Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor ( PLEASE READ THIS )

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3.htm

I have had enough !!! Rumsfeld and his Neo-Con / chicken hawk cohorts need to resign right fu*king now. When are all the veteran's orgaizations going to get together and protest with one voice ? It is THE ONLY WAY to get action !!!!

Larry

>>>>>>

Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor
By MARK BENJAMIN, UPI Investigations Editor

FORT STEWART, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Hundreds of sick and wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in hot cement barracks here while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see doctors.

The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.

"I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully and I have done everything the Army has asked me to do," said Sgt. 1st Class Willie Buckels, a truck master with the 296th Transportation Company. Buckels served in the Army Reserves for 27 years, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and the first Gulf War. "Now my whole idea about the U.S. Army has changed. I am treated like a third-class citizen."

Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been trying to get doctors to find out why he has intense pain in the side of his abdomen since doubling over in pain there.

After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has accepted 20 percent of his benefits for bad knees and is going home to his family in Mississippi. "They have not found out what my side is doing yet, but they are still trying," Buckels said.

One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses.

The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls "medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.

Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks or months without getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.

The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are getting better treatment while troops who serve in the National Guard or Army Reserve are left to wallow in medical hold.

"It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and Reserves," said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which she developed a serious heart condition and strange skin ailment.

A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart public affairs officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta were not returned.

Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.

Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.

Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper.

They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.

"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.

That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.

He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him.

"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."

First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the 296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he was healthy before the war; he could run two miles in 17 minutes at 48 years old.

But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness of breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the anthrax vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.

Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself looking at shotguns recently and thought about suicide.

Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that no more doctor appointments are available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the Army Reserves.

"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army," Mosley said.

Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army soldiers get to see doctors, while National Guard and Army Reserve troops wait.

"The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated first and they put us on hold," said another soldier who returned from Iraq six weeks ago with a serious back injury. He has gotten to see a doctor only two times since he got back, he said.

Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he has had real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he suffered in Iraq. "There are not enough doctors. They are overcrowded and they can't perform the surgeries that have to be done," that soldier said. "Look at these mattresses. It hurts just to sit on them," he said, gesturing to the bunks. "There are people here who got back in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It is putting a lot on these families."

The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves.

In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone of the military.

"Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on terror," Bush said. "And you're making your state and your country proud."

[BLUEHAWK]

If true, then not good.

What can and should we do?

[the humper]

propaganda, or fact, the pictures on the boob tube, unloading casualties in Germany and Andrews AFB, daily!!!!
SF
NC

[frisco-kid]

I heard today that military personnel coming home are required to pay their own fare home once they land stateside. If you land at Newark but live in Utah, tough shit. But nothing surprises me about the way this administration treats it's military personnel; active, Reserve, Guard, or veterans. They continue to shut down VA Hospitals or strangle them with under-funding. There's going to be more base closures in the near future. Bad news for CA with 60 military installations statewide. Bad news for the military. Stories of personnel being charged for meals while hospitalized. And on, and on and on. Seems like these people not only have to fight a war, they have to help finance it.

I thought this administration was going to be the Saviour of the military and the country's veterans once they were in office, after being treated so shabbily and disrespected during the Clinton years? Seems to me that Bush and Rumsfeld are saluting our military with one hand, and giving them the finger with the other behind their backs.

[BLUEHAWK]

My lady works for Omni Air International which has been ferrying troops and some equipment back and forth to the middle east theatre for more than two years.
With the rare exception of transports to Fort Bliss, Fort Hood and Fort Campbell all troops they bring home from the fronts are taken to Atlanta and Baltimore. They make their pick ups in Frankfort, Kuwait, Turkey, Oman and UAE.
It is customary for military to pay their own way home after that first transport to Basic/Boot, however one would think the DOD could make some sort of an exception or provision for troops from combat zones. Having been a zoomie (as Bones calls us), I know that many USAF bases all over the U.S. have many many small cargo aircraft sitting on flight lines basically idle, that could be deployed to move troops inland at least closer to their homes by taking people to major urban hubs or garrisons. The ride might not be all that luxurious (Omni uses DC-1030s), and there wouldn't be any stewardesses, but folks could get home faster and at no cost to themselves or their families.
I'd rather sit on a web seat in a C-47 from Atlanta to, say, Indianapolis or Albuquerque than to be paying one-way tickets after getting my face shot at in a desert. All it would cost the DOD is gas, they could easily get those old buses out of the lots, pick up our people at those hubs (Newark etc.), haul them out to flight lines and send 'em closer to home.

What gives?

I was very glad, on the other hand, to see recently that Congress finally put a total end to our people having to pay for their food during hospital stays.

[BLUEHAWK]

p.s.

Also, when I was in we used to carry GIs all over the place simply by them knowing they could get on a MATS (the old Military Air Transport) manifest if they asked at any USAF base, and we were constantly doing cargo sorties to practically every known air base in-country anyway, would've been glad to haul a few soldiers anywhere we were going... most of our trips were far from being fully loaded. Cannot speak for the comfort level, our planes were real basic units... cold, noisy, slow, but what the heck!

[revwardoc]

When I was stationed at Norton AFB I decided to save myself a few bucks and catch a MAC cargo flight to Westover AFB in Springfield, MA. Back then you had to reserve the seat at least 3 months in advance, which I did. It was to be a "red eye" flight, but no big deal. When I showed up at the base terminal I was told I was bumped off by the son of a Lt. Col. who was going to college in MA; not by the Col. but by his friggin' son! Man was I pissed! I started to complain but was read the riot act by some ass-hat "butter-bar", fresh out of the Academy. Fortunately a buddy drove me to the municipal airport in Riverside, CA where I jumped on a small commuter plane to LAX and I got the last seat on a plane to Boston. I still hope that little SOB had the worst flight of his life.

You're right about the old MATS and MAC flights. Especially now that C-141's have been essentially replaced by the C-17 (I think). I know for a fact that the 141's can be outfitted with airline style seats and have the nylon "bench" seats that can be lowered for personnel. Plus the AF Reserve and National Guard flight crews need the flight training so why not use those people and planes for just such a purpose? It would save GI's some bucks and provide flying hours for pilots and such. Nah! That's probably way too logical for this administration. I think our current GI's are beginning to realize what it feels like to be the "blue water" that leaks from planes; great while you have it, and easily discarded.

[BLUEHAWK]

Rev -
Yeah, I wasn't real sure our beloved AF would still be doing things the old way, but I know for a fact there were bunches of times we'd be hauling a PFC or a buck sargeant or a swabbie someplace... up to Great Lakes area or El Pusseo or Minot... god knows where. They'd just show up at Base Ops and take a seat, such as they were on whatever it was we were flyin' somewhere that day. There did happen a few bumps too, of course, pissed everybody off (pilots included)... needless to say the bumpee did not get to enjoy our weak-assed sub-10,000 foot liquid victuals either.

Don't see why the guys can't still get in on some of that, if they have a little advance planning or patience? I don't know what kind of equipment they've still got hanging around these days, maybe a few Goonies or Providers are still hobbling along?

[Jerry D]

The Space "A" flights reminds me of when I was stationed at Incirlick AB ,TU and went home on Emergency Leave. The TMO airmen that issued me plane tickets tried to tell me that I was only going to be flown from Incirlick-Rhein Main,Ger to Philly,PA on my way home but I needed to get to St.Louis. In 1985 I knew that a Active Duty Military person on Emergency Leave was able to fly on Commercial Charter A/c or Military A/c to it's final destination and in 1985 the Commercial Charter Flight went from Frankfort Germany to Philly,PA then onto St.Louis. So I went to my CO at 628MASS in Turkey and he called Rhein Main and told the TMO person there my situation and the person in Germany told me that it was possible so, just use the tickets I had from Incirlick and fly to Germany then they would issue me a 2nd set of tickets on my Travel Orders then When I get back to Turkey just turn in my unused tickets to TMO. A good CO and some good support personel makes a big difference in the Military.
BTW Bluehawk the C17's standard seat is a hard plastic red folding seat mounted on the walls along the inside of the aircraft. The Webseats on the 141 an 130 were much more comfortable.
Also from Baltimore a troop could take a bus to Andrews and take the C9 milk run flight to bases all over the US like Scott AFB. from Atlanta the nearest base with Space A capability is Dobbins ARB/Atlanta NAS and it has only unscheduled flights so one would have to call in advance to find out if they had any flights going where you wanted to go. Where as Andrews AFB has scheduled flights weekly.Military Living's "Military Space-A Air Opportunities Around the world" is a must have book for the Soldier wanting to use Space "A" to travel. Now if one is a Single Soldier why head home to the USA when you have Europe to see the Ticket from Kuwait probably can be used for a destination in Spain,Germany,or England and the flights are much easier to get on, for intra-theater flights in USAFE. Turkey is even a good vacation spot for someone on a limited income,"been there got the T-shirt"

[BLUEHAWK]

Sarge -
Yeah, I remember hearing stories about that ticket swap deal too, now that you mention it! Didn't happen very often, but at the time it sure did seem like a nice little helpful gesture on the part of our officers.

I know, or can imagine, what you mean about plastic vs. web seats... that's what we always had, a few stashed along the walls of our Providers and even a couple of the Goonies (and this one other biggish 2-engine tricycle gear unit whose designation I can never remember, never crewed on it, they used to paint its top all white, and keep the ground guys busy polishing the lower aluminum, maybe you remember what it was, C-something?), but we could easily have added a bunch to fill both walls ALL the way back, and there were even slots in the floor to build stanchions for still more seats, or we could turn those into litter carriers if needed, no prob...

All that Space "A" info you are gving up here, man, that should get in the hands of our people coming home... what gives that they don't know this? Maybe I'm off base here (always was trying to get "off base", one way or another :-), but we of the AF sorta took pride in our transportation capabilities, and though we receive more than our ration from certain other confreres in this outfit (Uncle Sam's Confused Group usually leave us be though), we were always always always looking out for every one of them in whatever way we could... hauling them home, or close to, would be a fairly high priority I'd think, eh?