Today I watched a video posted by Greg Barnes of the Fayetteville Observer. It was of the barracks provided to a company of soldiers recently returned from 15 months 10 miles from the Pakistan border. It made me recall a similar article a couple of years ago about similar conditions at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Yet it is without a shadow of doubt better to serve for weeks without showers in the mountains of Afghanistan than to serve a day in the hallowed halls of Ft Bragg with showers of sewage. Ask for the resignation of the base commander and his superiors up to and including the Secretary of Defense.

Unfortunately, over the last week, I read about testimony given concerning the coverup of internal e-mails from the VA that documented the actual numbers of suicides against a number which had been reported to CBS, and the seeming lack of comprehension by the top medical officer and the most senior administrator (longest tenure) that they had been caught red-handed.

Today I reread an article written by Larry Scott, VA Watchdog.org about the preferential treatment being given to 2% (598,000 of the roughly 23,000,000 living vets) of the existing veterans population by the VA. I point this out not from malice to my brothers in arms but from the suspicion that the VA intends to coverup their poor performance across the board by showing some minimal improvement for current vets.

Lest you forget, there are tens, no hundreds of thousands of other vets whose claims have been denied, who cannot afford educational costs, whose remains are hidden in the basements of funeral homes across this land. Ask for the resignation of each sub-agency head, each regional director, each medical center director, each program director up to and including the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Today I read about the passage of S.1315, which includes giving more money to the IOM, a singularly prejudiced and inept organization Congress authorized to research further the USAF Ranch Hand Study. The organization has to my recollection provided little of consequence other than to insure that thousands more veterans will die without being compensated for presumptive diseases associated with herbicides. Please let us also not forget their managerial ineptness concerning timely reporting and providing definitive testimony before your oversight committee.

I ask you to consider this situation, when next you admonish and state your frustration at the repeated offensives, lack of ethics and program integrity, and analyze where you have erred; to look inward, for it is your own continued authorization and funding of such a body, fraught with an organizational prediliction to provide  predefined and dishonest conclusions that you do veterans of all wars an undeniable disservice.

From 1989, the VA has attempted to tackle the ever-growing problem of claims, through a claim by claim review and adjudication of the most honorable people in this country, young once or still, but put through a process more ignominious than IRS audit, yet you cannot garner the forces to do what is necessary.  I ask you each to answer just one simple question, without adding such factors as you may.

Would you go fight for fifteen months, or multiple tours, or suffer irreparable harm knowing you face a VA designed to put you through five to fifteen years of indignity, financial and mental hardship, poverty, and dishonor or would you serve under commands who will not build and maintain a livable respite for you to lay your head, who treat you as less than human, who conspire with others to poison you, expose you to every disease imaginable, and use you as guinea pigs in tests and projects hidden behind classification systems meant specifically to deny the atrocities of those who claim the moral high ground? I think not.

I ask you to request, no demand these resignations because without them, no amount of legislation, oversight, admonishment, committee hearings, et.al. will change the cruel mentality of those who believe they are superior to, brighter than, or better educated than those who serve and actually do the job.

We fought then and fight now with the belief that the principles we fought for were honorable. Will you prove us wrong? If so, I stand before you, as sure as are we all, and demand you run your knife through my heart, for it is better I look truth in the eye than watch as each day goes by, wasting away, waiting for you to garner the courage every one of us who have served already know we have.