Operation Occupation: A Nation that doesn't take care of veterans has no business making new ones.

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from AfterDowningStreet.org:


Operation Occupation: A Nation that does not take care of its Veterans has no business whatsoever making new ones.
Submitted by stacybannerman on Sat, 2007-02-10 18:20. Activism
Saturday 10 February 2007

Operation Occupation moved in to Capitol Hill this week, starting with the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the 2008 Defense Budget and Fiscal Year 2007/2008 War supplemental appropriations with Secretary of Defense Gates, General Pace, and DOD Controller Jonas on Tuesday, February 6th. I arrived shortly before Chairman Carl Levin, (D-MI) gave his opening remarks, and sat near Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin and several other Pinkers, who interrupted proceedings several times, until they were escorted from the room.

This is probably the fourth or fifth House or Senate hearing I’ve attended over the past three years where the focus was the cost of the war in Iraq. Not a single one has ever included testimony from soldiers or military families about the human costs of war. Perhaps because there’s not a line item category that will ever be large enough to contain it.
At least Senator Byrd had the presence of mind to ask the panel, “Can you give us some idea as to the … cost in dead and wounded as of now? We can probably get that from the newspapers, but do you have it?”

Silence.

He asked again.

More silence.

Sweet Jesus, can it really be that NO ONE on the Panel knew the answer? That not one of the Senators who keep sending our soldiers to war knew how many had come home in a coffin? In a wheelchair? With the psychic equivalent of a sucking chest wound that is Post-traumatic stress disorder?

God forbid they should look at the armband I was wearing with 3,101 written in black, the death tally that day. That they read that the V.A. has already seen approximately 64,000 troops for post-combat mental health problems; that there are almost 53,000 non-fatal combat and non-combat related casualties, according to the Associated Press. But they drag you out if you tell the truth. ...(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18417