Wounded in action? Pay up for your damaged body armor.

Each time there's a new outrage you think the Bush administration certainly can't top that. Well, here's the newest. They're now charging wounded soldiers for their lost body armor -- that's the few that actually got body armor from the government to begin with.

Charleston Gazette-News: 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.

[A hat tip to Americablog]