Put your coffee down. If you’re not ready to be outraged, don’t read any farther. Go on to the next post.
To demonstrate the barbarity and brutality of communist systems, or totalitarian governments, people often point to execution practices used in Stalinist Russia or, currently, in the People’s Republic of China. When a person is executed, usually with a bullet to the head, the family of the executed person is billed for the bullet.
Insult to injury, injury on injury, it’s heartless, the critics rightly say — and evidence of the inhumanity, the complete lack of human emotion in the government.
That’s not what this post is about. Can there be something worse?
U.S. soldiers disabled in Iraq and Afghanistan so that they cannot continue their military service are being billed by the Pentagon for their recruitment bonuses. Marty Griffin at KDKA television in Pittsburgh got the story, about a local Pennsylvania soldier (I have highlighted some parts of the story):
One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.
He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.
Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.
A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.
“I tried to do my best and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now they’re telling me they want their money back,” he explained.
It’s a slap for Fox’s mother, Susan Wardezak, who met with President Bush in Pittsburgh last May. He thanked her for starting Operation Pittsburgh Pride which has sent approximately 4,000 care packages.
He then sent her a letter expressing his concern over her son’s injuries, so she cannot understand the U.S. Government’s apparent lack of concern over injuries to countless U.S. Soldiers and demands that they return their bonuses.
No kidding.
See the video — it’s even more compelling.
Do you agree with me that this is an outrage? Do you agree this should not happen in the United States of America?
Should we act? Wait just a moment.
This is such a clear outrage, that when the news broke, the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Department scrambled to say it is not so bad as it looks. Talking Points Memo Muckraker tracks the story; by now the government says it’s a mistake, and soldiers shouldn’t have to pay back the bonus.
So the official answer is that not as many soldiers were billed as Griffin claimed, and the Pentagon says they excuse the debts if the soldier complains.
What if the soldier doesn’t complain, but just pays?
How could any system do this in the first place?
Can we believe an administration that has lied to get out of accountability for so many other scrapes in this war?
Keep checking for followups.
Also, if you have received one of these letters, or if you know someone who has, please tell us.
Be ready to act by noting these numbers:
- The telephone number for the White House, the main switchboard: 202-456-1414; you can call and leave a message at 202-456-1111.
- The general telephone number at the Capitol, for any member of Congress, is 202-224-3121; you can look up your representatives’ direct numbers at Congress.org
- Rep. Jason Altmire represents the Fourth District of Pennyslvania, where Jordan Fox lives; Altmire will follow-up. Altmire’s number is : 202-225-2565
Watch the news. If this outrage is not corrected, your voice will be important.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Sticking by the error
November 17, 2007Neil Boortz has a bottomless well of venom. Boortz appears to be the chief source of the mean-spirited, cut-from-whole-cloth fables about Hillary Clinton being next to Marx.
Checking to see whether he had run a correction of those errors* (he did not), I found this little spittle of acid in that same post from October 8: Boortz wonders about former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger advising Hillary Clinton’s campaign, citing Berger’s admission that he took documents out of the National Archives as a basis for some conspiracy about a cover-up of Bill Clinton’s actions prior to September 11, 2001.
Berger pled to misdemeanor charges. He had the right to view the documents, especially since many of the documents he was reviewing were his own. NARA staff said he took copies of documents only. He was working to prepare a report to the 9-11 Commission at the time.
Neil, here are the facts: Berger was right about Osama bin Laden, years before you ever thought about it. Berger was the guy who was left standing at the White House door, ready to brief President George W. Bush on the need to continue chasing Osama bin Laden and the threat al Quaeda posed to America when Condoleeza Rice informed him that the Bush administration would not continue the chase. Berger was the guy who first got the news that Bush was letting al Quaeda off the hook.
There is great value in getting advice from people who seem to have an ability to see the future, or at least get the present right. Boortz can’t even bring himself to admit error for a silly quiz. We shouldn’t expect him to admit the larger error: Sandy Berger was right about Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda, and it was a nasty, damaging error for the Bush group to brush him off and ignore his warnings. Now we are involved in a great, perhaps misguided war that could have been avoided had Bush listened to Sandy Berger in January 2001.
It must be painful for Boortz to even imagine such things.
It’s a great idea for Berger to advise Clinton, or anyone else, because George W. Bush didn’t allow it, would not listen. Nearly 10,000 Americans are dead, 100,000 to more than a million Iraqis and Afghanis are dead, the U.S. has a multi-trillion-dollar debt, and the entire planet is a lot less safe because of Bush’s error. Let’s not compound the error.
(Boortz’s radio show is carried on a backwater AM station here in Dallas — oddly on KSL’s old clear channel frequency. I’ve never heard it. Is he this reckless with facts on all things? If the FCC were alive today, such inaccuracies might endanger a license, back when broadcasters had to broadcast in the public interest. Nostalgia is appropriate here. Too bad such broadcasters are not required to be licensed like history teachers; worse that Boortz doesn’t work for accuracy himself.)
* No, I don’t really believe Boortz simply erred; but it’s polite to pretend so, so that he may more gracefully make corrections.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.