The call to service that should have been disgusted tonight

UPDATE
Last night I was so "disgusted" that I typed it instead of discussed. Because it is a true reflection of how I've felt for a long time now, I'm not correcting the title. Thank you for those who emailed about this.

The call to service that should have been disgusted tonight

When it was well documented that the VA and the DOD could not keep up with the wounded or keep up with families of National Guards and Reservists needs, the call should have gone out by Bush to step up and take care of the need. People across the nation who have not paid attention to the suffering of the men and women we ask so much of are shocked to hear how bad they are in need. That is one of the sacrifices the people of this nation should have been called for.

When the need was known, psychologists and psychiatrist stepped up under the program Give An Hour.

CBS News Consults GAH's Barbara Romberg
Give an Hour founder and president Dr. Barbara Romberg was recently interviewed by CBS's Kelly Wallace for a story on the impact on families of wounded warriors. Portions of her interview appear on video at CBSnews.com (please Read More

Dr. Romberg stepped up because the need was so great yet the ability of the government was unable to meet it's obligation to provide the mental health care they needed to heal.

Across this nation, people are stepping up to help but far too few know what the need is or how they can help. This is a call to service that should have been made when both candidates had the chance to address it.

We have thousands attempting suicide every year and too many families are left to wonder why when the attempt is successful because the pain was too great for them to carry alone. Feeling wounded because of their service to this nation then being abandoned by this nation is one of the worst things we can put a veteran through. It should be a moral demand of all of us to make sure they are taken care of. If not, if we are unable to do anything for them, then the least we could do is to make sure the government does it by making phone calls, writing letters, sending emails and informing our friends about what they are going through.

The other thing that should have been required of all of us, if we are to really believe the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are so vital to this nation, is to pay for the cost of them. We have been told to go shopping. We were not told that our taxes would have to go up, that businesses would have to pay more of their own fair share by foregoing rules that allowed them to ship jobs overseas, of removing the tax cuts the rich enjoyed and the ungodly profits the oil companies made while our men and women were risking their lives so we could have the oil on Middle East soil.

There should have been a national call to service from coast to coast if it was really so important that included the defense contractors as a patriotic duty to eliminate these huge profits they received on the contracts they did not even have to bid for and above all, there should have been accountability demanded for every tax dollar spent. War profiteers should have been sent to jail and not rewarded with cost plus billing abilities. Any contractor found to have not been providing our troops with the best they had to offer, should have been tried and jailed along with being forced to repay more than they tried to swindle the tax payers out of, but none of this happened.

So why is it we didn't hear any of this tonight or any other night? We have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, suffering when they come home along with dying overseas. It seems that if any of them really mattered, even in this economy, we should have heard a lot more about them since they are over there worrying about staying alive and now have to worry about what they are coming home to.



Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington