By Michael Leon
This is like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention telling Americans treating the Ebola virus is really a diagnostic and therapeutic "trap;" quote is from Dr. Satel.
Does Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki know or care what anti-veteran nonsense the VA is emitting? How about President Obama?
Long an avowed enemy of Vietnam War veterans, Satal takes direct aim at last year's revised PTSD rules that were hyped by Sec. Shinseki in a well-publiczed op-ed piece (USA Today, July 12, 2010). Writes Satel in a Feb. 1 piece on the AEI site:
The idea that one can sustain an enduring and disabling mental disorder based on anxious anticipation of a traumatic event that never materialized is a radical departure from the clinical--and common-sense--understanding that traumatic stress disorders are caused by events that actually do happen to people.Sure, the war against veterans at home has been a bipartisan exercise of neglect, but anyone paying any attention to the Bush-Cheney years knows fully well that administration took its key from the AEI on major policy initiatives, and Satel became a leading light of the out-and-out animus towards veterans, especially those Vietnam War guys who smoked all that pot and wore peace signs. Get over it guys is the message by Satel and apparently now the VA and Sec. Shinseki to all veterans with PTSD.
In so many words American veterans, your psychological problems are not the fault of the entire USA. Get it?
Now that the GOP and Tea Party have made public their intention to target the insufficient amount of money now spent on veterans [an ever growing universe of people who served this country unless we can up the suicide rates a few points], one wonders if Sec. Shinseki even knows what's going on in his own office.
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