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latimes.com — The number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army involuntarily under the military's controversial "stop-loss" program has risen sharply since the Pentagon extended combat tours last year. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was briefed about the program by Army officials who said that thousands of new stop-loss orders were issued to keep soldiers from leaving the service after Gates ordered combat tours extended from 12 to 15 months last spring. The Army has resorted to involuntary extensions of soldiers' enlistment terms to prevent them from leaving immediately before a combat tour or in the middle of a deployment.

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hosted.ap.org — Increasing numbers of U.S. troops have left the military with damaged bodies and mind — even as the total population of America's vets shrinks. Despite the decline in total vets — as soldiers from World War II and Korea die — the government expects to be spending $59 billion a year to compensate injured warriors in 25 years, up from today's $29 billion, and the Veterans Affairs Department concedes the bill could be much higher.

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iht.com — Two months after announcing Major General Jay Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, the Pentagon has quietly canceled the assignment. Hood, a 33-year army veteran, was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The withdrawal of Hood's assignment has not been announced, but it reflects the widening shadow that the military prison at Guantánamo is casting over American foreign policy.

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msnbc.msn.com — Contractors large and small have been heading offshore to shield piles of taxpayer dollars, according to an Associated Press investigation, but irate lawmakers are thundering that they'll put an end to it. The House recently passed tax legislation that would treat foreign subsidiaries of U.S. government contractors as American employers. That means they would have to pay the taxes that finance Social Security and Medicare programs. The Senate is now considering the legislation.

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washingtonpost.com — Two Bush administration Cabinet members acknowledged gaps in the capability of U.S. hospitals to deal with a mass-casualty terrorist attack or other disaster, but they said a congressional effort to block pending Medicaid cuts will not fix the problem. President Bush has threatened to veto House legislation that would impose a one-year moratorium on changes sought by HHS to Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor. State officials said the impact would be greater, including cuts to physicians at teaching hospitals and to urban public hospitals whose emergency rooms are already strained.

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usatoday.com — More than 43,000 U.S. troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the weeks before their scheduled deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 were sent anyway, Pentagon records show. This reliance on troops found medically "non-deployable" is another sign of stress placed on a military that has sent 1.6 million service members to the war zones, soldier advocacy groups say.

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washingtonpost.com — House Democrats have charged that hospitals in seven major U.S. cities would be overwhelmed if any of the cities were struck by a terrorist attack, and shortages of emergency room capacity and intensive care beds will grow worse if Bush administration Medicaid changes are implemented. In a survey by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, more than half of 34 hospitals in cities deemed at greatest risk of attack said they had no emergency room treatment space available to accept severely injured patients.

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cnn.com — Defying President Bush's demand to send him a clean war funding bill, House Democratic leaders unveiled legislation that conditions the money on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and adds billions of dollars in domestic spending.

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reuters.com — U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq would make it difficult to mount any attack on Iran, the Pentagon's top officer recently said, adding that he would prefer to avoid a new regional war. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Israel's Channel Ten television when asked if he might recommend that U.S. forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities preemptively, "I actually am very hopeful that we don't get into a position where we have to get into a conflict."

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iht.com — The Pentagon is considering sending as many as 7,000 more American troops to Afghanistan next year to make up for a shortfall in contributions from NATO allies. Senior Bush administration officials said the step would push the number of American forces there to roughly 40,000, the highest level since the war began more than six years ago, and would require at least a modest reduction in troops from Iraq.

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