Christmas Vacation, Government Style...

Here's something which has boiled and built up pressure and now I'm blowing my top...

Locally there is a National Guard group, a Transportation Unit which was recently mobilized for duty in Iraq. None of these 55 guys/gals had ever deployed in support of anything beyond training. Well they get their orders in August and departed in the middle of October for four months of Convoy Training in Arizona after which they will spend 12 months in Iraq.

Here's the crappy deal. The local business's in town start a fund rasing/donation drive to pay their tickets to come home for the two weeks around Christmas and New year. They needed enough to charter a 'friggin' plane from Phoenix, Arizona to Rapid City, South Dakota. Well guess what, they end up with more than enough cash to pull this off. Just the 55 local South Dakotaians get to go home. The other National Guard units are left behind in the barracks being used for security duty and additional individual training, tough luck I guess.

Here we go I'm Steamed, over the top.. BOIL, BOIL, BOIL... I discovered today that TRI-WEST, (the military retirement medical insurance provider who we pay $400 yearly for crappy coverage) donated $35K to the group which comes out to roughly $650 (GIVEN) to each soldier. Christmas Cash which they can use to celebrate in grand fashion for the Holidays. These are Americas 'Front Line' Warriors and deserve it I hear from Joe Tacopino, the local TRI-WEST director. Not only that they only had to pay for the plane fuel with the donations they received which left another chunk of undisclosed money. Not sure where that went yet... I wonder how much our insurance dues will rise because of this?

Think about ALL the others who have spent Christmas after Christmas away from home. I counted and recall I spent seven away during my 20-plus years in the service. When I was busted up in Saudi Arabi and laying in Walter Reed Hospital, my wife had to pay her own plane fare there and back to see me when I arrived on a medivac flt from Kuwait. We were supposed to be reimbursed, but that was a fruit way out of reach, needless to say it never happened and I lost 13 days of leave because I was on 'Convalescent Leave with a broken back' when the fiscal year ticked over, I had over 60 days saved up and lost the excess... These 55 troops had NO LEAVE saved up...

Just my ranting, nothing to worry about
Ben