Vorkosigan

Bush Supports out troops!

Unless Congress and President Bush take quick action when Congress returns after Labor Day, the uniformed Americans in Iraq and the 9,000 in Afghanistan will lose a pay increase approved last April of $75 a month in "imminent danger pay" and $150 a month in "family separation allowances."

The Defense Department supports the cuts, saying its budget can't sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities. But the proposed cuts have stirred anger among military families and veterans' groups and even prompted an editorial attack in the Army Times, a weekly newspaper for military personnel and their families that is seldom so outspoken.

Kat_Somm_Faen

We all have to make sacrifices in the war on terrorism!

Man this is loaded with irony!

But a 75 + 150 allowance = 225 $... risking life is not that expensive after all, eh?

I still feel bad about the Army boys... they usually buy into the rhetoric... Consider it was the vote of those people that turned the election with absentee vote by the military personel stationed overseas coming just in the nick of time, eh?

Seems again some people are the priority and others are not - if one looks at the actions and not propaganda!

Vorkosigan

Contractors Don't Show Up to Support Soldiers

• While soldiers can be ordered into combat zones, civilians cannot. So U.S. troops in Iraq have had to suffer through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because contractors hired by the Army for logistics support plain failed to show up. Even mail delivery � turned over to management by civilian contractors -- fell weeks behind.

Other Bush Shit:

Canceling a "modest proposal" to increase the benefit from $6,000 to $12,000 to families of soldiers who die on active duty;

Rolling back recent increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 down to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 down to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones;

Refusing to consider military tax relief to help military homeowners, reservists who travel long distances for training, or parents deployed to combat zones;

Passing pay raises for some higher ranks, but capping raises for the lowest ranks at 2 percent, well below the average raise of 4.1 percent;

Enacting a $1.5 billion cut in the military construction request for 2004

RufusAtticus

This reminds me of Talbot County, GA, which descided, when its transportation grant was cut by the feds or state, to cut the pay of all its bus drivers. Yeap you heard that right, the lowest payed employees got a pay cut. Of course they protested by loading all the kids on the busses and sitting there from an hour after school. I guess its better to have football than keep the people entrusted with your kids safety happy. But I guess the school board isn't in danger; their kids go to private school.

conkermaniac

Makes me wonder why the US didn't just cancel the development of that gamma ray bomb and use it to support our troops. I mean, we've already got enough nukes to screw the entire world.