Fighting back

Like I said, this would be addressed, but only because there’s so much light on it. So hopeully this will be resolved before Lindsay Lohan goes back into rehab and the MSM covers that instead.

The 2,600 members of a Minnesota National Guard unit that returned from Iraq in July after serving there longer than any other ground combat unit were shocked to be told that their total time overseas of 729 days was one day short of the number needed to be eligible for expanded educational benefits under the GI Bill. Many of the soldiers wondered if this was done deliberately and they and Minnesota's senators asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it.

1st Lieut. John Hobot, a spokesman for the unit, told CNN on Monday that he believes it was simply a bureaucratic mixup, saying, "There's people that got off the same plane from Iraq ... and their orders read 730 days, whereas 1162 soldiers' orders say 729. These guys did the same exact tour." Hobot just wants the Army to fix the orders so that the soldiers, some of whom are already back in school, can receive the additional $500 to $800 a month.

The Army has announced that it is trying to get to the bottom of the matter and may ask for a legislative clarification to the criteria for GI Bill benefits. Hobot agreed that a change in the law might prevent the problem from recurring in the future but said it won't help his troops now. "We've been back 90 days as of tomorrow and it hasn't gotten fixed. And they keep telling us that they're fixing it."

It was smart and diplomatic of 1st Lieut. Hobot to publicly claim to believe the whole thing is just a bureaucratic mixup, as it gives higher-ups the cover they need to fix this without losing face.

But one day short? You don’t accidentally type “729” when you mean to type “730.” And I guess the fact that this one day makes 2,600 troops ineligible for education benefits is just a coincidence.

At the risk of being less diplomatic than 1st Lieut. Hobot, I’m going to call this exactly what it looks like to me: People being screwed out of benefits they need and deserve to save a little bit of money. You know, like when Bush vetoed the SCHIP exapnsion.

It’s not that the Bush administration doesn’t like to spend money (look at the billions of dollars of taxpayer money being poured into the bottomless well called Iraq). It’s that the administration only likes to spend money to benefit certain people, and these troops ain’t those people.

And neither are those children.