Of course then this is what our boys have to look forward to with this great president who is so very patriotic and loves our troops......How pathetic can this man be?
They fucking lay their lives on the line for the country, are seperated for months from their families, get injured and get this welcome home.
This administration treats our men like dogs. Makes me wonder how anyone can support this.
Righties can blame and will Clinton all they want but they have been in power of Congress since '98 and have been in total power since '01.
This is just the summary if you want the whole story the link is posted.... not enough space to post it all.
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Senators Kit Bond and Patrick Leahy, co-chairs of the U.S. Senate National Guard Caucus, dispatched their aides to Ft. Stewart to investigate reports that activated Guard and Reserve members were being poorly housed, with inadequate medical attention, while on "medical hold."
Summary
Approximately 650 members of the National Guard and the Army Reserve who have answered the call-to-duty and in many cases were wounded, injured or became ill while serving in Iraq, are currently on medical hold at Ft. Stewart, Ga. Army base. As a result of an investigation by a reporter and expeditious follow-up by a veteran service organization representative it has come to our attention that these National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers have been receiving inadequate medical attention and counsel while being housed in living accommodations totally inappropriate to their condition. Of the roughly 650 injured soldiers currently awaiting medical care and follow-up evaluations, approximately one-third of these soldiers were found not physically qualified for deployment and therefore never deployed overseas. The remaining two-thirds deployed overseas and were returned to Ft. Stewart as a result of wounds or injuries sustained while serving or as the result of illness encountered either before or after deployment. Regardless of the nature of the medical malady, these soldiers have been enduring unacceptable conditions for as many as 10 months.
The return of the 3rd Infantry Division from the Middle East (18,000-strong which is permanently stationed at the base), has forced commanders to lease barracks from the Georgia National Guard that were designed as temporary quarters for National Guard soldiers undergoing annual training. They are not designed to accommodate wounded, injured or ill soldiers awaiting medical care and evaluation. The Army has designed a Disability Evaluation System that is purposely slow to ensure that National Guard and Army Reserve citizen-soldiers who are found not physically qualified for duty receive a fair and impartial review when undergoing a medical evaluation board. The process, similar in many respects to the workman's compensation process, requires that these soldiers be given every opportunity to recover. If full recovery is not possible, the system works to establish a baseline condition before the soldier is evaluated by a medical evaluation board.
The situation at Ft. Stewart unfortunately was, and remains, hampered by an insufficient number of medical clinicians and specialists, which has caused excessive delays in the delivery of care. Exacerbating the situation, was the Army's placement of wounded and injured soldiers in housing totally unsuitable for their medical condition. Additionally, these soldiers were placed under the leadership of soldiers who were also injured, resulting in a situation where the sick and injured were leading the sick and injured. Furthermore, the perception among these soldiers is that the traditional active duty soldier is receiving better care, compounding an already deteriorating situation that had a devastating and negative impact on morale. Most of the soldiers in the medical hold battalion, which was established administratively to provide a military structure for the soldiers, have families living within hundreds of miles; yet they have been unable to join their families while awaiting the final deliberation of their cases.
In the short term, we must alleviate the unacceptable conditions at Ft. Stewart and determine if the problem is isolated to Ft. Stewart alone or part of a larger system wide problem.
Alleviating the problems at Ft. Stewart will require the immediate assignment of additional medical clinicians, specialists and medical support personnel and/or the transfer, where appropriate, of our National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers to facilities close to their families so they can continue to receive quality care and await further medical reviews if necessary in an environment conducive to healing. We must also ensure that the conditions at Ft. Stewart are not replicated elsewhere, while ensuring the fixes we install at Ft. Stewart are applied throughout the Army if necessary. In the long term, the Congress must address the physical readiness of the National Guard and the Reserve by passage of a pending bill, TRICARE for Guard and Reservists, to ensure that every member of the Guard and Reserves has adequate health insurance coverage and is medically ready to deploy.
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LINK:
http://www.ngac.org/news/troop_treatment.htm
BTW this is a nonpartisan pro-military site the National Guard Association Of California.
We need to hammer this man on where the money for the military truly is going.