Iraq veterans find the war continues at home with red tape

The thing that breaks my heart more than anything else, other than been there and done that, is the fact when we were going through it, it was from 93 to 99. That is when my husband's claim was finally approved. It was only 50% but it was as if a dark cloud lifted off our heads. He had to fight for the other 50% but it meant a lot more than money. It meant the VA acknowledged that what he was going through was because he served in Vietnam.

Iraq veterans find the war continues at home with red tape
Los Angeles Times
By Alexandra Zavis
Published: December 24, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO — Glenda Flowers stood at the edge of a crowd of angry veterans at San Francisco's War Memorial building. They had been waiting months, even years, to hear whether they would receive disability benefits, and they were tired of excuses.

Flowers, a 31-year-old Iraq veteran and mother of two, had come to the meeting with a pair of Veterans Affairs officials because she wanted to be heard. But she was trying too hard to fight back tears to take the microphone.

The social worker who accompanied her couldn't let her be overlooked.

"Nobody brought up here that a lot of these young vets have children," said Marcy Orosco, who heads a Salvation Army transitional housing program in San Francisco.

"Because of this wait, she was living in her car with her children. ... What are you going to do about that?"
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What is like to watch as everything you worked for is threatened? Hell. Pure hell. You know the truth. Doctors know the truth. Proving it to VA claims processors is a different thing. Mess up one piece of paper and they turn down the claim. Have some paperwork that was done wrong and you can kiss your claim goodbye unless you can get it fixed.

Then there are the others discharged under "other than honorable" unable to even find hope that their claims will be approved. They have to prove the military knew they had PTSD but kicked them out anyway. That the excuse of a pre-existing condition like personality disorder didn't measure up considering that every recruit has to pass a mental health exam before they are trained to go to war.

All of this breaks my heart more than the fact they are suffering this much today because nothing was ever fixed all the way for all of them so long ago.

Congress would leave an estimated 150,000 troops at risk for serious brain damage, 2006

NPR:documents show VA did give orders to stop helping wounded 2008. "The document says Col. Becky Baker of the Army Surgeon General's office told the VA to discontinue counseling soldiers on the appropriateness of Defense Department ratings because "there exists a conflict of interest.""

And this too

The fiscal 2009 IT budget request for the Veterans Benefits Administration is about 18 percent less than the fiscal 2008 proposal. The overall IT budget for the Veterans Affairs Department, VBA's parent agency, jumped 18 percent in President Bush's latest request.

VBA's pending compensation and claims backlog stood at 816,211 as of January 2008, up 188,781 since 2004, said Kerry Baker, associate legislative director of the Disabled Veterans of America, during a Wednesday hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.