He that lives by the sword shall die by the sword. You reap what you sow. What goes around comes around.

Nothing's changed since amputee World War I veterans sat on the pavement with a hat or a box bside them begging for money. It's the same here in Australia. We still have Vietnam veterans killing themselves because they just can't fight with the Army anymore. It wears them out. They lose their limbs, their eyes, their marriages, their kids and the army tells them it's all in their heads. They weren't injured in a war.If it wasn't so bloody tragic it would be funny. Sometimes I think these governments are just saving the taxpayer's money for the next war; the next lot of expendable soldiers.

But hey, why should anyone worry about concussions and brain injuries when we have to worry about whether or not Brittaney is having a nervous breakdown, or just PMS. Let's keep our priorities straight here.

Until you are officially released from service, you are still "in uniform" even if that uniform is a blue hospital gown with a breeze in the back. You maintain your rank and are treated as such. If you are a field grade officer with grievous combat wounds, you'd get a private room and specialized care. If you are a captain or lieutenant, you get slightly less exclusive care, but better than an E-7. If you are a Spec. 4, you get whatever care is left over.

The military's rules about "fraternization" with those of lower or higher ranks, and between enlisted and officer, are still firmly in place even though you are in a hospital ward.

So in comes a Col. Babbitt, any Col. Babbitt because his real name doesn't matter. He takes his orders from a brigadier general somewhere in the Department of Defense.

Col. Babbitt didn't just decide on his own to start dubbing soldiers malingerers. He was told to start doing it to cut down on costs by those above him in the DOD. During the time frame Benjamin is speaking of, the DOD was run by none other than that goddamned son-of-a-bitch Donald Rumsfeld.

I have been around the military long enough to know that the order Col. Babbitt got from above was just a "suggestion" that he could interpret any way he liked. But if he didn't interpret it the way THEY liked, his career folder would get lost under a rug somewhere at the Pentagon. Col. Babbitt probably just set up a quota system. I've seen it before. You have to have a certain number of malingerers because somebody at the Pentagon said that statistically speaking, there will be X-number of malingerers so by Jesus, you'd better have X-number of malingerers in your monthly report if you know what's good for you.

But this soldier whose brain was scrambled and his service record nearly destroyed by a charge of malingering, has just started his long road home. When he is released from active duty, he will no longer be under the command of the DOD, no sir!

Now he will descend into the second ring of hell known as the Veterans Administration. When he gets there, then a bunch of fucking civilians, mostly Bush political patronage appointees starting with Jim Nicholson, a Republican hack who has repeatedly tried to reduce the VA's budget each year, saying we're spending too much, even while the bloody C5s are landing at Dover in the middle of the night, offloading their sad cargo of men and woman who answered our country's call and who Bush and his fucking asshole criminal band now wish to short change, ignore, misdiagnose and shame as malingering cowards.

Fuck them! Fuck them all!

That's what they get for choosing a career in murder.

The politicians continually slander the public about not being supportive of the soldiers because people dont support the war because of the treasonous lies of the commander in chief. The truth is politicians support the war not the soldiers, and the public supports the soliders but not the war. Ford started the deal by deciding nixon should not be investigated for crimes against America. Crooked politicians rejoiced and have been dragging America down by allowing thier friends to profit outrageously at the expense of the greatest country in the world. America should be a beacon to the world, instead others see the crimes, profiteering, and sponsoring of many dictators by our leaders.

IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY NOW

Before ONE MORE DEATH.

sub sole sub umbra virens

While I'm shocked by the suffering of and I sympathize with these scarred young men, I have to agree with Bluecanary:

Maybe some of these recruits should read up on the historical treatment of U.S. servicemen before signing their lives away. There is so much information on this that I'm starting to feel less and less sorry for people who sign up to get killed in illegal wars without doing at least a little research.

We're in our third year of this war. This is far from the first and only article Salon's published about the military's indifference to the injuries and mistreatment of soldiers and their families, let alone articles on this subject from other news outlets. Anybody who bothers to get their news from other sources apart from Fox TV must be aware, by this time, that joining the military and getting shipped off to Iraq is a good way to get either dead, damaged for life, financially ruined, or a combination of all of the above.

Most of these young guys want to validate their decision so badly, and so earnestly yearn to feel that being cannon fodder lends them important and purposeful lives, that they've voted for Bush twice, and they may even re-enlist. These are young men and women who are smart enough to figure out how to speak Arabic and use complex, technical, and frequently dangerous equipment. It is time we expected these adults to read the information available about this criminal war and its victims, and exercise their critical thinking before signing up to become underpaid cogs in Bush Inc.'s oil-seeking and crony-enriching enterprises. It is time we expected them to do some of their own thinking when they're at the polls, and not simply rubber-stamp their father's or grandfather's antiquated John-Wayne-movie notions of gun-toting honor and military supremacy.

The military has clearly figured out that it's cheaper to let unusable units die or fade into oblivion with maligned reputations than it is to treat them. These kids need to get together and mount a class action suit. The awards might not be as lucrative as if they sued separately, but they'd have strength in numbers, and their legal costs might be lower if their families joined together in a class action.