Every year our Department of Defense budget grows to ever Huge Proportions and we're givin the simpleminded reason that we're getting our National Security Protection, and we simply except, no questions asked, don't even get upset when corruption within is brought out, or outrageous costs for items we could purchase offshelf cheaper in a handware store.
Many have seen this YouTube Video of the barracks conditions for returning soldiers at Fort Bragg, or at least heard about it, which has brought about this,
The Army identified eight installations Friday that will get priority attention: Fort Lewis; Fort Polk, La.; Fort Gordon, Ga.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York; Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland; and Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii.
One of those,
Fort Polk will receive $166 million for repairs to its barracks, which Sen. Mary Landreiu, a Louisiana Democrat, has called “80 percent unlivable.”
“Similar to the situation at Fort Bragg, the barracks are decades old,” said Stephanie Allen, a spokeswoman for Landreiu. “They’re rampant with mold and unfit for anyone to live in, much less our soldiers who are giving up their lives to serve their country.”
The living conditions, and apparently extreme ignoring of upfits to existing buildings, that soldiers are expected to live in and do, aren't a part of these bloated DoD budget requests that seem to alway pass, they also aren't important to the Country, who don't question where exactly the bloated budget monies go.
We also hear nothing of upset from the Military Contractors on the end of the bloated budgets, nor their Wall Street Investors, as their profit margins and returns grow. The investors seem quite happy with the No-Bid Contracts of the Haliburtan's as those bottom lines grow with each contract just given to them, and they seem to love our very own, now very wealthy, Mercenary Private Army, as they bank our hard working money with tax breaks on theirs.
Than one reads this,
At Martin Army, one of the nation's oldest Army hospitals, at least once a month corroding and antiquated pipes force the facility to shut down the entire plumbing system. If the water is out for longer than a day, patients are forced to bathe in portable showers.
The roof needs replacing. The electrical system is at capacity, making it difficult to add additional circuits, hospital officials said. The heating and cooling systems are so old that temperatures cannot be adjusted in individual rooms.
"With the influx of BRAC, we really need a new hospital," said Terry Beckwith, a hospital spokeswoman.
Controversial Iraq war spending bill includes funds to update Fort Benning hospital
Someone needs to explain the Why is this Included in the Supplemental Iraq/Afganistan War Funding Bill, why hasn't it already been takin care of, Long Ago, that will be partly answered in a moment.
"The quality of patient care remains high, but we want to make sure we don't have a Walter Reed situation," said U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga
We should never have had a Walter Reed Situation!
When the Republican controlled Washington were beating the drums of War and Occupations louder and louder, they should have seen this all coming, we've been through it before, and we supposedly have a professional military now, which means Everything should be under a Professional Atmosphere, the Best, Top Notch, not Second Place!
Those who "Your either with us or against us!" in the against, were considered unpatriotic, unamerican, enemy sympathizers {forget the fact of creating huge numbers of new 'enemies' by our actions}, yet many of us saw all of this coming.
Though the Army has long identified Martin Army as a high priority, the Iraq war has forced funding to be redirected, Bishop said.
Got that Redirected, mostly to corruption within the puppet governments we once again setup in our occupations, to the no-bid contractors, and to our very own private mercenary army!
"In recent years, the services have identified billions of dollars in recapitalization requirements for which current budgetary allotments are insufficient, but which desperately need funding due to the condition of the facilities," said Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on military construction and veterans affairs. "The funding problems will be exacerbated in the immediate future as installations like Fort Benning add thousands of personnel, dependent families, and departments due to BRAC, and as more wounded soldiers return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan."
In 'recent years'?, these should have been on going expected expenses, and the American People should be expected to pay, not bury their collective heads in the sand and cheer on Destructive Wars/Occupations of Choice, with their cheap yellow magnetic ribbons and their lapel flag pins which are symbols with no meaning behind them!
Occasionally we get representation, at least from the start, that looks promising in a Nation where only a tiny segment of it's society sacrifices, those serving and their families, Local rookie goes to bat for veterans, that rookie is Arizona Rep. Harry Mitchell, a grandfather in his 60s.
"I feel blessed to have been given the job that I landed in Congress," he told me last week.
And what is that job,
As a first-term member, Mitchell was named chairman of House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. It's a long title for doing exactly what?
"Trying to take care of our vets," he said.
This at a time when we are finding out, once again, just what wasn't done by the previous republican controlled congress and it's members and their staffs, as they continuely blocked the minority from holding the nessessary hearings and oversite, and now that they are in the minority play obstructionist.
The first-term congressman also has been among those who have worked to improve military hospitals since news broke of the awful conditions in some of them.
"The war doesn't end for a lot of these folks once they get home," he said. "Some concerns go on for years and years."
Maybe at age 60 he remembers,
"Solving these problems isn't easy," Mitchell said. "But we can't wait. That's one lesson we learned from Vietnam. At least I hope we've learned it."
We didn't learn that lesson nor the many other lessons of 'Nam, we're repeating them all and making new extreme failed policies that will haught this Nation for decades to come!
Mr Mitchell, as a rookie, is also a primary sponsor of what he calls a "21st-century GI Bill.".
Another of what shouldn't be needed but the Country should have been upgrading right along, for those who give service to it, the G.I. Bill, the benefits of a 'Thank You' for your Service!
Why hasn't it been, I'll give you a hint from the article,
The bill passed in the House but it included a surtax on individual incomes exceeding $500,000 to pay for the cost. Mitchell and others want that removed in order to improve the chances of approval.
A country and it's citizens that want everything but don't want to pay, nor give their time or lives for, especially those who gain Wealth from the hard work of the rest!
Oh and on the recent VA E-Mail and the seeming want to play Political Putdowns, it has brought about, because a certain Senator, running for President, saw the wrong in it and called for Senate Committee Investigations:
May 16, 2008, Washington, DC - Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI), Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, sent a letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake today, in response to a recently disclosed email from a VA mental health professional which suggested that time and money could be saved if VA stopped diagnosing veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Akaka also made a statement on this matter earlier today, calling the email “disturbing and disappointing.”
You can add Mr. Akaka's name to your political putdowns, though he isn't running for president. Never mind asking the one Question that should have been asked: "Why didn't Senator, and 'Nam Veteran, John McCain come out right after this hit the wires and question it's meaning and do the requesting for a further in-depth Senate Investigation?"!
But you see the bushy is one tough hombre, or so he would like everyone to think, the ones that don't use that gift. As to his soldiering Tough doesn't come to mind. For most of us 'Nam Vets, untill we see the purged documents of his missing service records from the Champagne Guard Unit his connections got him into, He's Still AWOL! And any wingers, don't give me the simplified "But he got an Honorable Discharge," crap, they all did, wether they attended training or not, unlike many in regular guard units!
This Aug. 2007 photo, released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, shows the remains of some of 110 victims of 1950 executions of political prisoners at Cheongwon, Chungbuk, south of Seoul, South Korea. The commission, which excavated the site, is investigating that and other mass killings in South Korea in 1950-51. A commission chief investigator estimates up to 7,000 were killed in the central city of Daejeon alone, and tens of thousands elsewhere. (AP Photo/ The Truth and Reconciliation Commission)
Associated Press correspondent O.H.P. King reported on the shooting of 60 political prisoners in Suwon, south of Seoul, and wrote in a later memoir he was "shocked that American officers were unconcerned" by questions he raised about due process for the detainees.