http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042806B.shtml

Coming Home From War on the Cheap
By Judith Coburn
TomDispatch.com

Thursday 27 April 2006

Shortchanging the wounded.
On the eve of his Marine unit's assault on Falluja in November, 2004, Blake Miller read to his men from the Bible (John 14:2-3): "In my father's house, there are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I leave this place and go there to prepare a place for you, so that where I may be, you may be also."

A photograph of Miller's blood smeared, filthy face, so reminiscent of David Douglas Duncan's photos of war weary Marines in Vietnam, is one of the Iraq War's iconic images. Over a hundred newspapers ran it. But as the San Francisco Chronicle reported recently, Miller, a decorated war hero, has been shattered psychologically by Iraq. Disabled by flashbacks and nightmares, he continues to pay daily and dearly for his service there.

His eloquent commitment to his fellow Marines is the highest value in military life. But the Bush administration, which sent Blake Miller, his fellow Marines, and 1.3 million other Americans (so far) to war in Iraq and Afghanistan apparently does not share this commitment.

Much has been written about how President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld waged war on the cheap, sending too few ill-equipped young soldiers - 30% of them ill-trained Reservists and National Guardsmen - into battle. But little has been reported about how shockingly on-the-cheap the homecomings of these soldiers have proved to be. The Bush administration awarded Blake Miller a medal, but it has fought for three long years to deny soldiers like him the care they need. While Miller and his men were being thrown into the fire in Falluja, the White House was proposing to cut the combat pay of soldiers like them. (Only an outburst of outrage across the political spectrum caused the administration to back off from that suggestion.)

The Veterans Administration, now run by a former Republican National Committeeman, has been subjected to the same radical hatcheting that the White House has tried to wield against the rest of America's safety net. Cutbacks, cooking the books, privatization schemes, even a proposal to close down the VA's operations have all been in evidence. The administration's inside-the-beltway supporters like the Heritage Foundation and famed anti-tax radical Grover Norquist like to equate VA care with welfare. Traditionally, however, most Americans have held that the VA's medical care and disability compensation was earned by those who served their country.

Unfortunately, in our draft-free country, the fight to protect the Veteran's Administration and to fully fund it has gone on largely out of public sight. Other than the Washington Post and the Associated Press, relatively few journalistic organizations have bothered to regularly cover the VA. The fight over it that White House hatchetmen, VA political appointees, and their allies in Congress have had with Congressional critics (Democratic and Republican) along with veterans' organizations has been monitored closely only by veterans' websites like Larry Scott's VAWatchdog.com, veteransforcommonsense.org and military.com.

"Enron-Styled Accounting"

While national deficits soar, thanks in part to skyrocketing war costs, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are flooding into the increasingly underfunded VA system. The Pentagon says that 2,389 Americans have died and 17,648 have been wounded in combat in Iraq (and another 285 have died in Afghanistan). But these casualty figures seem to be significant undercounts. After all, 144,424 American veterans have sought treatment from the VA system since returning from those wars, not including soldiers actually hospitalized in military hospitals.

These figures were wrested only recently from the Veteran's Administration after years of fruitless demands from Democrats on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. The 144,424 figure includes not only many of those 17,648 reported wounded in combat by the Pentagon - if that figure is, in fact, accurate - but those wounded psychologically, those injured in accidents, and those whose ailments were caused or exacerbated by service in the war. (Think of war, in this sense, as an extreme sport in its toll on the body.) Of course, neither Pentagon, nor VA figures for the wounded include estimates of those soldiers or veterans who don't show up at a Department of Defense (DoD) or VA facility. Among these casualties are post-combat-tour suicides (who obviously can't show up) and the victims of diseases like leishmaniasis, caused by the ubiquitous sand flies in Iraq, who often suffer on their own.

Nonetheless, the VA has admitted - and it's been confirmed by an Army study - that a staggering 35% of veterans who served in Iraq have already sought treatment in the VA system for emotional problems from the war. Add this to the older veterans, especially from the Vietnam era, pouring into the VA system as their war wounds, both physical and emotional, deepen with age or as, on retirement, they find they can no longer afford private health insurance and realize that VA health care is - or, at least in the past, was - more generous than Medicare.

Just as the Pentagon failed, after its March 2003 invasion of Iraq, to plan for keeping the peace, guarding against looting, fighting a resilient insurgency, or handling a civil war, so has the Veterans Administration failed to plan for caring for casualties of the war. The VA admitted recently that 33,858 more vets showed up for treatment in just the first quarter of FY2006 than were expected for the entire year. Do the math yourself. Multiply times 4, assuming that the war goes on injuring Americans at current levels, and you get a possible underestimate of 135,000 casualties for the year.

Even more distressing, the San Diego Union recently reported that mentally ill soldiers are being sent back to war armed only with antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. The Union quotes Sydney Hickey of the National Military Family Association as saying that "more than 200,000 prescriptions for the most common antidepressants were written in the last 14 months for service members and their families." According to the Union, an Army study also found that 17% of combat-seasoned infantrymen suffer from major depression, anxiety, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a single tour in Iraq. California Sen. Barbara Boxer has called for an investigation.

Are such chronic underestimates merely the result of incompetence? Not according to the General Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's investigative arm. In a series of reports on the Veterans Administration over the last three years, the GAO found that the VA's top officials submitted budget requests based on cost limits demanded by the White House, not on realistic expectations of how many veterans would actually need medical care or disability support.

In repeated testimony before Congress, top VA political appointees have opposed demands by veterans' groups like the American Legion and the Disabled Veterans of America to increase significantly funds for medical care and disability payments for the new patients now flooding the system. Top VA officials assured Congress that more money wasn't needed because the agency had stepped up "management efficiencies." But the GAO found that, from 2003-2006, there were no obvious management efficiencies whatsoever to offset the increased treatment costs from the Iraq War, nor did the VA even have a methodology for reporting on such alleged efficiencies.

While the GAO's findings, when describing the VA's budget manipulations, were couched in such relatively polite bureaucratic euphemisms as "misleading," "lacked a methodology," and "does not have a reliable basis," the conclusions nonetheless were striking. "The GAO report confirms what everyone has known all along," American Legion National Commander Thomas L. Bock commented. "The VA's health-care budget has been built on false claims of 'efficiency' savings, false actuarial assumptions and an inability to collect third-party reimbursements - money owed them. This budget model has turned our veterans into beggars, forced to beg for the medical care they earned and, by law, deserve. These deceptions are especially unconscionable when American men and women are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Some veterans are calling it fraud. Rep. Lane Evans (Dem.-Ill.) of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee calls it "Enron-styled accounting."

Budget Busting

The economic realities of the wars the Bush administration has taken us into are, in truth, budget busting. A recent study by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard management expert Linda Biones - that actually factored the costs of "coming home" into war expenditures - sets the total cost of the Iraq War between $1 and 2 trillion, including $122 billion in disability payments and $92 billion in health care for veterans.

Pentagon health-care costs for soldiers still in the military have doubled in the last five years and are projected to total $64 billion or 12% of the official Pentagon budget by 2015, according to William Winkenwerder, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Soaring American medical costs are only partly to blame. Advances in combat medical care have also meant that far more wounded soldiers are being kept alive than in earlier wars, many of them with serious brain injuries and/or multiple amputations. Taking care of these tragically maimed soldiers for life will be extraordinarily costly, both in terms of medical care and their 100% disability payments. (The VA rates disability on a scale of 0 to 100%, which then determines the size of the monthly disability payment due a veteran.)

Even before recent veterans began flooding the system, the VA was already underfunded and being criticized for poor services. Then, three years ago, Rep. Evans and Rep. Chris H. Smith, (Rep.-NJ), Chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, raised the alarm that the VA, already short of funds, would face a catastrophe as the troops began returning from Iraq.

Smith was rewarded for his efforts to sound the alarm by being removed not just from his chairmanship, but from the committee altogether, by the House Republican leadership. Similarly, in November 2004, VA head Anthony Principi was forced out by the White House because of his opposition to the VA being shortchanged in the budget the White House demanded - so lobbyists for veterans believe. But Principi seems not to have suffered from his VA experience. The Los Angeles Times reported recently that a medical services company Principi headed, and returned to after running the VA, earned over a billion dollars in fees, much of it from contracts approved while Principi was VA chief.

The VA admits its disability system was overburdened even before the administration invaded Iraq; and, by 2004, it had a backlog of 300,000 disability claims. Now, the VA reports that the backlog has reached 540,122. By April 2006, 25% of rating claims took six months to process - no small thing for a veteran wounded badly enough to be unable to work. An appeal of a rejected claim frequently takes years to settle. One hundred twenty-three thousand disability claims have been filed already by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, in its budget requests, the administration has constantly resisted congressional demands to increase the number of VA staffers processing such claims.

The True Cost of Coming Home

Congress has fought the White House over its low VA budgets for several years. In the FY 2006 budget, all Congress could finally grant the VA was $990 million above the agency's already meager request - an increase of just 3.6% over the previous year despite the rise in casualties to be treated. In fact, top VA officials now admit it would take a 14% increase in the present budget simply to keep up with the inflation in medical costs.

Rep. Evans estimates that there has been a $4 billion shortfall in VA funding in the years 2003-06. In 2005, the White House admitted that, for medical services alone, the VA was short $1 billion for the year - and another estimated $2.6 billion in 2006.

What may ultimately swamp the Veterans Administration's ability to cope is the emotional toll of combat - unless it jettisons thousands of returning soldiers. Nearly one in three veterans has been hospitalized at the VA, or visited a VA outpatient clinic, due to an initial diagnosis of a mental-health disorder, according to the VA itself. Its numbers are consistent with a recent Army study on soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Such a rate might add up over time (depending on how long these wars last) to almost half a million veterans in need of treatment - or more. A 2004 study of several Army and Marine units returning from Iraq and Afghanistan that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine found only 23-40% of those with PTSD had sought treatment. And post-traumatic stress is called "post" for a reason - its most serious symptoms usually emerge long after the trauma is over.

Listen to the VA's own national advisory board on PTSD in a report released in February, 2006:

"[The] VA cannot meet the ongoing needs of veterans of past deployments while also reaching out to new combat veterans of [Iraq and Afghanistan] and their families within current resources and current models of treatment."

The VA is now paying out $4.3 billion a year for PTSD disability to 215,871 veterans. The report also found that a returning war veteran suffering from emotional illness now has to wait an average of 60 days before he or she can even be evaluated for diagnosis, let alone treated. Forty-two percent of VA primary care clinics had no mental-health staff members and 53% of those that did had only one. Eighty-two percent of new patients needed to be in the most intensive PTSD treatment programs, the VA report found, but 40% of those programs were already so full that they could only take a few more patients; 20% said they were too full to take any at all.

"VA's data show a 30% increase in the number of [Iraq and Afghan War] veterans who have an initial diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder from the end of FY 2005," says Rep. Michael Michaud (Dem.-Me). "I applaud the courage of these veterans who have sought help, but the administration refuses to acknowledge fully the demand and need for mental health services."

Further down the line: How many Iraqi veterans will eventually join the ranks of the 400,000 homeless vets on the streets of American cities? (Right now the VA takes care of only 100,000 such vets, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.)

This dire situation has only encouraged the budget cutters and anti-government radicals like Norquist, who once joked that he hoped to shrink the government enough so that he could drown it in a bathtub. With PTSD rates soaring among vets, the hatchets have been out not just when it comes to treating them, but even when it comes to the diagnosis of PTSD itself. In 2005, the VA, under White House pressure, announced that it was reopening 72,000 long-approved PTSD disability claims for review, many of them for Vietnam veterans. Right-wing columnists quickly swung into action with op-ed pieces insisting that many PTSD claims were fraudulent. The VA backed off - but only after a New Mexico newspaper reported that a troubled Vietnam veteran with a 100% PTSD disability killed himself upon fearing that the VA might review his case and a firestorm of criticism from Congress and veterans' organizations followed.

Other White House ideas for cutting back the VA, including making vets pay insurance premiums, higher co-pays and doubling Vets' costs for prescription drugs, have also been beaten back by Congress. One VA response to its huge backlog of claims has been to limit enrollment for its services. In January, 2003, the White House ordered the VA to create a new temporary cost-cutting category of "affluent" vets who would not be eligible to use the VA. But the new category seems headed for permanency. And it sets the cut-off level for eligibility for VA care so low - around $30,000 for a so-called "affluent" family of four - that many vets who have been cut off can't possibly afford health insurance and medical care on the private market.

In World War II, 12 million Americans fought on behalf of a nation of 130 million. Twenty-five percent of American men served in that war. They came back heroes to a country more than willing to give them the latest medical care, compensate them for their wounds, send them to college, and help them buy homes.

Fifty years later in Iraq - an unpopular war - only 1.3 million are fighting for a nation of 300 million. "Never have so few sacrificed so much for so many," one Desert Storm veteran said recently. Iraq may be the wrong cause for sacrifice. But Vietnam veterans taught us that once war starts we must be willing to take care of everyone who gets hurt in it.

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Judith Coburn has covered war and its aftermath in Indochina, Central America, and the Middle East for the Village Voice, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times, and Tomdispatch, among other media outlets.


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In many of her assertions in this piece methinks Ms Coburn is a bit guilty of tryin' to perpetuate the myths them on the far left, includin' Candidate Kerry in his 2004 run for President, have been tryin' to foist on us for quite a while. We've had discussions in many threads here on CGCS 'bout them in the past year and a half, so I ain't gonna even try goin' over that ground again, eh?

Y'all might wanna see if you can get hold of the article "Funding for Veterans up 27%, But Democrats Call It A Cut" for a start. That was one of the items used as a basis for much of this discussion of the funding issues as well as the huge expansion of the number of beneficiaries under medical care by the VA system.

Don't get me wrong, she covers some of the shortfalls that do exist in today's VA medical delivery system. IMHO she tends to hyperbolize them which methinks clouds the ability to get a basic understandin' of them.

We've got a couple CGCS members currently under medical care through the VA system, but methinks they've frequently mentioned that, though the system does have short comin's, their experiences don't bear out the horror stories some folks on the far left like to put forth. Maybe they'll chime in with their feelin's on this, eh?

In case anyone's wonderin', I do feel pretty strongly on this issue. IMHO articles like this containin' so much conjecture and hyperbole do much more harm than good in tryin' to get support for efforts like those of Congressman Evans (D-IL) in fixin' what's still broke in the VA medical system! I'd sure like to see us cut the crap and try stickin' to the facts so's we can get veterans the needed care they deserve. Let's knock off the political rhetoric, stop tryin' to score ideological points and do what's right for a change!

I've taken the liberty to post the article to which you refer and note that it is dated February 18, 2004. Several articles have been written since that continue to raise the issue of the adequacy of funding for veterans health care. The costs of the Iraq war are not insubstantial, and are still not currently known. I will include some of the articles below.


http://factcheck.org/printerfriendly144.html


Funding for Veterans up 27%, But Democrats Call It A Cut
Money for Veterans goes up faster under Bush than under Clinton, yet Kerry accuses Bush of an unpatriotic breach of faith.

February 18, 2004

Modified:February 18, 2004

Summary


In the Feb. 15 Democratic debate, Kerry suggested that Bush was being unpatriotic: “He’s cut the VA (Veterans Administration) budget and not kept faith with veterans across this country. And one of the first definitions of patriotism is keeping faith with those who wore the uniform of our country.”

It is true that Bush is not seeking as big an increase for next year as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs wanted. It is also true that the administration has tried to slow the growth of spending for veterans by not giving new benefits to some middle-income vets.

Yet even so, funding for veterans is going up twice as fast under Bush as it did under Clinton. And the number of veterans getting health benefits is going up 25% under Bush's budgets. That's hardly a cut.


Analysis



Funding for veterans benefits has accelerated in the Bush administration, as seen in the following table.



Fiscal years ending Sept. 30

Source: US Budget: Table 5.2 - Budget Authority by Agency



In Bush’s first three years funding for the Veterans Administration increased 27%. And if Bush's 2005 budget is approved, funding for his full four-year term will amount to an increase of 37.6%.

In the eight years of the Clinton administration the increase was 31.7%

Those figures include mandatory spending for such things as payments to veterans for service-connected disabilities, over which Congress and presidents have little control. But Bush has increased the discretionary portion of veterans funding even more than the mandatory portion has increased. Discretionary funding under Bush is up 30.2%.

By any measure, veterans funding is going up faster under Bush than under Clinton.

One reason: the number of veterans getting benefits is increasing rapidly as middle-income veterans turn for health care to the expanding network of VA clinics and its generous prescription drug benefit.

According to the VA, the number of veterans signed up to get health benefits increased by 1.1 million, or 18%, during the first two fiscal years for which Bush signed the VA appropriations bills. And the numbers continue to grow. By the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30, the VA estimates that the total increase under Bush's budgets will reach nearly 1.6 million veterans, an increase of 25.6 percent.

And according to the VA, the number of community health clinics has increased 40% during Bush's three years, with accompanying increases in the numbers of outpatient visits (to 51 million last year) and prescriptions filled (to 108 million).

But They Keep Repeating: "It's a Cut"

That's just the opposite of the impression one might get from listening to Democratic presidential candidates debate each other over the past several months. One thing they seem to agree on is the false idea that Bush is cutting funding for veterans.

Examples:

Oct 9, 2003:

Sharpton: As this president waved the flag, he cut the budget for veterans, which dishonored people that had given their lives to this country, while he sent people like you to war.

October 27:

Dean: I've made it very clear that we need to support our troops . . . unlike President Bush who tried to cut -- who successfully cut 164,000 veterans off their health-care benefits.

Jan 4, 2004:

Kucinich: Look what's happened with this budget the administration has just submitted. They're cutting funds for job programs, for veterans . . .

Jan 22, 2004 :

Kerry: And while we're at it, this president is breaking faith with veterans all across the country. They've cut the VA budget by $1.8 billion.

Feb 15, 2004 :

Kerry: And most importantly, I think he's cut the VA budget and not kept faith with veterans across this country. And one of the first definitions of patriotism is keeping faith with those who wore the uniform of our country.

And even the Democratic National Committee website proclaims, "Bush Cuts Funds for Veterans' Health Care," despite what the numbers show.

Veterans Groups Want More

While it's false to say the veterans budget has been cut, and false to say that any veteran getting benefits has been cut off, it is true that funding is not growing as rapidly as demand for benefits, or as rapidly as veterans groups would like.

Veterans groups are unanimous in calling for more money than the administration or Congress have provided. Four groups -- AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States -- have joined to ask for $3.7 billion more than the administration is requesting for next year.

Even Bush's own Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi -- in a rare break with administration protocol -- told a House committee Feb. 4 that had asked for more money than Bush was willing to seek from Congress. "I asked OMB for $1.2 billion more than I received," he said, referring to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Some Denied Benefits; A Cut Proposed

In January, 2003 the Veterans Administration announced that -- because the increase in funds couldn't meet the rising demand -- it would start turning away many middle-income applicants applying for new medical benefits.

That led to accusations that Bush was denying benefits to veterans. " We have 400,000 veterans in this country who have been denied access in a whole category to the VA," Kerry declared during a debate Oct. 9, 2003. The VA's estimates of the number who might be denied benefits is much lower, and in fact nobody can say with certainty how many middle-income veterans might have signed up for medical benefits if they had been allowed.

Meanwhile the VA continues to add hundreds of thousands of disabled and lower-income veterans to those already receiving benefits, and has kept paying benefits to all veterans who were already receiving them.

The middle-income veterans who currently aren't being allowed to sign up are those generally with incomes above 80% of the mid-point for their locality. The means test cut-off for benefits ranges up to $40,000 a year in many cities. And any veteran with income less than $25,162 still qualifies no matter where they live. Those figures are for single veterans. The income cut-off is higher for those with a spouse or children.

Veterans groups have called for "mandatory funding" of medical benefits, which would automatically appropriate whatever funds are required to meet demand. Kerry has endorsed mandatory funding, which would allow middle-income veterans with no service-connected disability to resume signing up.

The administration also has proposed to make the VA's prescription drug benefit less generous. Currently many veterans pay $7 for each one-month supply of medication. The administration proposes to increase that to $15, and require a $250 annual fee as well. Congress rejected a similar proposal last year. The proposal wouldn't affect those -- such as veterans with a disability rated at 50% or more -- who currently aren't required to make any co-payments.

And it should be noted that the administration is proposing to increase some benefits, including ending pharmacy co-payments for some very low-income veterans, and paying for emergency-room care for veterans in non-VA hospitals.

All this means Bush can fairly be accused of trying to hold down the rapid growth in spending for veterans benefits -- particularly those sought by middle-income vets with no service-connected disability. But saying he cut the budget is contrary to fact.

(Note: FactCheck.org twice contacted the Kerry campaign asking how he justified his claim that the VA budget is being cut, but we've received no response.)


Sources



Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005 "Table 5.2 -- Budget Authority by Agency" (Washington, Government Printing Office) 3 Feb 2004.

US House of Representatives, Committee on Veterans Affairs, “ Statement of Anthony J. Principi , Secretary Of Veterans Affairs” 4 Feb 2004.

US House of Representqatives, Committee on Veterans Affairs, “ Statement of Peter S. Gaytan, Principal Deputy Director, Veterans Affairs And Rehabilitation Division, The American Legion” 4 Feb 2004.

US House of Representqatives, Committee on Veterans Affairs “ Statement Of Joseph A. Violante , National Legislative Director, The Disabled American Veterans” 4 Feb. 2004.

US House of Representatives, Committee on Veterans Affairs “ Statement of Vietnam Veterans of America , Presented by Richard F. Weidman, Director, Government Relations” 4 Feb 2004.

Press Release , Rep. Lane Evans (D IL)"Bush administration ’05 VA budget reflects misplaced priorities, places greater burden on some veterans" 2 Feb. 2004.

Suzanne Bamboa, “Principi Wanted $1.2B More for VA Budget,” Associated Press 4 Feb. 2004.

http://antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=5451

April 5, 2005
More Empty Rhetoric for Veterans

by Rep. Ron Paul
Many military veterans were shocked to see that the federal budget for 2006 makes several cuts in veterans benefits and services. Under the proposed budget, the Veterans Administration will increase once again the co-pay cost of prescription drugs, while adding a new annual fee for medical benefits. The budget also calls for the reduction of veterans home funding and limits the number of VA nursing home beds. Some members of Congress have even suggested rewriting the definition of "veteran" in a way that could deny VA health benefits for millions of retired servicemen.

Unfortunately, the trust that members of our armed forces put in their government has been breached time and time again, and the recent budget vote represents another blow to veterans. Even as we send hundreds of thousands of soldiers into Iraq, Congress can't get its priorities straight.

Our invasion of Iraq will swell the ranks of our combat veterans, many of whom will need medical care as they grow older. Sadly, health issues arising from the first war with Iraq still have not been addressed. Congress should immediately end the silence and formally address Gulf War Syndrome, which has had a devastating impact on veterans who served in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. As a medical doctor, I believe the syndrome is very real, and likely represents several different maladies caused by exposure to conditions specific to the Gulf region at the time. Congress and the VA should stop insulting Gulf War veterans and recognize that the syndrome is a serious illness that needs treatment. We can only hope and pray that our soldiers in Iraq today do not suffer from similar illnesses in the future.

It's easy to talk about honoring veterans and their sacrifices, even while the federal government treats veterans badly. Congress wastes billions of dollars funding countless unconstitutional programs, but fails to provide adequately for the men and women who carry out the most important constitutional function: national defense.

We can best honor both our veterans and our current armed forces by pursuing a coherent foreign policy. No veteran should ever have to look back and ask himself, "Why were we over there in the first place?" Too often history demonstrates that wars are fought for political and economic reasons, rather than legitimate national security reasons. Supporting the troops means never putting them in harm's way unless America is truly threatened.

Today's American soldiers are the veterans of the future, and they should never be sent to war without clear objectives that serve definite American national security interests. They should never fight at the behest of the United Nations or any other international agency. They should never serve under a UN flag, nor answer to a UN commander. They deserve to know that they fight for the American people and the Constitution, and that the decision to send them into battle was made by their own Congress via an express declaration of war – NOT by UN bureaucrats who don't care about them.

Only by using American troops judiciously and in service of the Constitution can we avoid the kind of endless military entanglements we witnessed in Korea and Vietnam. We honor our veterans by ensuring that their service to the nation is never in vain.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/zeese.php?articleid=7337

Most Expensive Military Effort in 60 Years'
An interview with Erik Leaver
by Kevin Zeese
The Institute for Policy Studies recently published an analysis of the cost of the Iraq War and occupation, "The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for Bringing Home the Troops." The study was co-authored by two prominent researchers and writers, Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver. Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the author of the forthcoming Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy U.S. Power (October 2005). Leaver is a research fellow at IPS and serves as the policy outreach director for the Foreign Policy in Focus project.

Kevin Zeese: Your study, "The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for Bringing Home the Troops," examines the economic and human costs of the Iraq war and occupation. Let's start with the economic costs. How does the cost of the Iraq war compare to previous wars in the last century?

Leaver: The Iraq War is the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years.

To put Iraq war spending figures in perspective, the monthly cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars now rivals the average monthly cost of the Vietnam War. Operations costs in Iraq are estimated at $5.6 billion per month in 2005, while the average cost of U.S. operations in Vietnam was $5.1 billion per month, adjusting for inflation. In current dollars, the Vietnam War cost $600 billion.

Zeese: There have been numerous spending bills related to the Iraq war. How much has been appropriated so far? What is coming down the pipeline? Where is the money going?

Leaver: In 2002, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was fired after predicting that an Iraq war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion. As it turned out, Lindsey low-balled the cost.

Congress has approved four spending bills for Iraq with funds totaling $204.4 billion and is in the process of approving a "bridge fund" for an additional $45.3 billion to cover operations until another supplemental spending package can be passed, most likely slated for spring 2006. Rumors have the next supplemental pegged at $30 billion.

The lion's share of the funding goes toward daily operations followed next by purchases of new equipment. Money is also spent on maintenance of equipment and in providing funds to coalition members and in training Iraqi troops. Unlike the hurricane relief efforts, where money is specifically targeted to victims, Iraqis are not receiving much of this funding.

Zeese: What is the impact of the cost of the Iraq war on the federal budget? We've heard talk that the budget cuts related to the Louisiana flooding were impacted by the Iraq war. Is there any truth to this?

Leaver: These expenses have long-term effects on the U.S. economy. In August 2005, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at current levels would nearly double the projected federal budget deficit over the next 10 years.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said to the [New Orleans] Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay." Ron Fournier of the Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. Clearly, tradeoffs were made in the budget process. And while funds were being cut for projects at home, the administration was pushing for facilities in Iraq such as the $500 million embassy.

Zeese: How about the impact on other social programs and veterans benefits?

Leaver: The Bush administration's combination of massive spending on the war and tax cuts for the wealthy means less money for social spending. The administration's FY 2006 budget, which does not include any funding for the Iraq War, takes a hard line with domestic spending – slashing or eliminating more than 150 federal programs. It also virtually freezes funding for domestic discretionary programs other than homeland security. Among the programs the Bush administration seeks to eliminate: vocational and adult education, a number of programs associated with community development, environmental protection agency grants, low-income home energy assistance, disease control, substance abuse, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and public safety.

The VA [Veterans Administration] projected that 23,553 veterans would return from Iraq and Afghanistan in 2005 and seek medical care. In June 2005, the VA secretary, Jim Nicholson, revised this number to 103,000. The miscalculation led to a shortfall of $273 million in the VA budget for 2005, and with between 1/4 and 1/3 of all returning soldiers needing care at a VA facility, these costs are going to skyrocket in future years.

Zeese: What is the impact of the war/occupation on the Iraqi economy?

Leaver: Unemployment figures today range from 20 percent to 60 percent. By comparison, during the Great Depression, U.S. unemployment peaked at 25 percent. The effects have been disastrous for the Iraqi people. Up to 60 percent of the population depends on food handouts, and the average income has dropped from $3,000 in the 1980s to $800 in 2004. The Iraqi government, under budgetary pressures, recently warned that government ministries "can carry out their duties with only about 40-60 percent of their employees." This would be devastating, as the government employs nearly one-half of Iraq's 6.5 million strong workforce.

The U.S. government says it has tried to respond by involving more Iraqis in reconstruction, but acknowledges that it is only employing 122,533 Iraqis in the civilian sector. Furthermore, only $7.7 billion out of $18.4 billion slated for reconstruction was spent by August 2005.

It is clear that high levels of unemployment are fueling the resistance by putting, in the words of one U.S. Army officer, "too many angry young men, with no hope for the future, on the street." This has become a deadly combination as the going rate in parts of Baghdad for planting roadside bombs is between $100-300 while the salary for an Iraqi soldier can reach $340 per month.

Zeese: There have been inconsistent reports about whether the U.S. is building permanent military bases in Iraq. I've had activists who have talked to Senator John Warner, who claims there are no permanent bases being built. Other members of Congress like Jim McGovern (D-Wash.) say there is money being appropriated to build permanent bases. What is the truth here? If such bases are being built, how many are there and what is their purpose?

Leaver: Despite what many U.S. officials state, militarily, the United States is planning for a long-term stay in Iraq. The most recent spending bill in Congress for the Iraq war contained $236.5 million for permanent base construction. The original request for these funds from the Department of Defense stated, "This proposal will allow the Army to provide temporary facilities and in some very limited cases, permanent facilities. … These facilities include barracks, administrative space, vehicle maintenance facilities, aviation facilities, mobilization-demobilization barracks, and community support facilities."

Currently, the U.S. operates out of approximately 106 locations across the country. That's a huge presence in a country the size of California. Originally many of these bases were designated with unabashed names like "Camp Slayer," "Forward Operating Base Steel Dragon," and "Camp Headhunter." But by late 2004, many were renamed to more subtle names like Camp Prosperity, Camp Liberty, and Camp Freedom. In May 2005, plans for concentrating U.S. troops into four massive bases positioned geographically in the north, south, east, and west were reported.

Zeese: What is the impact of the Iraq war on security? Is it undermining terrorist networks or expanding them? Is it going to have any impact on security in the United States, or will it keep the terrorists fighting us on foreign soil as the president claims?

Leaver: While no Iraqi terror threat previously existed before the president led our nation to war, a National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats at the CIA said in January 2005 that the Iraq war has now provided terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills." Others at the CIA agree. A May 2005 assessment says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was.

Experts from the nonpartisan London think tank Chatham House wrote in July 2005, "[The Iraq War] gave a boost to the al-Qaeda network's propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and deflected resources and assistance that could have been deployed to assist the Karzai government and to bring bin Laden to justice."

While foreign fighters are seen as the most violent groups in Iraq, their numbers have been estimated to be around 1,000 out of a resistance ranging between 16,000 and 40,000. Instead of being long-term mercenaries, new investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank found that the majority of foreign fighters are not former terrorists and instead became radicalized by the war itself – a troubling statistic given that according to the Bush administration, one major goal of this war is to stem future terrorism.

Coupled with what we've seen in the aftermath of the hurricane, the Iraq war has clearly made us less safe, at home and abroad.

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=8594

February 24, 2006
How Costly Is Too Costly?
by Mark Engler and Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse – the al-Askariya shrine, the Golden Mosque of Samarra, one of Shia Islam's most revered sites, was invaded by gunmen in police uniforms (possibly from Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia group, though no one has yet taken responsibility), bombed, and thoroughly desecrated, as photos make shockingly clear. Shia across Iraq reacted in anger, in Najaf to chants of: "Rise up Shia! Take revenge! " At last report, in 24 hours at least 90 Sunni mosques – the Muslim Scholars Association claims the number is already 168 – were burned, desecrated, attacked, or taken over by armed Shia militiamen; three Sunni imams were killed and another kidnapped; possibly hundreds of ordinary Iraqis have died in all sorts of reprisal attacks and executions along with 26-year-old Atwar Bahjat, a well-known journalist, and two of her crew from al-Arabiya TV news. In Samarra, "shops closed and muezzins recited prayers from the loudspeakers of nearby mosques and blamed the United States for the turmoil, saying 'God is Great, death to America which brought us terrorism.'"

The Americans, including our ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, who tried to apply some American financial pressure to the Shi'ite coalition in the Green Zone earlier in the week, still fancy themselves part of the solution, not part of the problem in that chaotic, semi-occupied, increasingly fractious land. Now, they are forced to listen to claims that they were at least partially responsible for the latest horrific violence. More is still to come on what looks like a slippery slope toward a larger version of the quiet civil war that has been ongoing in Iraq.

This Web site has long attended to the "costs" of George Bush's decision to invade Iraq – especially in human lives – both to American troops sent into action there and to the Iraqis who have suffered grievously. Less attention has been paid here (and elsewhere) to the literal costs of the war, not just to who is being bled, but to what is being bled dry. Mark Engler, who has previously written on the business community and the war for TomDispatch, now takes up the financial costs of war and pursues the subject vigorously.

While it is true that perhaps a million Americans turned out before the invasion of Iraq to protest the war to come, it is also a grim reality of our world that, had neocon dreams – those flower-strewn paths and an eternal, placid occupation of Iraq – actually come true, we would not today be speaking of the costs of war (no matter what they were to Iraqis). As in Vietnam, so here, those costs only really come into focus when the possibility of victory fades from sight. Engler makes good sense of the various escalating cost calculations so far offered on this war. No one, however, can make sense of the cost of what we are incapable of imagining or predicting (including the bombing of the Golden Mosque and everything that will flow from that act). My own guess is that, in the end, the cost of George's Bush's war of choice will prove incalculable in all sorts of frightening ways. Tom

How Costly Is Too Costly?

Finding the tipping point for Vietnam – and for Iraq
by Mark Engler

In the center of the CostOfWar.com home page, an upward-racing ticker, presented in a large, red font, keeps a steady tally of the money spent for the U.S. war in Iraq. Every time I visit, it takes a moment to sort through the counter's decimal places and make sense of it. The hundreds of dollars fly by too quickly to track. The thousands change a little faster than once a second. As I write, the ticker reads $239,302,273,144.

It is worth staring at the site for a while to see the vast sums accumulate. Yet this exercise in wartime accounting quickly becomes unsatisfying. First of all, few Americans have any frame of reference for evaluating a number like $239 billion. The National Priorities Project, the organization hosting the counter, attempts to remedy this by allowing visitors to compare war costs with expenditures on preschool, health care, and public housing, noting, for example, that this much money could provide basic immunizations for every child born worldwide in the next 79 years. Even then, the incomprehensibly large number ticking away on screen turns out to be no measure at all of what we will eventually pay for the war. Depending on what estimate you use, it could be off by almost a factor of 10. After all, it lacks a place for the trillions.

So how much will the war cost? The question occasionally appears in the media, never a new issue, never a settled one either. Still, there are some certainties about the costs of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. One is that it keeps going up. The president has now submitted a "guns over butter" budget to Congress that increases Pentagon spending to $440 billion, while taking away funds from social services at home and development assistance abroad. One of the great curiosities of this huge sum is that it does not include funding for the wars we are actually fighting. Those are appropriated separately – this year, the White House will reportedly be asking for another $120 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, roughly equal to what it spent in 2005.

Another certainty of wartime accounting is that the cost of the war in Iraq will remain far higher than the Bush administration wants anyone to think. It's already stratospherically beyond the initial estimate of $50-60 billion used to sell its war to the public. That number was meant to conjure memories of the previous Gulf War – Operation Desert Storm – an engagement Americans recall as swift and relatively painless, in part because an array of allies helped pay for it. The U.S. ponied up only $7 billion for that conflict. The administration's other magic trick was taking Larry Lindsey, the White House economic adviser who publicly suggested in late 2002 that a military return to Iraq would cost closer to $100-200 billion, and making him disappear.

In the years since Baghdad fell, several analysts have sought better estimates for the war's true cost. In August 2005, Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver at the Institute for Policy Studies issued a paper predicting that the total cost could reach $700 billion at the then-current spending level of $5.6 billion per month. Like the CostOfWar.com tally, this figure included only direct expenditures.

Last month, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard's Linda Bilmes released a report that took a wider view. Hinting at the human cost of the occupation – which, of course, requires its own ghastly page in the ledger of wartime accounting – the report factored in the government-assigned "value of statistical life" for troops killed in combat. (It did not include the loss of Iraqi lives.) It tallied items such as the costs of health care for wounded veterans, increased recruitment spending for a hard-up Pentagon, and the opportunity costs of more productive public investments that might have been made if funds had not been diverted overseas. Following Congressional Budget Office predictions for troop deployment, the report considers the possibilities of full U.S. withdrawal by 2010 to 2015. All told, the two economists put the cost to the U.S. at between $1 trillion (their most "conservative" estimate) and $2.2 trillion (their "moderate" one).

Sixty billion, 239 billion, 2.2 trillion dollars. The more such figures swirl, the more necessary it is to change the question. The real matter at hand is not, "How much will it cost?" but, "When does it start to matter?"

Vietnam Tipping Points

The answers provided by past experience are imperfect. The Oxford Companion to American Military History places the direct costs of the Vietnam War at $173 billion (equal to $770 billion in 2003 dollars). Veterans benefits and interest payments add another trillion to Vietnam's costs, calculated in 2003 dollars. Thus, the estimates for the cost of the Iraq war already place the two conflicts at similar levels, although Vietnam expenditures represented a larger percentage of the Gross Domestic Product.

There seems to be no single point at which costs become too great. Different parties reach their moment of decision at different times, independently determining that "victory" is not worth the price being paid. Disaffection builds as financial and human costs rise. And so looking at turning points, in Vietnam or in Iraq, involves twisting the question once again. We must ask not only, "How costly is too costly?" But also, "Too costly for whom?"

For many who opposed the war on moral terms, the conflict was too costly from the start. The lives and money sacrificed since then merely serve as tragic affirmations of a conviction already reached. Others more traditionally supportive of presidential decisions to take the U.S. to war can, however, be swayed by mounting costs, once victory doesn't come.

One Vietnam tipping point came in late 1967 when, for the first time, opinion polls showed that a bare majority of Americans considered the conflict a "mistake." The size of this majority surged after the start of the Tet Offensive in January 1968. In a watershed moment in the wake of that onslaught, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite both echoed and solidified public sentiment by famously indicating that the U.S. could not win the war. "To say we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past," he told his television audience. "To say that we are mired in a stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion."

Bad news from the war front helped to turn the public, but domestic dissent went far in shaping public reactions to developments abroad. The same 1967 polls that registered the first antiwar majority also showed that most Americans deplored the growing antiwar movement. Nevertheless, antiwar protesters had a critical (and sometimes unexpected) impact. Historian Melvin Small offers one example of when "the antiwar movement dramatically affected policy": After mass protests at the Pentagon in October 1967, "Lyndon Johnson launched a public relations campaign that emphasized how well the war was going. When the Communists [then] launched their seemingly successful nationwide Tet Offensive most Americans felt that they had been deceived by their own government."

A turn in elite opinion followed on the heels of public disaffection. Although rarely remembered, the defection of a previously supportive business community formed an important part of this shift. A lack of business enthusiasm for the war sprang from military developments in Vietnam, but was also spurred by war-related economic doldrums (which have resonance today). As Small explains, "For many economists, the last truly good years for the economy were 1962-65 with almost full employment, very low inflation, and a favorable balance of trade." As the war escalated, "an increasingly unfavorable balance of trade, related in part to spending for the war abroad, contributed to an international monetary crisis involving a threat to U.S. gold reserves in 1967-68. That threat helped convince some administration officials and Wall Street analysts that the United States could no longer afford the war."

In March 1968, Clark Clifford played a vital role in convincing a doggedly hawkish Lyndon Johnson that a seismic shift had, in fact, occurred among influential patrons. Clifford was a prototypical Washington insider, a polished and well-connected lawyer who for decades served as a counsel to the president and maintained close ties with the giants of corporate America. He felt comfortable speaking truth to power, and power listened, knowing Clifford had its best interests at heart.

In January 1968, Clifford replaced Robert McNamara as secretary of defense. Although recruited as a hawk, he formed a new assessment of the war after examining the military realities and polling his well-heeled contacts to gauge the domestic outlook. Historian Gabriel Kolko cites Clifford's recollections from March 1968, when he told several White House aides, "I make it a practice to keep in touch with friends in business and the law across the land. … Until a few months ago, they were generally supportive of the war. … Now all that has changed. These men now feel we are in a hopeless bog." He went on to say, "It would be very difficult – I believe it would be impossible – for the president to maintain public support for the war without the support of these men."

That same month, Clifford helped organize a two-day meeting between President Johnson and his Senior advisery Group on Vietnam – nicknamed the "Wise Men." These were veteran operatives and diplomats with powerful connections to the business and financial communities. As David Halberstam relates in The Best and the Brightest, they "quietly let [Johnson] know that the Establishment – yes, Wall Street – had turned on the war... It was hurting the economy, dividing the country, turning the youth against the country's best traditions." As libertarian economist Murray Rothbard notes, just a few days later Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection and started the U.S. on its long exit from Vietnam.

Iraq: The Politics of Withdrawal

Though the obvious "Wise Men" figures of this moment, like the elder Bush's confidant Brent Scowcroft, remain out in the cold when it comes to the younger Bush's Iraq policies, business leaders are one group that might yet be turned by a cost-benefit analysis of the Iraq War. In their report, Stiglitz and Bilmes consider, among other factors, how the war has hurt the economy by increasing global and domestic insecurity while contributing to a boost in oil prices. Outside of a few energy companies and defense contractors that continue to directly benefit, America's corporations have generally been adversely affected by these costs. A significant number of corporate leaders have begun complaining about a damaged Brand America and a chilled climate for doing business abroad. Certainly, business leaders have reason to doubt that a neoconservative foreign policy works in their favor, and they may yet decide to cut their losses. If some CEOs and other executives reevaluate their allegiance to the White House – becoming more vocal supporters of realism in Republican foreign policy or even of the Democratic Leadership Council's multilateral brand of corporate globalization – the turn could make the discussion about the war in upcoming electoral contests significantly more contentious.

As for the public at large, polls on Iraq started showing majority disapproval as early as the summer of 2004. Antiwar opinion now regularly registers as high as 60 percent. John Mueller, professor of political science at Ohio State University and an expert on wartime public opinion, has argued that eroding support for Iraq matches patterns for wars in Korea and Vietnam. "The most striking thing about the comparison among the three wars is how much more quickly support has eroded in the case of Iraq," he writes in Foreign Affairs. By the start of last year, with just 1,500 American troops dead, public opinion on Iraq had dropped to depths only reached in the Vietnam War after Tet, when some 20,000 Americans had been killed.

Mueller concludes, "If history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline."

That might be cause for celebration, if only it were the end of the story. Mueller's formulation may sound simple, even deterministic, but the reality of withdrawal is not. True, public support for the Vietnam War never rebounded after March 1968. Yet the conflict dragged on for another five years. The ticker for that intervention kept racing higher because President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger were willing to take the tragedy Johnson made and adopt it as their own. A lesson for us now is that no set pattern will guarantee a satisfying end to the situation we face, a situation in which another unpopular war threatens to stretch on for years.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of the country has already decided that the war in Iraq has become too costly. Americans have rejected the prospect of funding a massive and prolonged occupation. In that sense, we have already tipped.

Questions about the price of war keep resurfacing not because there's a credible argument for most Americans that the price is reasonable, but because our elected officials thus far have only pushed those costs ever higher. What remains, then, is for the public to hold accountable those who would carry forward the neoconservative crusade – to make their stance a costly one in public life. What remains is for us bring the political price of war into line with the human and financial costs that we will continue to bear.

Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is an analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and a contributor to Newsday, In These Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and TomPaine.com. He can be reached via DemocracyUprising.com. Research assistance for this article provided by Kate Griffiths.

Copyright 2005 Mark Engler

http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=3850

October 26, 2004
Veterans' Voices Rise in Protest

by Dahr Jamail
With the news that members of a U.S. Army Reserve platoon have been arrested in Iraq for refusing a "suicide mission," dissent among veterans of the U.S.-led campaign in that country continues to grow.

The recent incident mirrors other stories of troops being sent on missions without proper equipment, and again raises the specter of plummeting troop morale as the security situation in Iraq deteriorates and elections scheduled for January approach.

Even as late as six months after the March 2003 U.S.-led attack, as many as 51,000 U.S. soldiers and civilian administrators in Iraq had still not been properly equipped with body armor and other protective gear, according to the Washington Post.

Alerted to the situation, family members bought expensive flak jackets and other security gear and used international couriers to send it to the front lines.

Speaking of the low rates of readiness of his ground forces due to inadequate combat and protective equipment, the senior U.S. commander on the ground in Iraq from mid-2003 to mid-2004 said, "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low."

Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez added that Army units were, "struggling just to maintain relatively low readiness rates" for key combat systems, reported the Post.

The mother of Amber McClenny, who serves in the platoon that in mid-October refused orders to transport fuel through an area north of Baghdad where ambushes are known to occur, told the Associated Press her daughter called and told her, "We had broken-down trucks, non-armored vehicles, and we were carrying contaminated fuel. They are holding us against our will. We are now prisoners."

While a senior U.S. military official has said the unit had been ordered to carry out what is known as a maintenance stand-down and its soldiers are not under arrest, many Iraq veterans in the United States feel the incident is indicative of poor troop morale, which stems from the growing belief among soldiers that the war in Iraq is unjustified.

Army National Guard Sergeant Kelly Dougherty served for 10 months in Iraq at Tallil Air Base, near Nasiriya. "The people in Iraq didn't have money or jobs, and their cities were destitute," said Dougherty, who worked escorting convoys and patrols.

"I wondered how these people were functioning after they'd been through so much. They hadn't even rebuilt from the first Gulf War [in 1991]."

During a phone interview Dougherty said her unit did not even have translators for the first nine months of the occupation and were thus unable to communicate with Iraqis while conducting security patrols.

"I think it was definitely wrong to go into Iraq," she added. "I thought that before we went in and the intelligence is proving this now."

Like other soldiers who are beginning to speak out against the Bush administration, Dougherty has strong words about how the war was waged. "People say the president didn't lie – but it's hard for me to believe that they truly thought the reasons they went in were true," she said.

"I think we were intentionally lied to in order to get the U.S. into Iraq, and the Bush administration seized this opportunity." The president, she added, was also being dishonest about the dangers that soldiers would face when he did not provide them with the necessary armor and supplies.

Another veteran of the war in Iraq is Corporal Alex Ryabov, who participated in the invasion of Iraq until May 9. "What I realize after having been there is that it [the war] is such a huge waste of life on both sides," he said in an interview.

Ryabov also commented on U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's statement in September that the 1,000 U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq are just some of the victims of the "war on terrorism."

"The reality is that Bush and Rumsfeld don't have family in the military, and they have never served. Each U.S. death in Iraq – each of those people has family and friends, and you can't tell them that this is a small number."

Ryabov, who served as the ammunition chief for his Marine Corps unit, believes the administration should be held to account for the horrendous situation in Iraq. "They should be impeached. They should be put on trial."

He also believes the administration is not doing enough to support Iraq war veterans.

"When troops come home we need to have benefits and VA [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs] support. There are a lot of people having problems with this and no support. My friends are coming back angry and screwed up and not getting any help."

According to the U.S. military, more than 7,500 soldiers have been injured in Iraq through Sept. 27. Of those, more than one-half did not return to action after 72 hours. But veterans' advocates say the Pentagon is not counting nearly 16,000 more soldiers evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan for "non-combat causes," according to United Press International (UPI).

Another veteran who has served in the Middle East is Senior Airman Tim Goodrich. While serving two deployments at Prince Sultan Air Base for Operation Southern Watch, where he patrolled no-fly zones in southern Iraq during the buildup to the current war, "that is when it first hit me that this was the wrong idea," said Goodrich.

"I was watching troop movements for Iraq going through our base between August and October of 2002, Army troop movements preparing to go to war with Iraq six months before the war," he told IPS.

Goodrich too is angry. "I feel absolutely betrayed by this administration. I was brought up believing it was the most honorable thing to do to serve in the military. Now I've learned that it is not a glorious undertaking, and that our country isn't living up to the standards I believed it was – that our foreign policy has been flawed for decades."

Goodrich feels so strongly about the horrendous situation in Iraq that he has joined a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). The organization, which started two and a half years ago with only nine members, has now grown to over 60, including active duty service personnel in Iraq.

In order to accommodate the growing numbers of Iraq veterans joining the group, IVAW is trying to obtain office space and find a part-time employee to assist in its mission of ending the occupation and seeing service members return to the United States.

The group will also be sending members on speaking tours until the end of November, according to its Web site.

Goodrich believes the situation in Iraq is the reason why the military has failed to meet its recruiting goals recently. And he applauded the platoon in Iraq for refusing to follow orders.

"I think it's about time that someone stood up and did something. They are working with sub-par equipment that is putting peoples' lives at risk," he said. "There are not enough armored vehicles and not enough supplies for the soldiers. One hundred fifty billion dollars [has been spent] to fund these guys and the money isn't getting to where it needs to be."

When asked what he would do if he were called up to serve in Iraq again, Goodrich replied, "No comment."

(Inter Press Service)

Methinks there'll always be an issue with adequacy of fundin' for the VA, no matter how much gets appropriated. IMHO 'twill only gets worse when the ideology of the fringe elements right and left who really seem to want to keep issues alive rather than solve the problems keep bein' the main voices heard, eh? That seems to be the case here!Unfortunately methinks few of them are really pertinent here, and should be in the "Afghanistan and Iraq" subforum where they're really more pertinent. Most are really anti war messages poorly camouflaged as somethin' else and IMHO only invite anti military rhetoric to this forum, somethin' methinks I've warned about in the past.

Seems I've tried usin' common sense reasons in the past to get you to be a little more careful 'bout what you stick in the Mil/Vets forums, but 'twould seem I ain't made the case. It don't look like we'll be findin' any common ground based on it, you've made your choice and so now I'm makin' mine. Good bye!

There's no point shooting the messinger just because you may not like what you read. You are always welcome to post any and all points of view.
Snuffysmith