It wasn’t always like this

IT WASN’T ALWAYS LIKE THIS
SHAME ON THE BUSH REGIME
By Kyle and Abraham

Believe it or not there was a time when we did NOT treat war our veterans like toilet paper. Today we allow our veterans, wounded or otherwise, to go homeless and to wait weeks or even months before they are declared disabled. But it wasn’t always like this. After World War II we treated our Veterans like human beings, passing the GI Bill and treating them with respect and dignity as we provided them with educational and housing opportunities.

Educational opportunities were the most important aspect of the GI Bill. Approximately 7.8 million veterans attended colleges, trade schools, business schools and agricultural schools. GIs were guaranteed a year’s worth of education plus the time of their military service up to 48 months. They also received as much as $90 a month for food and housing. And it proved successful. Thousands of veterans used the GI Bill to attend school. By 1947 veterans composed approximately 49 percent of all college students. In 1952 and 1966 the GI Bill was expanded to include veterans from the Korean and Vietnam Wars, but was terminated in 1989 during the first Bush Administration. As if we should be surprised. The GI Bill was passed by a Democratic Congress and was signed into Law by Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, BEFORE the end of World War II. And we all know how indefatigable the Republicans are in their efforts to dismantle FDRs economic policies.

So how effective was it? The original GI Bill provided books, tuition and money for fees. And, more impressively, for every dollar invested seven dollars were generated. In addition the GI Bill also provided unemployment payments of $20 per week for a period of 52 weeks when a veteran couldn’t find a job. It provided loan guarantees for a home, farm, or business, and created a priority for building materials for Veterans’ Administration Hospitals

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Families and Lives Destroyed, Final Chapter

Of course we can hear the Social Darwinists even now: “Homeless veterans WANT to be homeless! Why should my tax dollars go to help people who WANT to live on the streets.” Yup. That sounds good to us. Who wouldn’t want to live on the streets during a Wisconsin winter. Nothing like 10 or 20 below zero to stimulate the old cardio-vascular system. Or a 95 degree summer day in clothing that hasn’t been washed since Hector was a pup. And don’t forget the meals–we hear garbage can left overs are a real treat. By the same token living in warehouses or under bridges or in old cars might be considered adequate housing in SOME deluded minds.

So let’s correct that mythology right now. Granted, there are a few veterans who might be reluctant to seek help because they view a need for help as a form of weakness. You have to remember that the military tends to view psychological disorders and a need to seek help as a form of weakness, indeed, careers can be ruined if a person is deemed weak because of a psychological disorder which requires therapy. So there may be some reluctance to seek out help in the first place, but that doesn’t mean that homeless vets enjoy being homeless. Virtually no one, save for the most severe cases, wants to live on the streets. As we might have expected, the myth of the happy homeless started during the Reagen Administration and it continues to this very day. Sadly it is just that, a myth, and yet the degree to which weak-minded right wingers continue to believe in that lie is nothing less than shameful.

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Destroyed Lives and Families Part 3

By ReasonOne, Shakti, and PraetorOne
PART 3: HALF TRUTHS AND BROKEN PROMISES

Under normal circumstances it takes a number of a decades for a Veteran to go homeless, but in the case of veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, the process by which past generations of veterans went homeless appears to be taking place at an accelerated rate. According to the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans nearly approximately 196,000 vets are homeless in any given night. And that may only be the beginning because as of 2006, 1.3 million American men and women had served at various times in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Sadly more than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are now utilizing agency supported residential programs across the entire United States. Shelters, soup kitchens, and parks are regularly visited by outreach officers from the Veterans Administration and the results are chilling to say the least. Approximately 1,500 Iraq-Afghanistan veterans were determined to be at risk even though some of them still had jobs. And the news only gets worse.

The increased number of women in the armed services has also complicated he picture. Approximately 40 percent of the hundreds of female veterans have been sexually assaulted by American soldiers while they were still in the military. That may sound irrelevant until you remember that sexual abuse can be a factor in determining homelessness.

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Families and Lives Destroyed Part 2

Another part in the series by the writers from the Coalition for a Democratic America~Dusty

BY DoctorWho, Shakti, and Rachel

PART 2, Screwing Wounded Vets at Home and in War

When former Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld issued his asinine comment about how we go to war with the army we have not the army we want, I thought to myself: “How unfortunate that we went to war with the President, Vice President, and Secretary of War that we have and not the one we legally elected.”

No matter how you look at it, this Administration has been a disaster for wounded veterans. On the one hand they sent the troops into a war lacking weapons, armored vehicles, and body armor, a fact which undoubtedly increased the number of dead troops which we never saw come home in flag-draped coffins. On the other hand, when we DID properly arm the troops, we all but guaranteed an increase in the number of severely injured veterans. Body armor, surgical techniques, new medicines, and improvements in transportation have translated into an increase in the number of severely wounded troops. Today, as a result of the innovations listed above, only 6 percent of all veterans die of their wounds. That’s up from 17 percent in Vietnam and from 23 percent in World War II. That isn’t to suggest that we want more dead troops. Far from it. When you consider the fact that we now have nearly 4,000 dead and 29,320 wounded with outside estimates ranging from 23,000 to as many as 100,000 wounded, one really has to wonder what the Administration was thinking about (or for that matter,what it was thinking WITH) when it decided to invade Iraq in the first place. Contrary to Administration prevarications, we were attacked on 911 by terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not Iraq. But I’m not here to argue about motives–at least not yet. No, for the time being I’m here to insist that at no point did the Bush Administration consider the possibility that under supplying some troops while properly arming others would cause tragedy at both ends of the spectrum.

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VA estimates fewer homeless Vets..

This FindLaw writeup cites the Veterans Administration as saying:

The Veterans Affairs Department estimates that on any given night last year, 154,000 veterans were homeless, about a 20 percent decrease from 195,827 in the agency’s 2006 estimate.

Although I am happy the numbers have decreased..the fact remains that even one homeless veteran is too fucking many. As the article notes, using the VA’s own numbers:
Today, it is estimated that about one in five people who are homeless are veterans.

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PTSD and the VA: A Story of Fact

In the Spring of 1993, I moved from Northern Minnesota to Grand Junction, Colorado. The move was to a different climate and a change of scenery and we thought we’d try the mountains; thought the fresh start would help us cope with the loss of our daughter-we were running from something. I had suffered a mild heart attack in winter of ‘93 and I didn’t think I should stay on and continue the job I was doing. I got a clean bill of health from the Cardiologist and packed up the truck and moved. When I got situated in Grand Junction, I met a man with a nephew who had gotten money from the VA for PTSD. I didn’t really know what PTSD was, but when I got an explanation and did some research, I found out that many of the symptoms associated with PTSD and returning Vietnam War Veterans, had manifested a foothold in my own life.

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