I had to wait until my rage subsided enough to blog this. The story is via Thousand Yard Glare, one of my daily reads.
The outrage, well, you read it then tell me The original story is here.
One of the most surprising statements to come from The Power Hour interview conducted on “The Genesis Network” was that while the son, Josh Neusche, was a healthy young soldier on June 26, 2003, when he reported that he was going to serve on the secret hauling mission, by July 1, 2003, he was in a coma, and that day was suddenly classified by the military, as medically retired from the Army without Josh or his family’s consent. Josh did not die until July 12, 2003. Among other problems that this new classification created was that the DOD was no longer obligated to assist the family in getting to Germany to be with their son as he lay in a coma. Because the DOD would not provide even so much as plane or taxi fare for the Neusche family, all 650 members of the 203 Engineer Battalion each contributed $10.00 to make the family’s final visit possible. (some emphasis added)
I can't even begin to imagine how my family would have felt if that were me. I can't imagine Senior Army leadership (of the Uniformed variety) breaking the faith with the troops like that. I can imagine some civilian DoD NeoCon chickenhawk deciding that it's more cost-effective to reclassify the kid as medically retired, since his prognosis is terminal, and dump him in a hole in the ground in Germany and send his family a letter "blah blah blah...honorable....grateful nation...blah blah blah".
It makes me proud to see the soldiers in his battalion got his parents over there. It's wrong on so many levels that they even had to consider doing that, much less do it; but that's what soldiers do they take care of their own. Something Chickenhawks will never, ever understand.
I hope all the tax-cutting shithead Chickenhawks and non-Chickenhawks out there are justly proud of this bit o'thrift. And that you choke on your money...all of it.
We have had two residents of the Oval Office in the last 10 years. The wrong one got impeached.
posted by Jo Fish on 08.12.03 at 04:56 PM
Comments:
George W. Bush, of course, literally owes his very presidency on having finagled technically improper military absentee ballots in Florida. He has never stopped showing his gratitude to the men and women in uniform, and he has done so again here. (In all fairness to the man, he has left standing orders not to be told any bad news, so this soldier's death probably qualifies as that).
There is something so fundamentally wrong here... what kind of a bastard would even THINK that a couple of thousand dollars here or there in a war costing $4 BILLION a MONTH (officially!) even matters. But then, we know the answer-- we can only afford to ration 3 litres of WATER a day in 120 degree desert conditions.
Its so consistent with the massive cuts to military and veterans benefits, even as DOD budgets rocket to outer space (large parts of the expense, of course, for... rockets to outer space, to featherbed contractors). We are watching the disintegration of this nation right in front of our eyes, and all most people want to do is fucking cheerlead for the home team.
And this recent insight into the "mystery illness", from the Estimated Prohpet:
"Just as supportive as they were to Gulf War 1 soldiers it seems, sadly enough. Soldiers in both Gulf Wars were exposed to, among other toxics Depleted Uranium".
'So why did the Pentagon insist on using DU weapons in Iraq? Tungsten alloys would have worked as well. Depleted uranium, it turns out, has one tremendous advantage over tungsten. It is provided to weapons manufacturers nearly free of charge by the U.S. government—an ingenious method of radioactive waste disposal. Essentially, depleted uranium is the waste left over from decades of nuclear weapons development. In fact, the United States has stockpiles of depleted uranium scattered at sites throughout the country—728,000 metric tons to be exact—a tiny fraction of which is used in the manufacture of depleted uranium warheads.'
"War as a way to 'get rid of' radioactive waste... Did you know this"?
(emphasis mine)
i didn't think of that, but has the military so overextended itself with outsourced labor that a civilian is actually in a position to reclassify the duty status of a soldier?
if that's true, i can't begin to describe the level at which my mind just boggled, and all that did was get me angry all over again.
that combined with them not letting people get discharged when they're supposed to be... just damn.
On a side note, does anybody know what the "Power Hour" on the "Genesis Network" is about?
I can imagine all sorts of possibilities, but I'd like to know if this channel is available through my local cable system.
posted by: edub on 08.12.03 at 10:38 PM [permalink]
Just to show you it's not the dying troops that are getting the shaft, there are others as well. It's funny how quickly they classify them as "medically retired." This one was actually expected to die, but she didn't. Now she can't even get medical care. Her very words were:
"It's easier to stay a soldier and be in harm's way than to come home and get care."
