I've been staying out of this, since I don't have a lot of facts, but I just wanted to comment on this:
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But Bush did lie to our troops. They had contracts specifying how long their tours of duty would last, with the option to renew or not. Contracts expired, but he still needed troops there. So he broke the terms of the contract and refused to bring them home, forcing them to stay.
Let me say first that I was one of these people affected by the stop-loss. I was never deployed (thank god), but I did spend time in service beyond my contract. There is a clause in every service contract that states that the contract can be extended at will by the government in a time of conflict. Trust me, I looked, trying to find a way out. When a contract expires while deployed, the contract is extended until the end of the deployment, plus a certain number of days. Deployments can be extended at will. I don't believe that Bush is the one to extend the individual troop deployments, since he doesn't sign every order. He just says "send troops!" Rather, that would be the military heirarchy who actually determines which units are going where.
I have other issues with the military heirarchy, such as the lack of communication that ended my contract in May and I wasn't notified until August. Not to mention all of the conflicting reports I heard. "Your contract is done." "No it's not." "If you don't show up for six months, you're out." "No, you have to show up for at least 1 period a month or you're AWOL." AUGH!
"You need me. You wouldn't be much of a hero without a villain. And you do love being the hero, don't you. The cheering children, the swooning women, you love it so much, it's made you my most reliable accomplice." -- Lex Luthor to Superman, Question Authority, Justice League Unlimited
