It's just like the lives of the people who created this invasion under false pretenses. They think they're in a movie. They have no grasp on reality. Why would I pay 11 bucks to see a movie about a movie created by people who live in a movie. This is gross and obscene.

....that abused Zacharek's wretched writing in the plainest terms. I thought this whole forum thing was meant to be democratic. I didn't accuse her of smuggling drugs, just writing incompetently. Why spare the feelings of a dreadful writer who is given a perch in a moment when many other vastly superior film writers are given the ax? In any case, the sad case of Zacharek relates to something approximately one molecule larger: the current staleness and inconsequentiality of online rags like Salon and Slate. A decade ago they were a sort of Internet equivalent of the New Yorker or Vanity Fair; now they are pitifully motheaten. The quacking of thought-we-lost-you-at-the-last-exit Nineties types like Zacharek and Camille Paglia makes you feel you're stuck in a godawful time warp.

Klooster never states what stop-loss is. I gather he thinks it's the government's ability to hold an enlistee to their 8 year committment. It's much more than that.

Stop-loss prevents a soldier from leaving their unit, when they're on active duty even if they meet their 8 year committment during that active duty. I know. I was stop-lossed into an 8 1/2 year committment. Further, once a soldier has met their 8 year committment and their unit has deactivated, the soldier can still not get out for an additional 90 days.

Given how stretched thin the military is, it's not difficult to imagine getting new orders and being re-stop-lossed during those 90 days. For me, when I was dying to get out during those 90 days, I was scared shitless that that's exactly what would happen.

If you don't believe me, contact the Army's personnel command. I did.

the word "caveat" means a "warning"...NOT an "exception".....

which is the new popular and incorrect way of using the word....

achillesiscrying and noizangel, you're so right. Willidigital, you advocate poor spelling, so we know where your priorities lay. Good enough is totally good enough for you.

Not one reacclimates...

No?

You're right about some things, wrong about others. You're right that everyone signs an eight-year contract upon first enlistment, and that they can be called back at any time during that period. But that's not all stop-loss encompasses; under stop-loss, the service can keep personnel from ETS'ing even after the eight-year period is up.

And you're right that back-to-back combat tours seriously degrade effectiveness. But it doesn't keep the Pentagon from doing exactly that to its people.

I have two very good friends who were sent on back-to-back tours, one who doubled up in Afghanistan, another in Iraq. The first one went back for her second tour with pieces of shrapnel already embedded in her kidney. In the second one's case, he was also stop-lossed even though he'd already put twelve years in. He was one of the most dedicated soldiers I've ever known, someone who loved the Army with all his heart and soul and had never wanted to be anything but a career soldier. Now he's so disgusted with the way he and everybody he serves with have been treated that he just wants to get the hell out.

And they're finally letting him out ... after using him up, leaving him with a host of combat-related medical conditions, and threatening him that if he doesn't keep jumping through hoops right up until his ETS date, he won't be eligible for any VA medical care or service-connected disability. Fortunately for him, he's smart enough that he knew what to do -- he found a friendly Congressman who would take him on as a pet project, and apparently enough threatening phone calls were made that now he's in the clear and getting the benefits he deserves.

So that's at least two good, dedicated soldiers who loved their country and their service who have been used by the Pentagon in ways that you claim don't happen. What you describe is the way things are supposed to work. What I'm describing (and what the film describes, to tie this back to the subject at hand) is the way things actually are.

I, for one, like reading letters like AchillesisCrying's-- why shouldn't readers get to regularly review the critics on Salon if they'd like? Sometimes the readers comment are far more interesting and entertaining than the articles themselves (it seems to be the sole explainable reason for Camille Paglia's continued presence on Salon, as the hostile letter pages in response to her articles tend to be fun, imaginative, and witty in a way that Paglia hasn't been for at least a decade and a half).

And as to the suggestion that readers should comment only on the film and not the critic in the letters section, it's not like Stephanie Zacharek avoids reviewing the person over the work whenever she please. Heck, this is the writer who recently offered us a long diatribe out of nowhere about the actor Daniel Day Lewis in addition to her previous review of There Will Be Blood; that sure as heck wasn't any singular film review, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander, if you ask me. Besides Salon's critics presumably get a paycheck for what they write, but folks like AchillesisCrying do it for free, so bully for them.

Willidigital,

I don't know if you were writing to me, but if so, I do so humbly apologize for offending your sophisticated sensibilities. My disagreement with the recent thrust of the critic's body of work was ungentemanly. This, I now understand, is no way to behave in polite society.

In the future, I will restrain myself and, other than sending letters to the editor (which, as we know, are all read, thoughtfully considered and acted upon), I will take your advice to heart, shut up, and eat whatever crap your "chef" sends to my table. I know now that's what's truly important is not to make a scene.

P.S. There is nothing wrong with me or anyone else who calls b.s. on shallow, uninformative criticism.