Donald Trump Clueless and Chickenhearted on PTSD

Donald Trump Clueless and Chickenhearted on PTSD

Donald Trump is an idiot.

Donald Trump speaks at retired American warriors PAC Event October 3, 2016:

Said Trump, "Speaking to an audience of military veterans in Virginia on Wednesday, the Republican candidate said those in attendance were "strong," but some with PTSD "can't handle it."

Moron.

Said CorbinReiff in response:

I guess my buddy who I deployed with, who suffered from PTSD, and who took his own life wasn't as strong as a roomful of Trump's supporters. 

PTSD has nothing to do with 'being tough,' dipshit.

Thank you, David Morris; Wishing You Peace

Käthe Kollwitz

Thank you David J. Morris for your piece in the New York Times on PTSD.

Let every chicken-hawk, veterans-are-frauds, anti-disability rights Republican read Mr. Morris.

Let every Republican who bashed President Obama's work to help veterans suffering from PTSD tell it to Mr. Morris first.

An excerpt:

"Occasionally I had weird dreams about the war that mixed people and places from my time in the Marines with my time in Iraq. But what really concerned me was something that happened a few years later. I was sitting in a movie theater with my girlfriend when the world suddenly went black. When I regained consciousness, I was pacing the lobby of the theater, looking at people’s hands to make sure they weren’t carrying weapons."

Let Gov. Scott Walker and his refusal to even discuss a pardon for an exemplary young Wisconsin Marine, Eric Pizer, read David Morris. Perhaps Scott Walker is too busy.

A Vietnam Veteran with PTSD is the First US Execution of 2015

Andrew Brannan - Killed by the
state of Georgia last night

Southern U.S. Republicans love killing people.

So it is that Georgia beat Texas to the kill in 2015 executing in cold blood a Vietnam Veteran, Andrew Brannan, suffering from PTSD, an affliction that Karl Rove, the American Enterprise Institute and most Republicans either deny or minimize.

Taylor Barnes reports in The Intercept.

Writes Barnes:

Numerous veterans spoke out in an attempt to stay his execution. "What does putting a man like Andrew Brannan to death say to my generation of veterans? To me, it says that this country can exploit our youth to its gain and then, when it comes time, this country, and the State of Georgia, will discard you like yesterday’s forgotten garbage," Sion New, a veteran of the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars and law student at Emory University, wrote to the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Barnes has it right, and it gets worse.

Under the Bush-Cheney administration, veterans' advocates tell me Karl Rove sent down the word to the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) that Vietnam veterans should be denied coverage for PTSD, an order effectively reversed in 2010 by President Obama who expanded disability benefits for veterans with PTSD to Republican and bureaucratic howls.

In February 2010, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts questioned Assistant to the Solicitor General Anthony Yang in a federal benefits-related case, Astrue v. Ratliff (2009). (Leon, Wisconsin State Journal)

Asked Justice Roberts, "In litigating with veterans, the government more often than not takes a position that is substantially unjustified?"

Yes, he was told.

Roberts found this "really startling."

Wisconsin's U.S. Navy Vietnam-era veteran, Keith Roberts, went to federal prison for this startling, unjustified attitude (persecuted by Scott Walker's current campaign attorney, Stephen Biskupic who was serving as U.S. attorney at the time) in a sham prosecution. (Horton, Harper's Magazine)

Vietnam-era veteran Andrew Brannan was killed in cold blood by the state of Georgia last night.

Humane PTSD Regs, Better Veterans' Care Are Obama Legacy

Myriad chickenhawks and neocons led the call against phantom PTSD fraud ala voter fraud

President Obama's administration expanded the VA's disability programs, and changed the PTSD rules for obtaining disability benefits, a move that drew criticism from the neocons and their allies.

This comprehensive altering of the PTSD disability regulations in 2010 is an achievement vastly underreported, and following eight years of neocon war was badly needed.

Obama expanded the rules for Agent Orange claims.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), Gulf War Illness, and an end to prosecuting and intimidating veterans for tenaciously pursuing disability benefit claims like Wisconsin's Keith Roberts, Obama made huge strides in veterans' care, though the GOP is trying to rid political history of this reality.

This Veterans Day, stand with President Obama and the many safeguards for veterans instituted against Republican Party opposition.