I have to family members who are under VA care. My husband and my son. This is no surprise for those of us in the system.

Thanks for posting this and doing what you can to remind the rest of the country. (also, nice to know there is documentation)

Make that TWO family members.

Pricks!

Blue Lensman @ 2:

Pathetic - we'll be living with this "war" for a long long time, but better to have PTSD then be DOA.

The suicides don't think so.

Avoiding a diagnosis of of PTSD? Is this VA worker a Scientologist?

(The remainder of this comment has been removed due to violations against the Church of Scientology)

Brandon Friedman posted this yesterday on Kos.

Copies of this email should be displayed in permanent, respectful-form outside each armed forces recruiting center. Eighteen-year-olds should know what they're facing before saying I do to the recruiting seargent.

beckyboo @ 1:

I have to family members who are under VA care. My husband and my son. This is no surprise for those of us in the system.

Thanks for posting this and doing what you can to remind the rest of the country. (also, nice to know there is documentation)

I agree and know exactly how what your talking about. None of this is surprising. Especially for those of us, who like yourself have had to deal with the VA.

Here is the other thing that is happenning to our Iraqi war Vets. They are being ignored by the MSM as our air waves have been filled with endless blathering by the talking head about the Presidential election.

Not a Peep not a peep on the MSM about yesterdays hearing with Iraqi war Vets. hello Chris Matthews and Olberman, CNN, Fox where the hell are you talking heads. How much more can you say about this upcoming election?

Did anyone else watch the testimonies of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) yesterday? Deeply disturbing. They talked about a great deal of indescriminate killing of the Iraqi people, the disregard for Iraqi corpses, placing weapons in the dead that had been killed etc etc. All of their stories backed up what I have heard from returning soliders in Ohio the last five years. Chilling stories. I believe these stories are the tip of a bloody bloody iceberg.

There was not a peep on the MSM last night about these hearings. Not a peep. At least C-Span was there. During the Iraqi Winter hearings I believe only Pacifica broadcast those hearings.

You can watch MSNBC from 5p.m to 10 p.m and not hear one thing about Iraq (although Keith went off the other night). It is 99% election coverage. When will Matthews and Olberman talk about these hearings? Who sets up the programming at MSNBC?

The link to the Winter Soldier testimonies

The Winter soldier testimonies
http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony

Here is a link to the testimonies of Iraq Veterans Against the War from yesterday at C.span

http://inside.c-spanarchives.o.....=202061800

When will the MSM mention these critically important hearings? It’s as if the Iraq war is over for the MSM

♠Bangkok-Bob♠ @ 16:

How Very Republican this idea is. mccain (lower case intended) is voting against the new GI Bill that would give some aid and comfort to the Vets.

Here is a list of the republicans who didn't serve and yet make all their macho noise and posturing.

# Representative Patrick McHenry, R-NC - did not serve. Saw fit to endanger American troops' lives after a visit to Iraq by violating operational security and helping militias target their mortar attacks on the Green Zone.
# Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY - did not serve (1)
# Senate Assistant Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-MI - avoided the draft, did not serve.
# Senate Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl, R-AZ - did not serve.
# Senate Republican Conference Vice Chair John Cornyn, R-TX - did not serve.
# National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Ensign, R-NV - did not serve.

# House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-OH - did not serve.
# House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-MO - did not serve.
# House Republican Conerence Chair Adam Putnam, R-FL - did not serve.
# House Republican Policy Committee Thaddeus McCotter, R-MI - did not serve.
# National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-OK - did not serve.

# Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani - did not serve.
# Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney - did not serve in the military but did serve the Mormon Church on a 30-month mission to France.
# Former Senator Fred Thompson - did not serve.
# ded the draft, did not serve (1). "So many minority youths had volunteered ... that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself."
# Former House Majority Whip Roy Blunt - did not serve
# Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - did not serve. (An impressive medical resume, but not such a friend to cats in Boston.)
# Rick Santorum, R-PA, formerly third ranking Republican in the Senate - did not serve. (1)
# George Felix Allen, former Republican Senator from Virginia - a supporter of Nixon and the Vietnam war, did not serve. (1)
# GW Bush - decided that a six-year Nat'l Guard commitment really means four years. Still says that he's "been to war." Huh?
# VP Cheney - several deferments (1, 2), the last by marriage (in his own words, "had other priorities than military service") (1)
# Former Att'y Gen. John Ashcroft - did not serve (1, 2); received seven deferment to teach business ed at SW Missouri State

# Jeb Bush, Florida Governor - did not serve. (1)

# Karl Rove - avoided the draft, did not serve (1), too busy being a Republican.
# Former Speaker Newt Gingrich - avoided the draft, did not serve (1, 2)
# "B-1" Bob Dornan - avoided Korean War combat duty by enrolling in college acting classes (Orange County Weekly article).

Thanks.

Most (maybe all) of the neo-cons that lied our nation into this immoral and unncessary war.

Senator Lieberman got a deferment during Vietnam. Cheney, Perle, etc etc

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html

Required @ 20:

"Support the Troops" is nothing more than a bumper sticker to Republicans, another phony slogan to go with their phony lapel-pin patriotism.</blockquot

No what it means to these dickheads is support the administration. If they were truly going to be honest the bumper stickers would say "Support the President, Fuck the Troops"

Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder

perfect!!

and what better way to avoid and/or cure "Adjustment Disorder" than to get the troops suffering from it back to Iraq. right? i mean, if they are having a hard time "adjusting" after being in hell iraq, maybe the only humane thing to do is keep them in iraq, so they don't have to suffer through this god-awful-bad "Adjustment Disorder"...

no change = no adjustment = stay in iraq

the DoD's wet dream, i imagine this person rec'd a promotion

Major General Smedley Butler (1935): War Is A Racket

Chapter 3: Who Pays The Bills?

(T)he soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. .. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. .. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! .. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.
...

The longterm question is, "Can the US transition to a Peace Time Economy?"

Or is Perpetual War necessary to make "Free Market Capitalism" work?

Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s @ 4:

Everything with conservatives is about cost.

When the bills from Medicare/Medicade start rolling in for the boomers, you can bet they will be advancing euthanasia.

Right to lifers, my butt.

No. Not cost. Profit. You see, making war is profitable. Cleaning up the mess afterward is operating cost. To the repigs, it's just good business practice.

Who really supports the troops?

My son is a reservist. He had dysentery for over a week when he was over there because he drank some bad water. When he came home, he was still having major stomach problems, and so he went to the VA for treatment. They told him that the "found" something the caused them concern, and ordered MRIs and Gastric Testing on him.

Reservists that have been deployed are only allowed 6 months of "free" care at VA. He was deployed for a year, as a photo journalists assistant. (he was in the field and in the Green Zone on and alternating schedule). He drank the bad water (it was water provided to them by the military) out in the field, because they were out of bottled water, and the temperature was over 100 degrees Farenheit. Everyone that was with him ending up coming down with the same symptoms.

By the time the VA got around to testing him, his six months of care were about up. THEY scheduled all of these tests as non emergency, even though they told him that they were concerned about something they found in his stomach AND duodenum. Two weeks before his six months were about to expire, they called him to reschedule, and he told them that he couldn't because of his contractual terms. They told him that it would be covered because it was their fault it had to be rescheduled. I'll bet you can guess the rest.

He went in the for test. Six weeks later, they sent him a bill for $21,000 for and upper and lower GI and an MRI. We still don't know what their "concerns" were, because they stopped talking to him when his six months were up. He is too old to be on our insurance, and he is an adult. He has no job, because he keeps getting called to do short stateside "duties". Oh, and his original diagnostics have been "misplaced".

It has been one year since this happened, (this week), and he is still fighting this, even though he has submitted documentation, and even though he was been "On Duty" for several months since his return from Iraq. He is also going back to Iraq in August, for his second tour.

He is 22 years old. He was 19 when he went to Iraq the first time. He is so used to being screwed the VA and the Army that it hardly even phases him. He is also in the mindset that he just has to do what he has to do until he gets out of his contract. (should be another 18 months unless he is stop lossed). Eventually he will, (god willing) be home and have to really deal with PTSD problems.

My husband is a Vietnam Vet. It is our good fortune to already to get through the system, and what to expect. We also have the will to fight, kick and scream to help our son get what he needs. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a young man or woman who is new to this, and who don't have the support that they need to get through the system.

For those out there that are reading and need help, joining veterans groups is a very helpful first step. They know things that may be helpful to those that the system is kicking aside.

Again, thanks to C&L and CREW for bring this stuff to public attention.

I went to the VA the other day. Their super nice there(Monterey). Although this is just a Satellite Clinic. So I can't say from personal experience how it is in the Hospitals. But while I was at the VA clinic the other day, I noticed 25 new handicap parking spots. 25. I counted them.

Kathleen Anna @ 14:

I recently went with my 81 year old father (WWII VET) to the V.A in Dayton Ohio. The place was so clean the Doctors and Nurses were so kind and efficient. Did folks who worked at the V.A. seem overwhelmed by long lines of Vets (many union workers and others who have had other types of insurance cut or reduced) HELL YES!

Under the Bush administration military funding, services etc have been cut back. We know what needs to be cut from Bush, Cheney and the other chicken shit radicals (who have never served themselves) that have sent our nations young off to an immoral and unnecessary war .

CALL YOUR LOCAL V.A. GO VISIT GO VOLUNTEER SEE FOR YOURSELVES WHAT IS HAPPENNING TO OUR VETS!

Its called Karma

Falsifying medical records is a criminal offense as well a violation of professional standards that can lead to loss of licensure. Ordering others to deliberate misdiagnose means she should face consequences more severe than feeling "apologetic".

I say make the war profiteering corporations pay the Veterans benefits. If it was okay to make TONS of money off a war which was strictly for the corporations benefit then they should pay compensation to the Veterans who helped make them so rich with life and limb. Perhaps if that was so they would think twice about using war for profit.

16 ♠Bangkok-Bob♠ Says:

You're one of my heroes for posting this... thanks so much! Good to see all of those effin' liars and wannabes on your list of defectors who shoot off their mouths and don't have one bit of real world experience.

Well, actually, he didn't give up golf. KO recently documented via his show that his statement to that effect is just another Bush lie!

Jesus... Just jesus... OK, fuck the bullshit... I say out THIS motherfucker and let him or her deal with the public fallout...
I don't give a flying fuck about any confidentiality involved here or V.A. policy on privacy.. What this tool is doing is advocating the abandonment of an entire generation who has been squandered on an illegal/immoral war of aggression by assholes who only care about money. And leaving them to starve in the streets and beg for spare change while being haunted by mental demons left over from their war experience, just like what happened to the Nam vets... IT was a sick way to treat the Nam people and its a sick way to look at people coming back from this war. Sick, callous and immoral!!!!

Out this motherfucker and let the court of public opinion deal with his/her deadweight ass. I'd bet dollars to donuts its a man, a squat doughy fucker like Rove who never served a day in his life but probably has some kind of econ/business degree and thinks he's some kind of smart guy in the room type.... Frankly, he needs his ass royally kicked by someone over this. Poetic justice would be a marine beating him senseless with an artificial limb.....JD

Amazing the cynicism and nastiness to characterize someone's wanting to be treated equitably and humanely as "compensation-seeking." But hey, such an attitude and approach is already standard practice across our culture, and so we become desensitized and accept it: for injured employees treated like this by workers comp insurance companies, or for citizens seeking physician-mandated treatments from their standard medical insurance. At what point did the inalienable right to "life" in the DOI expression "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" became legally alienable?

I wonder how that employee would react to a slip that said, "Sorry, but we don't have the time to pay you this month"? Would he insist they find the time??? One wonders.

They have endless resources to ask you to give your life in war, but it ends there.

Well you don't see Los Angeles Gang leaders paying for their members hospital bills either. The Military is nothing more than a legal gang with shoot to kill privileges and anyone who believes otherwise is brainwashed or braindead.