The Bush Regime & its supporters claim that they support American troops but the evidence suggest that this is not always the case. For instance there was the scandal over the Walter Reid Hospital that it was a disgrace & that parts of it were dire of need of repair or should be torn down & replaced. There have been scandals & questions about the lack of equipment or that the equipment given to the American troops were inadequate ie body armor & personnel carriers . There are also questions about the decrease in military morale when it comes to successive involuntary re-deployments to Iraq & Afghanistan. There have been further criticisms about the training of new recruits & of members of the National Guard as to whether or not the training is adequate or not. -paying signing bonuses if that are wounded - You gotta read the fine print - so this is another insult to the troops. So all their talk about " Support The Troops " tends to ring hollow & is just more phony " Bumper Sticker Patriotism ".
Adding insult to injury the soldiers who make a modest salary just barely a living wage get to watch the 150,000 Mercenaries stationed in Iraq as private contractors pulling down better salaries without being accountable for their actions.
There have also been stories that psychological illnesses which soldiers have developed while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder may not get the intensive treatment they need . It appears that the military under Bush have developed the attitude that PTSD is just a made up illness & is just a lot of " Psycho-Babble " . And as the article below claims that soldiers who have been wounded or have for psychological reasons are unable to complete their tour of duty are being told they must return to the government their signing bonuses . It seems the Bush regime is more interested in cost cutting measures than spending the resources necessary to properly equip soldiers & to take care of their medical needs where necessary or even to pay the average soldier a better & more reasonable salary. The article below this one shows that the military & the administration are downplaying the numbers of suicides of those troops who have returned to American soil after fighting in the war on terror.
Wounded Vets Asked to Pay Up, Monday 26 November 2007 AP & TRUTHOUT
New York - Service members seriously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan after they received a $10,000 bonus for enlisting are being asked by the Pentagon to repay portions of the incentive money, says a U.S. senator who calls the practice an example of military policy gone wrong.
"A bill in the mail is not the kind of present our soldiers deserve in this holiday season," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. said. "Our veterans are not being treated with the dignity, respect and thanks that they deserve. It's just a disgrace."
At a news conference Sunday, he said the policy remained in effect despite a report last July by a presidential commission that wounded veterans were being unfairly penalized by a requirement that enlistees must fulfill their entire term of service or lose a pro-rated portion of their bonus.
"This policy and early discharge as a result of service-related injury is now preventing thousands of combat-wounded warriors from getting the bonuses they have earned," Schumer said. "This includes several hundred New Yorkers who suffered wounds or catastrophic injuries before concluding their duty."
He said that when the case of Jordan Fox, an Army sniper partially blinded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, was called to the Pentagon's attention, officials replied that the demand for him to repay $2,800 was a "clerical error" and canceled the debt.
If the Mount Lebanon, Pa., soldier's case was an isolated incident, there has been no explanation of why hundreds of other wounded veterans have also received letters demanding repayment, Schumer said. "When you talk to the Pentagon, you get different answers from different people," he said.
Also see: CBS NEWS INVESTIGATION :Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans-A CBS News Investigation Uncovers A Suicide Rate For Veterans Twice That Of Other Americans NOVEMBER 13, 2007
And update at Alternet on suicide rates:
120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week on Average
By Penny Coleman AlterNet Monday 26 November 2007
The military refuses to come clean, insisting the high rates are due to "personal problems," not experience in combat.
Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone - and remember, this is just in 45 states - there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day.
As the widow of a Vietnam vet who killed himself after coming home, and as the author of a book for which I interviewed dozens of other women who had also lost husbands (or sons or fathers) to PTSD and suicide in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, I am deeply grateful to CBS for undertaking this long overdue investigation. I am also heartbroken that the numbers are so astonishingly high and tentatively optimistic that perhaps now that there are hard numbers to attest to the magnitude of the problem, it will finally be taken seriously. I say tentatively because this is an administration that melts hard numbers on their tongues like communion wafers.
Since these new wars began, and in spite of a continuous flood of alarming reports, the Department of Defense has managed to keep what has clearly become an epidemic of death beneath the radar of public awareness by systematically concealing statistics about soldier suicides. They have done everything from burying them on official casualty lists in a category they call "accidental noncombat deaths" to outright lying to the parents of dead soldiers. And the Department of Veterans Affairs has rubber-stamped their disinformation, continuing to insist that their studies indicate that soldiers are killing themselves, not because of their combat experiences, but because they have "personal problems."
Active-duty soldiers, however, are only part of the story. One of the well-known characteristics of post-traumatic stress injuries is that the onset of symptoms is often delayed, sometimes for decades. Veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam are still taking their own lives because new PTSD symptoms have been triggered, or old ones retriggered, by stories and images from these new wars. Their deaths, like the deaths of more recent veterans, are written up in hometown newspapers; they are locally mourned, but officially ignored. The VA doesn't track or count them. It never has. Both the VA and the Pentagon deny that the problem exists and sanctimoniously point to a lack of evidence they have refused to gather.
From the Real News Network:
Noam Chomsky on U.S. policy towards Iran
November 19, 2007
American Manifest Destiny continues with an all out Christian Crusade against the Middle East & the Islamic World as it were and so it goes... What Would Jesus Do ? The God of love says " Kill Them ALL "
Chomsky: Do the Democrats have a different answer on Iran?
Democrats the " ME TOO PARTY " wants to invade Iran while the Media Elite cheer them on -
Hilary & Bush can you tell them apart ?
Take care,
GORD.
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