Analysts say the military has saved more than $12 billion dollars in disability claims by coercing vets into signing personality disorder discharge papers, which puts wounded vets and their families on the road to poverty and despair.
Pipeline To Hell: Military Cheats Wounded Vets Out Of $12 Billion In Disability Claims
By Monica L. Davis
The greatest military in the world has been turned in to a pipeline to despair. According to congressional testimony, as many as half a million wounded veterans have reportedly been coerced, even tortured into giving up their disability and medical benefit, forced into signing bogus personality disorder discharge papers. Analysts say the military has saved more than $12 billion dollars in disability claims by coercing vets into signing personality disorder discharge papers, which puts wounded vets and their families on the road to poverty and despair.
Recent congressional testimony by veterans like Sgt. Chuck Luther revealed that the Army is torturing wounded vets, forcing them to sign discharge papers which say they have a pre-existing psychological condition—personality disorder. Personality disorder discharges are ineligible for VA benefits.
Joshua Kors, a reporter who has followed this issue for more than three years, says, “Some of these soldiers have been diagnosed with personality disorder. Personality disorder, being a pre-existing condition, is separate from a war-related wound, which is only what the military treats.”
Kors was particularly interested in Sgt. Chuck Luther, who was wounded by mortar fire in Iraq. “Sgt. Luther had a traumatic brain injury because of the blow to his head. He smashed his head against concrete, and developed vision problems after that. He would black out. He said it was like somebody was stabbing him in the eye, and became blind in one eye. He went to the health unit there, and was told that his blindness was the result of a ‘pre-existing personality disorder.’”
According to Kors, this is part of a 10 year pattern. “Since 2001, over 23,000 soldiers have been pressed into signing these documents, passing off their wounds as pre-existing personality disorders.”
When asked how the military has been getting away with this, Kors says it’s different from case to case. “Soldiers have been told by military doctors ‘hey, just go ahead and sign these papers, you’re wounded, it’ll get you get you out, and you can deal with this, once you’re out of the military. Some were told they’d get their benefits.”
Sgt. Luther refused to sign the documents which said he had a personality disorder, and that’s when his nightmare--torture, began. He was locked in a closet, and was basically tortured for refusing to sign the bogus discharge papers. Kors says, “Sgt. Luther was put in a closet, held there over a month, under enforced sleep deprivation, in what the Chairman of the Senate Committee in hearings called torture.”
Sgt. Luther was held in that closet for over a month by armed guards. They kept the lights on all night, blasted heavy metal music, so he couldn’t sleep. He tried to escape the closet at one point. They pinned him down, injected him with medication, and dragged him back into the closet. After a month of torture, he was willing to sign anything.”
After he signed the papers, they took him back to Fort Hood. “That’s when they told him the consequences: no disability claim for the rest of his life. No paid long-time medical care.”
To add insult to injury, Sgt. Luther was handed a bill: now he has to pay back his $1600 sign on bonus.
Kors believes there is a larger pattern, a bigger plan operating here. After pushing these wounded soldiers to sign papers saying they had “pre-existing conditions,” the military is now able to keep these soldiers out of the casualty statistics. If they have “pre-existing conditions,” the military isn’t responsible for their care, and they are not counted in the “casualty figures.”
Thus, in this “number’s game,” the wounded soldiers are getting shafted, and the military placates the public with low-ball casualty figures. “Of course, everyone knows about the thousands that have been killed in Afghanistan, and the tense of thousands that are ‘officially wounded’”.
READ MORE: http://beforeitsnews.com/...