Veteran Affairs to remember

Americablog gets a lot of traffic and a recommendation from me isn't going to generate much of a spike, but if you haven't been over there in the couple of days, take a trip. They are doing a bang-up job on the brewing scandal now swirling out of Veteran Affairs and what is increasingly looking like outright abusive behaviour of wounded vets at Walter Reed. The Walter Reed story that came out in The Washington Post started the horrendous ball rolling and has now become a veritable horror show of abuse, neglect, purposeful under funding, complete with a Pentagon cover-up of casualty numbers.

I doubt that there could be a more efficient way to infuriate American citizens, who, after being told ad nauseum by this gross and vile administration to "support the troops," are now learning that the administration has routinely proposed budget cuts to the VA and is doing so again, suppresses the real number of casualties, and abuses the wounded who have fought their dirty war. Back when the disgraceful mob of GOP hacks were running the House, they saw it wise to remove the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Chris Smith, because he was too pro-veteran, which apparently was cutting into their pork budgets:

the House Republican leadership had removed Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House.

The party's House leaders purportedly removed Smith, a tireless promoter of spending for veterans, to save money. But two days earlier, the same leaders pulled every string during a closed-door caucus to defeat reforms against pork barrel spending.

The pièce de résistance (and I mean that literally) of this disgraceful litany, of course, comes to us directly from the "Commander in chief" and his handlers when they uninvited an amputee from an official ceremony because the press would be there taking pictures.

Where did the pathetic meme come from that Republicans know how to handle national security? That they support the troops when most of them skipped out on service? Has it arisen from the fact they just like to spend more money on bombs and missiles than anyone else on earth? That's not "national security." That's a bunch of pissants too afraid to go to war themselves but who must vicariously thrill themselves with big things that blow shit up. It's clear that it is not the troops they support. It's their chums in the defense industry, slurping up hundreds of billions of dollars in tax payer money, while the GOP tosses the wounded onto the street.

How much longer is this country going to keep buying the standard bullshit that Republicans are all about "national security" or care about the troops? It is a ridiculous sham and it needs to stop. With a few exceptions, they're a bunch of toddlers, grabbing for the next lollipop.