A shameful way to ‘support the troops’

October 6, 2007

The 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard recently ended a 22-month tour of duty in Iraq, the longest deployment of any ground-combat unit in the Armed Forces. Many of its members returned home, looking forward to using education benefits under the GI bill.

For example, John Hobot, a platoon leader, said, “I would assume, and I would hope, that when I get back from a deployment of 22 months, my senior leadership in Washington, the leadership that extended us in the first place, would take care of us once we got home.”

It’s not working that way. The Guard troops have been told that in order to be eligible for the education benefits they expect, they had to serve 730 days in Iraq. They served 729.

Nearly half the members of one of the longest serving U.S. military units in Iraq are not eligible for a more generous military educational benefit, with some falling one day short of eligibility. […]

All 2,600 of the soldiers, who returned this year from Iraq, are eligible for money for school under the GI Bill. But nearly half discovered they weren’t eligible for a more generous package of benefits available to other soldiers.

Minnesota’s congressional delegation is apoplectic, and the Army has vowed to look into the matter, but the troops are understandably suspicious that they were deliberately brought home after 729 days so the Pentagon could deny them the better GI Bill benefits.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

“It’s pretty much a slap in the face,” Anderson said. “I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership… once again failing the soldiers.”

The AP report explains:

Under the GI Bill, two categories of educational benefits are available to Guard soldiers: one for those who have served less than two years and another for those who have put in more time. Among other things, the latter benefit provides as much as $800 per month for full-time training while the former provides $282.

“The Minnesota National Guard believes that all of these soldiers, who served 20 consecutive months or longer, on active duty as part of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, should be entitled to the same benefits for their dedicated service to the nation,” said Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, a spokesman for the Minnesota Guard.

Keep an eye on this one.

The Bush administration wouldn’t want tax dollars to go to vets when they could go to Blackwater.

  • I used to be concerned that the military leans Republican, and that this fact could be a problem if the armed forces are supposed to stay out of politics. However these days I’m less worried – the administration’s pulling this sort of crap will generate more and more Democratic votes in the ranks.

  • The Army may be feeling the heat over this travesty. A Minneapolis newspaper has reported that Army Secretary Pete Geren is attempting to fix the problem by expediting an appeal.

    http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1460969.html

    Does anyone think it was an accident that this unit came home just days short of unquestioned eligibility for these benefits? I doubt that there is anyone, anywhere in the Bush administration who gives a damn about what happens to the troops who are lucky enough to make it home from the mess in Iraq.

  • I wonder if Rush et al will call these guys, “phony” soldiers for complaining.

    Repubs may be needing more than just Purple Heart Bandaids and flag pins to protect them if they keep this up.

    And of all places, Minnesota. Bucha geniuses. Say aren’t the Repubs holding their convention there?

  • When you have to pay Blackwater more than $400,000 per “specialist”, the money has to come from somewhere, right? After all, George is always boasting how fiscally responsible he is.

  • My time in the guard taught me the importance of a well-trained and well equipped military. It gave me respect for the chain of command. It showed me, firsthand, that given proper training and adequate personnal, the military can accomplish its mission. After all, the military took a novice like me and trained me to be a skilled pilot of high-performance jets. I also learned the lesson of Vietnam. Our nation should be slow to engage troops. But when we do so, we must do so with ferocity. We must not go into conflict unless we are commited to win. We can never again ask the military to fight a political war. If America’s strategic interests are at stake, if diplomacy fails, if no other option will accomplish the objective, the Commander in Chief must define the mission and allow the military to achieve it. –George W. Bush, A Charge To Keep

  • Just add it to the list – there’s been very little that has been done that truly supports these guys whether in or out of the field, in or out of combat, deployed or at home.

    And you can add this to another list – a list that includes other things that aren’t getting done – like S-CHIP – because they might cost too much money.

    Let’s keep veterans out of school, kids unhealthy, infrastructure crumbling, food and medicine and consumer products a crap shoot as to their safety – but by all means, let’s keep lining the pockets of the Balckwaters and Big Pharma and the big corporations. Let’s not see any advantage into doing anything for the people. Forget “the public good” – it’s all about the private good.

    Maybe when they’re finished feeding off the public, they can start feeding on themselves. That should be interesting, huh?

  • […] this unit came home just days short of unquestioned eligibility for these benefits […] — Okie, @3

    Okie, it wasn’t dayS; it was one DAY.ONE. 24 hours. It’s such a contemptible, underhanded trick, it makes me *spit* with fury. They shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place; they’re *National* Guards. They shouldn’t have had a single, uninterrupted by any down-time, tour of 22 months; that’s not what the National Guards sign up for. And then this…

  • Gee, I wonder if the fact that the 2008 thug convention is in MN has anything to do with the efforts to address this injustice so quickly?

  • I hate to tell you all, but the government has never treated the soldiers who sacrificed for this country with any sort of honor, going back to the Revolutionary War, after which they would not pay the veterans $50 each for having served (a years’ income in those days). After the Civil War they left things to go to hell with wounded ets receiving no care. After WW1, the bonus that was promised was never ever paid, resulting in the 1932 “Bonus March” that ended with General Douglas MacArthur using active duty Army troops to dismantle the “Hoover viliages” of the men he had led in the First World War. The only guys who didn’t get stuck were the WW2 vets. For those of us on the Vietnam GI Bill, it didn’t support as well as the current one does: $160/month for a married vet, no help for tuition or books. And the checks never ever arrived at the same time every month or even arrived every month.

    Personally, from my own experience, anyone who decides to join the US military in any capacity needs their head examined to see if they have a working brain because they are making a seriously dumb decision. The military will gladly screw you when you go in, screw you while you’re in, and then screw you when you get out. A perfect trifecta.

    Anyone who thinks that that one missing day was some sort of oversight probably believes the sun rises in the west and the moon is made of green cheese.

  • Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler knew what was up…

    WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

    A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

    In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

    How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

    Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the self-same few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

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  • One can easily be of two minds about this. It’s easy to believe the fascist regime has someone watching closely enough to know the difference between 729 and 730 days. That would certainly have been the Nazi Germany approach. I’m inclined to believe, however, that this bunch of thugs is so poorly organized, and too worried about lapel pins, to know, let alone care, about deliberately cheating the troops out of what they’re due. They really are too busy taking care of their cronies who run the companies with the big no-bid contracts, paid for with our IOUs to China.

    I sure hope this gets some traction. It’ll be fun to watch the worms in Washington writhe to get out of the photo-op spotlight without looking like the complete boobs they are. My condolences, again, to the men and women who signed up for the National Guard to serve in civil emergencies but wound up fighting Bush’s unholy oil war instead.

  • I hope you all realise that a 22 MONTH tour of duty only equals about 660 days give or take a few

    much less than 730

  • Wait a minute. These kids weren’t drafted, they volunteered so they could get all the feebies and obscene benefits “these kids today” naturally always get. They’re not like the patriotic greatest generation.

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