The period from January 20th, 2001 until the same day in 2009 was not a good time to be a veteran. Conservative experiments in privatization resulted in the Walter Reed scandal -- America's heroes among rats and moldy walls. The Bushies cut claims processors while tens of thousands of disabled, traumatized new heroes hit the system. As the nation experienced another wave of homeless and unemployed vets, new rules limited benefits. And let's not even talk about a new epidemic of PTSD.

War sucks. Those who fight them must always have the sanctuary of the state -- because that ironclad promise is what makes the army of democracy possible. The republic is the bulwark of all rights and its defense is a high calling, so you will excuse me if my natural reaction to this Maddow segment is to make a sound only a soldier knows how to make.

More after the jump...

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Wonk Room: Black Chamber of Commerce CEO calls Barbra Boxer a racist

MAL Contends: What Economy? Let the financial inquest begin

Veterans Today: To Veterans Affairs Secretary Shensiki: Time To Take The Gloves Off

Jeff Blog: Sharecropping

Big Brass Blog: Late for the train to Clueville

Academic Earth: Here's one the birthers, bullet boxers, and tea baggers wont be visiting. Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars

SF Chronicle:

Thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans are returning home only to become casualties of war - at their own hands. Suffering from psychiatric injuries, 1,000 veterans under Veterans Administration care are attempting suicide each month. Almost 40 percent of the young men and women returning from combat almost have proven mental health injuries that include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, major depression and traumatic brain injury.

But when they seek help, disabled veterans face a claims system so mismanaged and inefficient that they often must wait more than five years for any assistance. The Department of Veterans Affairs is choking on a backlog of some 600,000 unresolved benefits claims. Even after their eligibility has been established, thousands of veterans cannot obtain adequate mental health treatment. While they wait for the care they are owed, veterans are dying. About 126 veterans per week commit suicide. Vast numbers of veterans are living with mental illness, sometimes so severe that they are unable to work. Nationally, about 154,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and twice that many are homeless at some time during the year. Read on...

I've said before that I'm the granddaughter of a career military officer. There is no excuse for the treatment of vets and it horrifies me that we're adding tens of thousands of more vets every year from Iraq and Afghanistan. They say that the measure of a society is how they treat the neediest among them. What does this say about us?

TomDispatch: Imperial overreach imperils the American republic and what's left of our democratic system as well as the American economy. Chalmers Johnson considers whether we can end our empire before it ends us. (h/t The Left Coaster)

The Existentialist Cowboy: In 1934, our government had said that the "airwaves" didn't belong to the big corporations or the government but to the people themselves. We want it back.

The Carpetbagger Report: Can anyone explain what's 'moral' about this behavior? The Nazarine didn't talk about homosexuality. He did, however, talk a lot about religious hypocrisy...Sadly, No! has more...

MAL Contends: An official Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) document contradicts the U.S. Attorney's narrative of alleged events that led to the conviction of a Wisconsin Vietnam-era veteran on federal wire fraud charges in 2006.

Pensito Review: The confederate flag still flys in the South...and the North

Connecting.the.Dots: Hillary and All That Jazz

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Total Information Awareness, The Irate Nation, The Hawke and Dove, Rethink, The FAA Follies

NavyTimes:

Navy veteran David Miller said that when he checked into the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City, he didn't realize he would get a hard sell for Christian fundamentalism along with treatment for his kidney stones.

Miller, 46, an Orthodox Jew, said he was repeatedly proselytized by hospital chaplains and staff in attempts to convert him to Christianity during three hospitalizations over the past two years.

He said he went hungry each time because the hospital wouldn't serve him kosher food, and the staff refused to contact his rabbi, who could have brought him something to eat.[..]

He described the Iowa City facility as an institution permeated by government sponsorship of fundamentalist Christianity and unconstitutional discrimination against Jews.[..]

The hospital's chaplains and staff, Miller said, have the attitude that you either accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior and you are saved, or you are damned.

He said he has tried to resolve the problems with the hospital's administration without success.

Booman Tribune; Congressional leaders on Thursday demanded that the Veterans Affairs secretary explain hefty bonuses for senior department officials involved in crafting a budget that came up $1 billion short and jeopardized veterans' health care.

Facing South: A special U.S. House task force voted yesterday to open a federal investigation into last November's disputed District 13 congressional election in Sarasota County, Fla., where more than 18,000 ballots cast by touch-screen machines recorded no vote for either candidate.

PERRspectives Blog: GOP quotes of the week, Iraq veto edition

denialism blog: Discussing the problem of denialists, their standard arguing techniques, how to identify denialists and/or cranks, and discussing topics of general interest such as skepticism, medicine, law and science. Mark Hoofnagle be taking on denialists in the sciences, while brother, Chris, will be geared more towards the legal and policy implications of industry groups using denialist arguments to prevent sound policies.

William K. Wolfrum: Tips on how to 'civilize' your blog posts

The Orstrahyun: Australia faces the world's most extreme 'climate challenge'.  How long before the mass evacuation of cities begins?

Seeing the Forest: It's starting...Patrick Leahy has introduced the War Profiteering Prevention Act

The Huffington Post: The animated "training video" the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs have made for doctors at veterans' hospitals to help them understand and treat troops coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-deployment mental health issues is absurd, insulting and dangerous.

Early Warning: Washington loves gossip and nothing satisfies the beast more than organizational and pesonnel changes that trigger still more, uh...organizational and personnel changes.  We call it rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

Needlenose: Can Joe Biden stop the war in Iraq?

HOLY CRAP: This Christ-tacular Pentagon video ought to scare the crap out of any freedom-loving American...We expect this crackpot to predict mass killings but why does CNN lap it up?...Crummy Church Signs...In Kansas, no news is bad news...

The Reality-Based Community: George W. Nixon

Let's hope this wasn't some kind of trial balloon.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson gave qualified support yesterday to renewing the draft - a suggestion that rattled the White House.
"I think that our society would benefit from that, yes, sir," Nicholson said of replacing the all-volunteer force with a tough draft purged of the deferments that allowed many to avoid service in Vietnam.

"I think if we bring back the draft, there should be no loopholes for anybody who happens to be drafted," he said. "If it's a random system, it ought to be an honestly random system."

Shortly thereafter, a White House spokesperson insisted, "The administration is not considering reinstating the draft."

Still, Nicholson's comments are a little disconcerting, aren't they?