I was going to put that title in quotes and attribute it to President Magoo and of course make the point that even though he's never said those exact words, his actions and decisions certainly have conveyed that sentiment. But then I realized that I don't have to put it quotes since, technically speaking, Bush speaks for me since I'm a member of we the people.
There's a disconnect between the treatment we'd like our troops and veterans to get versus the actual treatment they get. It's written about on here ad infinitum, yet we still haven't translated our rage and indignation and compassion into results. Perhaps we need to give more emphasis to our collective dissatisfaction that this is happening on our watch.
"SCREW THE TROOPS" is now the American way. So if I have to be guilty of ostensibly facilitating that way, the least I can do is have the courtesy to say it to their faces as loudly and clearly as my fecklessness implies.
So when Bill O'Reilley et al ask, "How can you say that 'SCREW THE TROOPS' is the American way?", you can say, "Well, for starters, Bill...
"I don't care about homeless veterans!" --Neale Boortz, said on a his show during the week of the last inaugural (Still getting rich by spreading compassion like wildfire.)
Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commander at Walter Reed, said in an interview last week that a major reason outpatients stay so long, a change from the days when injured soldiers were discharged as quickly as possible, is that the Army wants to be able to hang on to as many soldiers as it can, "because this is the first time this country has fought a war for so long with an all-volunteer force since the Revolution."
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The Army is ordering injured troops to go to Iraq
At Fort Benning, soldiers who were classified as medically unfit to fight are now being sent to war. Is this an isolated incident or a trend?
By Mark Benjamin
March 11, 2007 | FORT BENNING, Ga. -- "This is not right," said Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins, who has been ordered to Iraq even though he has a spine problem that doctors say would be damaged further by heavy Army protective gear. "This whole thing is about taking care of soldiers," he said angrily. "If you are fit to fight you are fit to fight. If you are not fit to fight, then you are not fit to fight."
As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
"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?"
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Spc. Lake 4th Platoon Apache Company Strykers: You got grenades going off. You got an IED blowing up your vehicle. And then you're, then you're expected to go back in those four to six, four to five hours and get, and relax, to come back out and do another six hours. You don't have time -- you just don't have time to do it. Your body never gets to come down. You're always on that higher, heightened sense of alertness, like you just don't have the, you don't have the rest. The comfort zone, I guess you could call it, to where when you know you're back on the fob [forward operating base] you can, you know, you can relax and let loose. You just don't have time. We're not given that, that time to, to recuperate from being out there for six hours and dealing with that, to go back out and deal with another six hours. It's just constant. You never get a break.
Spc. Vassell, 2nd Platoon Apache Company Strykers: We're supposed to be on the way home right now. We were supposed to be flying home in six days. Six days. But because we have people up there in Congress with the brain of a two-year old who don't know what they're doing. They don't experience it. I, I challenge the President or whoever has us here for fifteen months to ride along, alongside me. I'll do another fifteen months if he comes out here and rides along with me every day for fifteen months. I'll do fifteen more months. They don't even have to pay me extra. I just want him to come out here and ride with me another fifteen months.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
"We're kind of sitting ducks in the vehicles we have," said Lieutenant Colonel Vincent Montera, commander of the Long Island, N.Y.-based 310th Military Police Battalion, which has crisscrossed the Iraqi countryside for months in those "soft-top" models.
But the Army does not expect the full complement of a more heavily armored version, designed to withstand armor-piercing bullets and land mines, to arrive in Iraq until the summer of 2005. The Pentagon failed to move them into Iraq in significant numbers because war planners had seriously underestimated how violent the newly liberated nation would be.
Just 1 in 8 Humvees in Iraq are of this more heavily armored variety.
http://www.boston.com/...
The words "homeless" and "veteran" are not mutually exclusive: http://www.informationclearinghouse....
When soldiers come home from Iraq, the support they need in order to physically and mentally recover from the hell of Iraq is way out of reach for most. With their pay and benefits cut, health care, already scarce in many cases, is soon to become even more difficult to access.
A case in point is Marine Lance Cpl. James Crosby. He left Iraq strapped to a gurney after his legs were paralyzed and his innards lacerated by shrapnel. When he exited the combat zone to head back home for treatment, he realized the military cut his pay by 50%. "Before you leave the combat zone, they swipe your ID card through a computer, and you go back to your base pay," he said.
http://www.informationclearinghouse....
Nick told his mother that he and the men in his unit were all about 10 pounds lighter in their first few weeks in Iraq. They were pulling 22-hour patrol shifts. They were getting two meals a day and they were not meals to remember.
"He told me the two meals just weren't cutting it. He said the Iraqi food was usually better. They were going to the Iraqis and basically saying, 'feed me.' "
http://www.shns.com/...
As the president wrapped up his visit an hour earlier than scheduled, his administration moved to improve care. The Office of Personnel Management approved a measure to streamline the hiring of medical workers to fill 115 positions at Walter Reed related to patient care.
http://www.dailykos.com/...