With friends like these.....

http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=465_0_2_0_C

Bush administration slashes veteran’s benefits

By Dave Lindorff

11.26.03

Over the last year and a half, President Bush has staged more than
a
third of his major public events before active military personnel
or
veterans.

His rowdy "Hoo-ah"s and policy pronouncements--even when they have
nothing to do with military matters--are predictably greeted with
rabid applause.

But those easy and unquestioning crowds at military bases and
American
Legion halls will be increasingly hard to come by as soldiers and
veterans start to notice the string of insults and budget cuts
inflicted upon them.

Even more than his father, and Ronald Reagan before him, Bush is
cutting budgets for myriad programs intended to protect or improve
the
lives of veterans and active-duty soldiers.

Bush’s handlers have worked hard, through the use of snappy salutes
and fly-boy stunts, to present the service-ducking former National
Guardsman as the soldiers’ friend.

But though Republicans enjoy widespread military support, Bill
Clinton
was the only president of the last four to cut weapons programs
instead of veteran benefits.

Consider the following:

-----With 130,000 soldiers still in the heat of battle in Iraq and
more fighting and dying in Afghanistan, the Bush administration
sought
this year to cut $75 a month from the "imminent danger" pay added
to
soldiers’ paychecks when in battle zones.

The administration sought to cut by $150 a month the family
separation
allowance offered to those same soldiers and others who serve
overseas
away from their families.

Although they were termed "wasteful and unnecessary" by the White
House, Congress blocked those cuts this year, largely because of
Democratic votes.


-----This year’s White House budget for Veterans Affairs cut $3
billion from VA hospitals--despite 9,000 casualties in Iraq and as
aging Vietnam veterans demand more care.

VA spending today averages $2,800 less per patient than nine years
ago.


-----The administration also proposed levying a $250 annual charge
on
all Priority 8 veterans--those with "non-service-related
illnesses"--who seek treatment at VA facilities, and seeks to close
VA
hospitals to Priority 8 veterans who earn more than $26,000 a year.


-----Until protests led to a policy change, the Bush administration
also was charging injured GIs from Iraq $8 a day for food when they
arrived for medical treatment at the Fort Stewart, Georgia, base
where
most injured are treated.


-----In mid-October, the Pentagon, at the request of Defense
Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, announced plans to shutter 19
commissaries--military-run stores that offer discounted food and
merchandise that helps low-paid enlisted troops and their families
get
by--along with the possiblility of closing 19 more.


-----At the same time, the Pentagon also announced it was trying to
determine whether to shutter 58 military-run schools for soldiers’
children at 14 military installations.


-----The White House is seeking to block a federal judge’s award of
damages to a group of servicemen who sued the Iraqi government for
torture during the 1991 Gulf War.

The White House claims the money, to come from Iraqi assets
confiscated by the United States, is needed for that country’s
reconstruction.


-----The administration beat back a bipartisan attempt in Congress
to
add $1.3 billion for VA hospitals to Bush’s request of $87 billion
for
war and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.


-----In perhaps its most dangerous policy, the White House is
refusing
to provide more than 40,000 active-duty troops in Iraq with Kevlar
body armor, leaving it up to them and their families to buy this
life-saving equipment.

This last bit of penny-pinching prompted Pentagon critic and
Vietnam
veteran Col. David Hackworth to point to "the cost of the
extraordinary security" during Bush’s recent trip to Asia, which he
noted grimly "would cover a vest for every soldier" in Iraq.


Woody Powell, executive director of Veterans for Peace and a
veteran
of the Korean War, says these White House efforts should be viewed
as
attacks against American soldiers.

"I don’t think they see it as attacking them," he says.

"They see it as saving money. But it’s the wrong thing to be
cutting,
just like cutting education is a bad thing."

Increasingly, veterans, troops and their families are getting
angry.

Army Times, a newspaper widely read in military circles, ran a June
30
editorial saying:

"President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed
no
opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But
talk
is cheap and getting cheaper by the day, judging by the
nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately."

Ronald Conley, commander of the conservative American Legion, also
recently blasted the White House for VA budget cuts and surcharges,
saying:

"This is a raw deal for veterans no matter how you cut it. The
administration is sending a message that these vets are not a
priority
at all."

In 2000, candidate Bush campaigned hard for the votes of soldiers
and
military families, promising "Help is on the way."

It was, but in reverse.

Military votes--especially absentee ballots from soldiers posted
overseas--allowed Bush and his Supreme Court backers to claim a
Republican victory in Florida.

Real help may come in 2004, but it likely will be a Democrat riding
to
the rescue.

Each of the presidential hopefuls has blasted Bush and
administration
officials for dishonorable discharge of their duties to military
men
and women.
--