Nickle-and-Diming the Troops

[thedrifter]

01-24-2005

Nickle-and-Diming the Troops





By David H. Hackworth



Maybe you better sit down and pop a Xanax before reading any further, because what I’m about to tell you should seriously short you out: not only is the average soldier’s salary barely life-sustaining, the combat pay of the average grunt in Afghanistan and Iraq is only $7.50 a day or a measly $225 a month. And to make matters worse, the folks bringing up the rear – hundreds of miles from the horror show – are pulling down the same combat pay as our heroes who daily lay their lives on the line.



America was far more generous to her soldiers during World War II, when combat pay on the battle fields of Europe and Asia was 30 cents a day or about ten bucks a month. Taking the rate of inflation into account, our draftee Army that whacked the Japanese and Germans received three times the hazardous duty pay we’re currently paying our professional Army.



Since the invention of the spear and shield, grunts have always been at the bottom of the pecking order and always gotten the shaft. The reason for this is that – with rare exceptions, when caring leaders make a point of insuring their fighters are treated appropriately – grunts inevitably receive the lowest priority.



Grunts not only have no union to protect them, they rarely have committed patrons concerned about their welfare. This is especially – and tragically – true today, with an all-volunteer defense force and with few Beltway politicians who’ve worn a uniform or who have kids on the killing fields. Nowadays soldiers are considered pros who signed up to fight for our country, so they should shut up, suck it up and do what they’re being underpaid to do.



When I discussed this national shame with Lt. Col. Roger Charles, USMC (Ret.) and President of Soldiers For The Truth, he told me “Hack, you’ve only got it half right.”



Then he gave me the hot skinny that his organization has been studying what’s really going down with Imminent Danger Pay (IDP) in order to inform the American public and the U.S. Congress and hopefully cause change. “Combat pay is a misnomer. Today there’s no such thing as combat pay if you’re talking about extra pay that goes to those who actually trade rounds with the bad guys. Military personnel who serve in cushy posts hundreds of miles from Afghanistan and Iraq earn the same amount as those who kick in doors in Fallujah or drive fuel trucks through RPG Alley and IED Boulevard between Mosul and Baghdad.”



So I made a few phone calls. And sure enough, the guys living the good life in places like Kuwait and Qatar – for example that bronzed, handsome lifeguard saving lives at the base pool – get the same $7.50 a day as our heroes facing the bear on the mean streets of Iraq and in the treacherous mountains of Afghanistan.



A soldier’s father reports that his son and his buddies – just back from Afghanistan – became very bitter when they went on R&R in Qatar and talked to Joes and Jills inside a fortress-like base so safe that soldiers are not authorized to carry individual weapons. And these lucky stiffs living in a relative paradise were also drawing combat pay!



Another loophole creates an even more gross inequity: senior officers – read generals and colonels – regularly fly into Afghanistan and Iraq on monthly 48-hour useless VIP visits in order to both collect their combat pay for the entire month and rack up tax breaks that can run almost seven grand a month. Not bad double-headers for Perfumed Princes who can barely tell a foxhole from a bidet.



“The problem of our paying an equitable combat pay is the Pentagon’s bottom line,” says DefenseWatch Editor Ed Offley (SFTT.ORG). “Two years ago the ink hadn’t dried on the last Imminent Danger Pay increase when the Pentagon bean-counters were hustling to cut it.”



There’s more to supporting the troops than slapping a bumper sticker on the back of your wheels or occasionally flying Old Glory and feeling good about vowing to bring freedom to the world. Trust me, making sure our valiant grunts get at least the equivalent of what the Greatest Generation received during the Big War would be far more meaningful.



Col. David H. Hackworth (USA Ret.) is SFTT.org co-founder and Senior Military Columnist for DefenseWatch magazine. For information on his many books, go to his home page at Hackworth.com, where you can sign in for his free weekly Defending America. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. His newest book is “Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts.” © 2005 David H. Hackworth. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Special DoD Pay



Editor's Note: The following DoD Pay Chart for various specialized military pay shows that soldiers serving in combat (Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger Pay) earn significantly less than their counterparts in other specialized fields such as diving, recruiting and select health professions.



http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Defensewatch%20Special.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=3&rnd=426.37928701774996

Ellie

[Jarhed]

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...

[thedrifter]

01-24-2005

A Campaign for Fairness for the Troops



By Roger Charles



As you, the readers, of DefenseWatch, and supporters of SFTT are all too aware, it’s a “target-rich environment” when it comes to where to focus our attention and efforts on issues of concern to the troops.



But lately, one issue has surfaced that is just so blatantly unfair to those who fight and who too often bleed and die on our country’s designated battlefields, that SFTT has decided to make an all-out assault to educate and inform our fellow citizens about this injustice.



The issue is what is commonly (and erroneously) referred to as “Combat Pay.”



As you will learn in Hack’s latest column leading this Special Report, currently there is no such thing as “Combat Pay.” There is something called Imminent Danger Pay – IDP. In articles posted today on DefenseWatch, and in follow-up pieces in the days ahead, SFTT will prevent additional details.



Here’s the key issue from our perspective: If you’ve been thinking that all those getting IDP are somehow exposed to actual combat, well, you’re wrong – flat wrong.



Let’s be clear: This is not an “infantry versus others” issue!



It’s a case of those most at risk not being compensated for that higher risk at a higher financial level than those who are at substantially less risk.



Here’s a partial list of just some of the “non-combat” support personnel from all the services who daily risk life and limb and should be paid higher imminent danger pay at a level that reflects the demonstrated higher risk they endure:

the Army Spec. 4 driving a fuel truck through RPG Alley and IED Boulevard between Mosul and Baghdad;
the Navy 3d Class Petty Officer corpsman serving with a frontline Marine grunt platoon in Fallujah;
the Air Force Staff Sergeant tactical air controller serving with an Army SF detachment in eastern Afghanistan;
the Marine Lance Corporal MP escorting a convoy to an outpost in Ramadi.
the Army MI Sergeant who speaks Arabic and is serving as a translator for a grunt company on a sweep in Samarra.
the Coast Guardsman on a small boat patrolling the main shipping channel in the Shatt Al Arab.

All these stout-hearted Americans are doing their duty – dirty, dangerous and demanding duty – and they do not man the ramparts of freedom for the pay! (SFTT is not endorsing a mercenary military, so don’t accuse us of trying to create a modern corps of Hessian grenadiers!)



Two related questions will almost certainly arise: One, how much should the IDP be increased? Two, where will the money come from?



SFTT’s answers are:



First, the amount of IDP should be determined based on a study of casualty data to date. The Pentagon knows full well which duty assignments, in which units and in which areas, produce casualties. This same data will also show which ones do not. There should be a minimum level of IDP for everyone at risk in the theater of operations. SFTT is not calling for any deployed troops payments to be cut.



Second, our government can quickly allocate large sums for worthy causes, as it did in pledging $350 million to fund disaster relief for deserving tsunami victims. Our soldiers serving in positions of high risk deserve similar support.



Once we became aware of this blatant unfairness, SFTT could not sit silent. If you feel as we do, that this outrageous inequity in IDP should be corrected, we hope you will register your outrage through your elected officials and through your local media. See our Intel Center request below for specific information we seek on IDP equity issues as well as alleged abuses of the IDP system. We also encourage your emailed comments to our Feedback section at defeedback@yahoo.com.



What should the message be to those Pentagon and congressional leaders who have the power to set things right? That the blanket, geographically-based assignment of qualifications for IDP may be great for the bean-counters in the Pentagon and the Congress, but it is an affront to the nearly 1,400 men and women who have died, to the thousands who have been maimed and crippled for life, and to those serving today who are being treated in such an indefensible and unfair manner.



Bureaucratic indifference and administrative convenience should not be allowed to determine the proper levels of IDP.



The United States of America can, and should, do better. It's a simple matter of fairness.



Roger Charles is President of SFTT. Please email comments on this Special Report to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.

Ellie

[TRLewis]

is that the same david hackworth who was a battalion commander in vietnam?

[thedrifter]

01-27-2005

Not Enough Money, Too Many Recipients



By Ed Offley



One of the things that I love about the Pentagon is the response when you ask a question on a subject that Defense Department officials have no interest in discussing. There are actually two responses: Either a stolid, resounding silence on the line, or the telephonic circle jerk the PAOs organize to send you from Tinker to Evers to Chance (DoD to the military service HQs and back to yet another disinterested DoD flack) without ever getting a response.



This week’s subject is the arbitrary and stingy amount of “Imminent Danger Pay” (IDP) that the Defense Department pays out to men and women in uniform serving in combat, and the arbitrary and obsolete mechanism by which the Pentagon declares eligibility for that income.



A DefenseWatch review of the existing IDP system clearly shows that this well-intentioned program is in need of serious overhaul.



This is the system that is in effect today, according to DoD:



“A member of a uniformed service may be paid special pay at the rate of $225 for any month in which he was entitled to basic pay and in which he:



* Was subject to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines;



* Was on duty in an area in which he was in imminent danger of being exposed to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines and in which, during the period he was on duty in that area, other members of the uniformed services were subject to hostile fire or explosion of hostile mines;



* Was killed, injured, or wounded by hostile fire, explosion of a hostile mine, or any other hostile action; or



* Was on duty in a foreign area in which he was subject to the threat of physical harm or imminent danger on the basis of civil insurrection, civil war, terrorism, or wartime conditions.



“Reserve members are also eligible for Hostile Fire and Imminent Danger Pay.”



(As my colleague, Nathaniel R. Helms points out in an accompanying article in this *DefenseWatch Special Report, “Junkets Corrupt ‘Danger Pay’ System,” the eligibility provisions constitute a standing invitation for fraud and abuse, particularly from high-ranking officers with the clout to wangle short-term travel orders and military transportation to ferry them from their posh headquarters to the so-called hostile zone.)



(There is also a tax-free income eligibility for service personnel serving in hostile-fire zones that is computed on the basis of Base Pay but limited by statute to not more than the highest rate of pay an E-9, which in 2004 was a maximum of $6,315.90 per month. That benefit is not the subject of this column.)



How much is $225 per month in IDP really worth? Well, you can calculate it as $7.50 per day, a laughable amount to reward our grunts racing down the IED-laden streets of Balad or Mosul, or humping the mountains of Afghanistan. But if you review the military’s own record, the amount is even stingier than the daily average suggests.



Consider: An Army private in 1942 received a base salary of $50 per month. Overseas duty kicked in another 20 percent, or $10, for a total of $60. Elite combat troops such as the airborne infantry earned yet another $50 in jump pay. So an enlisted trooper with Easy Co., 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, earned an extra $60 each month during his combat service in Normandy, Holland, Bastogne and the invasion of Germany.



In 2003 dollars (the 1942 amount adjusted for inflation), that paratrooper received an extra $716.60 per month above his base salary – nearly three times what his grandson or daughter is getting in actual IDP for service in Iraq or Afghanistan today.



Of course, the problem of paying our troops a real IDP rather than the insufficient $225 stipend is the overall bottom line, as DoD officials confirmed two years ago. Four months after hiking IDP from $150 to $225 per month (and increasing a separate family separation benefit from $100 to $250) in April 2003, the DoD bean-counters revealed they wanted to let the enhanced stipends expire and revert to the lower levels when the 2004 fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2003.



Why? Pentagon officials protested that the extra $225 monthly was costing DoD about $25 million more a month, or $300 million for a full year. So rather than trim production of a single F/A-22 Raptor – whose unofficial unit cost hovers at the $300 million mark – the Pentagon opted to give a slap in the face to some 148,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq and their 9,000 counterparts in Afghanistan at that time.



At that juncture, a rare political firestorm erupted in Congress – not over the fate of some treasured pork-barrel defense program or cherished (but obsolete) military base in a powerful solon’s district – but rather, out of concern for the welfare of the troops doing the heavy lifting. The Pentagon quickly backed down, leaving the current IDP system in place.



This is a pity, because news accounts from that flareup reveal that some DoD officials were indeed interested in reforming the system to get a larger amount of IDP into the hands of the smaller number of troops who actually deserve it. On Aug. 14, 2003, Lawrence Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said that the Pentagon wanted to focus on compensating those facing the most danger. “Things fluctuate,” Di Rita told reporters. “But the philosophy is target it where it’s needed the most. It’s clearly needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.”



The problem that since the 2003 controversy, neither Congress nor the Pentagon has seemed interested in confronting the real culprit: the three key aspects of the IDP system that guarantee its costs will be prohibitive (and I do not include the fact that we still have over 135,000 troops in Iraq and another 18,000 in Afghanistan today – that’s the coast of a multiple-front war, folks). The problems are:



Arbitrary Geographic eligibility: The Pentagon defines who is eligible to receive IDP by creating a “hostile fire” zone usually defined by a country’s borders or – if ocean areas are involved – by an artificial Latitude-Longitude operating area designation for Navy warship or combat aircraft operations.



In many cases this is appropriate. Given the lethality and seamless presence of the insurgency in Iraq, for example, it would be hard to identify anyone in uniform serving there that doesn’t merit IDP. But a case could also be made that support personnel in many countries adjoining Iraq, such as Bahrain and Qatar, do not.



Short-term qualification*: In order to receive IDP pay and the tax-free base pay for any month, the individual only has to serve in the designated hostile-fire zone for one day. As DefenseWatch has reported in the past, this is a recipe for abuse of the system, especially by senior officers serving out of the area (see “The Grunts Patrol, the Generals Junket,” Guest Column, DefenseWatch, Sept. 30, 2003 and “Sailing to the ‘Golden Circle’ ”, Ed Offley, DefenseWatch, Feb. 26, 2004).



Once hostile, almost forever hostile: The Defense Department posts on its website an informative chart listing current and former hostile fire zones (see “Imminent Danger Pay – Who Gets It,” by Jim Garamone, Armed Forces Press Service, for the complete chart). It makes for fascinating reading, especially when pointing out that Sigonella NAS in Italy, the African nation of Burundi, all of Egypt, Souda Bay in Crete, and Zaire are just as hazardous to your health (and tax-free for your 1040 forms) as Iraq and Afghanistan.



We at DefenseWatch believe that the amount of IDP money being issued to the troops is grossly insufficient, and at the same time far too many people are receiving it who do not really deserve it, thanks to a system that has endured as a result of bureaucratic sloth rather than from any careful study or calculation.



In the days and weeks ahead, we hope to call attention to the inequities and systemic abuses that have riddled the IDP system, and begin a dialogue on how true reforms can both save the taxpayers from being ripped off while providing the guys and gals truly in harm’s way with a meaningful compensation for that danger.



Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com. © 2005 Ed Offley.

Not Enough Money, Too Many Recipients">

Ellie

[thedrifter]

01-27-2005

Junkets Corrupt ‘Danger Pay’ System



By Nathaniel R. Helms



Our military men and women manning the battle lines in far-flung outposts around the globe get shot at for a tax break on their salaries and an extra $225 a month for “Imminent Danger Pay” (IDP), assuming that they are serving in areas DoD has specifically designated for that paltry bonus.



Their curiosity is understandable. Men and women in combat are a cynical, questioning breed. Death and injury are always tugging at their elbows. In Iraq, they can’t even go to lunch on a reputedly secure base without getting killed. Driving down the road is tantamount to inviting attack, and going to bed with one ear cocked for the diabolical whooshing sound of incoming rockets makes for fitful sleep. It is hard to live day in and day out wherever they are stationed knowing that the indigenous people they live among may try to kill them at any minute. They understandably resent people that are getting paid far more than they are for risking far less. They especially resent the beatific peacocks that flit in and out of combat zones splendidly attired and armed to the teeth with weapons the grunts wish they had.



Meanwhile, they are wondering out loud: Why do the brass hats arrive en masse like unwanted relatives at the end of each month for several days of hasty conferences before jetting back off into the blue? Apparently, however, they are the only ones wondering.



The answer to the question can be found in the first paragraph: Under the Pentagon’s patchwork quilt of policies defining eligibility for imminent danger pay (IDP), the Ranger patrolling the Afghani outback for four weeks and the two-star general jetting into Baghdad’s “Green Zone” for a quickie overnight stay are equally eligible for the same bonus: a month’s tax-free income and the $225 cash bonus.



And considering the Pentagon’s pyramidal pay scale, the junketing general actually benefits far more. Senior officers more accustomed to the whir and whine of computers than the crump of mortars can earn tax-free more than $6,600 a month for entering a combat zone for a day. Their enlisted counterpart, say an E-4 with four years of service who is stuck in Balad without any respite until his 12-month (and extendable) tour is over, will enjoy the tax-free benefit on only a monthly salary of $1,877.70 a month plus the $225 imminent danger pay and whatever allowances he or she is entitled to for raising the family back home.



The 2004 National Defense Authorization Act provides for both the imminent danger pay and tax-free income eligibility for both our specialist and the perfumed princes. The NDAA says that a senior officer serving in a combat zone can earn up to $6,315.90 tax-free a month, the equivalent to the highest monthly enlisted pay available, plus the imminent danger pay of $225 per month. Combat zones and the applicable dates are determined by presidential Executive Order, another arbitrary and often capricious designation.



Currently, service members assigned to the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman, part of the Arabian Sea (north of 10o N latitude and west of 68o E longitude), Gulf of Aden, total land areas of Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan are in a designated combat zone. The Kosovo Area, by Executive Order No. 13119 and Public Law 106-21, including air space above, were designated as a combat zone and qualified hazardous duty area beginning March 24, 1999, include the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia/Montenegro), Albania, the Adriatic Sea, and the Ionian Sea north of the 39th parallel including all of the airspace in connection with the Kosovo operation.


Congress has generously increased the tax-free income amount each year since 2002, when a senior officer could earn $5,532.90 plus the then-lower $150 monthly stipend for imminent danger pay. The Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2003 (P.L. 108-11) raised the imminent danger pay to $225 per month through September 2003. Following a brief political flap in Congress when it appeared the Bush administration would let the $225 IDP revert to $150 per month, Congress extended the payment again for the 2004 and 2005 fiscal years. These amounts are excluded from gross income are not subject to federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service.



As the men and women of the U.S. armed services enter their fourth year of post-9/11 combat operations, DefenseWatch has undertaken to ask a fundamental two-part question concerning how we compensate them for service in the increasingly lethal back-alleys of the world.



First, is the IDP system itself adequately compensating those troops who are actually serving in harm’s way, as opposed to the legion of clerks and general officer flunkies toiling in air-conditioned comfort on the periphery? And second, how is the Pentagon acting to prevent abuses in the system?



Well, a careful review of news articles, government reports and other documents by DefenseWatch reveals that other than that two-week mini-controversy over the 2003 IDP extension, neither Congress nor the Bush administration (and through its OSD leadership, the Pentagon and military services) have shown the least interest in the IDP system.



Several Congressman and Senators quarried by DefenseWatch said it wasn’t their job to keep track of how the military spends the billions of dollars in “Imminent Danger Pay” and tax-free income eligibility.



The issue of controlling abuse of the IDP system by junketing generals – the focus of this article – provoked the same tepid non-responses.



Michigan Sen. Carl Levin’s spokesperson said it was impossible for the highest-ranking Democrat on the Armed Forces Committee to keep track of the spending for military personnel moving about the presidentially-defined danger zones. That is a job for the uniformed services, Levin’s spokesperson said. Indiana Rep. Steve Buyer, a decorated Army Reserve colonel with combat experience as an armor officer in Operation Desert Storm, was equally uninterested, saying through a spokesman that said it wasn’t his job to keep track of such things. Nor was New York Rep. John M. McHugh, a House Armed Services Committee member whose panel actually has the oversight authority for DoD spending in danger zones spread from Bosnia to Afghanistan. His office did not respond to repeated queries.



Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of the Pentagon an OSD spokesperson expressed confusion over the inquiry. Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke said, “OSD develops the policy and the service implements it.” She was unable to provide the policy itself when asked, and directed DefenseWatch to the individual services. Spokespersons for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps in turn directed inquiries back to DoD.



Only the U.S. Coast Guard, which has a clear and unequivocal policy, and the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), the multi-service combatant command presiding over our campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, were able to offer a comprehensive answer to the question of, “What is the policy on IDP and short-term visits to the AORs?”



Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Carter, the Coast Guard’s Chief of Media Relations, said: “We do not have a policy which prohibits senior officer movements, nor do we feel that we need one. Coast Guard policy and practice is that only required personnel, including operational commanders, will deploy to combat zones or hazardous duty areas. We are thankful that the administration and Congress have recognized the sacrifices of Coast Guardsmen who serve in these areas with financial incentives, and we are not aware of any senior Coast Guard personnel traveling into these areas in such a fashion that it could be viewed as abusive.”



Navy Cmdr. Nick Balice, CENTCOM’s Media Relations Chief, offered the following explanation of the command’s policy for visiting firemen:



“CENTCOM periodically puts out guidance concerning specific travel requirements in the CENTCOM AOR. That guidance directly addresses the issue of ‘cross month travel’ [the practice of arriving in a combat zone at the end of one month and leaving after the beginning of the next.] Following is the paragraph that specifically addresses this point:”



“Cross Month Travel: Travel requests for U.S. military that encompass two months (i.e. 30 Sept. to 3 Oct.) will not be approved without extremely compelling justification. All military personnel (depending on the mission, etc.) are not required to submit a clearance request because it is assumed (annotated in the Foreign Clearance Guide). However, local commanders also have a responsibility to ensure abuses do not occur.”



Other than that, CENTCOM does not place restriction upon travel to and from its area of responsibility. Doing so could hinder “the operational readiness of our commanders,” Balice said.



So what does this all mean? Perhaps someone should ask the star-spangled cast of perpetrators and the gilded commanders waiting for them when they arrive. According to the many observers who have written DefenseWatch in recent months, visiting firemen arrive every day at hot spots around the world. They arrive in desperately needed transport aircraft for an air-conditioned ride to some general’s office in a brand-new armored Humvee glistening with bullet-proof glass and protected by a retinue of appropriately garbed combat-ready staff officers, our readers complain.



continue..........

[thedrifter]

Two egregious examples involve the once-dangerous U.S. military operation in the Balkans, which may have faded from the front pages and network newscasts but still constitute a combat zone for the purposes of IDP and tax-free income.



Writing in a guest column (“The Grunts Patrol, the Generals Junket,” DefenseWatch, Sept. 30, 2003), an Airman serving with the KFOR mission in Kosovo described with contempt the regular monthly invasion of NATO staffers and other staff geeks seeking IDP and a tax-free income. He wrote:



“What I am talking about here, are the frequent interlopers from staff positions (O-4s through O-10s) throughout the military who Blackhawk into Bondsteel to eat lunch, shake a hand or two, and it’s wheels up by sundown – all the while collecting the same hostile fire pay as one of us who spends the entire month here. As if this were not enough of a slap in the face, they also get the month’s tax-free status. Of course, all of their pay isn’t tax free (only that portion up to what the Sergeant Major of the Army makes) but it is a lot more than any of the soldiers who put it on the line make – something up to $5,000 of their salary will be tax free for less than a day’s work.”



“One of the preferred tricks is to come on the 31st of the month and leave on the 1st of the next month, thus gaining two months of benefits for two days.”



That glaring loophole is big enough to drive an aircraft carrier through, as my colleague Ed Offley pointed out in a column last year describing Congress’ decision in the spring of 2003 to make all service personnel who participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom eligible for IDP and the tax-free benefit (“Sailing to the ‘Golden Circle’ ”, DefenseWatch, Feb. 26, 2004):



“The problem confronting Navy leaders was that the legislation did not cover naval crews serving in the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Truman and Theodore Roosevelt strike groups. The unspoken premise was that while their work was arduous and important, the ship’s crews were no more exposed to danger – combat aircrews aside – than if they were engaged in routine training off the Virginia Capes. But rather than lobby for a change in the law, the Navy essentially went looking for a loophole large enough to drive a Nimitz-class carrier through. … ”



The sea service found a beaut of a loophole, Offley wrote, when they realized a tiny corner of the northeastern Mediterranean Sea north of the 39th Parallel “was still legally defined as an operating area [in the Kosovo AOR] where military personnel were eligible for the war zone bonuses and tax relief.” Offley added:



“Never mind that combat ended in Kosovo four years ago. Never mind the ongoing hunt for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, or even the global maritime crackdown on international smugglers itching to sell WMD materials to the highest bidder. Make your course 000 and full steam ahead for the 39th Parallel! Once a month … the two carriers would break off whatever they were doing and sprint north to enter the Kosovo imminent danger zone. Sailors called it for what it was: ‘running for the money.’ They called the 39th Parallel ‘the golden circle.’ ”



Then a few weeks ago, a staff officer at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany alerted DefenseWatch to another glaring example of the alleged abuse, the diversion of scarce aerial assets to take care of the junketing generals. He was angry because a senior Air Force general was frequently flying to Africa using a K-135 refueling tanker at the cost of providing theater support to thirsty planes on operational missions. The big tanker was selected because it is large enough to hold the general’s band as well as having long range, making it ideal for the general’s goodwill missions (“Flying the General’s Band,” DefenseWatch, Dec. 28, 2004):



“Gen. Robert H. ‘Doc’ Fogelsong has taken several trips to different African nations using a KC-135,” the officer reported. “We don’t have many of them that we can use to task air refueling missions with within our theater, so each one we lose for something like this means we normally cancel real missions. They used the guise of global war on terror (GWOT) funding to pay for it. Eventually, they got EUCOM to send a TASKORD to basically tell USAFE to do these missions to make them “legal.” But the fact remains that the only reason a KC-135 is needed is for the band and so they don’t have to make as many stops.”



Another reader, responding to Col. David H. Hackworth’s column on generals visiting Iraq (“Calling Gen. Abizaid,” *DefenseWatch, Nov. 29, 2004), said, “The worst crap was when Central Command would schedule a C-130, then find another ride for their VIP and not tell anyone. They wouldn’t cancel the C-130 mission because if their shady deal fell through, they’d have the C-130 as backup. They would then jet off on their alternate ride and not show up for the C-130. Since it takes about a day to get the cargo planned for the C-130 and also to get the crew in crew-rest prior to the mission, there was nothing we could do with the aircraft. It just sat on the strip ... a wasted asset! This kind of fraud, waste and abuse has been common for a very long time.”



A third reader, responding to the same Hackworth column, said, “Probably all of us in military aviation as well as in other areas of military transportation have witnessed this kind of BS.”



If DoD won’t address and correct the systemic abuse of the IDP system demonstrated by these reported incidents, Congress should.



Contributing Editor Nathaniel R. “Nat” Helms is a Vietnam veteran, former police officer, long-time journalist and war correspondent living in Missouri. He is the author of two books, Numba One – Numba Ten and Journey Into Madness: A Hitchhiker’s Account of the Bosnian Civil War, both available at www.ebooks-online.com. He can be reached at natshouse1@charter.net. Send Feedback responses to* dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Junkets Corrupt ‘Danger Pay’ System">

Ellie

[kentmitchell]

Yes, that is the same Hackworth.
Charles is a new addition and for what it's worth, he's a Marine and that should carry some weight.
Notice that Hackworth *****ed but offered no solution.
Charles put up a plan. That's different for that website.

[rlbhersh]

I remember receiving 65.00 a month combat pay in Vietnam..Everyone there got the same also regardless if they were a Marine at the DMZ or an Air Force drinking cold sodas in Saigon..