Wisconsin Whistle-blowing Veteran Vindicated as Neocons Target Shinseki

To listen to Republicans today, the decades-long culture of the VA of Delay, Deny and Hope You Die sprung into being in January 2009.

During the Bush-Cheney administration Vietnam-era veteran, an early whistle blower of VA abuse and neglect, Keith Roberts of Wisconsin, navigated through the maze-like process of filing his claim for disability benefits for his diagnosed PTSD.

Roberts accused the VA officials at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center of fraud, fabricating the minutes of a benefits hearing and altering his C-file (claim file).

Roberts said the VA were a "bunch of crooks." In retaliation top VA officials and a corrupt U.S. attorney indicted and criminally convicted Roberts in 2004-05 to shut him up. The indictment was based solely on the testimony of VA special agent with the VA regional Inspector General office in Hines, Illinois.

When President Obama announced on December 7, 2008 that he would appoint Eric Shinseki to become veterans affairs secretary, Roberts and a small band of veterans' advocates said Shinseki needed to clean house at the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA) (VA).

Rid the VA of bureaucrats from the some 1,700 medical centers, the deputy assistant secretaries at the Veterans Benefit Administration (VBA) like Michael McLendon who during the Bush administration blamed PTSD on lack of belief in God and country. (McKelvey, Boston Review) and search out and can the people who don't want veterans to receive benefits.

What eludes most mainstream news is that embedded neocons throughout the VA have sabotaging the VA for decades because they are ideologically opposed to the mission of caring for veterans in the first place, and want to privatize the whole agency.

While former VA staff attorney and Vietnam veteran Robert Walsh (who now works for veterans in private practice), former VBA staffer Paul Sullivan, and Anthony Hardie (Gulf War veteran and advocate) and veterans’ advocate Steve Robinson (a veteran who served in Ranger and Special Operations units) kept spreading the word about the neocons and anti-veterans' cabals at the VA, they found in Secretary Shinseki who a man who didn't listen.

Said Robinson in 2010: "(Y)es, there have been some improvements, ... but it baffles the mind to think that the Administration believes change will occur if they don’t clean house, and remove the entrenched bureaucrats, and policy wonks, who are gatekeepers to affecting that change. I don’t know why they haven’t moved them out, but they are still there, and they are, in fact, sabotaging Shinseki on several fronts."

Shinseki, as noted on the Rachel Maddow Show last night, was a whistleblower himself as a military general on the Bush-Cheney 2003 invasion of Iraq, and now Republicans want him as a fall guy and political punching bag for "(c)hronic VA problems." 

I don't feel too bad for Shinseki. 

As a whistleblower, he didn't bare anything like the injustices of Wisconsin veteran Keith Roberts at the hands of the VA and U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic.

Shinseki never listened to the likes of Keith Roberts, Bob Walsh, Paul Sullivan, Anthony Hardie and Steve Robinson.

VA Senate Comm Hearing Draws Attention as Cuts in Veterans' Benefits Feared

- Hearing Thursday (September 23) United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs Oversight Hearing: VA Disability Compensation: Presumptive Disability Decision-Making. VA Secretary Shinseki should publicly blast the sad sacks who sit on the United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs -

As the continuing lurid, anti-veteran drips emit from congress, it appears one U.S. senator after another issues statements of concern that veterans' benefits cost money.

Early this Summer it was Sen. James Webb (D-VA) and Sen Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) of United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs fairly squawking for a delay in the implementation of the expanded Agent Orange-related presumptives illnesses rule.

Of course, the usual cabal of anti-veteran interests has kept up the pressure.

Former Sen. Alan Simpson, Republican co-chair of the President’s Deficit Commission, in early September said, “the irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess.” Simpson once was chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and his anti-veteran commitments help guide us to this disgraceful situation where we are still arguing about helping victims of Agent Orange.

Yesterday, the ranking leading Republican on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) joined the anti-veteran chorus.

Mike Baker reports Burr blasting the Agent Orange-related presumptives illnesses rule: "We’d like to make sure that, one, the science has a causal link, and two, that the defined population is an appropriate one,” said Burr.

Webb and his anti-veteran cohorts appear upset that VA Sec Shinseki has pushed on moving forward the Agent Orange presumtives rule without partnering with the sufficient Congressional stalling.

"On March 25, 2010, the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced his intention to add B-cell Leukemia, Parkinson’s disease, and coronary artery disease to the list of presumptive conditions associated with exposure to Agent Orange," wrote Sen Webb in July in reply to a veteran who wrote Webb blasting his stall tactics. "This decision was taken without full consultation with the Congress."

Whether the hearing Thursday will be an exercise in political damage control or a continuation of the Vietnam veteran animus in Congress, one thing is certain: Never will Vietnam veterans ever trust this Congress again.

And VA Secretary Shinseki has gained some new supporters for his commitment on this issue. He should continue the fight Thursday and publicly blast the sad sacks who sit on the United States Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Agent Orange is a political game for the likes of Webb, Burr and Simpson. Veterans who don't play know better.