Are our men and women in uniform deployed abroad being denied their pay? If this report over at Red Ink: Texas is true, it appears that the unthinkable may be happening.

Nasty Rumor that I HOPE is not true. But I'm afraid it might well be...

This morning, a woman called in to Edd Hendee's show on KSEV and informed Edd that her friend's husband, who is deployed to Iraq, has not been paid in a month, and that he had been ordered not to discuss it. The wife of course was under no such obligation to keep quiet. When I heard that I thought to myself that it could not possibly be correct, or if it is, it can't be widespread. So I asked around. I discovered that a woman here at work has three cousins in Iraq, two Army, one Air Force, and none of them have been paid in over 5 weeks as well. This no longer sounds like a rumor, this is starting to sound like fact. And if it IS a fact, someone's head needs to roll. This is UNACCEPTABLE.

These men and women have signed a blank check for their very lives in service to this country. They often have spouses and families back home that depend on that income to eat and pay the rent. Soldiers are not paid a great deal for their sacrifice to begin with. To screw them out of a paycheck their families need to survive is simply unconscionable. If you know of anyone who is deployed to Iraq who has not been paid. Please let me know. I've been in contact with Congressman Ted Poe's office and they will ask around, but at this juncture no constituent who has not been paid has contacted them so their ability to look into it is limited. I urge all servicemen and women who's paycheck is in arrears to contact their respective congressmen and let them know about this.

Check with your friends and loved ones in the war zones about this. If there is any truth whatsoever to this story, then We the People need to raise some Hell about it -- Barack Obama and the Democrats can try to screw the American people all they want, but we will not tolerate them screwing our troops.

UPDATE: Perhaps less than meets the eye to this one -- a fellow-blogger with lots of military connections sends me this:

From what I'm hearing, it's not uncommon for combat pay/benefits to lag a couple of months, and it gets corrected eventually, but I've heard of no mass missing of paychecks in theater. In fact, no commander worth his salt would tolerate that, and you couldn't possibly enforce a gag rule on it.