ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! HOW DARE THEY TREAT VETERANS THIS WAY!

No cracking wise here with this post. My disgust meter exploded and there is no room for humor as I write this.

I've taken a brief vacation from this blog because it seems all that anyone cares about is which celebrity died or entered rehab. But the ultimate shame of this administration and its party as evidenced by the revelations from Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) has pushed my big red button as it should that of every decent, average Joe and Jane American.

Former representative Joe Scarborough stated on the "Scarborough Country" edition of 5 March 2007 that, in effect, the revelations coming from WRAMC also hurt readiness as "younger brothers won’t enlist having seen the mistreatment of their big brothers". He couldn’t have been more correct. That observation applies as much to generations as siblings.

As the son of a career Air Force colonel who served in WWII and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal twice, the nephew of a combat Marine in the Pacific Island Hopping Campaign, the nephew of a Naval Aviator in the Pacific who was killed in combat, the brother of a Vietnam vet who served during the Tet Offensive and ended up killing himself because of his war demons and as a Vietnam era vet myself who eventually was medically separated in May of 2002, military service has ended with me. I have advised my sons not to serve.

Why? Because I have seen this country make promises to those who serve with its collective fingers crossed behind its back. The VA motto quotes Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan” yet that hasn’t really been the case since WWII.

This administration and its party are the most anti-veteran group of miscreants and hypocrites of all time, creating a whole new generation of disabled veterans for whom they can’t, or more accurately refuse to, care. They can’t provide promised benefits yet they can find $5-billion-plus each month to pour into the Iraqi debacle.

Yet these people who have never served a day in the military or were part of the “gentlemen’s flying club” (meaning those who never flew anything but training flights) never fail to appear before the cameras with our GIs and vets for every photo op available, making speeches publicly declaring their support for the troops and vets as they quietly and secretly erode what little benefits given our troops and vets at every opportunity.

Don’t let them put the blame entirely on the Army Medical Corps and WRAMC. As casualties continued to mount the Bush Administration compelled the Army to award a contract to IAP Worldwide Services for base operations support services and facilities management. That latter part, facilities management, incidentally, means the maintenance and upkeep of every structure on the base. Is this becoming clear now? Further IAP is run by a former Halliburton executive and the company’s inability to even deliver ice to Katrina put its abilities in question.

A full year passed from the time IAP was awarded the contract to the time IAP took over. In the interim some three hundred Soldiers and Department of the Army (DA) Civilians began to retire, transfer or simply leave as their positions would no longer exist. When IAP accepted the keys there were only sixty Soldiers and DA Civilians on staff. How did IAW respond? It replaced those sixty with fifty of its own (not only can't they deliver ice their math skills are sadly lacking) . The Army warned that this contract that was jammed down its throat could result in "total mission failure" - they were right - it did.

The appalling conditions at WRAMC are in great part due to that fat contract with no discernable performance requirement and a lack of post-care personnel, services and coordination. The conditions at WRAMC have pulled down the curtain that has concealed the true contempt that this administration and its mindless lock-step rank and file have for the military and its veterans.

The testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by wounded soldiers and their families was absolutely heartbreaking. And despite this administration and its party's claims to be supportive of those who have and do serve the testimony proved it to be nothing more than lip-service. And how can they claim they were "unaware" as there is mounting evidence that there was prior knowledge of what was going on almost literally in their own backyard? Villagers living near the concentration camps during WWII claimed ignorance of went went on beyond the gates too but no-one bought it.

This country only need look at history to see how the military is really viewed by conservatives– an expendable item like munitions. The troop is the bullet that once expended leaves the empty shell that is the veteran.

One ugly moment in our not so distant history that the government has pretty well kept out of the text books are the Bonus Marchers of WWI. During the Great Depression homeless, jobless veterans, many with families, turned to the government in peaceful protest for promised benefits for which they would qualify long after the government actuaries banked they’d be dead (a typical caveat to a benefit for veterans - they won't live to collect or won't collect for long).

One side of the house voted to pay the benefit, the other to withhold it until 1945 and shortly after Herbert Hoover turned the Army under the command of Douglas MacArthur (yes, THAT MacArthur) on the veterans in the streets of DC .

Why? As the Hoover Administration spun it, they were obviously “influenced” by communists as “whites and coloreds camped together” thus they were a threat to the federal government as subversives, a "red threat" to be crushed.

They were nothing but hungry, unemployed veterans whom the government sought to silence and deny promised benefits – and it did until FDR’s administration.

As always history repeats itself. After the GI Bill of WWII was stripped and watered down following Vietnam, veterans once again became an expendable commodity and a way to whittle a budget while pork barrel spending continued unfettered.

Budgets are balanced on the backs of the most vulnerable and veterans, particularly disabled veterans, are among the vulnerable. Promises made for their service and sacrifices vaporize when it’s time to pay the bill as the fat contracts of the Halliburtons, IAPs, et al are funded by stealing from promises to veterans and others. This why military service in my family ends with me until there is drastic change in this government’s attitude toward and treatment of its military and veterans.

Let the children of this administration, its party and those who profit from Iraq do the dirty work for their parents.

21-50 - Out.