At Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, Larry Provost said, he spent a week digging through the still-smoldering pile for survivors who weren't there. His Army Reserve unit touched down in Afghanistan a year to the day after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Then it was onto Iraq a year later, where every trip off base could be deadly, and Provost knew three fellow soldiers who died in a Baghdad roadside bomb attack. It's why back home, he swerves to avoid a piece of trash in the road, or tries to avoid large crowds -- things that would have been danger signs in Iraq, a hiding place for a bomb, or a bomber. Some experiences, he just can't forget, no matter how hard he tries But when he sought counseling at a Veterans Affairs hospital near his home in Virginia Beach, Va., he said he felt like the message was, "Take a number."
(snip)
Nearly 150,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets have shown up on the doorsteps of VA health centers since 2001 -- and about one third, 46,000, have been seen for mental health issues, the agency says. Veterans' advocates say those figures point to cost increases ahead, with two wars in progress. VA officials and the White House insist they are ready to deal with this ongoing human cost of war, marked not by fatalities alone but also by those who survive.
They say President George W. Bush's budget proposal next year would mark a 69 percent increase in veterans health-care spending since he took office, to $34.3 billion. About $300 million in new spending in the past two years has shortened waiting times for care and largely erased the problems outlined by its post-traumatic stress disorder committee, the VA insists. But many veterans groups -- from newcomers like the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America to mainline stalwarts like the American Legion -- say Bush's spending still shortchanges the needs of veterans and leaves the VA ill-prepared to deal with what's still to come.
They point to proposed fee increases that would bump 200,000 higher-income veterans off the rolls, projections of $1 billion in management efficiencies that Congressional auditors call dubious and spending hikes they say fall short of what's needed to cut down wait times for specialty appointments, spotty care in rural areas and other problems.
"The White House is playing Enron games with the numbers," said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war vet who runs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "These guys are not projecting the true cost. It should have been part of the original Iraq war planning but now there's no excuse."more
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usvets0320,0,2166439.story?vote20135390=1there are just no words to describe these criminals in office :cry:
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