'Nightline' Investigation: Wounded Soldiers Told They Owe Money to Army

By BRIAN ROSS

Jan. 31, 2006 — It was one of the thousands of roadside bombs in Iraq that paralyzed Staff Sgt. Eugene Simpson.

"My first instinct was to jump farther back into the Humvee, you know, for protection," Simpson said. "But in doing that, I opened my back up to all the scrap metal and debris, which hit my spine and severed my spine, paralyzing me."

"...So, the Army said it withheld the paralyzed soldier's pay until it got back the amount he owed — with no advance notice, Simpson said.

"Four months," he said. "I didn't get paid for four months."

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=1562145

(Funny, the Pentagon seems to have no trouble getting checks signed and sent to Halliburton right away. But when it comes to the troops, there's always red tape.)

be for the soldiers who have risked and lost so much.:cry:

shame adults far too much to treat these wounded people like this. With friends like this are enemies really necessary?

Paralyzed and didn`t get paid for four months. Sickening.

This is painful to read.

Oh God help us.

that morning did he? Yep, gotta dock him for lying around in bed. :sarcasm:

-- a humiliating policy of the United States govt. Please don't do this in my name.

Put your life on the line, almost die from your injuries and spend the rest of your life disabled and the army treats you like a deadbeat customer.

And they wonder why they have problems recruiting?

let it rot there.

of the flag-waving support our troops chickenhawks are going to say anything about this outrage.

year of so.

Bush does love the troops.

Now, I can understand keeping track of the books, and making sure that folks get paid the proper amounts. No problem with that at all; in fact, I'm glad the military is checking up on these things. But the hardship to the soldier must be weighed against the amounts we're talking about. From the story:

{snip}

It turns out the Army had mistakenly continued to pay Simpson a combat duty bonus while he was in the hospital.

He had been overpaid thousands of dollars, and the Army wanted the money back.

"By law, he's not entitled to the money," said Col. Richard Shrank, "so he must pay it back."

Shrank said although that is the law, soldiers can apply for debt forgiveness if they believe the debt is a mistake. So far, more than 800 soldiers have done so. More than 600 of those requests have been granted, amounting to more than $600,000.

{snip}

A total of $600,000. Six hundred thousand dollars. You know what our defense budget is? Over $400 billion annually. That's in excess of a billion dollars a day spent on defense. Every day, a billion dollars. Saturdays, Sundays and holidays included. Even Christmas. A billion dollars a day. The total of six hundred thousand dollars is 0.06% of what we spend on defense each day, or what the defense budget spends in about 52 seconds.

I mean can't they pay them a bonus for their injuries sustained in combat while their recovering, it seems to only make sense. I mean if you got severely injured on your first day of combat duty, you would hardly get any bonus at all, whereas someone who lucked out and did combat duty for a months with no injury would get a nice bonus, since the bonus is for the risk of injury it only makes sense. I think Kennedy and Rockefeller have proposed such a bill.

This is far, far from being the first such time I have read of the Army treating its wounded or discharged soldiers this disgracefully. And I certainly never heard of it happening, excpet by major SNAFU, before ** forces occupied the WH.

You ever heare of Warren G. Harding? His hand-picked person who ran the Veterans program stole huge amounts of money, and left America's military veterans starving and dying. Reportedly, when Harding found out about it, he tried to strangle the guy in the Red Room of the White House. The bastard went to trial, and got a fine of $100,000...about a tenth of a percent of what he stole from the vets and the people.

You also might want to look up the case of the "Bonus Marchers" of Herbert Hoover.

a shanty town type protest about not receiving promised benefits? If I recall it was WWI vets - were those the Bonus Marchers to which you refer?

And yes, I've heard of the Bonus Army. They were asking for their bonuses to be paid *early*, IIRC, on account of the Depression. ** doesn't have the excuse of a Depresion, since he insists the economy is just dandy.

The freepers will fix this problem...they'll just slap another yellow ribbon magnet on the back of their gas guzzlers, and that'll take care of supporting the troops. :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: