corrente

The most famous person to use the word "egress" was P.T. Barnum, who posted a sign in his traveling freak show reading "This Way to the Egress!" The marks, thinking this was yet another wondrous creature, charged through the door only to find out that "egress" means "exit." How times have changed.

via WaPo, with the interesting headline Army to Prevent Troops' Egress

The Army will prevent soldiers in units set to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan from leaving the service at the end of their terms, a top general [Hagenbeck] said Wednesday.
The announcement, an expansion of an Army program called "stop-loss," means that thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will have to stay on for the duration of their deployment to those combat zones.
In an opinion piece in Wednesday's New York Times, Andrew Exum, a former Army captain who served under Hagenbeck in the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, called the treatment of soldiers under stop-loss programs "shameful."
"Many, if not most, of the soldiers in this latest Iraq-bound wave are already veterans of several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan," he wrote. "They have honorably completed their active duty obligations. But like draftees, they have been conscripted to meet the additional needs in Iraq."

Hagenbeck said the stop-loss move is necessary only because the Army is also undergoing a major reorganization that requires some units to be taken off-line while they are restructured.

Just like we can't stop buying oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve even though it's at the peak of a price cycle, we can't hold off this "reorganization" of miltary units even though it requires screwing some 4000 troops, their family members and communities. But we waved our flags, Rummy says, and made patriotic speeches Monday, Bushco notes, so that PROVES that we support the troops, unlike Democrats, say.