A VETERANS’ DAY MESSAGE

by Lt. Col. Robert M. Bowman, Ph.D., USAF, ret.

             George W. Bush, for all his grandstanding before military audiences and his carrier photo ops, has turned out to be a disaster for the people in the military and for our veterans.

             The president has threatened to veto any legislation containing “concurrent receipt,” the provision that allows disabled veterans to receive compensation without having it deducted from their retired pay.  No other category of retirees is discriminated against in the way that our military disabled veterans are.  Bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress have approved concurrent receipt legislation.  The roadblock is the Bush White House.

             In another poorly-reported move, the White House has also proposed a reduction in combat pay and allowances for our troops in Iraq.  To do this at the very time that our young men and women in the military are endangered by a growing guerrilla war is unconscionable.

             Just about everyone has heard about the supply snafus and shortfalls.  Even the corporate media has covered it.  Parents are sending their children facing combat such mundane yet essential items as toilet paper, because the logistics system (much of it privatized) isn’t doing its job.  Only a fraction of our troops have been supplied with modern body armor to give them a chance of surviving snipers.

             In the first Gulf War, depleted uranium (DU) munitions were used for the first time in large-scale operations.  Over 130,000 veterans of that conflict have been declared “unfit for service” because of medical conditions which independent scientists and physicians connect to exposure to depleted uranium.  DU was used again in Kosovo and Afghanistan.  In spite of mounting evidence that the use of DU results in massive civilian casualties, soaring cancer rates, and decapacitating illnesses for our own soldiers, it was used again in this Iraq War.  As a consequence, thousands of our young people will have debilitating and often fatal conditions.  The continued use of DU is an affront to our troops as well as to the civilian populace in the target country.

             Our returning veterans are also being denied prompt medical care.  Reserve and National Guard troops are being injured in combat and sent home to spend months in “medical hold” status.  There are some 400 such soldiers at Fort Knox and over 600 at Fort Stewart.  Many are living in barracks without air conditioning and without proper medical care.  At Fort Stewart, all those hundreds were waiting their turn to see the ONE assigned doctor.  Our troops deserve better than that!  Only when word of the horrific conditions leaked out did the Pentagon belatedly assign more doctors to Fort Stewart.

             Of course, possibly the worst thing being done to our troops is to send them into the Iraqi quagmire in the first place.  They were trained to fight.  They were not trained to be an occupying army in a hostile land.  More and more reports are being received of deteriorating morale.  These young people are sitting ducks, the targets of an unseen but ever-present enemy.  Some are responding by indiscriminately mistreating and killing Iraqi civilians, most of whom are innocent.  Soldiers who commit such atrocities and survive the war usually return home psychologically damaged, often irretrievably.  More Vietnam veterans committed suicide after coming home than were killed in the war.  This could be one of the as-yet uncounted costs of the Iraq war.

             Our young men and women in the military deserve to be trained well for the missions they are to perform.  They deserve a well-defined mission based on the truth and in support of objectives essential to our national security and the safety of the American people.  They deserve to be supported with the best equipment and supplies available.  They deserve to be paid appropriately for their service.  They deserve to have their families taken care of while they are overseas.  They deserve prompt and effective medical care when they need it.  And they deserve to be returned  home as soon as possible.  They are getting none of these from the Bush Administration.

             Those who give their lives deserve to be acknowledged and indeed honored, not swept under the rug.  The White House and the Rumsfeld Pentagon have banned cameras from every site involved with bringing home our dead soldiers.  Have you seen any videotape of body bags (which the DoD now calls “transfer tubes”) leaving Iraq?  Or arriving at Dover, Delaware?  Or caskets lining the hangar at Dover?  No.  Cameras are forbidden.  Have you seen a picture of a government official attending a funeral of one of our troops killed in combat?  No, because none has.  Not one!  For that matter, have you seen pictures of the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center?  Or the hundreds at Fort Stewart, Georgia?  Or the 7,000 wounded in combat in Iraq treated at a single hospital in Germany?  Nope.  Cameras are forbidden.  The Bush Administration has decreed that our fallen heroes remain nameless and faceless, so that a squeamish public will not start questioning the human cost of this imperial war.

             Let those of us not called upon to fight in this war give our troops what they deserve from us — the thanks of a grateful people and the promise that we will never again allow our representatives in Congress to issue a president a blank check to conduct an unnecessary, illegal, and unconstitutional war.  Let us promise to never again allow an AWOL president to so misuse and abuse our gallant youth.  Let us promise not to forget those casualties being hidden from our view.  And finally, let us promise that this Veterans’ Day will be the last to see American troops fighting and dying on foreign soil to secure profits for big oil companies.

             I wish this could be the last Veterans’ Day to see our troops fighting and dying ... period.  But that is perhaps too much to ask.  But it is NOT too much to ask — nay DEMAND — that any future combat be solely to protect the American people and the international community, that it be authorized by the United Nations, and that it be based on TRUTH for a change.