Showing posts with label Vietnam War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam War. Show all posts

Thursday, May 08, 2014

The Games People Play Part 2 - Military Medical Care - Vets to Active Duty

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Oh the Games People Play Now

Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean now


Once upon a time there was no higher honor in America than to be a member of the armed forces.  But little and long wars have a way of desensitizing people to the dangers, the deaths and the casualties of war.


I remember after World War II that we celebrated our veterans and their role in world peace every year and multiple times a year during holidays, parades, and the many air and military shows that were ever present.



As a kid of a veteran we grew up to know every battle in every war our parents had fought in and we were thrilled to go to the military air shows and parades where all the planes and equipment that protect our parents was on display.



Over time the Korean War stalemate seemed to dampen the enthusiasm for the military and by the time college came and brought Vietnam there seemed to be no sense in why we were fighting wars as 55,000 of our classmates died.




America had become split.  And the more and more we learned about the war the more the prestige of the military, the intelligence agencies and our federal government lost popularity.


Then came 9/11 and the World Trade Center destruction and suddenly the nation rallied around the military and the government once more.  Faulty intelligence led to the invasion of Iraq and God only knows what led to the invasion of Afghanistan and we were suddenly pinned down into two wars without logic, without purpose and without the support of the nation.


Most certainly the arms industry, what President Eisenhower warned about when he said the military-industrial complex could become our biggest enemy against peace, has profited from these and every other war the last few centuries.


So have the financial institutions and Wall Street.


But the endless wars seemed to sap the enthusiasm of the public and suck the money out of our economy that was desperately needed for some crucial services.  While we were spending billions of dollars every year fighting wars that could never be won back home our infrastructure like roads, bridges, sewer and water systems, power plants, even the schools where we sent our children, were falling apart by American standards.

When the budget is tight it seems greed always profits at the expense of the people.


Our twin wars brought out greed to a brazen degree never seen before as millions and even billions of dollars in military, foreign aid and intelligence spending disappeared somewhere between America, Iraq, Afghanistan and the pockets of the rich.

What was our reward?  A housing, banking, automobile and stock market crash in 2008 that nearly wiped out what little assets the middle class had to begin with.  So we were the victims of lousy government and the victims of unscrupulous hucksters in the housing, financial and banking industry.


What happens next?  Well us victims, thanks to the omnipotent wisdom of Washington, use our money to bail out the bankers, bail out the brokers, bail out the unethical auto people, bail out crooks and creeps of all manner of dress, status and income.


But all that is behind us now.  Except there is a problem with the very government leading us down the path of self-destruction.  Thank Divine Providence our leaders are so busy name calling and fighting that nothing happens in our Capitol since they are too busy stealing our capital to cause us more problems.


Then we find out the Veterans Administration, another of those agencies President Obama is responsible for until the buck is passed to him at which time he passes it back like a hot potato, well we find out the Obama Vet gang is killing our soldiers.


Seems the Veterans Administration has hospitals that created secret lists so they could improve their election year statistics.  Many of  those vets in need of life saving treatment are refused treatment by the hospital regardless of the seriousness of the condition and told to get on the primary physician care waiting list, thus there is no backlog of hospital cases.

In the Phoenix VA hospital alone it is alleged over 40 real people were refused emergency treatment by the hospital and moved to the secret list of those waiting to see VA primary care doctors.  They have now disappeared from the secret waiting list, allegedly, because the 40 have died waiting to be seen by doctors.


Seems a bunch of other VA hospitals might have done the same thing perhaps to make the Administration look good during the fall elections.  These actions, like a host of other acts swept under the rug by the Administration and the Administration press agency, the national news media, shed a disturbing light on the underbelly of the beast we call the US government.



You see, this is not just a policy dispute or a partisan blow up, this is criminal bordering on murder.  You can bet the spin doctors will be burning the midnight candle once again.


And speaking of doctors, stay tuned for one of my next articles, again trying to shed light on the lousy way we treat our military and vets, and my analysis of the health treatment of our veterans while in the service where they supposedly get the best medical help available yet it seems they are virtually lab rats rather than patients.