Anti-choice Bushie Pushed VA Death Book Lie

As Sussex, Wisconsin native Thomas Tradewell, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) National Commander remains silent, a Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) health planning booklet is still the object of right wingers misleading veterans and other Americans it is cast as a "death book."

This lie was begun by anti-abortion George W. Bush staffer, Jim Towey. From Veterans Today:

How did the phony ‘death book’ debate involving Veterans Affairs begin? Simple. Fox News-owned Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece by Jim Towey, former Bush coordinator of anti-abortion activities and political fixer.

Towey is now president of St. Vincent's College, though he has no experience of any kind as an educator. Further, 80% of the faculty have called for his resignation for falsifying documents. It was Towey, in his WSJ editorial who continually mischaracterized VA attempts to inform patients of choices as an attempt to encourage Gulf War veterans to commit suicide.

The pamphlet itself, Your Life, Your Choices, is far from controversial. In fact it is, if anything, frighteningly conservative and mainstream. The document is exhaustive in its addressing of faith based decision making. Every imaginable attempt was made to see to it that no group, no matter how ‘wingnut’ or extreme, would find anything to complain about. The result was a huge document, though extremely informative, that is too long for anyone to read or at least want to.

Now GOP Aims Lies at Veterans

Hey Sussex, Wisconsin native Thomas Tradewell, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) National Commander, where are you?

Because nothing is sacred to the Republican Party, certainly not veterans.

Chris Adams at McClatchy Newspapers reports, "While Republicans are calling a Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) health planning booklet a 'death book' that encourages veterans to kill themselves or forgo care, ethicists and legal and medical experts say it's a reasonable attempt to help America's veterans plan for the end of their lives."

Make no mistake, the GOP will tell any lie and dishonor America's 26-million veterans for a chance to stir up its benighted base. Now, they are claiming that the DVA is encouraging veterans to kill themselves.

Does the VFW approve of these lies?

There is seemingly no bottom to the Republican Party's capacity to lie in service to ... who knows what these people think they are doing?

Writes Gordon Duff at Veterans Today:

In a TV appearance where Michael Steele, GOP Chairman and defacto spokesman for the medical industry and Fox News's Chris Wallace fabricated a story citing the Department of Veterans Affairs for creating programs to force veterans to commit suicide. ...

Defending veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs was Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense, a watchdog group famed for uncovering VA corruption. Other veterans groups, some whose aging members were terrified by the Fox News story have neither made any significant effort to inform their membership or call the GOP and Fox News to account for this attack on the veterans health care system.

The wild and totally falsified claims made by Steele and Fox News are part of a pattern of deceptive reports intended to bring about an outcry against the government's attempt to guarantee health care for the ever increasing millions of uninsured Americans who are victims of the current economic collapse.

Why a political party and news network with passive complicity from veterans organizations would perpetrate such a massive fraud meant to victimize thousands of aging veterans may seen surprising to some.

Again I ask, Thomas Tradewell, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) National Commander, where are you?

Veteran Advocates Hit Service Orgs

America has 26-million veterans comprising a tremendously powerful and effective lobby for veterans' interest after service. Wrong.

Veteran advocates who do the thankless work assisting veterans navigating through an often uncaring [and under the administration of George W. Bush hostile] bureaucracy in the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA) see themselves as sleeping with the enemy as service organization such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) are perceived as posing a barrier to reform.

Recently a resident of Sussex, Wisconsin, Thomas Tradewell, was elected VFW National Commander.

Mr. Tradewell said in his acceptance speech in mid-August, "to honor our military heroes is to ensure that our military and our veterans are honored, recognized and cared for … which is the focus of every program we conduct at every level of this great organization."

But many veteran advocates see institutional surrender by the VFW and American Legion to the inaction of bureaucracy and neocon aversion to meeting the responsibility to care for our veterans.

In the words of one veteran advocate harboring contempt for the VFW and American Legion: "It's time to rain on these pricks."

Writes Gordon Duff in Veterans Today:

It's worse, much worse. Not only do they say nothing good, most work openly against veterans who, especially recently, have won huge victories for veterans rights, victories won, not only against an uncaring government but with no support from millions of fellow veterans and the organizations who have rubber stamped every oppressive act, every abuse that has for decades destroyed veterans and their families.

Truth is very simple. For 60 years things have gotten worse for veterans although tens of billions of dollars have bloated Veterans Affairs into the most dysfunctional and oppressive bureaucracy in our entire government. Courts now ‘officially’ find the DVA proven ’troubling’ but nobody seems to know why. We know. Sick veterans know. Veterans who have worked claims thru the system know.

What vets don't know is how the American Legion, VFW and other groups have advised the DVA and Congress, led us, every step of the way, to the total failure and utter disaster we have now. These groups ‘played’ at helping vets but became a home for political extremists or dimwits addicted more grandstanding than the hard work required by informed veterans advocacy. ...

For every failure of the service organizations, most military retiree groups even go further. Some actively oppose funds for veteran medical care and benefits feeling it threatens retiree privileges. On one landmark issue, retiree groups continually oppose use of Space A military flights for disabled veterans and Medal of Honor winners, yet millions of tax payer dollars are spent to subsidize both flights and facilities, terminals, hotels, for retirees to use.

All the game playing, be it retirees against vets, conservatives against liberals, delusional idiots against less delusional idiots or serving military who are systematically instructed by our military to disrespect veterans and their service, makes unity an impossibility.

The industry that breeds ignorance is too powerful and ingrained to convert. Veterans have been too polite and understanding, not only with the public and their leaders who could care less what happens to us but with other veterans whose utter ignorance has left us powerless.

The idea that social organizations with good and decent members operate under a national bureaucracy so less decent than the members themselves, or most of them anyway, that reason itself is challenged.

How do we say, thanks for your service, thanks for the flowers and the motorcycle processions but keep the hell out of politics and please, please dump your leadership, fire your lobbyists and get connected to the real world?