In a cover story titled "Cheating Our Vets: How the Pentagon is shortchanging wounded soldiers" in the April 16 issue of U.S. News & World Report, reporter Linda Robinson alleged that military medical evaluation boards are chiseling wounded troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan on disability benefits.
If true, and Ms. Robinson makes a powerful case to back up her charges, the situation is even more difficult to comprehend than earlier revelations by the Washington Post of nightmarish treatment and living conditions of outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Though unforgivable, that situation at least had an explanation, lame as it was.
In that instance it seems that the Pentagon failed to anticipate that invading Iraq might, just might, result in substantial casualties. Thus, inadequate provisions were made by the military medical system to accommodate a new generation of wounded. After all, our troops were going to be greeted as "liberators," as then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz put it shortly before the invasion. So we were understandably surprised when the liberated started shooting and blowing up our troops, rather than hugging them and draping them with garlands.
If we questioned the Post's reportage on Walter Reed, subsequent developments quickly confirmed the accuracy of the newspaper's work. After all, Defense Secretary Robert Gates personally thanked the reporters, Dana Priest and Ann Hull, for their efforts.
Ms. Robinson, in her heavily documented story, writes that those assigned to determining the extent of disability for wounded combat troops are low-balling their ratings. She notes, for example, a striking number of the wounded have received disability ratings below 30 percent. That's the threshold that determines if a Soldier is given a severance check or becomes eligible for much more expensive lifelong benefits that include military retirement pay, health-care coverage, commissary and PX privileges.
To back up her charge, Ms. Robinson cites an analysis by the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission, a panel created by Congress in 2004, which says that since 2000, 92.7 percent of disability ratings have been 20 percent or lower.
She goes on to cite more figures to support her allegations, including one that says that 26 percent of Airmen have received ratings of 30 percent or more, while only 4.3 percent of Soldiers and 2.7 percent of Marines hit that dubious jackpot.
The reporter is unrelenting. In addition to a flood of statistics, there are numerous interviews with troops who feel the system has turned on them and experts both in and out of the service who tend to back them up.
That strongly suggests that many of the men and women who sit on these disability boards are, for whatever reason, standing on their heads to save the federal government money at the expense of our wounded warriors. And that those who oversee these panels are complicit as well.
Like the rest of us who wear or wore the uniform, especially the officers, disability board members have been imbued from the earliest days of their service that they have no greater responsibility than to take care of their troops.
If so, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that many of those officers ignored that sacred responsibility and betrayed the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen who look to them for a fair break.
Not a pretty picture, but this story needed to be written. Thanks, and here's to you, Ms. Robinson.
On a brighter note, this is our annual Naval Review issue, perhaps the most anticipated of the year. Leading off, Admiral James Stavridis discusses his new command, the U.S. Southern Command. In addition, Rear Admiral Jacob Shuford, president of the Naval War College, tells us about important changes in the school's curriculum. And USNI's own Tom Cutler provides his annual list of Notable Naval Books, which is sure to illuminate, provoke, and stir debate.
As always our experts chronicle developments in the past year involving the Navy, Naval Aviation, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine and Maritime industry. There's a lot more, as might be expected in an issue twice the size of our usual one.
No surprise, this issue is also the most complex, difficult and labor intensive to put together. And the burden falls most heavily on our design team, composed of Director of Design and Production Kelly Erlinger, Senior Designer Jen Mabe, and Photo Editor Amy Voight. We thank them for their dedication, long nights, and unaccountably cheery dispositions throughout this arduous month.
Editor's Page
Robert Timberg