Article: This Time It's Bush Spitting on the Soldiers

Iraq is not Vietnam, but our soldiers are still being spat upon, only this time it's by their own President and government.

The individual G.I. in Vietnam did not have the support of his fellow citizens, today's Iraq soldier does; it's the war that's not supported.

The Vietnam vet was spat upon by the public; today's soldier in Iraq is being spat upon by the very government that sent him to Iraq to be killed, maimed and emotionally traumatized.

I've been told that it's not nice for person of the female persuasion to use the "F" word, and I'll try to be polite, but U.S. service men and women are being royally F**KED over by the Bush Administration in big CAPITAL letters.

The truth is Bush doesn't give a damn about the fighting forces. They're only of value to him when they're either in the womb or he's flagrantly using them for photo-ops.

Bush spat in their faces when he originally sent them into battle underarmored, underequipped, undermanned and based on a gross pack of lies.

It's fine with Bush to send them into battle with promises of winning and glory and welcome them home with a spit in the eye by denying them the medical treatment they deserve. It's not the initial medical treatment; it's the post-treatment that they have to fight their way through, which can go on for months and years.

If they are really injured the government is more than willing to house them in a facility across from Walter Reed where the conditions are so horrific that none of us would board our pets there. Worse, the Pentagon has known about this for at least three years. But that's okay, after all soldiers are the dogs of war.

We've all heard or used the expression, this wait is killing me; for the injured who require ongoing intermittent care this is literally true. They're faced with never-ending cuts in service and interminably long waits for appointments.

Now Bush is adding insult to severe injury and expectorating all over them with a thousand more cuts by further slashing the VA's budget and making the vets pay even more for their ongoing care. Then the Administration lies about the number of deaths and injured, so we'll never know what the war has cost in terms of lives wasted by both death and injury.

Nobody gets punished except the soldier and his family. So what if the head of Walter Reed was fired and will be forced to retire? What a punishment! Then he was replaced by a man who appears to be just as culpable and who may get fired and retire on a nifty pension, too.

Need psychological help because of what you've seen and done in Iraq?...tough, because the government is in denial that such conditions exist and has left 40 percent of the positions for psychiatrists and psychologist vacant.

It's estimated that one out of three returning vets will need some sort of mental health care.

VA facilities are closed while those remaining open are understaffed, and if you're a vet living in a rural area you're s**t out of luck and faced with long trips to the doctor, because there is a dearth of satellite facilities.

The spit list compiled by Bush, the aficionado of effronteries, goes on and on. Bush rips up the Geneve Conventions, the brass orders them to torture, and the grunts go to jail. Where's the justice?

Hardly a word is spoken about all the returning vets who find themselves estranged from family and friends, jobless and homeless.

Spur a surge that 85 percent of the country is against, and while Bush is at it, send surging forces who haven't had proper rest, adequate training or equipment. The two brigades that are headed to Iraq are woefully unprepared.

Regardless of what Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) says, most of the troops do not have proper helmets. According to Dr. Robert Meaders, Capt.-USN, Ret. and founder of operation-helmet.org, the new helmets are lined with a material that is so hard, it does not conform to the head, leaving the soldier wearing it with an awful headache. You go fight with a headache; I can barely write in the comfort of my office when I have a headache. And, we can be damn sure that if W. has a headache he gets immediate treatment from a live-in White House doctor.

Then White Press Secretary Tony Snow adds his own cut by saying less equipment makes the soldiers more agile. He has to be freakin' kidding us.

Rat out the rats who stuck you in a rat-roach-infested medical treatment holding hotel, and you're punished with snap inspections and being ousted from your room. The Pentagon and all the human rats and roaches infesting it need a healthy dose of Roach Motel.

According to the veep, the Brits pulling out is a good thing; if we do it, it's a bad thing. Which is it, Mr. Bush's Brain? In the mean time, our guys are being wasted by being ill-prepared, ill-equipped, unable to converse in Arabic and not knowing who the enemy is.

In the mean time, Bush's games of Whack-a-Mole and Spit-in-Your-Eye goes on. Surge here, drive the moles away here and they'll pop up there, and the only ones paying a horrific price are the soldiers. The rest of us have been told to go shopping.