What is amazing is how the numbers in this story keeps growing and the government is playing stupid on it:

Personal data on more than 2.2 million active-duty military personnel – not just 50,000 as initially believed – were among those stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee last month, the government said Tuesday.

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said the agency was mistaken when it said over the weekend that up to 50,000 Navy and National Guard personnel – and no other active-duty personnel – were affected by the May 3 burglary.

In fact, names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of as many as 1.1 million active-duty personnel from all the armed forces, along with 430,000 members of the National Guard, and 645,000 members of the Reserves, may have been included.

Is it the employee who took this information home, only to end up with it stolen, did not know what all information there was or is the government trying to cover up the magnitude of what has happened here?

Our troops are in the middle of fighting a nasty war that is not only highly unpopular but also in essence a quagmire. How does our government respect them and show appreciation for the sacrifices they are making? By not even securing their vital information.

One veteran is speaking out on this and has filed lawsuit against the government:

Former congressional candidate Paul Hackett sued the U.S. government Tuesday on behalf of the 26.5 million veterans whose personal information was stolen this month.

Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and Indian Hill lawyer, accuses the Department of Veterans Affairs of failing to safeguard crucial personal data, including Social Security numbers.

The federal lawsuit asks a court to order Veterans Affairs to pay damages of about $1,000 per veteran and to cover the cost of credit monitoring services.

“Why should all these people have to live in fear?” said Chris Jenkins, one of the Cincinnati lawyers who filed the suit on behalf of Hackett and the other veterans.

Knowing Paul personally, I can say he is the perfect man for this fight. He has a passion regarding what has happened in Iraq and the administrations failures along the way. It is not just the fact that he is a lawyer or a former congressional candidate. As matter of fact the latter has nothing to do with it. It is the fact that he could very well be a victim of this tragic example of piss-poor management by the VA.

So how can a government that can’t even protect the information of our soldiers be expected to protect our nation? They can’t. True we have seen how much our government cares about sensitive information – they go as far as to expose covert operatives in the name of playing politics.