That would be from the Hotel U.S. Army, not California: who knew that the draft has, for all practical purposes, unannounced and unheralded, far under the radar of most Americans, been reinstated?
Lee Hockstader, in yesterday's front page Washington Post story, tells us all about it. It seems that soldiers whose enlistments are over, or were due to retire after 20 years, can't: the expiration date of their military service on their Army paychecks is now listed sometime after 2030.
Thousands of soldiers are now forbidden to leave the Army under "stop-loss" orders intended to slow the loss of troops through retirement and discharge, now that the military has been stretched thin by increasing overseas missions.
More than 40,000 soldiers who were eligible to leave the Army this year have had their departures blocked until further notice.
I must say, I'd given thought over the years to joining the Reserves, for easy money and not much work: besides ending up in Iraq, now I see where I could've been stuck there forever under this policy, which was set-up after the Vietnam War but not invoked until Dick Cheney, as Secretary of Defense during the build-up to the Persian Gulf War in 1990, allowed the military services to bar most retirements and prolong enlistments indefinitely.
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