Those dirty ground pounders are stealing money from my fellow squids and the fly boys for their ground surge in Iraq. Now it seems that these branches of the military have had to cut back on routine maintenance and other "frills" like training in order to pay for the Army.

OK, so I'm joking above, but this is a serious situation.

This was just passed along to me from Chris Short of Conservative Thinking who happens to be a fly boy.

Military.com

The Air Force’s top officer said Wednesday that if nearly $1 billion in personnel funds taken from the service to pay for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t restored by the end of the summer, Airmen and civilian employees might not get their pay.

Due to a congressional delay in approving a wartime supplemental funding bill this year, the Pentagon pulled about $880 million from the Air Force’s personnel accounts to make up for a shortfall it warned lawmakers would come in mid-April.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael “Buzz” Moseley said at a breakfast meeting with reporters today that the money is coming out of the military personnel account earmarked for the last four months of the year.

“Somebody’s going to have to pay us back,” Moseley said. “You have to pay people every day when they come to work.”

“A: it’s the right thing to do, and B: it’s kind of the law,” he added.

...

The Army also requested that about $1.6 billion be diverted from the Air Force and Navy personnel accounts to help put the wartime funding tab in the black.

Thanks for being a bunch of dickheads Democrats in making our military suffer so you could show that President Bush wouldn't sign a deadline bill that you knew he wouldn't.

What a bunch of assholes.