More Broken Promises To Our Citizen Soldiers
The bonuses were offered in January to Active Guard and Reserve and military technician soldiers who were serving overseas. In April, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs ordered the bonuses stopped, Murray said....A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed the bonuses had been canceled, saying they violated Pentagon policies because they duplicated other programs. She said Guard and Reserve members would be eligible for other bonuses.Krenke said some soldiers had been paid the re-enlistment bonuses, but she was unsure how many or whether the money would have to be repaid. Murray’s office said that as far as it knew, no active Guard or Reserve members had received the bonuses. [emphasis added]
$15K is hardly chump change to your typical Guard member. I personally know one family that sold their house when Dad shipped off to Iraq and gave up solid paycheck in exchange for the "not-enough-to-pay-the-bills" compensation of an activated grunt. Mom and two young daughters moved into a trailer.
Thanks Mr. Rumsfeld! You're a swell guy.
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This is disgraceful. It being the military, though, I guess that the soliders can't back away from re-upping just because the government reneged on their end of the contract.
Before the election, I thought that Bush would lose the election by losing the military vote. He didn't; will we lose our military instead? I mean, who's going to be willing to stick with it, with this kind of treatment?
October 17, 2005 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Few support Bush who have been sent there on the grunt level.
In fact Washington's Governor got her spot when the absentee Ballots of Soldiers based in Washington were counted despite repuke efforts to scrap them.
October 18, 2005 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
With 20 years of military experience, I am quite familiar with the phenomenon described. Several times our political masters changed the rules (never to our benefit) and we just had to smile.
From my own experience, I once received a re-enlistment bonus. Three years later, the military decide that they had applied the rules improperly and my bonus was too large. I was politely informed of this by a letter, which assured me that I had not done anything wrong, they just changed their interpretation of the rules, and instructed to send in a check for the overpayment (about $9000.00) within two weeks.
The only thing that saved me was our unit's executive officer, who was an old hand with these games. He knew how to work the system and got the repayment waived.
Ten years later, one of the guys working for me received a similar letter. My previous experience helped me help him, and that repayment was also waived.
Like always-people make the difference.
October 18, 2005 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink