Article: Since When Have People Started Caring About Vets?

Yeah, yeah.yeah, Our soldiers deserve better. We have to “support out troops”, we must “thank our Vets”, and the best one “thank you for serving” like a God-damn Wal-Wart greeting. Truth is, you can all kiss my ass. We didn’t serve so that you could tale a day or two out of the year and give us a big salute, or use us for a political point or two, or just get the day off from work. Walter Reed is closing, you all knew it and you were are going to just let it close. Most VA Hospitals are in terrible shape, you all know it, but unless it’s your Dad or your brother in one waiting in line all day, you don‘t really give a rat’s ass.

You care so much about the Vets that Congress had to make sure that they weren’t discriminated against after Vietnam, and they were anyway. The country called us baby killers and every other nasty name they could come up with. Now the Vets are getting shafted again by having to live with DU and God knows what other crap they use over there now. The family of a buck Sergeant with two kids is eligible for food stamps while the policeman he’s “training up” to replace him is making more from the American taxpayer than he is.

So everyone’s incensed at the pictures coming out of Walter Reed. So what. Go to any VA or any State Hospital and see the same thing. Congressman don’t go there anymore, they go to Bethesda since they decided to shut Walter Reed up. If they still go to Walter Reed, than shame on them for not decrying the poor conditions. Still, its not the occasional chipped paint or a spot of mold here or there that is so bad. The year before, Congress cut 15% of the prosthetics budget in the middle of a war chock full of land mines and IED’s. Soldiers are at the bottom of the barrel. This isn’t about the quality of life for the soldier, it’s about politician getting “sound bites”.

The truth is, just as in any war ever fought except maybe WWII, when the soldier gets home, he gets it right up the ass by his fellow countrymen. That’s why we have higher alcoholism and drug addiction rates. Why we have a greater percentage of homelessness. Why we have high rates of PTSD and other assorted psychological defects. We see too much, we are kicked around too much and generally a lot of us stop trusting in that great American dream they try to sell us.

Try to get a mortgage on a VA loan. Unless you have a damn good credit score that is almost impossible to reach on Army pay...forget it. Go to the VA and try to get medical care. Unless someone dies you’ll wait at the end of the line unless you’re injury is service-connected, and that means that the service Admits it’s connected.

Go try to get a military pension for things that happened to you while you were in the service. The IRS can dig out paperwork from the day you were born, but the service seems to “loose” paperwork that confirms you were hurt or hospitalized. Truth is, nobody gives a sh*t about Veterans...at least not many do. If you can’t use us for fodder or make money off of us, you forget about us, unless you’re running for office. It’s all just a big con. When people start making noises about how vets are being treated, it’s probably because they have a political axe to grind with someone somewhere, because in reality, there aren’t too many that really give a flying f**k about us.