Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

No way to thank troops

Injured soldiers are being harassed for debts they may not owe by collection agencies that have been hired by the military.

Reservist Christopher Vorisek of Ocala spent months in the Iraqi desert searching for mass graves to help build the war-crimes case against Saddam Hussein. His mission accomplished early last year, he ended his 10-year Army career and returned home to a law enforcement job. Rather than thanking Vorisek for his service, however, the military hired a collection agency to hound him for $1,687 in excess pay, which Vorisek thought was for unused leave.

If Vorisek were the only soldier in that predicament, it might be dismissed as a misunderstanding. But a congressional investigation found that 95 percent of reservists and 63 percent of all soldiers it questioned experienced pay problems, often because of military error. Some of the cases are even more heartbreaking than Vorisek's.

Robert Loria was seriously injured in Iraq; an explosion blew off his hand and riddled his body with shrapnel. His rehabilitation was long and painful, and as he prepared to leave the service he was dunned for a nearly $7,000 debt. The military said he received combat pay he didn't deserve, plus he was charged for a helmet and suspenders missing after he was wounded, as though accounting for equipment was a priority as medics rushed to save his life.

"It was like I was being abandoned," Loria said. "They figured the pay glitch was my fault and I was going to pay for it."

More than 300 injured soldiers have been harassed over similar debts. The error is usually related to a faulty computerized pay system that the military says it is trying to fix, with little success. That situation so outraged Congress that it has held hearings and demanded change, yet the practice continues.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson came to the defense of Vorisek and the others in a recent letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, calling for a halt to the use of collection agencies and negative credit reports against wounded soldiers. With no confidence in the accuracy of pay records, Nelson wrote, "the (Defense) Department must give the benefit of the doubt to the soldier and stop hounding our wounded for debts they may not owe."

That's the least the military can do. It's disturbing enough that the Defense Department can't get its payroll right. The fact that it assumes soldiers are deadbeats, even those who have sacrificed for their country, is an outrage.