Joseph Galloway tells truth on Bush's deadly record of veterans care

During the years of the Bush residency in the White House, I've been hammering away at what he claims because the truth was far from it. In the process, anyone pointing out his deadly record of being a adversary along with most of the Republicans in Congress, were regarded as persona non grata. This happened to me.

It didn't matter that I was fighting for all veterans simply because they were veterans and served this nation, deserved far more than this administration provided for them or the fact the veterans were suffering because some people in this country equated "supporting the troops" as supporting the Commander-in-Chief no matter what he did. I was un-welcomed in the military blogger world and avoided by too many groups to even think of their names. If anyone was unwilling to give Bush a blank check to do as he pleased, well then, they didn't support the troops. That's what it boiled down to. Now a lot of the people that blindly support Bush no matter who had to pay for their support, are finally understanding what people like me have been trying to tell them all along. The problem is, it's too late for far too many. As lives were on the line, veterans were suffering and families were falling apart, these people refused to set aside their own ego and at least look at the evidence. This was a deadly delusion spread far and wide across the nation.

Everything in Galloway's article is fact. As a matter of fact you can find most of the reports here on this blog, but too many military bloggers wouldn't pay attention enough to at least read any of them. If they had, the strength of their numbers would have caused drastic changes for the sake of the troops and the veterans needing this nation to take care of them for a change. I can't even remember how many law suits had to be filed because his record on veterans was so bad people felt the need to force him into doing something besides talking about how much he cared.

Commentary: At long last, sir, have you left no sense of decency?
By Joseph L. Galloway McClatchy Newspapers
Even as President George W. Bush was packing up his knick-knacks and calling for the moving van, the White House spin machine was whirring along at Warp 6, doing its best to put a happy face on the sorry history of his eight years in the Oval Office.

The truth is that Congress passed virtually every bill to spend more money on benefits for veterans over the opposition of the Bush administration. Reforms in the care of wounded soldiers came only after The Washington Post exposed the shameful warehousing of the recovering wounded at Walter Reed Army Hospital, less than five miles from the Oval Office.

Even as the Iraq War dragged on and the numbers of severely wounded troops began rising sharply, Mr. Bush's Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson, a former Republican National Committee chairman, was up on Capitol Hill delivering a budget with cuts in healthcare staffing at VA and cuts in nursing home care.

Nicholson, on White House orders, blocked four congressional attempts to streamline the VA's handling of a disgraceful six-month backlog in veterans benefit claims — a backlog that's only grown worse in subsequent years.

With its eyes on maintaining public support for Bush's war in Iraq, and not on those it sent to fight it, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's Pentagon pressured the Army and Marines to discharge their wounded as fast as possible with the lowest possible disability ratings.

As a result, those who had borne the battle were abandoned to the dysfunctional VA healthcare system, in which it takes six months just to get into the system and a month or more to get a doctor's appointment.

The Bush administration grossly underestimated the flood of post-traumatic stress disorder cases coming home from combat and, when confronted with the reality of more than 320,000 new veterans suffering from PTSD, major depression and TBI, it did little or nothing to expedite their care. In fact, of the 84,000 new veterans diagnosed with PTSD, only half, or 42,000 have managed to get their disability claims approved by the VA.

Some veterans committed suicide while they awaited medical and financial help, itself evidence of the abject and disgraceful failure of the system, and the nation and the administration of George W. Bush. The VA responded by understating the numbers of veterans' suicides and then covering it up. Only after a veterans group sued it did the VA establish a suicide hotline. A heckuva job.

President Bush proposed a half-percent increase in the VA budget for fiscal 2006 after his own appointees at the agency told Congress that they needed a 13 percent increase to meet — barely — the urgent needs for medical and mental health care for the wounded coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the budget scrimped on care for our troops, the administration somehow found room for $3.8 million in performance bonuses for the top executives of an agency that was failing to do its job and fulfill our obligation to those who served and suffered.

In 2007, Bush threatened to veto a bill to boost VA spending by 10 percent, or $3.2 billion. He said that was too expensive and countered with an offer of 2 percent. After Congress passed the bill almost unanimously, Republicans included, The Decider decided to swallow it and signed the bill.

His actions and those of his crony appointees toward our veterans is a blot on our consciences. To then turn around, as the door is about to hit them in their butts on their way out, and take credit for their “good work” on behalf of those they neglected is reprehensible.

Decent people would be tortured by their consciences, but these people apparently have none, and they have no shame, either.
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