SEC. GATES: ... It is an issue. It troubles me. And I think it is a strain. But the principle reason for it is to maintain unit cohesion. One of the things that I learned for the first time this morning is that half of those -- about half of those who are stop-lossed are sergeants. And so if you pull them -- if they left a unit it would leave a pretty gaping hole, you know, while still deployed and so on.
And so I think they have good reasons. They don't like it any better than I do. But it has proven necessary in order to maintain the force, and they are hoping that with the -- as I say, with the drawdown of the five brigade combat teams from Iraq, that we'll begin to see those numbers gradually decline.
Do you want to add anything, Admiral?
ADM. MULLEN: The only thing I'd add, Jim, is that as the Army has grown, it actually is a smaller percentage than it was a year ago even though it is a larger number. And that I'm -- the point the secretary mentions about the unit integrity issue is a very powerful point in many ways in terms of being able to operate and execute like we are, and much different from what we did in Vietnam.
And General Casey describes this as creating -- a significant contributor creating the resiliency that's clearly in the units.
But he doesn't like it, and none of us like it. And we need to move away from it as rapidly as we can.
SEC. GATES: One other fact about this, that I was told this morning, is that if you're looking strictly at the active Army, the percentage of people on stop-loss was about between 10 and 11 percent in 2005. And it's about 6 percent now.
Yes, absolute numbers are up, but as a percentage it is down and should decline further.
But since this is a policy all about winning and protecting the lives of our troops, you can see why the Left hates it so much.
