February 02, 2006

5,549 payroll screwups?

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

"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."

He was soon on a plane home.

Fast-working, skilled Army doctors saved his life, as they have so many.

Slow, bumbling Army bureaucrats would make his life miserable, as they have so many.

"And the military basically is, like, they turn their back on you, you kind of feel that you've just been used," Simpson said.

It started with a phone call from his wife, home with their four children. She didn't have enough money to pay the bills.

"And she was like, well, we haven't been paid," Simpson said. "And you know, instantly I was like, I don't know what to do. You know, I'm still in the hospital. I can't actually get up and go around and talk to these different people."

And until "Nightline" inquired at the Pentagon, Simpson said he could not find out what happened.

"Every day is something different," he said. "Well, this person isn't in. I'll have them call you back, give it a couple days. Couple days go by, I call back, well I got somebody else for you to talk to. And days lead to weeks, and weeks lead to months."

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.

[snip]

[Colonel] Shrank could not name an exact number, but the Army told "Nightline" that 5,549 soldiers, or about one out of five soldiers who were removed from battle for medical reasons later had payroll problems.

The fabled $600 toilet seats were bad enough, but when you screw up your people's pay this badly, it can't even be blamed on the procurement system.

Is it any wonder there's a wee bit of skepticism about Donald Rumsfeld and his people's abilities to manage complicated things like war?

In 1974 the Oakland Athletics were on their way to a World Series. In June of that year they had a particularly frustrating loss, and Sal Bando said of his manager, "he couldn't manage a meat market."

Neither can Rummy.

Via Julia

Posted by Linkmeister at February 2, 2006 12:01 AM | TrackBack
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