Seems as if soldiers with disabilities are given the short shaft in both our countries. A soldier goes where they are sent and risk their lives. If they come back damaged, what obligations to we, as a society, have towards them?
Posts: 771 | Location: Winnipeg | Registered: 06 September 2001
You could make the argument that we have no obligations. If they were stupid enough to get wounded in some hostile foreign country, that is their own damn problem. Let them live a life of misery because they are so stupid. Why should the government bail them out?
Or at least, that's the argument conservatives make over all kinds of other social services, so it should just as well apply to veterans.
-- The only time we see the middle of the road is as we run from side to side. R.O.Clark
Posts: 3959 | Location: Santa Fe | Registered: 11 June 2003
You could, but I never would. It would be immoral, and the worse you treat soldiers, the less new recruits you will get, at least from among those who have some choice.
Of course, in a country with a good national health care, their health needs should be taken care of, and in a country with a good safety net, they should at least receive enough to live on. Only in America would the individual cost of caring for them be counted.
Soldiers know there is a risk of being injured on the job. But they, like all other workers, have a right to expect their employer to do everything practical to minimize that loss, and to be taken care of if they are injured.
Just like other employees, soldiers have the right to expect that their employers will not order them to carry out illegal acts, but because of the nature of their work, they can generally be expected to do what they are told more often than other employees. In Iraq, we have let them all down, by staging an illegal invasion and an illegal occupation, and placing a big target on their backs. We have also failed to used diplomacy to avoid or get out of this situation.
I think those who sent them there, and those who profited from the occupation, should pay all the costs for the damage they have done to soldiers and to Iraqi civilians alike. This would include confiscating all war profiteering money, all profits on the increase in oil prices due to loss of most of the Iraq supply, including all the dividends paid out to stock holders in these companies. It would also include reparations from those in the White House who initiated the war, and of the leaders of other countries who joined in the occupation unless they can show that they were mislead by the Bush Administration.
All this money would go to those who had been harmed, including disabled veterans.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
Hurry mother hurry hurry wake me up. I'm having a nightmare mother where are you? Hurry mother. I'm down here. Here mother. Here in the darkness. Pick me up. Rockabye baby. Now I lay me down to sleep. Oh mother hurry because I can't wake up. Over here mother. When the wind blows the cradle will rock. Hold me up high high. Mother you've gone away and forgotten me. Here I am. I can't wake up mother. Wake me up. I can't move. Hold me. I'm scared. Oh mother mother sing to me and rub me and bathe me and comb my hair and wash out my ears and play with my toes and clap my hands together and blow my nose and kiss my eyes and mouth like I've seen you do with Elizabeth like you must have done with me. Then I'll wake up and I'll be with you and I'll never leave or be afraid or dream again.
Posts: 246 | Location: Q | Registered: 25 August 2007
"Soldiers are called on to make the "ultimate sacrifice""
Look at that again, and see how tasteless this is. To me, that writes the book on BBC and its sympathies.
"Look mom, it's a guy about to make the ultimate sacrifice!"
How about, oh I don't know, show a soldier being blown to bits and providing us with the subscript "Soldiers are called on to make the "ultimate sacrifice"".
Or how about you show a Iraqy child being blown to bits while the mother is watching and providing us with the subscript "Iraqi mothers are called on to make the "ultimate sacrifice"".
HERE's you 'ultimate sacrifice':
Peace.
Posts: 246 | Location: Q | Registered: 25 August 2007
I think those who sent them there, and those who profited from the occupation, should pay all the costs for the damage they have done to soldiers and to Iraqi civilians alike. This would include confiscating all war profiteering money, all profits on the increase in oil prices due to loss of most of the Iraq supply, including all the dividends paid out to stock holders in these companies. It would also include reparations from those in the White House who initiated the war, and of the leaders of other countries who joined in the occupation unless they can show that they were mislead by the Bush Administration.
One step further......... Execution of the above, including all the neoconetts that voted for them and were stupid enough to be drawn into the con. That would clean the gene pool nicely.
"The moon that I love clears a path through the pines And guides a stream right to the bamboo gate."Poems by Zen Master Hsu Yun: Series I
Posts: 795 | Location: western slope, northern sierra | Registered: 18 April 2003
Or at least, that's the argument conservatives make over all kinds of other social services, so it should just as well apply to veterans.
Ok, this is the argument they make for every other kind of worker. However, the Neo Cons don't tell us to "support our Nurses" they tell us to "Support our Troops." Do we only support them until they are damaged? Where does out "patriotic duty" end?
quote:
Soldiers know there is a risk of being injured on the job. But they, like all other workers, have a right to expect their employer to do everything practical to minimize that loss, and to be taken care of if they are injured.
Furthermore, so do their Employer - who set the policy and determine which risks the soldiers do and do not take. But, you are right, they are like any other employer.
I can do you one better than shabby housing and low compensation - what about giving with one hand and taking away with the other?
A group of disabled Canadian Armed Forces' veterans are blaming senior federal bureaucrats for clawing back their disability payments and costing them thousands of dollars in income.
Ron Cundell, a disabled veteran who lives in Angus, Ont., said the current policy dealing with benefits has allowed the government to "steal" $50,000 of his money over the past seven years.
"I am here today to ask if there is any one Canadian citizen who thinks this theft of my long-term disability benefits is OK," he said Wednesday during a news conference with other veterans in Ottawa.
Sean Bruyea, a retired air force captain from Ottawa who was injured in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said the deductions affect more than 4,000 disabled vets who have been deemed "unemployable." ...
Cundell pointed out that in 2003, all parties of a standing legislative committee on national defence and veterans affairs voted to stop the deductions. He also noted that in November 2006, the majority of parliament MPs voted to stop the deductions. The motion was non-binding and opposed by the Conservative government.
This means that the NDP, Liberals and Bloc voted for it, the governing Conservatives voted against it, and it passed. Note that the three opposition parties combined have enough seats to overrule the Conservatives.
OTTAWA -- Federal bureaucrats are ignoring the will of politicians and the forces' ombudsman by continuing to deduct pain-and-suffering awards from long-term disability payments to wounded soldiers, a group of military veterans said Wednesday.
Sean Bruyea, a retired navy captain on longterm disability, says public servants have for four years ignored the urgings of both the military ombudsman and politicians to end the practice.
The deductions -- now the subject of a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Canada -- are costing more than 4,000 disabled vets who have been deemed "unemployable'' thousands of dollars, Bruyea told a news conference.
"This is the only insurance plan in Canada that we know of that is deducting awards for pain and suffering from their longterm disability,'' Bruyea said.
And, if it is happening in Canada - I wonder what is going on in the States!
Posts: 771 | Location: Winnipeg | Registered: 06 September 2001
Execution of the above, including all the neoconetts that voted for them and were stupid enough to be drawn into the con. That would clean the gene pool nicely.
I don't believe in execution. But it would be interesting to see, if they were all imprisoned for life, whether the next generation would have as many sociopaths.
Sue N.
Posts: 4624 | Location: UK | Registered: 16 November 2004
What do you expect, Sue, we have Conservatives in power. Right now they are embarrassing us all right now voting against Native rights at the UN.
One of the Cabinet Minister under the Conservatives (you call them Secretaries), Tony Clemment was born in Manchester England and, as a youth, used to worship Margaret Thatcher.
Ok, he is just Minister of Health and the Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario - but they are all like that. From Wikipedia:
quote:
Born Tony Panayi to a Greek Cypriot father and Canadian mother in Britain, Clement immigrated to Canada in childhood with his mother and later adopted his last name from his stepfather, Ontario politician John Clement. ...
He was also an admirer of Margaret Thatcher's government in the United Kingdom.
The Death Penalty for Stupidity - one could call joining up after the war in Iraq started as a form of that.
Posts: 771 | Location: Winnipeg | Registered: 06 September 2001
Greenspan covers the why, Paul O'Neil too, now through FOIA it's public info..on their spread sheet did LTD reductions figure in, and get a bonus? Bush and Cheney have cut veterans benefits , and are continuing to do so, but recruiters don't mention it.
quote:
Just days into the job, President Bush created the Cheney energy task force with the stated aim of developing “a national energy policy designed to help the private sector.” Typically, Cheney has been able to keep secret its deliberations and even the names of its members.
But a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit forced the Commerce Department to turn over task force documents, including a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, terminals, and potential areas for exploration; a Pentagon chart “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts”; and another chart detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects—all dated March 2001.
A year into the war in Iraq, President Bush moved to politicize the Department of Veterans Affairs. In December 2004, he replaced the secretary of Veterans Affairs, Anthony Principi, who had spent a career in public service, with Jim Nicholson, a real estate developer and former chair of the Republican National Committee.
In his resignation letter, Principi gave no specific reason for his departure, stating only that it was “time to move on to fresh opportunities and different challenges." Months earlier, however, he had voiced his frustration, telling a House committee that he had asked President Bush for an additional $1.8 billion for veterans’ care, but that his request had been denied.
“Some people were disappointed when Principi abruptly left,” Sullivan remembered. “Nicholson came with no experience at all when the VA was mired in crises. The first crisis was a demand in health care and benefits by veterans. And the second crisis was a shortfall in appropriations from Congress, because the VA failed to properly plan for the consequences of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”
Unlike Principi, Nicholson made no requests for additional money, telling Congress his agency had all the resources it needed.
But the VA had to do something, because hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were coming home and filing disability claims with the federal government.
Instead of adequately addressing those veterans’ needs, the head of the Veterans Benefits Administration, Undersecretary Daniel Cooper—the main point-person in charge of processing those claims—made his priorities clear in a fund-raising video for the evangelical group Christian Embassy, in which he proclaimed that Bible study was “more important than doing my job.”
In the video, Cooper says of his Bible study, “It’s not really about carving out time; it really is a matter of saying what is important. And since that’s more important than doing the job—the job’s going to be there, whether I’m there or not.”
When Cooper was appointed in 2002, 325,000 veterans were waiting on their disability claims. Now that number is more than 600,000.
Blaise Pascal Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Pensees
Posts: 2917 | Location: Sverige | Registered: 21 June 2005
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