Editorial: Veterans deserve faster relief

Friday, April 13, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

Th ere is a major disconnect between the federal government promising care for injured war veterans and actually carrying out those promises. The Washington Post reported Sunday on the frustration veterans experience from the lengthy delays they must often endure to make disability claims for injuries or diseases related to military service.

On average, the Veterans Affairs Department takes six months to process a claim and nearly two years to address appeals. As bad as those delays are, they will get worse as veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan return home, adding to the nearly 400,000 claims that were pending as of February, the Post reported.

The process is so sluggish that many veterans wonder whether the VA is just hoping that they die off so that the government won't have to pay benefits that range from $115 to $2,471 a month. That's not as farfetched as it sounds. The Post led its story with the sad tale of an 80-year-old World War II veteran who lost the hearing in his right ear from a grenade explosion but died last year while still appealing the amount of his monthly benefit.

Army veteran Raymond L. Goings of Las Vegas, a military policeman in Vietnam who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, told the Post that the regional VA office denied his disability claim after a three-year ordeal because it didn't believe his story. "They wanted dates and times, even though I tried to explain to them that there are a lot of things about combat that I can't remember," Goings said.

Soldiers are compelled to carry out orders in training and on the battlefield. Their lives and our nation's security depend on that. Sorry to say the VA too often doesn't act with such urgency.

The president, Congress and those in the VA bureaucracy should be ashamed of what is happening to these veterans. They need to do what it takes to straighten out this mess so claims are expeditiously handled.