"Chris Hornbeck" wrote in message
...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...nkstothestreet

Chris Hornbeck

I've spoken on this a number of times here, and even wrote a song about it
in the mid-80s, called The Ballad of Wolfman, who was a well known homeless
man sleeping on grates here in DC until they found him dead of exposure, ran
a fingerprint check and found him to be a Medal of Honor winner in 'Nam. He
apparently never even attempted to try to get compensation (MOH winners
receive $1000 per month for life) or medical treatment from the Bureau of
Veteran's Affairs (now the Veteran's Administration) and just took to living
on the streets. In all of the service organization meetings I've attended
(Purple Heart, American Legion, Veterans of Foriegn Wars, and my own
organization, AMVets) there are tales of known veterans living the in the
vast wilds of Oregon, Washington State and Alaska, just to prevent
themselves from having to come into much if any contact with "normal"
humans.

With this prolonged use of Reservists and National Guard, even jobs are no
longer available that, by law, as supposed to be available to returning "on
active duty" Guardsmen and Reservists. The average enlisted man below E5 is
qualified by income to be on welfare, even including seperate rats. VA
support of returning vets has been cut by this President's last two budgets
by 2.5 Billion dollars per year causing VA hospitals to be closed all over
the US. Guardsmen also aren't entitled to the same benefits that active
military are, thereby costing the government much less money to use them
than Active Duty personnel.

I'd suggest anyone interested in learning about how badly this
administration is actually treating our troops to check into Col. David
Hackworth's website www.sftt.org for further information.

--


Roger W. Norman
Past Eastern District Commander, State of VA, AMVets.