Instead of a Purple Heart....

Your tax dollars - and VA budget - at work.

Scores of veterans across the country are getting lifetime checks from the government for gonorrhea, genital herpes and other venereal diseases they caught while in the ranks.

The disability payments are made under a little-known provision from three decades ago that entitles vets to monthly benefits for sexually transmitted diseases they contracted, or simply aggravated, while in the service -- even if they became infected on their own time years ago.

How do you do a line of duty investigation.

Among those receiving VD disability payments is a Texas veteran of a four-year hitch in the mid-1980s, who convinced the Board of Veterans' Appeals that he deserved to be considered 30 percent disabled -- worth $350 a month now -- because his genital warts left him seriously depressed.

Another veteran, this one from Wisconsin, waited 30 years before applying for benefits for the residual effects of gonorrhea he acknowledged he contracted from a prostitute during his basic training at Fort Polk, La., in 1972.

This former soldier, who mustered out of the Army in 1975, said he continued to suffer from recurring gonorrhea-related urethritis when he sought benefits in 1996. Eventually, the appeals board deemed him 10 percent disabled, and thus eligible for a monthly check of about $100 for the rest of his life.

Of course, you know where this is going. Have I hit on the Boomers in awhile? Nawwwww. Don't need to. They give me plenty of material. This has to do, as expected, with the Boomers and the 70s with all the rot that came with it.

The question of compensating veterans for sexually transmitted diseases is one that apparently has not arisen in Washington since 1972, when Congress changed old rules that had categorized the contracting of such diseases to be an act of "willful misconduct."

Read the whole thing - there is a lot more. I would stop now - but I can't help myself. Here is something for notanon.

IN WASHINGTON, D.C., a veteran who served from 1962 to 1965, and for eight months in 1991, filed for benefits for the six condyloma acuminata, or anal warts, which medical dictionaries describe as sexually transmitted. The vet said the growths had bedeviled him since his service during the Persian Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and, despite treatment, always return.

"The veteran also testified that he experiences a lot of discomfort when he is in the sitting position," said a summary of his testimony during a 1994 hearing on his case.

In 2000, the appeals board deemed him 10 percent disabled because of the warts, entitling the vet to about $100 a month for the rest of his life.