SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Pentagon recently asked nearly 10,000 soldiers to repay excessive bonuses they were given for re-enlisting in the California National Guard between 2007 and 2009 amid the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress was notified of the problem in 2014, but representatives failed to pass a provision that would allow the Defense Secretary to waive the repayments.
Some representatives claim that the California National Guard failed to convey the scale of the repayments issue or make it a congressional priority. An outraged and bipartisan group of legislators have called for quick action and full forgiveness of the overpayments (estimated to be around $70 million). On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and President Obama have promised to resolve the issue, even as officials acknowledge that the issue may extend to other states:
President Obama has told the Defense Department to expedite its review of nearly 10,000 California National Guard soldiers who have been ordered to repay enlistment bonuses improperly given a decade ago, but he is not backing growing calls for Congress to waive the debts, the White House said Tuesday. The comments by White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggest the administration is running into legal and policy roadblocks as it struggles to handle a public relations headache for the Pentagon, the National Guard and members of Congress who were caught off guard by the scope of the problem.
[...] California Guard officials say they informed California lawmakers about the scale of the debts in 2014, telling them in a list of legislative priorities sent to each House office and the House Armed Services Committee that "thousands of soldiers have inadvertently incurred debt, through no fault of their own because of faulty Army recruiting or accounting practices."
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday October 28 2016, @04:01AM
Bush was making oblique references to invasion before he was even elected. He said a number of things off hand that only made sense if invasion was a foregone conclusion (Honestly, I don't remember exact details but that was the impression I got at the time).
But yeah, as I said, it'll never happen. Too many people still in power would be dragged down with the administration, not to mention companies that are too big to fail.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 31 2016, @05:32AM
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade...if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."
and
According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush's beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House - ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."
Bush's circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: "They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches."