staffer about the issue you might want to mention:

* In March 2008 the Pentagon announced it would begin compensating stop-lossed servicemembers for their overtime, this payments would not include those who were stop-lossed before October 2008
* Since 2001, over 170,000 service-members have been held past their enlistment contracts as part of the stop-loss policy
* Retroactive stop-loss pay will mean approximately $5,000 for each servicemember or veteran and their families

Note: Please only contact your Senators. The House has already passed this bill.

A study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. The death counter provides a rough daily update of this number based on a rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count. (See the complete explanation.)

The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US-led invasion.

This devastating human toll demands greater recognition. It eclipses the Rwandan genocide and our leaders are directly responsible. Little wonder they do not publicly cite it. You can use the simple HTML code above to post the counter to your website to help spread the word.

Add your name to the petition telling Congress that about a million Iraqis have likely been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.