Today a local newspaper columnist asked her readers to support Operation Shoebox and send food and toiletries to our troops in Iraq. I’ve sent off Christmas cards and hot breakfast kits and no doubt other stuff along these lines before, but right now I’m in no mood.
No, my ill temper isn’t on account of those big checks I so recently wrote to “United States Treasury.” (The payee used to be “Internal Revenue Service,” and that bit of PR dissembling makes the pain of paying taxes just a little worse.)
What I’m really mad about on the flip:
I’m disgusted because the administration still hasn’t fixed the payroll problems the troops have had since their first weeks at war. Now 900 battle-wounded troops are being dunned for money they may or may not owe due to payroll errors.
So first the powers that be create an economy in which college is just about necessary for mere survival but unaffordable for working-class kids, even those willing to take on mortgage-size debt. Then the powers that be lie, telling us feeble Iraq is about to launch nuclear missiles at Oshkosh, or maybe nerve gas missiles at Houston or smallpox bombs on Salt Lake City, and we have to destroy them fast before they destroy us. Now those neighbors and relatives and classmates are coming home with a leg missing or with brain damage, only to find that the powers that be are hounding them for money they’re supposed to owe but maybe don’t, even turning them over to collection agencies. Haven’t these vets been screwed over eleven ways too many already?
My opinion at the moment is that the million and a half the powers that be are wringing out of these disabled and dead troops will buy a lot of body lotion and candy bars for the troops in the field.
And why isn’t the VFW marching en masse to the Pentagon to protest?
So after I calmed down, I read Judith Coburn's "Shortchanging the Wounded," and I'm mad again: "The VA admits its disability system was overburdened even before the administration invaded Iraq; and, by 2004, it had a backlog of 300,000 disability claims. Now, the VA reports that the backlog has reached 540,122. By April 2006, 25% of rating claims took six months to process -- no small thing for a veteran wounded badly enough to be unable to work. An appeal of a rejected claim frequently takes years to settle. One hundred twenty-three thousand disability claims have been filed already by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, in its budget requests, the administration has constantly resisted congressional demands to increase the number of VA staffers processing such claims." (http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=80291)
And Trudeau is providing pictures.
Posted by: Joyful Alternative on April 29, 2006 7:57 AM