Support Troops in Iraq and Shaft Them at Home?

I did not realize that it takes active duty orders of 730 days to qualify for the GI Bill education benefits once the National Guard returns to civilian duty. That seems like an excessively high number of days seeing that active duty in this case is Iraq.

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.

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.

Whether these orders were deliberately written to save money, as some feel, or whether it is the result of an incredible bureaucratic blunder is immaterial. The end result is that these troops were wronged and stories like this one will play havoc with future service recruitment. The moral responsibility is fix it now! The practical responsibility is fix it now!

Write the President and Congress and demand that this wrong be rectified. Writing to them is easy and fast at Congress.org.

Links in this blog:
National Guard Troops Denied Benefits After Longest Deployment Of Iraq War

Contact Congress & the President

Update-Read:
Thin Red Line, The Real Stars