No American soldier or Marine fighting in Iraq would ever make such an absurd statement.

That’s because a fighting man knows beforehand that if he gets killed it’s all over: he is now in the hands of God. But if he gets seriously wounded and is sent home to live a life of unending pain and agony he suspects that he may not be treated well and given the help he deserves by this “compassionate” government. Or so he has heard. And he heard right.

But that was not always the case.

John Martin, my childhood chum, was in the Navy and served on an aircraft carrier in World War II. When a pilot, returning to the carrier from a mission, misjudged his landing, the aircraft slid across the deck on its belly. John, a sailor on “deck duty” at the time, couldn’t duck fast enough and the aircraft slid over his body, severing his right leg nearly to the hip.

Since that very day to this, John has received the finest care at Vet’s hospitals. Including periodic adjustments to his artificial leg—even new ones-- all the necessary therapies, medications, and emotional help; and everything costing John not one penny! Those were the days when the government paid its debt to wounded military personnel in every way it could, because it realized that it told other military people that they were recognized, honored, and rightly due assistance from their government.

Why the Bush administration doesn’t understand this is either a gross dereliction of a government’s duty, an unconscionable dodging of personal responsibility, or just plain ignorance. My God, even as far back as 1789, George Washington knew this when he said: “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their country.”

Fast forward to today.  President Bush and his “What veterans?” administration are playing fast and loose by attempting to balance the budget by reducing critical health care to our badly wounded troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. “Either the Administration is proposing massive cuts in VA health care,” says Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, “or its promise of a balanced budget by 2012 is based on completely unrealistic assumptions.”

Well, we can’t have an unbalanced budget, can we, Mr. President? So we’ll just cut veterans’ health care and let the poor, seriously-wounded grunts fetch for themselves.

The number of veterans coming into the VA’s health care system is rising 5% a year because of the number of people returning from Iraq’s battlefields with various illnesses and terrible injuries, such as traumatic brain damage, requiring costly care.  Of the 5.8 million patients the VA expects to treat next year, 263,000 will be veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan---the two countries we supposedly are defeating and have under our control. And Bush is CUTTING the VA budget to keep his “pledge” to balance the national budget by 2012?

That should tell you something about this President’s attitude toward our wounded soldiers.

But then, what can you expect from an unbalanced egomaniac who never saw a war he didn’t like, as long as he wasn’t expected to personally participate in it?

The irony of all this is that King Bush turns his back on the very military people he depends on to fight his illegal, immoral, unnecessary, unpopular, hegemonic wars for him.  Only an individual ready for the booby hatch could be that stupid.

James T. Moore
http://jamestmoore.us/