Is the Army Ripping Off Our Troops?

       If the Army is shortchanging our troops on their disability retirement ratings to save a few bucks, then the Army should be charged with treason for doing such a thing. The Army says that they aren't doing such things but anyone who reads the Inspector General's report will see many problems with the way that the soldiers are being treated and ripped off after serving this country in that sham war in Iraq!   MORE BELOW

                                                                               

Army Times 

The Army is deliberately shortchanging troops on their disability retirement ratings to hold down costs, according to veterans’ advocates, lawyers and services members, and the Inspector General has identified 87 problems in the system that need fixing.

The numbers of people approved for permanent or temporary disability retirement in the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force have stayed relatively stable since 2001.

But in the Army — in the midst of a war — the number of soldiers approved for permanent disability retirement has plunged by more than two-thirds, from 642 in 2001 to 209 in 2005, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year. That decline has come even as the war in Iraq has intensified and the total number of soldiers wounded or injured there has soared above 15,000.

Along with paying them reduced wages during that time, the eventual reevaluation often leads to downward revisions in their disability ratings — and lower disability payments.

   From Daily Kos

...what about that Inspector General's report that identified 87 problems that needed to be fixed? It was from a year long probe that found, "inconsistent training for counselors helping soldiers through the system, inadequate record keeping and a failure to follow policy pushed down from the Defense Department," and yet two days ago, Secretary of Defense Gates was:

...dismayed to learn this past week that some of our injured troops were not getting the best possible treatment at all stages of their recovery, in particular the outpatient care. This is unacceptable and it will not continue.

I'm grateful to reporters for bringing this problem to our attention, but very disappointed we did not identify it ourselves.

Yes, Secretary Gates was shocked, simply shocked, at the problems at Walter Reed, and so he sprang into action, sending an army of workers to paint and patch up Building 18 before giving reporters a tour, and naming a review group to "inspect the current situation."  And after much study and expressions of support for the troops, with a few more case workers assigned to the ever-increasing number of wounded men and women, what will happen to Cpl. McLeod and the thousands like him across the country?  After the outrage and news coverage dies down, will the issue of shortchanging wounded veterans on their disability ratings continue to be ignored?  

 

Technorati tags: US Army, Secretary Gates, Walter Reed, GAO

Democrats Soft On Terror?

   We all know that I am leaning towards thinking that the Democrats still need to grow some balls to get with the program as they seem to have gotten lost somewhat since the election passed.

   Are the Democrats soft on terror?  I do not think so. They just aren't used to playing the role of adult yet.

                                   

 

Published on Saturday, February 24, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Are Democrats Soft on Terror?

by Susan Lenfestey

A few days ago, the PBS News Hour, which deserves, well -- a medal, for honoring the war dead each evening, was followed by a program on the Marines which I found unexpectedly compelling for many reasons, including the haunting faces I'd just seen

In it, several retired Marines spoke of the reality of war vs. the romance, and said that anyone who has been to war will do everything to avoid sending someone else off to war.

This brought to mind our current Commander-in-Chief and his blackguard Vice-Chief, who both cut-and-run when they were called to serve. And, by contrast, the Democrats such as George McGovern, Wes Clark, John Kerry and Max Cleland, who are all anti-war, but "warriors" in the lexicon of the Marines.

So how is it that these Democrats who fought the wars have come to be seen as the ones who are soft on terror, and the ones who ducked the war have come to be seen as the ones to fight it, at least long enough to bamboozle a nation into re-electing them?

Just as we allowed Karl Rove and the “base” to paint us into the corner of being anti-family (while many of them are single with no children or, like Newt Gingrich, working on their third marriages), we've allowed them to portray us as "not getting" the threat of terrorism.

Well, we do get it.

• We get it that George Bush's biggest foreign policy blunder in history has increased the rage towards America and made us more at risk.

• We get it that the instability he's created in Iraq and the Mideast makes the consequences of pulling out of Iraq almost certainly catastrophic, matched only by the catastrophe of staying in.

• We get it that bin Laden is flourishing - somewhere -- and that new Al-Qaeda training camps are sprouting up in Pakistan and Somalia and who-knows-where else.

• We get it that we are still woefully weak at home, with efforts at Homeland security floundering and under funded.

• We get it that we have stretched our troops so thin in Iraq that we have put our capacity to respond on any other front, including the home front, at risk.

• We get it that by miring us in Iraq, by keeping detainees in Gitmo with no recourse, by allowing torture and suspending Constitutional guarantees, George Bush and Dick Cheney have stripped us of the moral authority to lead by example.

• We get it that we need to be vigilant and defend ourselves from future attacks, even if it requires military action.

It's not the war on terror we oppose; it's the stupids who are running the war on terror we could do without. We'd rather listen to those who have been to war than those who are delusional about it.

Are Democrats “soft on terror?” Do we tuck tail and run in times of war? For better or worse, think FDR, Truman, and LBJ.

What we do want is for our leaders to be smart on terror, to use all the diplomatic, political and economic firepower they can muster before (and after) sending a few good men - and women - into the killing fields of war. And if they've already blundered into a disastrous unwinnable war, to have the smarts to see that there's no correlation between the number of dead bodies in Iraq and our national security -- and the humility to admit it.

Susan Lenfestey lives in Minneapolis and writes at the Clotheslineblog.com

 

Technorati tags: Democrats, War on terror, Homeland security, Bush Administration