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"A bill in the mail is not the kind of present our soldiers deserve in this holiday season," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. said. "Our veterans are not being treated with the dignity, respect and thanks that they deserve. It's just a disgrace."

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

Read this and then tell me how you support the troops....

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Originally posted by Hero:
This triggered the billing process for failure to complete the tour.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
That doesn't make up for the fact that peeps that SERVED THEIR COUNTRY are getting screwed.

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Senator Schumer is doing what he does as well; making everything look like an evil plan.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
you sign a contract with the devil, expect to get a little burnt, you know ?

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Originally posted by rue:
If these were just process problems you'd expect it to go both ways. People getting benefits or more benefits to which they aren't entitled, people getting honorable discharges when they should be dishonorable, people getting more than their sign-up bonus ... but it seems to all go one way.

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Originally posted by Geezer:


Having spent more years than I care to remember testing software, I can tell you that a single type of problem, repeating multiple times, based on one particular set of circumstances, is exactly what you'd expect from a system design or program error. I'd bet that there is an indicator or code, that is set due to a particular type of injury-related removal from active duty, which isn't being acted on properly in a DOD computer system somewhere. Probably left out of either the documentation the programmer used to create the code, or just left out when the code was written.

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Department of Defense told to stop demanding wounded soldiers return bonuses


Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Amherst, has called on the Department of Defense to stop requiring wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to repay enlistment bonuses because their injuries prohibited them from fulfilling their commitment

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
This problem is being fixed and the soldiers are getting their $$.

It's a Pentagon issue, not an administration issue.

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Originally posted by rue:
"And then ... you have people spending months, years in the brig for being AWOL after they were honorably discharged.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

I've never heard of it neither, other than that.
-F

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Originally posted by rue:
Who's Jesse McBeth ?? And what is Media Matters ?? I could look it up, I'm just too lazy right now.

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Originally posted by rue:
And then ... you have people spending months, years in the brig for being AWOL after they were honorably discharged.

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Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-readyBut instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.

Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits. The conditions of their discharge have infuriated many in the military community, including the injured soldiers and their families, veterans' rights groups, even military officials required to process these dismissals.

They say the military is purposely misdiagnosing soldiers like Town and that it's doing so for one reason: to cheat them out of a lifetime of disability and medical benefits, thereby saving billions in expenses.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Ah, here it is... Some of the stories in this article are pretty horrific.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Did you read the article?

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Further investigation by The Nation has uncovered more than a dozen cases like Town's from bases across the country. ... All were deemed physically and psychologically fit in a second screening as well, before being deployed to Iraq, and served honorably there in combat.

... Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, acting surgeon general of the Army, was briefed on the problems with the Army's personality disorder discharges.... The surgeon general released a series of memos filled with fabrications. Pollock then informed wounded soldiers that their cases had been thoroughly reviewed by an independent panel of health experts when in fact no such review was conducted.

... The story of Pollock, Knorr and the "thoughtful and thorough" five-month review had been picked up by news talk programs... To stem the tide, officials at Fort Carson did something odd: They released a new memo stating that fifty-six soldiers discharged from Fort Carson with personality disorder actually had PTSD.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Well Geezer you either didn't look very hard, or you looked REALLY hard for material to support your "do nothing" views because I found this third citation down when I Googled 5-13+discharge+personality

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So by the Army's own admission, they had misdiagnosed 56 soldiers at Fort Carson alone.

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The organization was founded by the conservative-turned-leftist journalist David Brock, who says he created Media Matters “to combat” what he characterizes as the largely successful effort of “the right wing in this country” to “mov[e] the media itself to the right” and to “mov[e] American politics to the right.”"

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We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our arguments and making them effective and disseminating them widely and really putting together a network in the blogosphere, and a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support, like Media Matters and Center for American Progress

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Yep. You found independent confirmation of an article by Joshua Kors in...another article by Joshua Kors.

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However, one base is not the entire military, and 56, while too many, is not 22,500. To inflate this into yet another government-wide secret conspiracy is, well, paranoid

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I never said it was a government-wide conspiracy.

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I never said it was a government-wide conspiracy.

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No. Just the article you quote.

"They say the military is purposely misdiagnosing soldiers like Town and that it's doing so for one reason: to cheat them out of a lifetime of disability and medical benefits, thereby saving billions in expenses."

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Well, do you think it should be investigated? (By someone outside of the military, perhaps with the power to subpoena?)

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
Like Rue said- I don't hear about any misdiagnoses leading to a ridiculous EXCESS in many vet's benefits...
you bias betrays you, Geezer.

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SignyM's 'Military-wide mis-diagnosis to save money' conspiracy has so far been identified as 56 folk at one military base. Hardly a 'riciculous' number.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
First of all, it's not "my" conspiracy.

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However, ASG Pollock did not properly investigate...

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Geezer- It doesn't necessarily HAVE to be a conspiracy. As usual, you're putting words in my mouth. It COULD be f*ckup and a coverup. It could be nothing at all. I wish you'd stop constructing strawman arguments, but it seems so ingrained in your psyche maybe you just can't help yourself.

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