Know what's really scary....homeless soldiers, soldiers without a decent

[peacetalksforall]

immune system, soldiers whose babies are born with big problems, soldiers who can't sleep, soldiers suffering haunting nightmares, soldiers with residual killing mentalities.

Truthout has something about the homeless -

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060405A.shtml

Iraq, Afghan Vets Turning up Homeless

[lies and propaganda]

1. But they are supporting their troops...

how could this happen?

I saw those stupid fucking ribbons in my neighborhood Korean dollar store yesterday, youre doing a whole lot for your troops.

[acmejack]

8. Once you are out of uniform, you're no longer a soldier...

Veterans are an entire different class of person. Merely a drag on the economy. Knowledge of killing methodologies doesn't do much to enhance one's resume. And there is this outlook which is popular among veterans; "At least they're not shooting at us!".

My experience is that veterans gain nothing for their service. Especially with this administration screwing everyone on their VA benefits. With the proposed co-pay and drug price increases, the costs exceed many veteran's disability payments.

Of course, the service connected disability is the only reason the VA will even see them. We won't even discuss the incredibly long period required to process said disability upon separation form the service.

[Fovea]

2. Ancient Pistol's soliloquy

from Henry V.

Where Nym talks about stealing back to England...
"and there I'll Steal"

[FloridaPat]

3. Tons of Vietnam soldiers still homeless and messed up. American

cares about homeless vets as much as they care about homeless Americans.

[FreedomAngel82]

4. It is really horrible

:mad: These soliders give their lives for Bush's bull and this is how they're repaid?!

[Pepperbelly]

5. Welcome to Dick Cheney's America.

-Seymour Skinner-

[corbett]

6. A National Disgrace

Roughly 60% of the nation's homeless are veterans. The level of disgrace to our nation defies description.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050601/the_key_to_impeachment.php

[tabasco]

9. There is a protest in support of veterans in DC on Wednesday.

It may not be that huge but I am going.

After lying us into a war creating thousands of maimed veterans, Bush refuses to increase VA funding this year. He TRIED to cut it by almost a billion dollars.

Here's info on the protest:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/6/prweb246504.php

[Jackpine Radical]

7. You people really don't get it.

"Veterans" as you call them (better thought of as worn-out cannon fodder) are of no further use to the Empire. It is wasteful to expend resources on them.

[Jamison]

10. That's right.

They're needed as long as they have a gun in their hand and are willing to kill "ragheads." When they're service is over then it's like "We don't give a damn about you, go make a living on your own and deal with your problems on your own too."

[nashville_brook]

11. in grad school, we did an ethnography of homeless vets in east tn

it was an altered ethnography, b/c the university wouldn't let us actually live with the homeless... anyway, we found that many (if not most) of the homeless men we studied were living outside (in caves, at the rail yard) b/c they simply could not fit into a "home-life" in the way anyone would recognize. johnson city in east tennessee has a veterans hospital called mountain home, so lots of homeless vets live near the facility in order to get healthcare. in fact, many of the men had family in the area, but wouldn't accept help from the family in the form of living under the same roof. a couple of the men actually feared they would hurt their family members. most, simply had too much anxiety to live in a house with "civilized people."

ethnographies by design are subjective, so you have to take them as "storytelling" more than an objective study. i'm not going to say we found an "objective truth" about all homeless vets -- but i will say, we were extremely surprised that most of the men we studied lived a homeless life by "choice," given their other options.

most of these guys were vietnam hillbillies. hillbillies in vietnam often wound up doing crazy special forces, scout shit. living on berries and insects; sneaking into villiages; killing everything that moved. hillbillies, they found, were better suited to living off the land and were more tenacious (courageous, loyal, unquestioning) than city-dwellers. so they were sent to the very front lines.

subjectively -- from the few men we studied -- they made a conscious decision not to enter "civil" society. i want to be very careful to point out that these men CHOSE homelessness GIVEN their options, i.e. their options are probably too limited in terms of mental health care, re-introduction into society. we were "forced" at the end of our study to conclude -- cest la vie -- who are we to say that a roof over your head is the right thing for everybody -- espeically men who believe they don't belong anymore.

i walked away from this study wondering if it's even POSSIBLE to reintroduce jungle killers to suburban culture. i don't know the answer to this.

[MountainLaurel]

12. That's fascinating Nashville

It reminds me of a coworker's father, who came back from Vietnam similarly scarred and is currently living in an isolated cabin in the Rockies, waiting for WWIII to break out.

[peacetalksforall]

13. Thank you for sharing. This was very insightful. The impact

of the changes to the mind is boggling. Perhaps they will be our leaders when our current leaders have ruined it all.

[lala_rawraw]

14. God damn this...

They are making money off our citizens. This is how they support the troops? You know what, Halliburton needs to be forced to pay health care costs for troops. I cannot even begin to understand how anyone thought it was a good idea for troops to have to pay for their own food as they were in their hospital bed. Hello????

Yet if you ask a Con, they will call us unsupported and unpatriotic. I am so sick of hearing "support our troops" from these people who don't give a damn.

It is one thing to pay lip service, it is another thing to actually question what kind of President (yes, even of your own party) would humiliate, destroy, rob, mutilate, etc., our real treasure, lives, so that Halliburton can make another 9 billion.

I swear these people are sick! How can they support the troops and allow them to be treated like this? And then they wonder why it is that John Kerry came home from war and protested against it. You see, to the war mongers, troops are just coins to put in the lotto machines. To those of us called "tree huggers" and such, troops are made up of actual people, who are worth more individually than any amount of money.

Next time you hear "unpatriotic" being flung at you, remind the person that they helped make these deaths possible and not once, but over and over.

Sick!!!

[Yellow_Dog]

15. confirmation that the lowly GI is just another

expendable tool of war, just like a tank, humvee or a bomb

[EFerrari]

16. kick

:kick: