The legacy of Bush and Cheney's lying and incompetence will continue to haunt our veterans and the rest of us for decades to come.
America's newest veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate, claiming to be the most medically and mentally troubled generation of former troops the nation has ever seen.
A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related.
On average veterans returning from Bush's follies are claiming eight-nine separate medical ailments, with newer returnees claiming as many as eleven. Officials acknowledge that the spike in claims is partly related to the fact that these people
can't get jobs due to Bush's disastrous economic policies. Better awareness about the effects and symptoms of PTSD and multiple concussions is also a factor, as is the plain, corrosive physical toll on our servicemen and women caused by multiple deployments.
Did Flight Suit Bush and Five-Deferment Cheney set aside any money to compensate the soldiers they eagerly enlisted into multiple deployments for their ideological experiments? Of course not.
These new veterans are seeking a level of help the government did not anticipate, and for which there is no special fund set aside to pay.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is mired in backlogged claims, but "our mission is to take care of whatever the population is," said Allison Hickey, the VA's undersecretary for benefits. "We want them to have what their entitlement is."
While the development of body armor and heavily protected vehicles has thankfully reduced the number of fatalities among our soldiers, as a consequence it has also left many with multiple and unusual residual injuries that they are now forced to live with for the rest of their lives. The article cites Larry Bailey, a triple amputee, as an example:
After tripping a rooftop bomb in Afghanistan last June, the 26-year-old Marine remembers flying into the air, then fellow troops attending to him.
"I pretty much knew that my legs were gone. My left hand, from what I remember I still had three fingers on it," although they didn't seem right, Bailey said. "I looked a few times but then they told me to stop looking."
The number of returning wounded veterans is essentially threatening to overwhelm the resources of the VA and backlogs in processing applications are now the norm, as each separate claim must be evaluated to determine eligibility. The injuries these soldiers bring home are real and sobering:
More than 1,600 of them lost a limb; many others lost fingers or toes.
—At least 156 are blind, and thousands of others have impaired vision.
—More than 177,000 have hearing loss, and more than 350,000 report tinnitus — noise or ringing in the ears.
—Thousands are disfigured, as many as 200 of them so badly that they may need face transplants. One-quarter of battlefield injuries requiring evacuation included wounds to the face or jaw, one study found.
The staggering trillion dollar direct cost of Bush's failures is often cited. Less known are the coming future costs of those wars which will somehow have to be borne by the American taxpayer:
With any war, the cost of caring for veterans rises for several decades and peaks 30 to 40 years later, when diseases of aging are more common, said Harvard economist Linda Bilmes. She estimates the health care and disability costs of the recent wars at $600 billion to $900 billion.
"This is a huge number and there's no money set aside," she said. "Unless we take steps now into some kind of fund that will grow over time, it's very plausible many people will feel we can't afford these benefits we overpromised."
Of course the hundreds of billions of dollars in treatment can't compensate for the emotional trauma, diminished quality of life and in many cases chronic pain these soldiers have to look forward to.
You might expect the uber-patriotic, flag-waving, yellow ribbon magnet Republicans in Congress who cheered on these wars from the sidelines to respond to this urgent appeal for treatment of our wounded soldiers. Alas, you'd be wrong. And while President Obama announced a detailed Veterans' Initiative in February, his opponent has put forth. . . nothing.
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