Continuing "stop loss" shows lack of respect for military on part of Bush White House

The United States Army will continue its program of "stop loss" to keep personnel close to retirement or re-enlistment from leaving, so as to keep up President Bush's "surge" in Iraq.

Which only indicates to me that Bush has no understanding or sense of respect at all for the lives of our soldiers.

These men and women have lost enough already for Bush's private little war. Too many of them have already lost their homes back in the states, many have lost spouses. A few have even committed suicide.

And yet, the damaged little boy in the White House continues to play with their lives as if they were so many G.I. Joe dolls.

Y'know, for all the "God bless our troops" that I've seen over the past six years, I have to wonder how much not just this President, but a lot of Americans seriously value the men and women in our armed forces. Because these people offered to volunteer years of their lives - which could have been spent doing other things like pursuing career and family - to serve their country. And they did so having faith that we would honor their commitment by choosing how to wisely employ them.

Instead their lives are getting wasted. Not just in the battlefield but by sapping away at what's left to them when they come back. And yet somehow, to question this is to be branded "unpatriotic" in some quarters.

The more patriotic thing to do would be to remember that these men and women did not willingly choose to become "second class citizens" by virtue of their offer to serve, so that the rest of us could sit on our butts and wave American flags and "feel good" about blowing stuff up half a world away.

But then, we have a President who has never really been confronted with that kind of pain and death. He doesn't know. He's never understood what that's like.

We have a very foolish man, who has no comprehension of the real meaning of life, occupying the Oval Office and who believes that other people have no other purpose than to help him live out his fantasies.

Meanwhile, our good men and women in the military are being robbed of what good reality they could have made with the rest of their lives.