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Push-back Against Veteran Initiatives Launched, Anti-Vet Critics: Benefits Are ‘Quite Extreme’
The Wall
- Vietnam-era veterans are treated by neocons and their allies are lazy, shifty malingerers who do not deserve the disability benefits pertaining to PTSD and Agent Orange, areas of concern that to this day the rightwing fights with the message: Get over it, and no free rides for you. Shocking disrespect for a generation still suffering.-
Vietnam-era veterans are accustomed to American hostility across society enduring for decades.
The American culture has changed, the Wall and Vietnam veteran popular Welcome back events stand as monuments of respect and empathy for what servicemembers endured in an unpopular war begun by lies.
But a lasting enmity persists in an ideological right-wing cabal opposed to the idea that Vietnam-era veterans receive disability benefits.
Their efforts are cold slaps in the face of veterans.
The Obama administration has politically allied itself with veterans in a flurry of pro-veterans initiatives, including the implementation of new PTSD regulations for disability claims and an extended Agent Orange presumptive illness rules published today, both of which affect Vietnam-era veterans profoundly in addressing severe health problems.
Amid rumors of a coming housecleaning of benefits-hostile neocons in the VA and Veteran Benefits Administration(VBA), including mid-level VA managers, the neocon anti-veteran PR project has begun.
A national AP August 30 piece, ostensibly about diabetes and how it has not been proven to be caused by Agent Orange, is the latest in a line of reports asserting that veterans have it too easy in the VA, VBA claims system.
This could have been written by the American Enterprise Institute: It was written by Mike Baker, evidently the new anti-benefits writer, Allen G. Breed has been taken off the veterans’ AP hit pieces duty.
The Politico, a neocon journal used as an entree into the mainstream is in the anti-veteran game. Old age and Agent Orange are “closing in on Vietnam veterans, a legacy of hurt for those who served — and a very big bill for American taxpayers,” reads the Politico.
This vets-cost-too-much is a meme coursing through the Internet, taking the tract of Sally Satel who has made a career of knocking Vietnam-era vets.
Satel is part of a network, a “cabal,” as veterans’ advocate Paul Sullivan calls them, of anti-benefits ideologues in the media, the Congress [believe Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) has been brought off] and of course in the VA.
It’s not war that is costly, about which lawmakers have no reservations about spending. No, it’s those damn veterans who should go away or at least die.
We can expect more Associated Press writer Mike Baker anti-veteran talking points coming from politicians, pencil-neck thin tank residents and of course the remaining hacks at the VA and VBA.
Here is some of the language Baker uses in his piece asserting that the VA and VBA bend over “backwards to be fair” to veterans:
- even though decades of research into the defoliant have failed to find more than a possibility that it causes the disease, diabetes
- Because of worries about Agent Orange, about 270,000 Vietnam veterans — more than one-quarter of the 1 million receiving disability checks — are getting compensation for diabetes, according to Department of Veterans Affairs records obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.
- Tens of thousands of other claims for common ailments of age — erectile dysfunction among them — are getting paid as well because of a possible link, direct or indirect, to Agent Orange.
- And the taxpayers may soon be responsible for even more: The VA said Monday that it will add heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and certain types of leukemia to the list of conditions that might be connected to Agent Orange. The agency estimates that the new rules, which will go into effect in two months unless Congress intervenes, will cost $42 billion over the next 10 years.
- Lawmakers and federal officials who have reservations about the spending are loath to criticize a program that helps servicemen. They have largely ignored a 2008 report in which a group of scientists said the decision to grant benefits to so many on such little evidence was “quite extreme.”
- “There needs to be a discussion about the costs, about how to avoid false positives while also trying to be sure the system bends over backwards to be fair to the veterans,” said Jonathan M. Samet, a public health expert who led that study and now serves as director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Southern California.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=47058
Posted by Yanira Farray on Aug 31 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Vet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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The people who started these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did not serve in Vietnam and they did not serve and have pride in this fact.
Cheney, Bush Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith among a long line of republican war mongers. For these neocons to admit a Vietnam veteran has value devalues them. To give vietnam veterans money devalues those that never served during Vietnam. In their heads that is.
One thing about those that did serve there in Vietnam is this, most Vietnam era veterans grew wisdom from their service. This wisdom is shown by anti war writers here on Veterans Today. Neocon 60′s college bunker warriors have the beJesus scared out of them by their own dishonesty.
AIPAC & NEO-CONS ALWAYS RESENT FEDERAL FUNDS
THAT DO NOT GO TO THEM & AIPAC/NEO-CON “FAVORED”
& “SPECIAL” CORPORATIONS, & OF COURSE TO ISRAHELL &
ISRAHELL CORPORATIONS & MULTI-TRILLION “BAILOUTS”
TO “SPECIAL” BANKS/FINANCIAL INSANE ASYLUMS.
AMERICANS ARE BORN TO SERVE THE
TALMUDIC SATANIC ANTI-GENTILE & ANTI-SEMITE
“KHAZAR-ASHKENAZI” NON-SEMITIC WEIRDO UBER FASCIST STATE OF ISRAEL
AND AIPAC/NEO-CON (FAKE) KRISTIANZ-ZIONISTS CULTISTS??????????????????????
I recently ran across an article on a Jewish news publication about something called The King’s Torah. It’s a Jewish commentary written by Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur who are located in the settlement of Yitzhar in the West Bank. It is flying off the shelves in Israel. What makes this commentary so shocking is it calls for the murder of the “goyem” (a derogatory term for gentiles), including children. Unbelievably it states that gentiles are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them ‘curb their evil inclination,’ while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”
This book is not making a distinction between their enemies and the rest of the world’s population who are not out to harm them. In fact, this commentary states “it is permissible to kill the Righteous among non-Jews even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation.” (emphasis added). The justification is “if we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments – because we care about the commandments – there is nothing wrong with the murder.”
http://fruitoftheword.com/2010/02/05/the-kings-torah-kill-the-goyem/
On the Jewish hatred towards Christianity
Dishonouring Christian religious symbols is an old religious duty in Judaism. Spitting on the cross, an especially on the Crucifix, and spitting when a Jew passes a church, have been obligatory from around AD 200 for pious Jews. In the past, when the danger of anti-Semitic hostility was a real one, the pious Jews were commanded by their rabbis either to spit so that the reason for doing so would be unknown, or to spit onto their chests, not actually on the cross or openly before the church. The increasing strength of the Jewish state has caused these customs to become more open again but there should be no mistake: The spitting on the cross for converts from Christianity to Judaism, organized in Kibbutz Sa’ad and financed by the Israeli government is a an act of traditional Jewish piety. It does not seize to be barbaric, horrifying and wicked because of this! On the contrary, it is worse because it is so traditional, and much more dangerous as well, just as the renewed anti-Semitism of the Nazis was dangerous, because in part, it played on the traditional anti-Semitic past.
This barbarous attitude of contempt and hate for Christian religious symbols has grown in Israel. In the 1950s Israel issued a series of stamps representing pictures of Israeli cities. In the picture of Nazareth, there was a church and on its top a cross – almost invisible, perhaps the size of a millimeter. Nevertheless, the religious parties, supported by many on the Zionist “left” made a scandal and the stamps were quickly withdrawn and replaced by an almost identical series from which the microscopic cross was withdrawn.
OUR AMERICAN GOVERNMENT CANNOT SERVE TWO MASTERS.
OUR AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS TO SERVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE,
NOT AIPAC/NEOCON KRISTIANZ ZIONIST CULTISTS & ISRAHELL
ColJack I worked through my anger about those dope smoking : ) draft dodgers that did not serve in Vietnam a long time ago. This is not about those that did not serve in the military, or those who did not go to Vietnam. It is all about what is right! Let me borrow a stupid white person statement about having black friends. “I have many draft dodging friends“!
This is not partisan just the bigger asses today are the republicans. Yes to me Clinton is a whore to money and power. He is not a humanitarian; he is an opportunist. The same could be said about Kerry. But —- Coljack these people did not engineer two failed wars one in Afghanistan and Iraq! Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith engineered these wars.
All these war mongering wonder boys in the republican party never served in the military except Bush, Rumsfeld, and might as well have not. Bush never showed up for drills because he was too busy to serve his nation. None had shame about their non war service. What I find very wrong is this.
They today have no shame in sending today’s young men and women to fight die while having life time injuries. Not one of them served in Vietnam. Rumsfeld was a peace time navy flier. Again he today has no shame about this. Why because he thinks he is about biblical prophecy and the end days. Which makes him and them no better the Islamic extremists!
Not one of these folks think Vietnam veterans deserve anything. Because if they did they might have to rethink their lack of service in the military during war time.
Let us not forget LBJ and his template for Rumsfeld, McNamara. Also never let us for get Nixon and his lying cheating ways. Mostly let us remember the names on the Wall in DC and those combat vets that die everyday along with the children and families of Vietnam veterans who suffered from chaos created by Post Traumatic Stress and addiction problems.
Sorry!! look up the history of the Vietnam conflict it was Eisenhower that sent the first ad-visors
No, you have to have proven veterans advocates’ experience or be a veteran that knows what the hell he is talking about.
I know of Veteran’s today writers that have combat experience. They also have direct assistance helping veterans obtain help from the horror of government systems that are complex and not veteran friendly. Did you know that at compensation and pension medical evaluations, VA health care professionals conduct complete and honest exams of verterans? Yes, it does happen. The VETERAN must however provide proof that his or her condition is service connected. I know a veteran that has hearing damage to his right ear. It occured when his squad leadere fired his M-16 when the muzzle of the weapon was next to the vets righ ear. The incident happened in a firefight. It is not a doucmented incident. Try and get help for it 40 years after the fact. Difficult, is it not? The wounded must complete formal hearings and document that pieces of thier bodies blown off in combat are service connected. It is not an easy process. Veterans Today authors that write about the danger to existing benefits are very correct. It may appear to be popular for politicians to say they support us – but – we are a somewhat difficult expense for the government. Yeah, many of us have been on a two way rifle range but we are not war heros. We are guys helping other guys.
Sempere Fi
Dale R. Suiter
One thing I have noticed over the years is many retired military even without combat under their belt feel they are higher level veterans then those Army draftees with Purple Hearts.
Ya, Most of them Retired you talk about are probably rear area Air Force reserve or Guard fobbit.. Hand them a rifle
the bmilitary industrial complex and other war proffiteers and your standard flag waving war mongering politicians.have reaped trillions off war.they could care less about the vets out there dying and bleeding on the killingfields.compensation to some sick and dying vets whether young or old,is grossly unfair and costly to these neo-cons.the neo-cons are the first to start war and form the rally around the flag and other patriotic garbage to get some poor man or woman to die and suffer,while they rake in piles of money off the vets.wise up vets and americans.its all about money and not the poor vets.its just plain pathetic.
i and im sure you have spent years of hell because of these insane wars.and these politcos and the war industry billionaires want us to suffer,die and smile about it.greed has no boundaries and mercy and compassion for the suffering,mentaLLY,EMOTIONALLY PHYSICALLY AND SPIRITUALLY ONLY MAKES THESE CHUMPS FEAR AND LOATHE THE THOUGHT OF GIVING US A SINGLE DIME FOR OUR MISERY. THANKS FOR LISTENING TO MY RANT,THINGS LIKE THIS REALLY GETS TO ME.
Please go back to watching faux noise