Dumb, Continued

The California National Guard is demanding repayment of enlistment bonuses given to soldiers a decade ago.  The Guard says an audit discovered that many soldiers had been over compensated.  If that weren’t embarrassment enough, the soldiers had served on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and are now being told to give the money back. The lame excuse from the Guard is that it must recoup the dollars under the law.  It is illegal to absolve the soldiers’ debts.  If the Guard had been doing its job 10 years ago, none of this would have happened in the first place.  The error of its incompetence is being taken out on the backs of soldiers it recruited.  There are better ways to handle it.  For one, it could have sent up a trial balloon.  “We might have to collect bonuses from soldiers unless Congress absolves us from the current law.”  That alone might have done it.  Instead, it followed the law narrow-mindedly and put itself in a dumb position.