Two Wars Down: An Ungrateful Nation Now Turns on Its Veterans

- We can afford wars, but not the people who fight and serve, say Alan Simpson, James Webb, ... -

By Gordon Duff in Veterans Today

A week ago, we marched out of Iraq, leaving 50,000 'administrative' troops and tens of thousands of contractors behind. They perform no useful purpose of any kind, no more than the original attack which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates now openly refers to as unnecessary and wrong.

The war that never should have started cost America 3 trillion dollars, much of it unaccounted for. Along with the thousands of American dead and the untold devastation in Iraq, the war also cost America the health and welfare of up to 400,000 of her veterans, America's children. A generation of young adults, another generation of our best and bravest stand betrayed.

We have money for fraud of every kind, projects paid for but never finished, weapons stolen, defective or never delivered, buying poisoned water for our troops at five times the cost of French Wine, I could go on for hours, the list is endless.



This week, when Senator's Alan Simpson, the wild-talking Wyoming Republican and now formerly a stalwart veterans' advocate Daniel Akaka talk about saving money, it is to come from payments to veterans for "presumptive" illness.

Don't believe it's just these two, its the whole gang of them, with few exceptions, and its not the first time. When Bush gutted funding for Veterans and up to nine-million disability claims related to war wounds and the endless environmental crimes against our troops shredded or shelved, even our mainstream veterans organizations stood behind him.

I spent two hours on the phone with a Vietnam veteran I have known for 35 years. He has both a son and son-in-law seriously wounded from Iraq. His 30 years in government and 28 years in the military, many years working with veterans, gave him the skills to help his own family negotiate the minefield of bureaucratic insanity servicemen and women are faced with when returning from war, used up, smashed, maimed or poisoned, discarded and left to die.

How many veterans died with claims in processing? How many died of undiagnosed poisonings or waiting for that medical appointment that never comes? It isn’t thousands or tens of thousands. Is the number as high as a million? It may be, we aren’t allowed to know.

Target: Veterans' Benefits; AP Is Leading Edge of Fight Against Veterans

- Paul Sullivan, executive director for the advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense, said it would be unreasonable for veterans to have to prove on a case-by-case basis that their illness came from Agent Orange. He believes the science supports the decision by VA to grant presumptive benefits. -

"The presumptive law is absolutely essential," Sullivan said. "Money should not be an issue," emphasizing veterans file claims against VBA in order to obtain urgently needed and endlessly delayed VHA medical care.

The day after the AP hit piece on veterans' benefits comes another piece on Aging vets' costs concern Obama's deficit co-chair.

The question remains whether the veterans' community is going let Congress to slash veterans' disability benefits, a neocon policy priority for years:

By Mike Baker, Associated Press Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. — The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama's deficit commission said Tuesday.

Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson's comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans, even though decades of research has failed to find more than a possible link between the defoliant Agent Orange and diabetes.

"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," said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has also allowed Vietnam veterans to get money for ailments such as lung cancer and prostate cancer, and the agency finalized a proposal Tuesday to grant payments for heart disease — the nation's leading cause of death.

Simpson declined to say whether the issue would become part of his work on Obama's panel examining the nation's debt. He looked to Congress to make a change.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, a Hawaii Democrat who currently chairs the VA committee, said Tuesday he will address the broader issue of so-called presumptive conditions at a hearing previously set for Sept. 23. The committee will look to "see what changes Congress and VA may need to make to existing law and policy," Akaka said in an e-mail.

"It is our solemn responsibility to help veterans with disabilities suffered in their service to our country," said Akaka, who served in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. "That responsibility also requires us to make sure limited resources are available for those who truly need and are entitled to them."

Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat and Vietnam combat veteran, has also raised questions about the spending. The leading Republican on the committee, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, has not responded to several requests for comment on the topic in recent months.