Soldiers Must Pay Refunds: Pond Scum Update

Pentagon official: "Thanks for serving your country, soldier. I hope your battle wounds will heal. Oh, that's right, limbs don't grow back, do they? Haha. Anyway, if you would just give back most of the signing bonus we paid you when you enlisted, we're good."
Double amputee in wheelchair: "Give b—... But... Whaa?!"
Pentagon official: "You heard me, boy. You owe us thousands of dollars. Didn't fulfill your contract, now, did you?"
Amputee: "But, Sir, they blew my legs off!"
Pentagon official: "I know. Damn shame, that. Still, gotta keep up the war effort. We all have to make sacrifices, you know. And better they took off your legs than your arms. You can still sign a check, can't you? There, buck up. Just make it out to the Department of Defense."

What do you think? Something out of a Vonnegut novel? A snippet from a Bertold Brecht play? An updated scene from Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Schweik?

Nope. This is actually going on in America, right now, under a president who was given a second term by the self-professed patriots who trot out their 'support the troops' mantra on every occasion. 

The U.S. military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments. To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases. Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills. He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started. Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.

A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

It's just the latest outrage in a string of them: episodes like, off the top of my head, the Walter Reed pay-for-your own-meals scandal, the subsequent Walter Reed vermin-ridden-rooms scandal, the defunding of a program for soldiers with brain injuries, the deep budget cuts forced upon the Veterans Administration, and the Pentagon's fatal and enduring inability to procure sufficient personal and vehicle armor for American troops in Iraq. The latter failure alone has cost the lives of more than 1,500 U.S. soldiers and Marines.

But of course, it's one thing to fail at something that you earnestly (if incompetently) try to do; and quite another to be so grossly calloused and borderline sociopathic, so utterly without humanity and without decency, that you would demand a cash refund from a severely battle-wounded soldier.

I'm an atheist, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I sometimes think God would be a great idea. And I'm not denying myself the pleasure of fantasizing about being a spectator to the Judgment Day sentencing of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and — please, God! — every last one of their sick, smug, sadistic sycophants and enablers, at all levels of the government.

What a way to go that will be.

[hat tip: Anita Bartholomew, Steve Benen]

Comments

[Martin Owens]

It's an unspeakable outrage.

[David]

What fucking, bean-counting douchebag could possibly have thought this was a good idea?

I suppose the fair thing for soldiers in these circumstances is to sue the Federal Government for the unsafe labor conditions and negligence that resulted in their injuries. I'm sure their contracts prevent that, though.

That aside, I can't wait for some right-wing columnist or radio host to try to blame this on liberals, or claim that reporting it is a liberal ploy to destroy troop morale.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

Here's an update, but.....I'm not buying that this was bureaucratic bungle.

NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski explains to First Read that it is actually already “against Army policy to require repayment for enlistment bonuses from soldiers wounded in service,” said Miklaszewski, NBC News' Pentagon correspondent. “The incident that popped up in a local news story in Pittsburgh, on FOX and on MSNBC last night was the result of bureaucratic confusion over the soldier's wounded status and an incorrect determination of his discharge. The decision to request repayment was in error and has since been reversed.

“The local report from KDKA in Pittsburgh that claimed thousands of medically discharged soldiers are being forced to repay their enlistment bonus is wrong. The KDKA reporter said he got his information from a local congressman, who confused an earlier issue in which 2,005 wounded soldiers did not receive their full pay for a brief period of time. Another typical bureaucratic bungle, which was also corrected. The KDKA reporter never sought any clarification or reaction from either the Army or Pentagon before running the story, according to Army officials."