Ellington

It's been said that you don't know what hell is until you've had an insurance salesman in your living room, prattling on eternally about term life annuities.

But I've learned about a deeper level of hell reserved for insurance company hucksters who are ripping off America's young soldiers headed into Iraq. Companies such as American Amicable Life Insurance have weaseled their way to our basic-training bases where they pose as semi-official military agents, gathering boot-camp grunts into so-called classes.

During the fleecing, presented as a compulsory briefing on personal finances, with superior officers in the room, the agents talk of investments and walk the unsuspecting troops through pages of paperwork, getting them to sign blind authorizations to deduct money from their meager monthly paychecks. The briefings don't mention that the 19- and 20-year-old soldiers are not buying investments, but life insurance that is unnecessary, since nearly every soldier is covered by a low-cost military policy that pays 10-times what these private scams do.

It's bad enough that our young men and women are thrust into a war of lies in Iraq, but it's a moral abomination that insurance gougers are allowed to prey on them at home. The lobbying front for the companies, the American Council of Life Insurers, has used its campaign donations to get lawmakers to block any effort to stop the corporate thievery.

These companies, lobbyists, congress critters and military officials deserve a special place in hell.

Jim Hightower (jimhightower.com) is author of "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush" (Viking Press). Ken Stiggers returns next week.