Supporting the troops .. yeah .. right

The 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard recently ended a 22-month tour of duty in Iraq, the longest deployment of any ground-combat unit in the Armed Forces. Many of its members returned home, looking forward to using education benefits under the GI bill.

For example, John Hobot, a platoon leader, said, "I would assume, and I would hope, that when I get back from a deployment of 22 months, my senior leadership in Washington, the leadership that extended us in the first place, would take care of us once we got home."

It's not working that way. The Guard troops have been told that in order to be eligible for the education benefits they expect, they had to serve 730 days in Iraq. They served 729.

Via Talking Points Memo and Balloon Juice comes this bit of stupidity.

The worst part about it in my mind is that someone thought that they were being very clever and saving a lot of money. I count beans for a living and I know that some of the things that I tell management will lead to folks losing jobs from time to time but holy shit this is a cold-hearted thing to do.

Wrong Damned Answer

I understand that it will take some finite amount of time to safely remove troops from Iraq once the decision is made to do so but let me be so bold as to say that I think it is possible to do it in less than 4 years.

"I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation's first primary state.

"It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

"I cannot make that commitment," said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

I expected nothing more of Obama and Clinton but Edwards really disappointed me with those answers. This means that this little excursion into Iraq will have gone on for at minimum 10 years if any of these people get into office.

Chris Dodd is looking better and better to me (not that he cares because I cannot legally vote) so maybe it is time to sit down with all the candidates platforms and figure some stuff out.