I have been writing about this issue for months now, since NPR broke the Fort Carson story of punishing soldiers for having PTSD and then diagnosing them with Personality Disorders.
Instead of getting them help for the PTSD symptoms they are suffering from going to Iraq and seeing the horrors of war, the military command of Fort Carson is pushing the soldiers out the door with no benefits, telling them they can get help when they get home and go to the Veterans Affairs Hopsital, except they are LYING to them, if you sign the quickie discharge they are offering a Chapter 5-13 you are signing away your rights to healthcare and your ability to file a claim for PTSD, because you are signing a statement saying that you came into the military with PDO's which means the government owes you and your family nothing, it's quite possible you are going to owe them thousands.
Here is the story of one man who took the easy way out of the Army and his experience since the Chain of Command and the Doctors gave him the disinformation campaign to get him out of the military and off the base, by the time he signed the discharge papers and learned the truth, it was to late.
I am deeply disturbed and pissed off by htese "compassionate conservatives" that have sent this nations young middle class of poor children to war, and them dropping them like a hot potato to save having to provide them with healthcare and or compensation if they are disabled by medical conditions related to the 2 wars, we are now involved in, Afghanistan was a war that needed to be done, Iraq however is a war that PNAC wanted, men like Richard Perle, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol the talking head on Fox news with Brit Hume, and the other signatories to PNAC that first pushed President Clinton to invade Iraq and when they got their man George W Bush in place they used 9/11 to prepare the invasion of Iraq come hell or high water, spending 2 billion a week, but when it comes to the human side of it, the veterans they all swear they stand behind and love "support the troops" and all their damn magnets on their SUV's and their American Flags on their lapels.
Here is the real story of how these bastards think of our troops read it, it makes me ill, and pissed, this is the real story of support or rather the lack ot if if you can read this and not get mad, there is something wrong, this is immoral and disgusting here is a few paragraphs to encourage you to read the entire article:
How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits
Jon Town has spent the last few years fighting two battles, one against his body, the other against the US Army. Both began in October 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq. He was standing in the doorway of his battalion's headquarters when a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old Army specialist to the floor, where he lay blacked out among the rubble.
"The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground." Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. "They started shaking me. But I was numb all over," he says. "And it's weird because... because for a few minutes you feel like you're not really there. I could see them, but I couldn't hear them. I couldn't hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead."
Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.
So soldiers that are no longer able to deploy due to medical problems related to service should get disability payments right, isn't that the way it is supposed to work in America?
One military official says doctors at his base are doing more than withholding this information from wounded soldiers; they're actually telling them the opposite: that if they go along with a 5-13, they'll get to keep their bonus and receive disability and medical benefits. The official, who demanded anonymity, handles discharge papers at a prominent Army facility. He says the soldiers he works with know they don't have a personality disorder. "But the doctors are telling them, this will get you out quicker, and the VA will take care of you. To stay out of Iraq, a soldier will take that in a heartbeat. What they don't realize is, those things are lies. The soldiers, they don't read the fine print," he says. "They don't know to ask for a med board. They're taking the word of the doctors. Then they sit down with me and find out what a 5-13 really means--they're shocked."
Russell Terry, founder of the Iraq War Veterans Organization (IWVO), says he's watched this scenario play itself out many times. For more than a year, his veterans' rights group has been receiving calls from distraught soldiers discharged under Chapter 5-13. Most, he says, say their military doctors pushed the personality disorder diagnosis, strained to prove that their problems existed before their service in Iraq and refused to acknowledge evidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and physical traumas, which would allow them to collect disability and medical benefits.
"These soldiers are coming home from Iraq with all kinds of problems," Terry says. "They go to the VA for treatment, and they're turned away. They're told, 'No, you have a pre-existing condition, something from childhood.'" That leap in logic boils Terry's blood. "Everybody receives a psychological screening when they join the military. What I want to know is, if all these soldiers really did have a severe pre-existing condition, how did they get into the military in the first place?"
Terry says that trying to reverse a 5-13 discharge is a frustrating process. A soldier has to claw through a thicket of paperwork, appeals panels and backstage political dealing, and even with the guidance of an experienced advocate, few are successful. "The 5-13," he says, "it's like a scarlet letter you can't get taken off."
This is what is really happening so the government can save money down the road either by failing to give the soldiers the medical retirement from the military, but to make matters worse, this paperwork prevents them from even being able to get veterans benfits.
If you can't go back to Iraq and fight anymore you are useless, and they are driving these young and wounded soldiers out of the military thru deception and outright lies, the soldiershave no one to tell them the truth, they have no advocates in the system telling them what they are really doing to their and the families future.
They wonder why so many of these young men and women are committing suicide when they get home and find out the truth of what has happened.
Please contact your Conngressman/women and the Senators and tell them how dispicable this is, that as a nation we do not want our veterans treated this way, they deserve the truth, they deserve advocates when the Army proposes to seperate them from service before their contract is up, due to behavoral problems related to PTSD symptoms. If we don't demand change who will? We owe it to the volunteers who serve the nation by joining the all volunteeer services, this is a sad way to show "compassionate conservatism" and if this is an example of it, the republicans can kiss my ass, I am proud to be a progressive who demands better for the soldiers, I do beleive in supporting the troops and not screwing them.