Served in Iraq then discarded

A horrible story from ABC News earlier this evening

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/WoodruffReports/story?id=3368726&page=1

Questionable Treatment for Some Iraq Heroes

Army Spc. Jonathan Town is back home in Ohio now, but still very much at war.

"When you see bits and pieces of actual people or people bleeding to death or anything, it's very unsettling. It's something you'll never be able to forget. Period," Town told ABC News' Bob Woodruff.

(snip)

n Town's case, the discharge came two years after he was injured in an attack. In the fall of 2004, a 107 mm rocket ripped through his unit's headquarters in Ramadi, exploding two feet above Town's head and knocking him unconscious. The rocket blast left Town with hearing loss, headaches, memory problems, anxiety and insomnia. For his wounds, he was awarded the Purple Heart.

But when he returned to the states seeking treatment for those very wounds, the Army quickly discharged him, asserting his problems had been caused not by the war but by a personality disorder that predated his military career.

(snip)

On the day he was discharged in the fall, Town met with Jeff Peskoff, a civilian employee in the personnel office at Fort Carson in Colorado, and learned he owed the Army $3,000 to repay his enlistment bonus... Peskoff, who served 10 years in the Army, including a tour of Iraq, recently quit his job in disgust and is now speaking publicly for the first time.

(snip)

The Dave Matthews Band collected 23,000 signatures on its fan site for a letter requesting that Congress and the Department of Defense look into the personality disorder discharges... Just today, six senators including Bond and Barack Obama, D- Illinois, introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would temporarily suspend personality disorder discharges for combat veterans until there is a comprehensive review of the current procedures.

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