From The Chicago Sun-Times, 10/28/03:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse28.html
Iraq vets join ranks of have-nots under Bush administration
By Jesse Jackson
Former POW Shoshana Johnson has finally returned home, still suffering
from injuries she received in the military.
But now her postwar wounds are exceeding her war wounds.
First, she had to fight simply to get an assessment of her injuries so
she could get medical care and disability payments.
She had been shot in both ankles, beaten and imprisoned for 22 days,
and her military career was cut short.
For all this, she has received $600 a month disability compensation,
far beneath her needs or what she deserves.
But Johnson isn't an exception.
America's soldiers and veterans seem to be at the bottom of the barrel
when it comes to Iraq.
***** Cheney's former company Halliburton is earning hundreds of
millions charging U.S. taxpayers 85 percent more than Iraqi companies
to import oil into Iraq.
This tidy profit is on top of what Halliburton will earn for the
multimillion dollar, no-bid contract it was awarded to rebuild Iraq's
oil fields.
Even as taxpayer money is sluicing to Halliburton, the U.S. military
refused to spend the money needed to supply soldiers on the front
lines in Iraq with the modern body armor.
Assigned to an occupation for which they are neither trained nor
equipped, thousands of soldiers were sent out with outdated
Vietnam-era vests.
Desperate mothers and fathers have been buying their sons and
daughters the modern vests -- even as the Pentagon dawdles.
But for Johnson and thousands of other Iraq troops, the real indignity
comes when they return.
Bush Veterans Affairs political appointee, Laura J. Miller, issued a
memo to VA administrators to stop informing veterans of their right to
health care.
Given the ''very conservative Office of Management and Budget
guidelines for 2004,'' Miller wrote that administrators should ensure
that there be ''no marketing activities to enroll more veterans.''
Now we learn that literally hundreds of sick and wounded Iraq veterans
have been warehoused in crude barracks without proper medical care at
Fort Stewart in Georgia.
The barracks have concrete floors and outdoor latrines.
''Some of these soldiers are certainly not happy,'' admitted Col. John
Kidd, the garrison commander.''
No kidding.
The administration's callous disregard for the lower ranks is not
limited to soldiers and veterans.
Consider homeland security.
It's bad enough that the president, in a shameless pander to the
Florida Cuban-American vote, has ordered the Homeland Security
Department to monitor goods and travelers going in and out of Cuba,
rather than our own ports.
What is worse is that despite a red alert about the threat posed by
terrorists, U.S. chemical companies have managed to block any sensible
regulation of their security plans -- or lack of them.
According to the General Accounting Office, ''123 chemical facilities
located throughout the nation put at risk more than a million people
in the surrounding area if an attack releases toxic gas.''
CIA Director George Tenet has warned that these plants are high
targets for al-Qaida.
But when EPA and Congress sought to create standards for defense of
the chemical plants, the chemical lobby weighed in and rolled the
administration, arguing that self-regulation would suffice.
When Sen. Jon Corzine introduced a bill to give EPA authority to
oversee chemical plant security, Republicans blocked it.
That same summer, members of the American Chemistry Council ''gave
more than $1 million in political contributions, most of it to
Republicans.
Eight senators critical of the Corzine bill have received more than
$850,000," according to Common Cause.
President Bush likes to say that Sept. 11 changed everything.
But it didn't change this administration's callous disregard for the
lower ranks -- for the soldiers, the workers, and the citizens who
give their lives to build and defend this country.
It didn't change the special interest politics that choose the
benefit of the few over the common good of the many.
__________________________________________________
Further evidence of the un-American actions of a treasonous
administration.
Harry
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