Support the troops, my *****. Right-wing liars support their pocketbooks.

The new frame for "Support the Troops" should be "Support our soldiers at
home and abroad."

"Harry Hope" <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:fg3kr0l3gup4asn7e8bfqof6ps4f2ekq8h@4ax.com...

From The Times Herald-Record, 12/10/04:
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/12/10/abandon1.htm

December 10, 2004

He lost an arm in Iraq; the Army wants money

Spc. Robert Loria is stuck at Fort Hood, Texas

By Dianna Cahn
Times Herald-Record


Middletown --

He lost his arm serving his country in Iraq.

Now this wounded soldier is being discharged from his company in Fort
Hood, Texas, without enough gas money to get home.

In fact, the Army says 27-year-old Spc. Robert Loria owes it close to
$2,000, and confiscated his last paycheck.

"There's people in my unit right now -- one of my team leaders [who
was] over in Iraq with me, is doing everything he can to help me ....
but it's looking bleak," Loria said by telephone from Fort Hood
yesterday.

"It's coming up on Christmas and I have no way of getting home."

Loria's expected discharge yesterday came a day after the public got a
rare view of disgruntled soldiers in Kuwait peppering Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with questions about their lack of adequate
armor in Iraq.

Like many soldiers wounded in Iraq, Loria's injuries were caused by a
roadside bombing.

It happened in February when his team from the 588th Battalion's Bravo
Company was going to help evacuate an area in Baqubah, a town 40 miles
north of Baghdad. A bomb had just ripped off another soldier's arm.
Loria's Humvee drove into an ambush.

When the second bomb exploded, it tore Loria's left hand and forearm
off, split his femur in two and shot shrapnel through the left side of
his body.

Months later, he was still recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical
Center in Washington, D.C., and just beginning to adjust to life
without a hand, when he was released back to Fort Hood.

AFTER SEVERAL MORE MONTHS, the Army is releasing Loria.

But "clearing Fort Hood," as the troops say, takes paperwork.

Lots of it.

Loria thought he'd done it all, and was getting ready to collect
$4,486 in final Army pay.

Then he was hit with another bomb.

The Army had another tally -- of money it says Loria owed to his
government.

A Separation Pay Worksheet given to Loria showed the numbers:

$2,408.33 for 10 months of family separation pay that the Army
erroneously paid Loria after he'd returned stateside, as a patient at
Walter Reed;

$2,204.25 that Loria received for travel expenses from Fort Hood back
to Walter Reed for a follow-up visit, after the travel paperwork
submitted by Loria never reached the correct desk.

And $310 for missing items on his returned equipment inventory list.

"There was stuff lost in transportation, others damaged in the
accident," Loria said of the day he lost his hand.

"When it went up the chain of command, the military denied coverage."

Including taxes, the amount Loria owed totaled $6,255.50.

The last line on the worksheet subtracted that total from his final
Army payout and found $1,768.81 "due us."

"It's nerve-racking," Loria said.

"After everything I have done, it's almost like I am being abandoned,
like, you did your job for us and now you are no use. That's how it
feels."

AT HOME in Middletown, yesterday, Loria's wife, Christine, was beside
herself.

"They want us to sacrifice more," she said, her voice quavering.

"My husband has already sacrificed more than he should have to."

For weeks now, Christine has been telling her 3-year-old son,
Jonathan, that Robbie, who is not his birth father, will be coming
home any day now.

But the Army has delayed Loria's release at least five times already,
she said, leaving a little boy confused and angry.

"Rob was supposed to be here on Saturday," she said.

"Now [Jonathan] is mad at me. How do you explain something you
yourself don't understand?"

Christine said the Department of Veterans Affairs has been helpful in
giving Loria guidance about how to get his life back on track,
offering vocation rehabilitation to "teach them to go back out in the
world with the limitations they have."

But the Army brass has been unreceptive, she said.

The Lorias also contacted the offices of U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton,
D-N.Y., and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Saugerties.

Hinchey's office responded.

"There's enough to go on here to call the Army on it and see if it can
get worked out," said Hinchey aide Dan Ahouse.

"We are expressing to the Pentagon that based on what we see here, we
don't see that Mr. Loria is being treated the way we think our
veterans returning from Iraq should be treated."

Army officials at Fort Hood could not be reached for comment
yesterday.

"I don't want this to happen to another family," Christine Loria said.

"Him being blown up was supposed to be the worst thing, but it wasn't.
That the military doesn't care was the worst."

The end of her rope

Christine Loria was at the end of her rope earlier this week when she
called her wounded husband's commanders at Fort Hood, Texas, and gave
them a piece of her mind.

The Army was discharging her husband, Robert, after he lost his arm
and suffered other severe injuries in Iraq, without even gas money to
drive his car home.

"I am up here and he's there. That's 1,800 miles away," she said.

"I had to call his chain of command and scream at them."

Their reaction she said, was "very mature."

"If he feels that way, why is his wife talking for him? Why doesn't he
come talk to us himself?" she remembers them asking her.

"Because on some level, he still respects you," she answered.

"I don't have that problem."

__________________________________________________________

Meet Spc. Robert Loria
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/12/10/main.jpg

Harry