March 16, 2005
Fuck The Troops
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to cut back military officer education during "stress periods" like the war in Iraq so more will be available for deployment. [...]
"Let's come up with some options how we might shorten professional military education or abbreviate it during stress periods," Rumsfeld wrote in a short memo marked "for official use only". It went only to Myers and Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel David Chu.
Rumsfeld's proposal is already meeting with resistance among the uniformed military.
A Granite Falls woman who was released from the Army Reserve after only a few months in uniform was shocked by a recent military mailgram telling her to report for duty next month for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"I thought I was discharged and done," said Andrea DeGeus.
It wasn't so simple.
DeGeus' name was transferred into the Individual Ready Reserve, an administrative roster the Army plucks soldiers from during times of war.
DeGeus, 21, is now struggling to get her Army orders changed. Her biggest worry is 14 months old.
"My daughter. That's everything," DeGeus said, referring to Abby, her toddler.
As a general rule, 26-year-old National Guard members ought to be some of most physically fit people on the planet. For eight out of the nine years that Randi Airola served as a technician in the Army and Air National Guard, she met that description. Then, in March 1999, in a moment that would the mark beginning of the end of her honorable military service (and the start of a lifelong struggle), Airola received her fourth dose of a compulsory vaccine to prevent service members from contracting anthrax.
The anthrax vaccine given to service members requires six doses plus an annual booster shot. Airola had taken the shot before, so the slight lightheadedness she felt after leaving the doctor's office was nothing for her to get worked up over. The next day, though, while serving as honor guard at a funeral, she nearly passed out. She spent the rest of the week in bed, suffering from an immobilizing combination of muscle weakness, abdominal cramping, sore joints, and vertigo.
Over the coming months, her pain increased, growing so intense that even a daily dose of 16,000 milligrams of Motrin wouldn't offer enough relief to get her through the day. Civilian doctors were baffled by her condition, and though she missed 140 hours of work in a two-month span, she was denied any referral to see a military physician.
Officials in Airola's chain of command shrugged off the possibility that the anthrax vaccine may have been responsible for her condition, and in October 1999, she was ordered to take her fifth shot. She refused, and was honorably discharged in 2000. Not long after, she was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.
A Kansas soldier who is on active duty in Iraq is also fighting for his home.
A bank is trying to foreclose on Sgt. Steve Welter's house in Osawatomie, which is illegal. It is a violation of a 64-year-old federal law to foreclose on a soldier's property while he or she is at war.
Welter has been fighting in Iraq since September. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is threatening to foreclose on the house where his wife and three children live.
Veterans account for nearly one-third of all homeless men in America, even though the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says they comprise only 13 percent of adult males in the general population.
Tens of thousands of other veterans have returned from war only to find that they have to fight their own government to win the disability payments they're owed. A Knight Ridder investigation has found that injured soldiers who petition the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for those payments are often doomed by lengthy delays, hurt by inconsistent rulings and failed by the veterans representatives who try to help them.
The investigation was based on interviews with veterans and their families from around the country and on a review of internal VA documents and computerized databases that had never been released to the public. Many of the records were made available only after Knight Ridder sued the agency in federal court.
And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that "Gulf-era veterans" now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.
This week the American Free Press dropped a "dirty bomb" on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.
They're overmedicated, forced to talk about their mothers instead of Iraq, and have to fight for disability pay. Traumatized combat vets say the Army is failing them, and after a year following more than a dozen soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, I believe them.
National Guardsmen and reservists who are injured on active duty face daunting and sometimes insurmountable hurdles to get medical care, soldiers and military officials told a congressional panel Thursday.
The troops described an Army bureaucracy that loses track of wounded reservists, drops medical coverage before some are healed and often inflicts hardships on families.
"I can take my animals to the veterinarian and get better treatment than my father got at the Dallas VA. They shouldn't do this to anybody, let alone someone who fights for their country."
Congressional investigators are The agency said that so far it has treated 6,400 veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars for the disorder and that overall, its health care system has provided such services for 244,000 veterans. But the Government Accountability Office, in a report Wednesday, said it is not clear whether the VA can meet the demands for treatment from veterans of those two recent wars. Agency data for the 2004 budget year show that fewer than half of those using VA health care are screened for the disorder, according to the investigative arm of Congress. If veterans returning from combat do not have access to these services, "many mental health experts believe that the chance may be missed ... to lessen the severity of symptoms and improve the overall quality of life" for those with the disorder, the report said.
War may be hell, three veterans of the Iraq conflict told college students Monday, but coming home is no picnic either.
The three painted a bleak picture of a soldier's life in the war zone at a forum at Nassau Community College, saying troops still lack body armor, fly in decades-old helicopters and don't have enough Arabic-speaking interpreters to do their jobs effectively.
But they saved their harshest words for the conditions that soldiers face after returning home. They cited a lack of services and compassion -- both in Washington and among the general public -- for high rates of alcoholism, homelessness and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder among the recently returned troops.
According to advocates for the homeless, about 100 Iraq War vets are currently homeless, and they expect that number to increase dramatically if US troops stay in Iraq for several years, as Bush administration officials have admitted they will have to.
"Americans think the VA [the U.S. Veterans Administration] is wonderful, but that's a lot of crap," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless Veterans (NCHV) in Washington, DC. "The VA doesn't have enough resources to take care of our veterans, and Congress doesn't want to pay for them."
Gulf War veteran Melissa Sterry's voice shook as she told state lawmakers Thursday about the devastating illnesses she blames on her contact with depleted uranium ammunition and armor in Kuwait.
"On the outside, I look perfectly normal," said Sterry, a 42-year-old New Haven resident. "On the inside, my body is destroying itself."
Sterry told lawmakers about her chronic headaches, the pneumonia she suffers through three or four times a year, muscle spasms, chronic diarrhea, blood in her urine and stool and the three recorded heart attacks she has survived.
Dr. John Caulfield thought it had to be a mistake when the Army asked him to return to active duty. After all, he's 70 years old and had already retired -- twice. He left the Army in 1980 and private practice two years ago.
"My first reaction was disbelief," Caulfield said. "It never occurred to me that they would call a 70-year-old."
John Staresinich is a Purple Heart veteran who has slept in cracks in highway overpasses and abandoned cars, camped out in thin tents next to railroad tracks and fought off rats and bugs in Chinatown flophouses.
In December, he was diagnosed with severe combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder -- 32 years after returning from Vietnam -- and is now getting help from the federal Veterans Affairs in Chicago. He says it took more than a year of begging that agency.
"Soldiers from Iraq are going to come back with PTSD," said Staresinich, 54. "I hope they treat them sooner than they did me."
Posted by Eddie Tews at March 16, 2005 10:46 AM
Comments
Pathetic. This site is simply pathetic. Reminds me of an Arnold Schwarzeneggar line from Predator when they are building a trap to catch the predator, but all Dylan does is whine.
"Instead of complaining.....maybe you should help".
Then they all died at the hands of an alien.
Dumbasses. -- Posted by: Alex on April 19, 2005 01:13 PM
look bitch ur mom sux my kok i from kkk yea and we hate thos niggers and 1 time we chopped som guys dik ooooofffffff and shooved in a niggers ass.and we took it and poot it in ur soup and u souped it up lik a bitch ass nigger -- Posted by: matt and shane hate niggers on August 5, 2005 09:44 PM
Man you are some sorry individuals kkk huh yeah lets hear you say that in the heart of la or the bay are or chicago you racist fuck...try doin that shit when there are real people around and you have equal numbers same number of kkk as there are african american both with equal fire power also...you cowards nuthin but inbred trash
have a blessed day -- Posted by: PAIGE I on August 25, 2005 09:59 AM