Stars and Stripes reports Kosovo troops relieved they will keep danger pay.
Several area newspapers are recognizing Walz's work to maintain combat status for the Kosovo mission. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader, which covers southwestern Minnesota news, reports Lawmakers credited with helping preserve pay for Kosovo veterans.
The Rochester Post Bulletin reports that Walz applauds Pentagon's reversal on pay issue. An Iowa National Guard master sargeant who served in Kosovo says of conditions inthe Balkans nation:
Master Sgt. Duff McFadden of the Iowa Army National Guard, who returned from Kosovo in 2006, said the area remains dangerous, with occasional shootings, bombings and many mines still buried in fields.
"While it's mostly peaceful, there's still an underlying tension," McFadden said. He said troops get an extra $225 per month in imminent-danger pay, and their earnings while they are deployed to a combat zone are not taxed by the federal government. Soldiers also receive government-paid flights home for leave.
"It's a hardship on the families," McFadden said. "You are gone for a year, some people in certain jobs, they are looking at a big drop in pay depending on what they do."
A Mankato Free Press editorial gives thumbs up to Walz's work on Kosovo pay:
To Congressman Tim Walz of Mankato and the other 17 members of Congress who pressured the secretary of defense to pay combat-level pay to troops being deployed to Kosovo.
More than 400 members of a Mankato-based battalion of the Minnesota Army National Guard will be among the 1,700 troops being sent there as part of NATO peacekeeping operations. When their deployment was announced last month, it appeared the military might cut pay and benefits because the mission would be classified as “a noncombat mission.”
But the government in Kosovo remains unstable and the area, from the accounts of military personnel, remains dangerous with shootings, bombings and buried mines. It should be considered the dangerous mission that it is, with the compensation to match.
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