Letters to the Editor
-
Dr. Hayashi
I don't care if Peake was a freakin' Eagle Scout and an alter boy, let alone the fact that he was a twice-wounded company commander (captain I recall) with the 101st Airborne. I served in combat in Vietnam under the command of a couple of outstanding COs in the field, and an equal number of certifiable lunatics and complete assholes. So I have no way of knowing which kind Capt. Peake was.
Here's something funny: Look at the outgoing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. It says on his resume that he was an infantry captain, a CO, much like Peake. But I tried for three years to find Nicholson's particulars, as in which infantry company, battalion, brigade, and division he served with. Because with that info and his dates "in country" it would be easy to find out from the "daily journals" and the "Combat After Action Reports-Lessons Learned" of his unit just exactly where Nicholson was, and what he was doing. Guess what? I'm not surprised that nobody can find that information. I'm not saying he wasn't what he now claims, but where's the record? Where are the men he served with who could say, "Yeah, I was up country with him and he did this and that."
All I know about Nicholson is that he was a multi-millionaire real estate developer who got rich building Parker, Colorado, a wealthy southern suburb of Denver. And he was a Ranger-level contributor to G.W. Bush's presidential campaign. Suddenly, Nicholson is made ambassador to the Vatican. Now there's a dick job if there ever was. But when Principi went out the revolving door to go make more millions, Bush tapped Nicholson to be Sec of Veterans Affairs. During his time in that job he stunned veterans with his incompetence and willingness to cut the VA budget by millions of dollars during a time when the GWOTS were streaming in bleeding and brains scrambled from Bush's two wars. His hallmark was the phrase, "Treat and Return to Function." Which sounds good, but what it meant was he sent out the edict to the raters to deny or reduce claims for service-connected disabilities as much as possible and to drag out the appeals process into not months, but years. Nicholson's main job was to shrink the budget and screw veterans.
Now comes Peake, in through the revolving door just as Nicholson is departing. What do you bet, Dr. Hayashi, that it won't be long before we see a small story in the business section of the WaPo or NYT that "Former VA Secretary James Nicholson has joined the firm of ____ Corporation, in charge of pharmaceutical supply contracts, or facilities location and construction, or medical contract services, blah blah blah for interface with the VA." What do you bet?
You can talk all you want about how Peake is such a great man, but I'll wait and see. I've seen the VA from the inside and I can tell you this: A veteran only gets what he's willing to fight for, complain about, get his congressman to investigate. The whole damned place is biased toward not helping the veteran, but to somehow get him out of the system, make him go away out of frustration.
I'm betting that Peake isn't going to be any different than the last asshole they had in that job.