Op-Ed Columnist: An Insult to Our Soldiers:
"As we mobilize troops from around the country and send them off to fight and possibly die in that crucible of terror known as combat, is it too much to ask that they be paid in a timely way?

Researchers from the General Accounting Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, studied the payroll processes of six Army National Guard units that were called up to active duty. What they found wasn't pretty.

There were significant pay problems in all six units. A report released last November said, 'Some soldiers did not receive payments for up to six months after mobilization and others still had not received certain payments by the conclusion of our audit work.'

This is exactly the kind of thing that servicemen and women, especially those dealing with the heightened anxiety of life in a war zone, do not need. Maj. Kenneth Chavez of the Colorado National Guard told a Congressional committee of the problems faced by the unit he commanded:"

"All 62 soldiers encountered pay problems. . . . During extremely limited phone contact, soldiers called home only to find families in chaos because of the inability to pay bills due to erroneous military pay."

These problems are not limited to the National Guard. But one of the reasons the Guard has been especially hard hit is that, in the words of another congressman, Christopher Shays, its payroll system is "old and leaky and antiquated," designed for an era when the members of the Guard were seen as little more than weekend warriors.

That system has been unable to cope with widespread call-ups to extended periods of active duty and deployment to places in which personnel qualify for a variety of special pay and allowances, particularly in combat zones.

The G.A.O. report said, "Four Virginia Special Forces soldiers who were injured in Afghanistan and unable to resume their civilian jobs experienced problems in receiving entitled active duty pay and related health care."

The country is asking for extraordinary — in some cases, supreme — sacrifices from the military, and then failing to meet its own responsibility to provide such basic necessities as pay and health care.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/opinion/15HERB.html