C2NN - Care2's member-powered news network

CONGRESS PLANS "STEALTH ATTACK" ON VETERANS BENEFITS

US Politics & Gov't (tags: abuse, americans, candidates, congress, constitution, corruption, cover-up, democrats, dishonesty, economy, elections, ethics, Govtfearmongering, lies, media, military, news, obama, politics, propaganda, republicans, troops, war )

Kit
- 524 days ago - veteranstoday.com

A week ago, we marched out of Iraq, leaving 50,000 "administrative" troops and tens of thousands of contractors behind. They perform no useful purpose of any kind, no more than the original attack which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates now openly -->

add comment

send green star



Comments

Kit B. (263)

Saturday September 4, 2010, 7:15 am
A week ago, we marched out of Iraq, leaving 50,000 “administrative” troops and tens of thousands of contractors behind. They perform no useful purpose of any kind, no more than the original attack which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates now openly refers to as unnecessary and wrong. The war that never should have started cost America 3 trillion dollars, much of it unaccounted for. Along with the thousands of American dead and the untold devastation in Iraq, the war also cost America health and welfare of up to 400,000 of her veterans, America’s children. A generation of young adults, another generation of our best and bravest stand betrayed.

We have money for fraud of every kind, projects paid for but never finished, weapons stolen, defective or never delivered, buying poisoned water for our troops at 5 times the cost of French Wine, I could go on for hours, the list is endless.

This week, when Senator’s Alan Simpson, the “wild talking” Wyoming Republican and now formerly a stalwart veterans advocate Daniel Akaka talk about saving money, it is to come from payments to veterans for “presumptive” illness. Don’t believe its just these two, its the whole gang of them, with few exceptions, and its not the first time. When Bush gutted funding for Veterans and up to 9 million disability claims related to war wounds and the endless environmental crimes against our troops shredded or shelved, even our “mainstream” veterans organizations stood behind him.

I spent two hours on the phone with a Vietnam veteran I have known for 35 years. He has both a son and son-in-law seriously wounded from Iraq. His 30 years in government and 28 years in the military, many years working with veterans, gave him the skills to help his own family negotiate the minefield of bureaucratic insanity servicemen and women are faced with when returning from war, used up, smashed, maimed or poisoned, discarded and left to die.

How many veterans died with claims in processing? How many died of undiagnosed poisonings or waiting for that medical appointment that never comes? It isn’t thousands or tens of thousands. Is the number as high as a million? It may be, we aren’t allowed to know.

This is America’s real patriotic tradition, with network after network talking about little but election year hate issues like immigration, the “Ground Zero Mosque and our “Muslim” president. Do they really think we don’t all know that the only non-atheists in Washington are the Satan worshippers and pedophiles? Every time I hear a politician call to his personal god for support or drag out a bible, I wait for the lightening bolt. Washington is a cesspool and every “reformer” begging for a chance to clean it out only plans to jump in and enjoy the stench.

We have seen it all before. The only “non-issue” this year is our hundreds of thousands of sick veterans. The war has become boring and unpopular, unless, of course, we have another of those dramatically staged terror attacks. Then we can bring out the flags again, and, for awhile at least, honor the fallen.

That will end, of course, when new wiretapping laws are passed and another “money eating” bureaucracy is created, always headed by “the usual suspects,” the Washington-Tel Aviv-Wall Street nexus of conspiracy nuts, “government sanctioned” conspiracies, of course.

Until then, it will be business as usual. The machinery of Bush era Veterans Affairs is ready to go into high gear like the “Court of Miracles” from Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities. Our government is famous for hiring claims examiners who have found crippled and dying veterans “fit and whole” thousands of times. Our military has learned from them, sending soldiers into combat pumped full of anti-psychotic medications or with brain injuries so serious they barely know their own names.

The whole idea that veterans and our troops are “freeloaders” is insane. A real examination of finances shows another story. What we are overloaded with is “lead pants” Pentagon brass, thousand upon thousand generals, admirals and their personal aides and “yes men” followed by thousands of publicists. Do we want to forget our two primary boondoggle money pits, our endlessly repetitive intelligence agencies and our “peek under the bed” homeland security gang?

We spend more money hiding facts from the public than funding research to try to save generations of military families, not just veterans but their entire families, poisoned, not only from Agent Orange, questionable vaccinations, depleted uranium, toxic insect sprays or the rare “enemy” related chemical weapon but dozens of environmental disasters on two dozen or more military bases.

Agent Orange is only one of dozens of such problems. 2,900,000 Americans served in Vietnam 40 years ago. As of last year, 711,000 were still alive with many dead for decades of “presumptive illness” that congress finds trivial. For every living Vietnam veteran, two died mysteriously, many of them in their 30s.

Hiding this from the America people costs millions a year. Congress has no difficulty funding lies.

After all, how much can it cost keeping the fact that America itself has given the Taliban in Afghanistan over $3,000,000,000 to protect our military convoys, money they then spend killing our troops.

Is congress that insane?

Let’s take a second to look at the economic component, not from the traditional “mumbo jumbo” sense, but from the view of a returning veteran. It isn’t any secret that the only reason America can still be at war with its “volunteer army” is the fact that there are no jobs in America. America is an economic failure, bankrupt, jobless, poverty stricken, a failed nation.

Washington blames the “bankster” thieves who looted trillions of dollars through mojo financial schemes which allowed them to create money out of air backed by “derivatives.”

What is a derivative? The answer is simple. Spend all the money in your wallet or purse. Reach in for more. What you pull out is a “derivative” and perhaps a piece
of lint.

The boys who own our government, all the governments, simply pretended to have money that didn’t exist, pretended to lose money they never had and then went to the government to recover their “losses” when pretend money didn’t “spend” anymore.

The government then started up the printing presses to make the super-rich even ‘super-richer.” The end result means you have a job you may lose tomorrow, you house is worthless, social security may fail, you retirement account is dead and now congress wants to take away the meager veterans pension your son or daughter receives for what was done to them by Bush, Blair, Wall Street and, especially, our very good friends in Tel Aviv. Don’t forget them.

Congress knows nothing about how many parents cry themselves to sleep.

America can’t really be trusted with an army anymore. Would you give a baby a laptop or a three year old a shotgun?

I just saved you four useless years at Harvard Business School.

When will Glenn Beck, the warmongering demagogue voice of Israeli owned Fox News cry his first tear for a wounded veteran? Even when Sean Hannity and Oliver North promised to send the children of all Iraq and Afghanistan vets to college, something that seemed to hopeful to many, it turned out to be a hollow political ploy.

Let’s talk about the first attacks on veterans, attacks against what congress believes is the weak underbelly, “presumptive illness.”

Senators are now focusing on the tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans, about half in “claims processing” for 20 to 30 years, some paid a few dollars a month, some paid a few thousand. The goal is to strip them of this money as quickly as possible.

Is this a joke?

Agent Orange compensation is only paid to veterans either close to death from cancers, diseases that already killed so many we will never be able to count or those with clearly defined maladies that it took medical science, the worst and slowest minds in the world decade after decade to establish as results of dioxin exposure from Agent Orange.

Dioxin has long been known to be as poisonous as arsenic or cyanide.

What really motivates our Washington thieves to go after our veterans? It’s easy. The service organizations that used to represent our former military are now grown fat, complacent and are focused on political infighting and are toothless, useless and more part of the problem than even congress itself.

They “cherry-pick” newsworthy issues aimed at their “conservative” membership, political issues, and ignored the dozens of scandals that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of veterans. At recent hearings in Washington on Gulf War Illness, our service organizations in their seats of prominence, not only brought nothing of value to the table but proved they were more than unfamiliar with the issues themselves.

They knew nothing and simply didn’t care. However, you can be assured, if something is done, they will stand up to take credit as usual.

With the most powerful advocacy group in Washington the AIPAC lobby, pumping money into, not only Israel, but the real power in keeping America’s military debt machine at full speed to support the aftermath of our national attack of post 9/11 delusion and self destruction, veterans don’t stand a chance.

Expect benefit cuts, medical treatment cutbacks.

Expect continual attacks on veterans in the corporate media, replacing their usual silence. Veterans are a threat, competing with Israel and the war lobby for the last pickings from a bankrupt America.

Veterans have always been an easy target, patriotic to a fault, easy to fool, easy to exploit, and always led by hucksters. Read any mainstream veterans publication. The signs of assumption are there. Veterans chose to serve, even when their country was dead wrong. Now veterans are being forced to pay. Congress calls it justice.
****************************

Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today. His career has included extensive experience in international banking along with such diverse areas as consulting on counter insurgency, defense technologies or acting as diplomatic officer of UN humanitarian groups. Gordon Duff's articles are published around the world and translated into a number of languages. He is a regularly on radio and tv.

send green star |

C2NN - Care2's member-powered news network

CONGRESS PLANS "STEALTH ATTACK" ON VETERANS BENEFITS

Loading Noted By...Please Wait

butterfly credits on the news network

Most Active Today in US Politics & Gov't