One More Way NOT to Support the Troops

In it's never-ending efforts to make sure your children's future income is spent as efficiently as possible, the Army is ensuring National Guardsmen returning from 22 months in Iraq do not qualify for full educational benefits under the G.I. bill. Those clever bean counters at the Pentagon deployed more than 1,100 of them for only 729 days… exactly one day short of the 730 days needed to guarantee thousands of dollars a year for college.

When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

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."

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.

[snip]

Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.

Klobuchar said the GI money "shouldn't be tied up in red tape," and Coleman said it's "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."

[snip]

Senators Klobuchar and Coleman released a joint statement saying the Army secretary, Pete Geren, is looking into this personally, and they say Geren asked a review board to expedite its review so the matter could be solved by next semester.

Minnesota National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Olson said the soldiers are "victims of a significant injustice."

Hobot and Anderson must be some of those "phony soldiers" Rush spoke of this week.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

So President Bush says we can't afford to spend an extra $30 billion over five years to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. But, he wants to spend another $42 billion more just next year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(side note -- this would raise the total spending on the Iraq war alone to more than $600 billion -- or TWELVE TIMES the $50 billion cost the Pentagon estimated in 2002)

I wonder if the president's request includes money to fix this:


That's an aerial view of a U.S. Navy barracks in Coronado, Calif. It's been that way since 1967.

Since it was not visible from the ground, officials decided not to make any changes.

But aerial photos made available on Google Earth in recent years revealed the buildings' shape to a wide audience of computer users.

Glad we have our priorities straight.

Sunday Factoids

The June edition of Harper's Magazine includes several articles explaining how much work is needed to undue eight years of the Bush misadministration. It's worth the read at the library.

Harper's each month also includes a list of statistics chosen and arranged for ironic effect. The online version for the past six months is only available to subscribers, but it may prove educational and fun to read through pre-2007 indices:

From January 2005:

Number of House members in 1979 who voted against making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday : 133

Number who are still in the House : 9

Number who are Vice President : 1

[Moral: Dick's a dick]

Average number of suicides per 100,000 residents in states carried by President Bush in November (2004) : 13.5

Average number of suicides in states carried by John Kerry : 9.9

[Moral: Buch kills]

What Blue Girl, Red State Said

Welcome to America, 2.0

This has been another edition of What Blue Girl, Red State Said.

3,454 and Counting

This Memorial Day, remember the dead, and the politicians who killed them.

Since last Memorial Day, roughly one thousand more Americans have died in this inhumane, horrible, foolish war.

In the period from Memorial Day 2006 through Saturday, 980 soldiers and Marines died in Iraq, compared to 807 deaths in the previous year. And with the Baghdad security operation now 3 1/2 months old, even President Bush has predicted a difficult summer for U.S. forces.

"It could be a bloody — it could be a very difficult August," he said last week.

A "very difficult AUGUST?" What about June? July? Evidently, Bush thinks it's going to get worse.

At least 103 American troops have died in the first 26 days of May, an average of 3.96 deaths a day. At that pace, 123 troops will have died by the end of the month, nearly double the 69 who died in May 2006. And it will be the highest monthly total since 137 soldiers died in November 2004, when U.S. troops were fighting insurgents in Fallujah.

And now, according to the New York Times, terrorists trained in Iraq are starting to take their fight to other parts of the world.