WILL SHINSEKI’S APPOINT MEAN AN END TO THE “CULT OF DISHONESTY” AT THE VETERANS AFFAIRS?
By Kevin Stoda
Rep. Bob Filner, the head of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has noted that over the past five years the VA chiefs in Washington had “created a ‘culture of dishonesty’ over the way it [the VA] has treated some of the more than 350,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans under its care.”
According to Jason Leopold, the recent “choice of retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, a Vietnam War veteran who sustained combat-related injuries, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs sends a clear message to the hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans that, unlike President George W. Bush, Obama takes the sacrifices they have made seriously.”
CLEANING UP THE CRIMES AND INJURIES
The appointment of former-Gen. Shinseki comes less than a week after national guardsmen from Indiana sued KBR over chemical exposure.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/4/indiana_guardsmen_sue_kbr_over_chemical
Rep. Bob Fuller is head of the House Veterans Affairs [VA] Committee and has warned America that the, “VA is now at a ‘critical juncture’ and ‘is on the verge of completely losing the trust and confidence of the people that it is supposed to represent - the very same people it has been entrusted to care for . . . .These [benefits claims] are matters of life and death for some of these veterans.”
Currently 100s of thousands of claims remain unprocessed or neglected in VA offices.
This is appointment of Eric Shinseki as new VA head comes only a few weeks after the Department of Veterans Affairs admitted (i.e. five full years after the British military did so) for the first time--in a lengthy 450-page document--that scientific research overwhelmingly recognizes that Gulf War Syndrome is a reality, which needs to be taken seriously by the VA as thousands of Americans continue to make claims.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/GULF-WAR-SYNDROM-RECOGNIZE-by-ALONE-081121-361.html
The full VA report can be found here:
The USA media has usually badly covered the Gulf War Illness Story because (1) many journalists and news agencies are lazy and don’t check up on the facts and because (2) the Pentagon spent nearly 300 million dollars of tax-payer money on propaganda to try and show that Gulf War syndrome was not real.
It was just another boondoggle of American patience and taxpayers money. Eventually, the truth about the reality of the Syndrome of Gulf War veterans cannot be ignored for another generation.
Meanwhile, take time and listen to this report and interview with Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense [VCS], with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
