Insult to Injury: Veterans versus the Department of Veterans Affairs

Insult to Injury

TYSON JOHNSON, ALL LOOSE LIMBS AND SINEW, eased into his mother's television room. As he settled on a navy blue love seat, it took a long moment before his wounds became apparent. The gash in the left side of his torso. A missing patch of scalp. The skin grafts that stretched from shoulders to wrists.

But the most serious injuries, the ones that ended his Army career, were hidden within his body. A kidney is missing. His intestines are shredded. The remains of shrapnel pepper his back and make his hands burn with pain. At 23, he said he feels like an 87-year-old man. Not able to work, he struggles to envision a future for himself and how his misfortune might end.

It began the night of September 20, 2003, in a tent on the dirt yard of Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Johnson, a mechanic who kept trucks and generators running for a military intelligence battalion, had just been promoted from private to specialist and was, he said, "feeling really good." After shooting pool in the prison's game room, he returned to his tent to watch a DVD of the television show Law & Order: Criminal Intent when, Boom! A mortar shattered the night. He grasped for his gun and, Boom!

Blood ran like warm water down Johnson's arms. His whole body went numb. He edged from the tent and fell backwards, sensing the thwup, thwup of a helicopter above. "I saw them cutting my uniform off," he said, "and I blanked out."

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Insult to Injury

I want to puke every time I hear our illustrious leader claim that he has raised the VHA budget. The problem is, with healthcare costs rising 10-15% per year, his little recession that sent thousands of middle-class veterans clamoring for VA healthcare, a system that was already struggling to care for those within the system, and now the Afghanistan and Iraq soldiers coming home. His little pittance 1-2% increases are in actuality HUGE cuts in care.

Not even Bush is THAT stupid to believe that he has done veterans ANY justice. El Smirko knows what he's doing, he just doesn't care.

Neither do the republican voters. They want smooth roads, they want the best military, they want security, they want medicare, they want medicaid, they want SS, they want the pork their congressman bring to their districts, they want electricity and clean water, BUT DO THEY WANT TO PAY FOR ANY OF IT??? HELL, NO! They will, however, pay $40,000 for the latest greatest 10mpg SUV, further increasing the odds of US soldiers in the future being sent into harms way for our precious oil, thus continuing the republican selfish cycle.

and thanks for the other references

Some good sites

I would just like to add, that if the nation realized the harm to our military and public alike of 2-butoxyethanol, they would ban the BE chemicals which are endocrine disruptor chemicals, and then there would be lots of help available in the health care industry ... to help those in need of regular care.

A study of this chemical would place the blame of many health ailments squarely where it belongs ... on this chemical!

But then, they would have to give early retirements to doctors and shut down a lot of the no longer needed medications


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