Seriously wounded in Iraq? Please pony up $700 for your incinerated body armor:

The last time 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.

A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook's right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again.

But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.

He was leaving the Army for good because of his injuries. He turned in his gear at his base in Fort Hood, Texas. He was informed there was no record that the body armor had been stripped from him in battle.

He was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for weeks, perhaps months.

Rebrook, 25, scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home to Charleston last Friday.

... no one documented that he lost his Kevlar body armor during battle, he said. No one wrote down that armor had apparently been incinerated as a biohazard....

This is all bureaucratic BS:

In the past, the Army allowed to soldiers to write memos, explaining the loss and destruction of gear, Rebrook said.

But a new policy required a "report of survey" from the field that documented the loss....

Rebrook said he tried to get a battalion commander to sign a waiver on the battle armor, but the officer declined. Rebrook was told he'd have to supply statements from witnesses to verify the body armor was taken from him and burned.

What's the point of this -- is the military trying to prevent troops at discharge from claiming that body armor (or some other piece of equipment) is lost so they can sell it as military surplus? Even if that's the case, can we please have a presumption of innocence for soldiers who've suffered serious injuries, at least until the dumbasses in the military bureaucracy can make their way through their own bureaucracy and verify the soldiers' stories?

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I see that AMERICAblog had this story earlier today and is raising money for this soldier -- quite successfully. Good work.