Cursed Tongue: Post Traumatic Scandal Disorder

Posted by CursedTongue on March 20, 2007

I was born a military brat. A couple of weeks ago Sweetface and I drove to Williams Gateway Airport. Which used to be Williams Air Force Base. We drove in through what must have been a gate entrance. There was a golf course on the left (a golf course is always a must have and a point of pride for Air Force generals.) and hangers on the right.

It was a good thing Sweetface was driving. Because I was tearing up. Sweetface notices because I’m quiet (kind of a rarity.) Then he’s laughing at me, because we get to the place where they used to house military families and I blubber. “Look, there’s the substandard housing!” The brightly colored, relatively fresh paint did not conceal the handiwork of the lowest bidder.

Another base we lived at was Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. Actually we lived there a couple of times. The first time we lived in substandard housing that was rumored to have been intended for a base in California, where the temperature never drops to 60 below. This housing was condemned by the time we returned.

The second house we moved into was relatively new, and didn’t appear to be too substandard. But then some of the neighboring houses on base began to drift off of their foundations. Our house suffered from doors that stuck because of the strain on the building. But some of our neighbors had doorjambs and roofs that collapsed in on them like an overpass on St. Louis commuters.

I learned that it was perfectly acceptable to the DoD to put the squeeze on soldiers in order to save money. As my Dad’s military career progressed we watched more and more benefits fall away into dust like actual news stories from the Fox News Network lineup. It’s even worse now, despite the war.

My brother, who joined the Air Force, tells me that his unit doesn’t have body armor for the people they send to Iraq. But they do have two medieval replica suits of armor that their fearless leader bought as a “morale booster.”

It did boost morale when a wise guy soldier posed the suits so they were giving a special offensive salute, but I hardly think that’s what brass had in mind. I constantly hear news from my brother of how his base is understaffed and under supplied. He’s been working 12-hour shifts for years, and he’s not working them alone.

Lt. General Ken Kiley was trying to paint a rosier picture of the squalid conditions at Walter Reed Hospital. He pointed out the plasma TV and the pool table in the dayroom. I’m sure that the mold farm in the walls is an attempt to bring down the cost of Penicillin, and the rats and cockroaches are part of Therapy Pets program.

The low rate of diagnosed cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder must be due to the fact that soldiers are being sent the same recreational inhalants that are floating through the halls of the White House. And I’m sure soldiers are just so gosh darn happy to be on their second and third and forth extended-double-overtime tours of duty in Iraq that it inoculates them against PTSD.

I hold George W. Bush accountable. I hold responsible any politician who went to a Veteran’s hospital for a photo op with wounded war heroes without stepping in. I think the Bush administration must have confused Walter Reed Hospital with Gitmo, just as they confused Iran with Iraq.

President Bush has not deviated from his pattern of denying culpability and appointing a bipartisan panel to look into the matter. I’m sure he’ll continue down his inexplicable path of “Why haven’t you been impeached yet?” and completely ignore the findings of the Troop Care Panel.

Bush said, “I’m confident that this commission will bring forth the truth.” But we already know the truth about the deplorable conditions of the veterans’ hospitals. “You know it, I know it and the American people know it,” as Bob Dole, co-chair of the bipartisan panel, might say.

According to a February article by the Associated Press, the Bush Administration’s plan for a balanced budget includes a 2% cut in funding for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in 2009. But as with government budgets the magical finance fairies are expected to step in and make sure that the budget is balanced by 2012 without cutting veteran benefits.

Regardless, I say we switch the inhabitants of the White House with the residents of Walter Reed and see how long it takes for the Bush administration to fix the situation. I’m sure Bush will enjoy the plasma TV.

- Sarah Letnes

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Tags: humor, military

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