Support the troops, buck fush.

From The Indianapolis Star, 11/9/03:
http://www.indystar.com/articles/4/090942-4464-021.html

Dan Carpenter

Making the troops pay twice

If you notice there are more veterans to honor this Veterans Day
than
there were last year, thank the Bush administration and the
Republican
Congress.

If you want more help for those veterans, better ask the Democrats.

They're fighting President Bush, the Defense Department, the
Department of Veterans Affairs and the GOP congressional leadership
just to keep a shamefully inadequate veterans support system from
getting worse.

When Democrats tried to insert health insurance and other personnel
benefits into the $87 billion appropriation for Iraq and
Afghanistan,
the White House shot them down.

When Democrats tried to replace $1.3 billion of the $1.8 billion
shortfall in the pending VA health care budget bill, the White House
threatened a veto.

On and on it goes.

Waits of six months to two years for some seekers of health care,
even
as the VA moves to close down facilities.

Multiple hikes in drug co-pays.

Exclusion of more than 160,000 "low-priority" vets from the health
care system because the money's not there to cover them.

Non-mandatory funding, meaning the budget must be fought for anew
every year by those who care.

"The general public has no clue as to the shortfall in the veterans'
system nor the impact of an additional 130,000 people (eventually
returning from Iraq) on that system," said U.S. Sen. Patty Murray,
D-Wash., a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

"If the American public fully understood how we are treating our
veterans, they'd be outraged."

Except for military families, such as those belonging to the 1,600
surviving wounded in the current war, the public generally doesn't
know.

The news teleconference Murray held with several colleagues Tuesday
didn't make the wires, and rarely is there news, in the land of Fox
and football, of the sacrifice that continues when Johnny and Jane
come marching home.

"We've been very frustrated that we can't penetrate the curtain that
Bush has pulled down over the country to justify this war," says
Joseph Farah, Indiana president of the antiwar group Veterans for
Peace.

"There are long-term implications that nobody's thought out yet, and
we should have thought them out before we committed troops to
battle."

In addition to the time of day, this is an area where Farah is in
agreement with the American Legion.

In congressional testimony recently, Legion National Commander John
Brieden politely but pointedly drew a comparison between the figures
$87 billion and $1.8 billion, and said:

"If the ever-present courage of our men and women in the armed
forces
exists also in Congress and in the White House, then our nation will
do the right thing for America's veterans."

The courage seems to exist not among the politicians who beat the
drums for war but among those who dared ask what we were getting
into.

"It takes more than the bravado of 'bring it on,' " Sen. Patrick
Leahy, the Vermont liberal Democrat, said at the press conference.

"Unfortunately, they did bring it on."

Now, a wide-open spigot of American tax dollars is paying Iraqi
soldiers and American defense entrepreneurs while American soldiers
who escape the mess find themselves to be a trimmable budget item.

"I'm deeply concerned," Sen. Murray said, "that the wrong message is
being sent to the next generation that will be asked to serve our
country."

Over the cheers, speeches and flyovers on Tuesday, nobody will hear
that message anyway.
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