Horrific!

The family is the real casualty of two, protracted, neoconservative wars.

How much more proof do we need that President Obama must stop this insanity and bring the troops home immediately?

disgusting! infuriating! family values, indeed!
This makes me heartsick!
Are you in touch with her?
I feel helpless. I want to right this wrong, but how? It bums me out totally, but I'm so glad you reported this.
LOVE LIGHT LAUGHTER JOY PEACE

MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!

Isn't this EXACTLY the abuse of power that they keep telling us they are fighting to prevent? Hypocritical asshats!

The good news, in my opinion anyways, is that they will prolly discharge her from the Army. I’d MUCH rather see her on even welfare, WIC, etc., while caring for her child, that helping those asshole kill even more people.

How many people would it take to storm DC and replace the government with a Constitutional government? Or return power to the states and tell DC to just get hosed?

Afghanistan? As if we have any business there. When do we invade the Moon? We have corporate interests there, I'm sure.

Where's the baby's father?

So don't just fume about it - help her out!

1) Call the Pentagon switchboard (703-545-6700) and ask to speak to the office of the Secretary of the Army, John McHug

2) Call the Pentagon's Office of Public Communication (703-428-0711) and say that you have a message for Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

3) Call the White House (202-456-1111) and say that you have a message for President Obama.

I wonder what accounts for the lack of compassion in this particular case, because it IS about compassion and understanding and simple humanity. This gosh awful war and the world are not going to fall apart if this woman is allowed a little more time to find appropriate care for her child. The rules are the rules and humanity is humanity - and humanity is about compassion. It is said that is what separates us from the animals.

This woman isn't asking to be exempted from her deployment, just for a little more time. I recall that former Vice President Cheney, a major player in starting, lying us into and prolonging this war, asked for and received 5 deferments from service in the Viet Nam war!

This is truly insane.

It's been awhile since I got out, but back when if you were a single parent or both of you were on active duty you had to have a child care plan in place in case something happened.

If she is in the Army, knowing we are fighting 2 wars, why did she wait until she got her orders to try to put together a plan for child care?

Wow. That is f---d up. Where is the religious right now with their family values?

I did a remote tour in Greenland when my daughter was 2 and half, and another in Korea when she was 13. Yes, it was difficult to leave her, and yes, I would rather have not done so. But I was in the military, and one of those things I signed on to was to always have a plan for child care, during war and peace, and both for short and long-term care, and for someone to escort her home from overseas with, if there was ever an evacuation. I had to have those arrangements current and up to date at all times, and it had everything to do with my personal responsibility to my family and child, and f**k-all to do with whatever party was in charge at the moment.

As usual, Catnlion, you are either unable to read at a 6th grade level or you are obtuse.

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson had a care plan in place with her mother but, her mother became overtaxed caring for a special needs daughter, an ailing mother and an ailing sister.

If the four branches of the military continue to be as antifamily as this, then I think the Pentagon needs to immediately stop reaching out to the other 50% of the population of the U.S. -- women, and stop encouraging them to "sign up and see the world" in order to help the military meet its recruitment goals.

You know - having to have a plan for the care of your children in case of TDY or deployment wasn't something that came up, just in the last year or so, right? And that not recruiting women to be in the military would be terribly retro; They used to discharge women from the service - single or married - as soon as they got pregnant. Women fought like hell for the right to serve in the military, and then they fought like hell to stay in when they got married, and again to stay in when they got pregnant. So, you would like to go back to 1940, or 1950, hmmm?
See, the thing is about family care plans; you have to have a workable, doable one, and realistically, you have to have to have a fallback plan, and friends in the unit or family members that you can trust absolutely. I don't know enough about Specialist Hutchinson, or her family situation, or her command to have an opinion about who is at fault. She could be a sterling-gold and responsible troop whose plan fell through and whose commander and first shirt are unsympathetic and unhelpful ...or she could be a careless and disorganized s**tbird drama-diva who put off making any plan at all until OMG! I've got orders for Afghanistan ... and her command is just fed to the teeth in dealing with her. Or anything in between those two extremes. I don't know, you don't know, the people commenting here on OS don't know. I know that I don't have enough information to make a judgment here - about the situation and definitely not the policy.
You wanna know the absolutely worst child-care moment I had, when I was in? My daughter was 18 months old, and one Sunday afternoon, she's running a fever and coughing - and I know that I am due at work the next day and that the Child Care Center will NOT accept a sick child. So I call my fallback baby-sitter, who can't look after my daughter on Monday and refers me to HER fallback baby-sitter, who says, yeah, I live at # so and so in the Base Housing Area, bring the kid by in the morning ... and so I do, and the next morning I am walking to my car and thinking "Those quarters looked pretty trashed and she's got all those grubby-looking kids running around, and I have just handed over the most precious being in my life to a total stranger whom I know nothing about at all!" You can believe that I felt pretty s**tty at that moment. (Actually the woman took wonderful care of her, but I wouldn't know that until that evening.) But as awful as that emotional experience was - I did not blame the Air Force: I had enlisted with clear eyes, and reenlisted with a month-old child, knowing that it was a pretty good deal - as long as I could hold up my end of the bargain. And that bargain was that for the various benefits offered and the honor of serving the country, I would have to order my personal and family life in such a way that it never became a burden or an embarrassment to the Air Force.
Your mileage may vary. BTW, when I was in, the single-parent personnel most likely not to have organized a comprehensive plan for the care of their dependents were male. Make of that what you will.

Of all the people who should be exempt from being sent overseas, it's this woman. It's infuriating.

I wish ending both wars was as simple as saying "Okay, everyone back on the plane, we're leaving." Unfortunately, ending wars is a lot more complicated than ending them.

I definitely second the motion to cal the Pentagon on her behalf. And the White House.

This breaks my heart. What the fuck is going on? Who are these people?

When I first read this post, I thought the photo you used was of Alexis Hutchinson and her son. I subsequently read an AP article that actually has a photograph of Alexis with her son. Interesting how we get certain words and images in our minds, make assumptions and then have to readjust when given new information...or not...I guess we sometimes get stuck but I digress...I hope all the media attention on Alexis and her plight help her out of this horrible situation for her child's and her sake.

Aw man, that photo hurts, the look on the mother's face. Ouch. Excellent journalist Dahr Jamail was all over this horrible story too. Thank you for continuing to raise awareness about it.

Holy geez! Thanks for getting the word out, and thanks to the Editors for putting this on the front page. This story needs as much exposure as possible.

1) The photo shown isn't Alexis Hutchinson

2) Quote from AP:
Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield, said he didn't know what Hutchinson was told by her commanders, but he said the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to care for his or her child.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbwXU5GGu5ZhF8SdvhXS1em7u1tgD9C0V6NO0

Grr. The whole link doesn't show. Hope this works...
AP Release - With photo.

I can think of plenty of reasons to end the war, but one woman's personal problems do not figure on the list.

I've met many people who thought the Gov't should give them a hand up in their lives -- the guy who wanted to be a foreign service officer so the Gov't would pay him to learn Arabic and after he learned, he could quit and earn big bucks working for an oil firm. The guy who wanted a secure job where he wouldn't be harassed to actually accomplish anything. And some people who joined the army for their educations making the bet (this was some time ago and a better bet) that they've never actually be sent to a war zone.

Maybe this woman tried to game the system, maybe she's a conscientious soldier with bad luck who being made an example for the rest.

But, I'm sure that if the military allowed parents with no child care for their kid to escape a trip to a war zone, many, many soldiers would have no care plan for their kid.

Your post is not an honest portrayal of the facts on several fronts.

First, the AP news report clearly states that Hutchinson is refusing to deploy (which is why she was arrested).

Second, as a vet myself, I have to tell you that personal hardship is NOT a valid excuse for refusing orders.

Third, you seem to want to draw some larger lesson beyond the lesson that single parents or even married parents on active duty have in fact signed away their rights when they entered service and must comply with lawful orders even when those orders create hardship.

Short version: Your post is disingenuous if not actually dishonest. I'm just surprised you didn't find a way to put a really bad pic of Hillary Clinton in it...just because.

Reading this story I'm wondering why the hell Hutchinson thought she could leave her infant with her mother given her mother's considerable other care-giving burdens. Sounds like she never had a viable family care plan to begin with. Oh, and where's the father in all this? I'm not surprised the Army is losing patience with her.

Im in the military and this story is probably missing some information. Any member of the armed forces that has a dependent that they care for must have a plan incase they are called away. Her plan was for her mother to take care of her child but that didnt work out so it wasnt really that great of a plan. I doubt that she didnt know of her upcoming deployment, we usually know when we are going to the sandbox months in advance. They also gave her an extension, and maybe there was NO one else to watch over her kid and it sucks that they took the kid to CPS, but joining the military isnt for everyone. We take an oath, most civilians have no idea what it is like to be in the military. So go ahead, poster of this story, tell me how wrong I am and pitch a fit like you usually do. This job isnt meant for everyone.

The photo you are using is wrong on more than one level.

Christopher di Spirito

"As usual, Catnlion, you are either unable to read at a 6th grade level or you are obtuse.

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson had a care plan in place with her mother but, her mother became overtaxed caring for a special needs daughter, an ailing mother and an ailing sister."

I also have a plan to be make a million dollars, but I don't see that happening either.

A plan, just because you have one, doesn't make for a plan. This plan was BS to show her CO that she had one. Even if her mother was the planned caregiver and she could have done it, when she got to the point she couldn't then she didn't have a plan anymore did she? All she had was a pipe dream.

Don't give me your BS.

Based on the AP story, I don't see anything about the mother being jailed and the child being taken away from his mother and placed in child protective services. I see a mention that she was taken into custody (briefly) and the child placed with an on-post day care provider overnight while she was processed. Either there's more to this, or the child was returned to her once she was released the next morning.