ACLU's lawsuit against the VA is a step in vet's recovery
 

Whether or not you believe the man in the article deserves/needs help (I think he does) it strikes me as wrong that the ACLU should have to fight on behalf of the vets to get medical help that they need. We have money to waste on the wars but not on helping the damaged soldiers that come back?

ACLU fights for Vets

The VA sucks pretty badly and often has no idea of how to deal with vets with PTSD. Perhaps this will help improve the situation, but I doubt it. It hurts to see sufferers of PTSD go without the proper treatment. It is often worse for service members still in teh armed services.

I'll give you another kick in the groin - Adm Mullen, Chairman of the JCS, is already talking about cutting active duty pay and benefits to meet the administration's budget targets for 2023. He's saying it would be a mistake to cut back on hardware or any of the gold-plated weapons programs, that the better choice is to cut pay and benefits.

Let's see, he's an O-8 to O-10 with 40 years service, and probably already has a cushy job lined up with a defense contractor when he retires in the near future - he sure as hell won't be hurting from any pay cuts.:mad:

Yeah, still in the middle of two wars, with an all-volunteer force, and you're telling the guys having to fight those wars they need to look forward to pay and benefit cuts? Smooth move Cochise, I'm sure THAT will help reenlistment and recruitment big time.:rolleyes:

And I guess someone forgot to tell the Adm that all that expensive hardware is nothing but JUNK if you can't keep trained experienced PEOPLE to operate it.

NO PAY OR BENEFIT CUTS FOR AC SERVICEPEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cut out the Dept of Ed or scale back foreign aid, but do NOT cut back those who are in harm's way!

Not to make light of their situation but how did the former vets of say WWII get treated for this PTSD thing? We had more soldiers who went, didn't we? By that estimation, shouldn't we have had massive issues? What changed?

For WWI and WWII, it was known as "shell shock" or "combat fatigue". And yes there probably were massive issues, just didn't get publicized to the extent they are now. And the "mindfawks" as you call them had even less of a handle on the condition than they do now.

For starters, go watch "The Best Years of Our Lives"

http://thebestpictureproject.files.w...ur-lives-3.jpg

Then I suggest you check out the biography of Audie Murphy.

But you would think that if there were massive issues, publicize it or not, it would definitely come out. Sure, you can keep 10000 cases private but if there were a million cases, it would be much harder whether you choose to publicize it or not. We have a volunteer force so I would think that their mentality would be much better than if they were drafted. After all, isn't it much easier to bear with suffering when you go in knowing what it can entail as opposed to being given the choice of say prison or service? Maybe we are enlisting the wrong sort of people?

I'm not sure how that would make a difference. I have so low regard of their profession I would be more proud of my daughter or wife if they were to go to hooking on the street as opposed to being a mindfawk.

Can you be more specific? Wiki has Audie listed as having issues but apparently he did cope with it. In fact, he was addicted to placidyl and he locked himself in a motel and got himself off it. The question wasn't whether they had problems or not. The question is how did they deal with the issues.

It is about TIME forsome reformin the VA !!!!


This is about supporting the troops!!

They deserve the best, and nothing less, for their service to our country !!

John Huston made a film after World War Two that was shelved by the VA as it just contained too much truth.

The title is 'Let There Be Light'.

A friend of mine who was in the D-Day invasion recently died at the age of 96. He was also in Korea and Veit-Nam and retired as a One Star General. He had nightmares until the day he died and while he would talk about Korea and Viet-Nam he would never talk about D-Day. He would talk about it with his Priest, but no one else.

Which still begs the question, how did he deal with it? How did the past generations deal with those issues? If they couldn't, there would be massive issues. The fact that we were more successful then as opposed to now leads me to believe that they have coped better.

There were a lot of men who buried their horrors in a bottle of booze. Some men, like my dad, suffered in silence, forever jumpy, nervous about everyday noises and just made it through the best they could. Until recently, there was not a lot of reminders of the war that were graphically accurate and a lot of men put the war behind them and went to work building a future.

I think a lot of men did but I would say that a lot more coped. Obviously, like you dad, it couldn't be erased any more than my Grandfather who enjoyed Japanese "hospitality" did.

It just seems to me that the previous generations had less and coped with it better. What I don't understand is how they did it. That makes me wonder if we are getting soldiers that should not be in that field. After all, not everybody is cut out to be a neurosurgeon or even something as blue collared as a welder. Looking as and taking notes for the wife's classes sometimes, I can see that I could probably do what she is doing ON PAPER. However, if push came to shove, She'd have to be plenty drunk and high and tired for me to equal her performance. So while I have the intelligence to do it, I do not have the aptitude and should NOT involve myself in her line of work. So maybe, we are simply recruiting soldiers who do not have the mentality to be soldiers?

I don't think the vets of today are coping any less well than those of old. We're just more willing to talk about our problems.

There are people in every field who shouldn't be there. This isn't anything new. In the military we usually figure out which ones don't belong pretty quickly. Getting them gone however usually takes quite a bit longer.