This is just unbelievable: We ask soldiers to make the ultimate sacrifice for our country, and in return, what do they get? Your family in poverty. Read this and tear your hair out — here’s the story of a guy who’s blinded and quadriplegic from war:
TAMPA, Florida: He lies flat, unseeing eyes fixed on the ceiling, tubes and machines feeding him, breathing for him, keeping him alive. He cannot walk or talk, but he can grimace and cry. And he is fully aware of what has happened to him.
Four years ago almost to this day, Joseph Briseno Jr. was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range in a Baghdad marketplace. His spinal cord was shattered, and cardiac arrests stole his vision and damaged his brain. (…)
“They told us, ‘Prepare for his service.’ That’s how bad he was,” said his father, Joseph Briseno Sr., a retired career Army man.
But he survived. From Germany, he went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, then to McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia. In December 2003, he went home, to Manassas Park, Virginia, where his parents, Joseph Sr. and Eva, quit their jobs to care for him.
“All our savings, all our money, was just emptied … the 401(k)s, everything,” said Joseph Briseno, who took a new job a year and a half ago to make ends meet.
How can our troops not have all necessary care when they get back — taken care of, full up, no questions, no bills? How can this be a proper response to their sacrifice?
It’s hard to choose the most infuriating thing about this war, but this is up there.
Is there no option for active duty personel to purchase disability insurance?
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One wonders if such insurance should be mandatory for service members.
or what the VA is supposed to be?
was that this soldier was not at a VA facility. Perhaps I misread.
Isn’t Walter Reed a VA facility?
At home, he has the support of visiting VA nurses, but not 24-7, so his parents quit their jobs to care for him.
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It doesn’t say why he left the VA, though I suppose if it was Walter Reed, we probably know why.
…not a VA facility.
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That issue came up a few months ago, with the issue of the problem with the WR annex.
The Walter Reed Army Medical Center is US Army, not VA.
Brook in San Antonio is UA Army. Balboa in San Diego is US Navy. Trippler in Hawaii is US Army. Then there is US Naval hospital Long Beach and Okinawa Japan.Ran Mien
(?SP) Germany is Army. There are military hospitals all over the world. Bethesda and Walter Reed are the specialty hospitals.
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Personally I would much prefer Brigham and Womens, Mass general etc. Military hospitals are famous for very good or very bad MD’s.
When you enter military service all of your life insurance poloicies/death dismemberment policies are rendered null and void.
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The only isurance option a service member has is SGLI (service members group life insurance). There is no ‘disability insurance available because hypothetically the US Government will provide that. In this instant case this soldier is eligible for hospitalizatiin at a VA hospital which his parents apparently elected to not avail themselves of.
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Ever hear of or see the movie ‘Johnie Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo. I think I saw it forty odd years ago. it’s an eye opener abot a decerebrated soldier being hidden in a closet in a military hospital, meaning for a soldier fighting for whatever country, things never change. Many years ago people would forget about you years after the conflict was settked. Today, no one really cares even while the bullets and shells are flying.
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There was a sign outside a US Marine outpost in Iraq.
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“America is not at war, The United States Marine Corps is at war, America is at the mall.”
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When I was sitting on a bunker just south of the DMZ just before (circa) Christmas 1968, I remember opening the Stars and Stripes (newspaper) and seeing Jane Fonda sitting on a NVA anti aircraft gun. I am unable to explain exactly my emotion and sentiment, but it was not warm and fuzzy. I stayed with the military by accident and choice for the remaining twent six years, but I always carried one thought as a cornerstone: The only people who give a crap about me are my family and my fellow Marines.
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When I went overseas for Desert Shield/Desert Storm in 1990 my employer, the Commonwealth of massachusetts, not only stopped all pay and benefits, but they cut off my health insurance for my family, and I also suffered employment issues upon my reurn, which I will not delve into. Suffice it to say that my experience of Vietnam was affirmed twenty odd years later.
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Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem: Tommy, which essentially states all of aformentioned. That was when? The Crimea?
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The more things change the more they stay the same. We are looking at a future presidential election where not one candidate is a veteran excepting Duncan Hunter. I am assuming Hunter is still in the race—perhaps not.
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You folks may think it makes no difference–it does—immensely.
MCRD,
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McCain is a Veteran.
But I have a better shot at being elected president than he does. I’ve already written him off as has 98% of the electorate and I have no cites for you. His support of the amnesty bill doomed him. He’s down into the single numbers I believe.
That certainly answers my question.
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My question to you: how do you get America out of the mall? (And wasn’t it the president who suggested that we go there?)
Americans now view military service as something that the neighbor does “not my kid”. I come from a very, very large family. All of my uncles as well my father served in WWII. My mothers family in UK all served. I was the only person in my family since WWII that served in the military.
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Military service is now viewed with disdain. You get hurt doing it—or worse. In reality you have a better chance being killed or injured on Rte 128 or in Boston.
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I can tell you this. If Russia starts to rebuild militarily or China decides to take Taiwan and all of SE Asia or perhaps even USA there is nothing we can now do to stop them. I don’t believe we will ever resort to a nuclear exchange for fear of the catastrophic consequence and everyone knows that. America is now in a very, very, dangerous situation.
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I see cumpulsory military service as the answer. It will not happen until it is too late. We are now sitting on a ticking bomb.
IMO that would change immediately were we involved in a war to actually defend the United STates. But as long as we have these corporate wars like Iraq, I think you’re assessment will hold. For example, I’ll be damned if anyone in my family is fooled into joining uo just to fight for Haliburton and other assorted Bushco & Darth Ventures.
1.) I garee with Laurel, below, that the disdain–I think indifference might be a better word, except in the Cambridges, Ann Arbors, and Berkleys– would dissolve immediately in response to an actual threat to American soil, just as it did in the wake of 9/11. (Another thing about which to rue the present occupant of the White House is the squandering of the opportunity this presented.)
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2.)It is an open question if sudden, mass enlistment would be sufficient in a real, rather than manufactured, crisis, given the extreme professionalization of the modern forces. You think it won’t, and I agree. But, in my view, technological advances in air-based weapons platforms would make it very unwise for Russia, China, or any potential enemy to mass troops and arm with hostile intent, as was done in WWII or Korea. As we saw in Afghanistan, any concentration of hostiles is rapidly dispatched by a B-52 circling at 50,000 feet and two special forces guys with a laser GPS.
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3.) I tend to agree with you regarding compulsory military service. The IDF is a good model. Not going to happen though, alas.
When you enter military service all of your life insurance poloicies/death dismemberment policies are rendered null and void.
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…sent me looking at my life insurance policies and I was unable to find an exclusion for service in a conflict zone. I suspect that the exclusion is in the master policies, though.
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If I were an insurance underwriter, I would make certain that there was such an exclusion in any policy that I issued. For obvious reasons. I have heard of a number of similar exclusions, including, some years ago, for hang-gliding. If you voluntarily put yourself in a position dangerous to life and limb, you can’t expect an insurance company to bail you out willy-nilly.
It’s there. My insurance policies also become null and void when I fly an aircraft as pilot in command unless I have a rider which I do not and cannot afford.
If you are killed/wounded as the result of an act of war or terrorism while in military service (policy is rendered null and void)
…just as exclusions in policies issued by property insurers for flood, but not for wind.
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There’s a difference between an exclusion and “null and void.” A subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.
but I do know this:
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Jane Fonda went to Hanoi in July of 1972, so you must be mistaken.
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http://en.wikipedia….
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In 1968 you probably saw Fonda riding big guns in the movie Barbarella.
posts and claims about his service, but when people just blatantly make shit up, I can only take so much.
In 1968 she was organizing a sort of anti-USO called FTA (F–k the Army), which was as likely to wind up in a newspaper.
I stand corrected and somewhat red faced. Something pushed my buttons back then. After I left active duty and finished my degree at UMB 71-74, JF Kerry and his “Winter Soldiers” were doing their thing. Whatever.
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When you go to a very unfriendly place on this planet at the behest of the president, the US Congress and your fellow citizens, you do what you do, bear witness to the assaults on the mind and body and still try to do the right thing and then reurn to the hatred and dislike we endured, then I trust you may forgive my failing memory.
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I will re iterate that in fact I was sitting there that day, and I read something that was going on back home which sent me and my fellow marines into a tailspin.
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The VVAW lynching of Americans who did the right thing was unconscionable and in my opinion treasonous.
when I see it. Who is absolutely correct? First you make specific claims about Jane Fonda and Xmas 1968, when she wasn?t even in Hanoi before 1972. Right? Then someone offers you a fig leaf about Jane Fonda and the FTA, and now that?s what you remember instead? That and all of the other traitors?
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Well, according to those ?treasonous? Vietnam Vets Against the War (and every other source), the FTA didn?t even exist before 1969, and Jane Fonda wasn?t involved before 1970, so it must be something else you were reading about back in ’68.
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Speaking of Jane Fonda and the FTA, here?s a review of a documentary made in 1972:
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Viewing “FTA” today is like opening a long-forgotten time capsule. The
film’s true power comes in the frank, often rude comments from the servicemen
and women who openly question the purpose and planning of the American
involvement in Vietnam. Most memorable here are the members of the U.S.S.
Coral Sea, who presented a petition to their superiors demanding a halt to
the bombing in Vietnam; African-American soldiers and marines who angrily
decried racist attitudes among the white commanding officers at the U.S.
military installations, usually with an upraised fist of the Black Power
movement; women serving in the U.S. Air Force who talk unhappily about sexual
harassment from their male counterparts; and soldiers who pointedly refer to
the dictatorial government in South Vietnam which was being presented as the
democracy which they were supposedly defending. The extraordinary air of
dissent that rises out of “FTA” provides a rare glimpse into a unhappy and
demoralized fighting force stuck in a war which they did not believe in.
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You?re right about one thing though. Some things never change.
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I’ve only seen a few of your comments, but you seem to have a recurring theme: wrapping yourself in the flag, from where you then denigrate anyone, even decorated Vets like Kerry or Bacevich, who don’t blindly support Dear Leader. I don’t have the time to scroll through all of your other comments to pick out the instances of ahh “failing memory”, but you’re “0” for three in this thread.
PATRIOT, n.
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One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
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–Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
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Parse the first sentence carefully.
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* A stipend for life.
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* Help in finding housing.
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That is the least we can do.
How very progresive of you. You sound like a closet lefty, lol. See, entitlements aren’t always a bad thing, now, are they?
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I woulod add, that they not only get free health care, I would want them to get free, unlimited, unrestricted health care. If a wounded soldier wants to see a specialist at Mass General, the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, or any top teir medical fascility, it should be their right. They shouldn’t have to be forced into only what is “pre-approved”.
It’s already in effect—- to a degree. A 100% disabled veteran gets about $2600.00 a month tax free. There is a housing and training allowance. Free hospitalization , PT, OT, at VA. There is also psychiatry and counselling etc.
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The problem is that there are so many veterans and so few medical practitioners and facilities that the system is overwhelmed. Since everyone is essentially equal, there is no priority. It’s crazy.
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Too little, too late. It’s really a shame. The WWII veterans literally saved USA and the world and USA was greatfull and did what they could. Most of our present day VA hospitals are all post WWII structures. In other words they are falling down and ill maintained which is typical of the government or anything governmental. Perhaps the fact that we have always tried to save some other country rather than our own has something to do with this equation.
Also, was he taken home because his parents wanted him there, or because the VA refused to keep him at the hospital? The article doesn’t say.
I had the oppurtunity to get, how shall I say this, an “advanced screening” of Michael Moore’s latest documentary.
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We simply cannot ask for any wounded/disabled veteran from any branch of service, of any combat experience, to spend one red cent on a health problem directly related to service. Their costs must be covered. The pain and disruption of there lives is too much sacrifice to begin with. Money should never enter the equation. This is the only decent and moral choice that can be made here.
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And the fact that other countires have free/negligible cost health care for all citizens (Canada, Britain, France) and we can’t even provide for those who have sacrificed the most makes me disgusted.
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I can accept that corruption is rampant in many areas of government and corporate America. But when policies egregiously inflict suffering and hardships on not just people but entire families that “did the right thing” – according to the very people who are fucking them over – is amongst the worst crimes I can imagine. Contrasting this scenario with Moore’s film make me feel violent in a way I don’t often feel. My hands are shaking as I type.
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I hate the short comings of America sometimes.
And the Bushco folks think movies of people having sex are obscene. If this doesn’t redefine obscenity, I’m Mohandas K. Ghandi.