Letters to the Editor
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Gen. Kiley knew about vets' outpatient scandal.
Short version = Dept. of Defense hasn't decided who to blame yet. Must be John Murtha's fault.
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Taking care of our soldiers
I have heard of this same problem in the Dallas are where returning soldiers who need assistance get no one to answer the 800 numbers given for them to call for help.
A government that won't take excellent care of its returning and injured servicemen and women is morally bankrupt. We ask them to sacrifice everything including, life, limb, family, mental health, income etc and we are not willing to step up to the plate to care for them. That's right up there with not being truthful about the need for invading Iraq in the first place!
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Sergeant 1st Class?
I think you're looking for First Sergeant. The only "First Class" in the Army rank structure is a Private First Class (E-3).
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They just use you
When I came home from Vietnam 1971.I was in a awful state of mine.Looking back I am lucky I didn't kill somebody.I had been in combat for 14 months.Almost everyday I would kill somebody.There was no place to go for help.I had to work it out for myself. Steven H.
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WiJO : Time for retraining
Enlisted grade 7 (E7) - Sergeant First Class (SFC)
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/insignias/enlisted.html
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Why is this guy wearing Camo?
Maybe he's trying to be inconspicuous.
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stvh1 my brother, I empathize, but please get real
I got back in 1971 also.
While I don't doubt you've got PTSD, you are exaggerating your story. You did not kill someone every day for 14 months. That would be 420. If you had killed 420 enemy that would be a remarkable record, surpassing even Audie Murphy in World War II, who witnesses confirm that he killed 250 Germans in the course of his combat tour, which was recorded as two full years in combat.
So you are saying you nearly doubled Audie Murphy's record of confirmed kills, and you did it in little more than half the time it took Murphy to do it.
And you did it not in a full-scale total war in four horrendous campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Germany, but in 1970-71 in Vietnam.
Look man, I was there at exactly the same time you were. I don't care if you were in I Corp, II Corp, or III Corp, during that time, there was no place where their was daily engagement of the magnitude suggested by your 420 kills. Even if you had been in country during Tet in 1968, at Hue, I don't think there was any combat soldier there who racked up enough confirmed kills to make it one per day.
Also, your figure of 14 months in-country is rather interesting. Depending on your DEROS date, you were there in 1970. So was I. Same tour. Same war. Even if you were, as I was, in on the Cambodia Incursion of May to July of 1970, the biggest engagement of that period of time, there was never a period of time in '70-'71 when NVA and VC were pressing the war so vigorously any American unit was in constant contact with the enemy.
But let's say for the sake of argument you did it. Admittedly, the military was stingy handing out medals for heroism in Vietnam, but you must be the most highly-decorated veteran of any war. Let's take Audie Murphy again as an example: For all that fighting and killing and heroic selflessness in the face of certain death, Murphy received the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Star Medals, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals with Valor device, and three Purple Hearts. During his European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign, he received one silver battle star (denoting five campaigns), four bronze battle stars, plus a bronze arrowhead representing his two amphibious assault landings at Sicily and southern France. The French government awarded Murphy its highest award, the Legion of Honor. He also received two Croix de Guerre from France and one from Belgium. In addition, Murphy was awarded the Combat Infantryman's Badge.
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I did not write this to denigrate you, or to call you a liar, or to put you down in any way.
But the Vietnam War was bad enough, horrific enough, that exaggeration is not only unnecessary, it gives all living Vietnam Vets a bad name. When civilians hear these bloviated war stories, they tend to discount our true stories. So anyone who fabricates false stories hurts not only himself, but other veterans living and dead.
I hope you are in the VA mental health program. I hope you don't kill yourself or anyone else. But one of the first things you are going to have to do is be honest with yourself about what you did, and did not, do in Vietnam.
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Bush administration boiler-plate
Somewhere in the White House there has to be a memo with the formulaic response to any embarrassing press about a major failure.
"I don't think anyone could have anticipated . . . [fill in blank with latest embarrassment]."
The blank will then be filled with something that many people did anticipate, predict, and warn about repeatedly, usually getting ridiculed for it until they were proven right. So far, that sentence has been completed with ". . . that terrorists would hijack planes and fly them into buildings," ". . . that Saddam Hussein would turn out not to have any WMD," ". . . the breach of the levees in New Orleans," ". . . that Sunni insurgents would bomb the Golden Mosque," and now "that there was any problem with the medical treatment of wounded veterans." They'll just keep filling in the blanks in that sentence until January 20, 2008.
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Same Sad Story, Different War
Does this report really surprise anyone? After the Vietnam War, there was a huge scandal about conditions at VA hospitals and the treatment of vets returning from combat. We all heard about the substandard conditions, uncaring and overwhelmed staff and of vets denied mental health care. We heard all the stories about vets being denied basic services and the VA promising that they would do better now that they've learned their lesson.
Fast forward thirty years and we again find an overwhelmed system, substandard care and vets being denied the healthcare and services. And again we hear the excuses. The truth is very simple - a war fought on the cheap and by leaders who did not anticipate combat lasting several years. Add to that the fact that far more soldiers are surviving catrostrophic injuries that would have killed them in previous wars and need more long-term care than had been anticipated. More casuaties are bottlenecking the system that is ill-prepared to deal with them. It doesn't help that the military had planned to shut down Walter Reed, so they had not invested the money in maintaining and upgrading the facility.
Sadly, the Bush administration talks big about supporting our troops but has done a very shoddy job of caring for them properly. Look at the total record - lack of body armor and armored vehicles, extending tours, stop loss rotations, "bring it on" talk, lack of accountablilty for civilian contractors, etc. Is the lack of care for our veterans any real surprise? What surprises me more is the lack of outrage in our country over this final indignity.