Granny Rant
Thursday, August 14, 2003
::: Department Of Defense Is Treating Our Soldiers Like Garbage :::
::: OR ::: The More I Get to Know Them, The More I Hate Them :::
This post was so dreadful, Granny just had to bring it over from
post by Joe Fish on Democratic Veteran ~~ Credit where credit is due
~~ path was through SouthKnoxBubba ~~ Thanks Guys, Great Work
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Dead Soldier, Family Punk'd by 1600 Crew
I had to wait until my rage subsided enough to blog this. The story is via Thousand Yard Glare, one of my daily reads.
The outrage, well, you read it then tell me The original story is here.
One of the most surprising statements to come from The Power Hour interview conducted on “The Genesis Network” was that while the son, Josh Neusche, was a healthy young soldier on June 26, 2003, when he reported that he was going to serve on the secret hauling mission, by July 1, 2003, he was in a coma, and that day was suddenly classified by the military, as medically retired from the Army without Josh or his family’s consent. Josh did not die until July 12, 2003. Among other problems that this new classification created was that the DOD was no longer obligated to assist the family in getting to Germany to be with their son as he lay in a coma. Because the DOD would not provide even so much as plane or taxi fare for the Neusche family, all 650 members of the 203 Engineer Battalion each contributed $10.00 to make the family’s final visit possible. (some emphasis added)I can't even begin to imagine how my family would have felt if that were me. I can't imagine Senior Army leadership (of the Uniformed variety) breaking the faith with the troops like that. I can imagine some civilian DoD NeoCon chickenhawk deciding that it's more cost-effective to reclassify the kid as medically retired, since his prognosis is terminal, and dump him in a hole in the ground in Germany and send his family a letter "blah blah blah...honorable....grateful nation...blah blah blah".
It makes me proud to see the soldiers in his battalion got his parents over there. It's wrong on so many levels that they even had to consider doing that, much less do it; but that's what soldiers do they take care of their own. Something Chickenhawks will never, ever understand.
I hope all the tax-cutting shithead Chickenhawks and non-Chickenhawks out there are justly proud of this bit o'thrift. And that you choke on your money...all of it.
We have had two residents of the Oval Office in the last 10 years. The wrong one got impeached.
Granny agrees completely Fish and just had to jump in. I have been searching around a bit since I tracked over to this post on SKB, plus I had already printed out several outrageous items from TruthOut. Might as well do the "eye openers" in consecutive posts. It makes for
posted by Jo Fish on 08.12.03 at 04:56 PM
And ~~~ It just keeps getting better and better for the troops according to Paul Krugman on TruthOut
In his article he blames Military Privatization ~~ War On The Cheap!
It seems the same Horse's Ass DoD is to blame, trying to run their noble
Krugman details a litany of woes.
A few days ago I talked to a soldier just back from Iraq. He'd been in a relatively calm area; his main complaint was about food. Four months after the fall of Baghdad, his unit was still eating the dreaded M.R.E.'s: meals ready to eat. When Italian troops moved into the area, their food was "way more realistic" - and American troops were soon trading whatever they could for some of that Italian food.
Other stories are far worse. Letters published in Stars and Stripes and e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that in his unit, "each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day," and that inadequate water rations were leading to "heat casualties." An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?
Colonel Hackworth blames "dilettantes in the Pentagon" who "thought they could run a war and an occupation on the cheap." But the cheapness isn't restricted to Iraq. In general, the "support our troops" crowd draws the line when that support might actually cost something.
The usually conservative Army Times has run blistering editorials on this subject. Its June 30 blast, titled "Nothing but Lip Service," begins: "In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap - and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the
nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately." The article goes on to detail a series of promises broken and benefits cut.
Military corner-cutting is part of a broader picture of penny-wise-pound-foolish government. When it comes to tax cuts or subsidies to powerful interest groups, money is no object. But elsewhere, including homeland security, small-government ideology reigns. The Bush administration has been unwilling to spend enough on any aspect of homeland security, whether it's providing firefighters and police officers with radios or protecting the nation's ports. The decision to pull air marshals off some flights to save on hotel bills - reversed when the public heard about it - was simply a sound-bite-worthy example. (Air marshals have told MSNBC.com that a "witch hunt" is now under way at the Transportation Security Administration, and that those who reveal cost-cutting measures to the media are being threatened with the Patriot Act.)
There's also another element in the Iraq logistical snafu: privatization. The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat - and the system failed.
According to the Newhouse News Service, "U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up." Not surprisingly, civilian contractors - and their insurance companies - get spooked by war zones. The Financial Times reports that the dismal performance of contractors in Iraq has raised strong concerns about what would happen in a war against a serious opponent, like North Korea
These stories and many more to come are just a speck of the extent to which the American people are being deceived by the smart guys in Washington. More ghastly stories on the way.
