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Friday, December 17, 2004

Supporting the troops isn't about those fucking ribbon magnets
Posted by Jill | 9:24 AM

Sometimes I think I'm going to take a baseball bat to the next car that sports one of those Goddamn fucking ribbon magnets that say "Support our troops." No, I'm not going to; for one thing I don't have a baseball bat, and for another thing, I'm not a complete idiot. But sometimes I wish I could. Because it seems to me that far too many Americans think that supporting the young men and women that George W. Bush is feeding into his meatgrinder in Iraq is JUST a question of sloganeering. It's appalling how little discussion I hear about how many of our young men and women are being killed and maimed for life; and how little support there is for them, both in the Middle East and here at home. These kids are as much casualties of American sloganeering and complacency as they are of Bush's ill-begotten war.

What ever happened to the outrage over Rumsfeld's bitchslap of a soldier who dared to ask why they don't have armor? Is it simply because he was given the question by a reporter? What about the 2200 other soldiers who applauded the question? Instead of the kind of outrage that this incident would have engendered had the president's name been "Bill Clinton", we get the government suddenly scrambling to find enough armor, and "All Bernie Kerik All the Time". Not that Kerik doesn't richly deserve what's happened to him, but somehow I suspect this is more about prurient interest in his sex life than about any kind of moral outrage that he's a crook...especially since no one seems to be blaming the Administration for appointing this guy without a proper vetting, and no one seems to be questioning the competence of Attorney General-designee Alberto Gonzalez, who pushed for Kerik's appointment. No, like the Scott Peterson case, it's all about the sex.

Meanwhile, in real life, Iraq vets are already showing up at homeless shelters:

U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

"I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. "One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets," he said.

In Iraq, shrapnel nearly severed his left thumb. He still has trouble moving it and shrapnel "still comes out once in a while," Arellano said. He is left handed.

Arellano said he felt pushed out of the military too quickly after getting back from Iraq without medical attention he needed for his hand -- and as he would later learn, his mind.

"It was more of a rush. They put us in a warehouse for a while. They treated us like cattle," Arellano said about how the military treated him on his return to the United States.

"It is all about numbers. Instead of getting quality care, they were trying to get everybody demobilized during a certain time frame. If you had a problem, they said, 'Let the (Department of Veterans Affairs) take care of it.'"

The Pentagon has acknowledged some early problems and delays in treating soldiers returning from Iraq but says the situation has been fixed.


Yeah, right. Just like the body armor problem is "being fixed." How does that help the guys who've been blown up already because of inadequate body armor? How does that help a guy who's been kicked to the curb by the military because he's no longer useful as cannon fodder?

Meanwhile, while guys are still scrambling for body armor in Iraq, and veterans are showing up at homeless shelters, and C-Plus Caligula is planning a $40 million extravaganza for his second inaugural.

Does anyone else see a problem here?

So I'm going to repeat...here are two ways you can help:

1) Send a package of useful items via USO Cares. These "care packages" contain items such as deodorant, hand cream, bug guard, bath gel, and lip balm, pre-paid calling cards, disposable cameras, sunscreen, and baby wipes. For $25, you can make the holiday a bit brighter for a soldier stationed in Iraq. The site also includes space to deliver a personal message.

2) Send prepaid phone cards to wounded soldiers recuperating at Walter Reed Medical Center. Any amount is accepted, from $5.00 up. The address to send cards is:

Medical Family Assistance Center
Walter Reed Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Building 2, Third Floor, Room 3E01
Washington, DC 20307-5001

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