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"SUPPORT THE TROOPS"........MY ASS


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[quote][size=3][b]Center for war-related brain injuries faces budget cut[/b][/size]

By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY

Congress appears ready to slash funding for the research and treatment of brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, an injury that military scientists describe as a signature wound of the Iraq war.
House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense appropriation bill contain $7 million for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center — half of what the center received last fiscal year.

Proponents of increased funding say they are shocked to see cuts in the treatment of bomb blast injuries in the midst of a war.

"I find it basically unpardonable that Congress is not going to provide funds to take care of our soldiers and sailors who put their lives on the line for their country," says Martin Foil, a member of the center's board of directors. "It blows my imagination."

The Brain Injury Center, devoted to treating and understanding war-related brain injuries, has received more money each year of the war — from $6.5 million in fiscal 2001 to $14 million last year. Spokespersons for the appropriations committees in both chambers say cuts were due to a tight budget this year.

"Honestly, they would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities," says Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for the Senate Appropriations Committee. "They didn't have any flexibility in such a tight fiscal year."

George Zitnay, co-founder of the center, testified before a Senate subcommittee in May that body armor saves troops caught in blasts but leaves many with brain damage. "Traumatic brain injury is the signature injury of the war on terrorism," he testified.

Zitnay asked for $19 million, and 34 Democratic and six dumbass members of Congress signed a letter endorsing the budget request.

The House of Representatives approved its version of the spending bill June 20. A vote in the Senate is pending.

Scientists at the center develop ways to diagnose and treat servicemembers who suffer brain damage. The work is done at seven military and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, including the center's headquarters at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, and one civilian treatment site.

The center has clashed with the Pentagon in recent months over a program to identify troops who have suffered mild to moderate brain injuries in Iraq from mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs — the most common weapons used by insurgents.

Preliminary research by the center shows that about 10% of all troops in Iraq, and up to 20% of front line infantry troops, suffer concussions during combat tours. Many experience headaches, disturbed sleep, memory loss and behavior issues after coming home, the research shows.

The center urged the Pentagon to screen all troops returning from Iraq in order to treat symptoms and create a database of brain injury victims. Scientists say multiple concussions can cause permanent brain damage.

The Pentagon so far has declined to do the screening and argues that more research is needed.


[url="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-08-brain-center_x.htm"]http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...in-center_x.htm[/url][/quote]

Just another example of how "the powers that be" could not give a rat's ass about the
men and women who serve this country.
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Vets always get screwed, both on the front end and mostly on the back end, once they are no longer useful combatants. At least vet programs are far, far better than they ever were in the past....ever read about the Bonus Marchers and how they were treated?
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[quote name='Bunghole' post='320031' date='Aug 20 2006, 08:28 AM']Vets always get screwed, both on the front end and mostly on the back end, once they are no longer useful combatants. At least vet programs are far, far better than they ever were in the past....[b]ever read about the Bonus Marchers and how they were treated?[/b][/quote]

No. :huh:

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[quote name='Bunghole' post='320035' date='Aug 20 2006, 08:34 AM'][url="http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/bonusm.htm"]http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/bonusm.htm[/url]

Read that. Talk about some governmental mistreatment of veterans....[/quote]

Fucked up, however i cant say that I was surprised.
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[quote name='Homer_Rice' post='320068' date='Aug 20 2006, 08:17 AM']Excellent. While we are doing the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot"]history thing...[/url][/quote]
Thanks. Didn't know that there was a larger conspiracy afoot that correlated to the Bonus Marchers affair.
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Guest Coy Bacon
[b]I agree with General Butler, who was well qualified to speak on the subject of war. This is why I refuse to pretend that "our troops" are mine in any way, or that, regardless of how sincere their intent or conviction, US troops are defending the country. They're not allowed to - instead they're employed in a continuing racket:[/b]


Smedley Butler
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[b]Smedley Darlington Butler [/b] (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye," was a [b]Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps [/b] and, [b]at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history[/b]. Butler was awarded the [b]Medal of Honor twice [/b] during his career, one of only 19 people to be awarded the medal twice. He was [b]noted for his outspoken non-interventionist views and his book War is a Racket, one of the first works describing the military-industrial complex[/b]. After retiring from service, Butler became a [b]popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, communists, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s. Butler came forward to the U.S. Congress in 1934 to report that a proposed coup had been plotted by wealthy industrialists to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[/b].....


.....[b]Butler was known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States. [b]His book War is a Racket (1935) presents a highly critical view of the profit motive behind warfare. [/b] Between 1935 and 1937, Butler served as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism, which was considered by many to be communist-dominated[5], and gave numerous speeches to the Communist Party USA in the 1930s, as well as to pacifist groups.[6] The following, from "the non-Marxist, socialist Common Sense magazine"[7] in 1935, is one of his most widely quoted statements:

[size=3][b]I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.[/b] [/size] ....

.......Trivia
Camp Smedley Butler Marine Corps base in Okinawa, Japan was named in honor of Butler.
The Boston, Massachusetts, chapter of Veterans for Peace is called the Smedley D. Butler Brigade in his honor.
USS Butler (DD-636), a Gleaves-class destroyer, was named in his honor in 1942.
Butler was featured in the documentary film The Corporation.
Billy Bragg quoted Butler's famous paragraph (above) to describe his song The Marching Song of the Covert Batallions in the liner notes of the album The Internationale.
Since Butler's death no man has earned more than one Medal of Honor.
_____________________



Chapter One

WAR IS A RACKET

[size=3][b]WAR is a racket. [u]It always has been[/u].[/b][/size]


It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

[b]A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.[/b]

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This [b]newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.[/b]

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, [b]I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it.[/b] Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out............
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