Wounded Warriors: Criminal, Corrupt Betrayal of Generations of Heroes

All combat veterans have poorly treated PTSD!

The home of the brave....needs to take care of our heroes. Photo by Bonnie King

(PORTLAND, Ore.) - Reviewing the war casualties of the American military is a frightening experience. Starting in 1775 and up to the present we have suffered an enormous number of killed and wounded military.

To be more specific, the number of deaths from all wars is about 1,300,000 and for wounded, it is about 1,500,000. The reason the latter is so high is that before WWII if the person was wounded he would almost certainly die. In WWII, with antibiotics and newer, better surgery, the death rate dropped immensely.

In WWII we had about 400,000 dead, but about 1 million wounded who did not die.

To get back to the subject, our worst war was the Civil War, with 600,000 deaths; about 300,000 from each side. The Union had about 280,000 wounded (who lived?) no figures are available for Confederate wounded, but it was very possibly more.

Our second worst war was WWII, as mentioned above, with about 400,000 dead and 1 million wounded who lived.

The next war was WWI, with 116,000 killed and 204,000 wounded who lived.

Next was the Vietnam War with 58,000 killed and 153,000 wounded.

Strangely enough, it has been said that more Vietnam veterans have committed suicide than were killed in the war.

The next was the Korean War with 36,000 dead with 92,000 wounded, but survived.

This takes us back to the Revolutionary War, with about 25,000 killed and 25,000 wounded. This was the highest killed and wounded percentage per population of all our wars, as there were about 1.25 million citizens of this new country at that time.

Other earlier wars provided about 11,000 deaths, but an almost unknown number of wounded.

The worst picture of the wars before WWII was that if one was wounded, he would almost surely die of infections. But that was not the worst of it, with WWII and subsequent wars many severely wounded were saved.

The current Middle East wars have caused about 13,000 deaths and about 100,000 wounded, some of which are extremely disabled and will be a tremendous burden on their families and the VA system for years.

This brings me back to the title, Wounded Warriors: Criminal, Corrupt Betrayal of those wounded, and supposedly under the care of the VA system.

We have the VA hospital superintendents and doctors being given huge financial BONUSES, up to $60,000 or more for cutting costs of medical care of veterans.

The reason for this is not complex. Many of the current patients are PTSD victims, the VA doctors prescribe medications which not only do not work, but make their symptoms worse and the patients resort to alcohol or illegal drugs.

About 20 veterans or active duty personnel use the medications for suicides – per day.

For our recent wars, some military personnel have been deployed to combat duty up to 4 or 5 times - and even more. It is well known that repeated deployments cause severe increases in PTSD, alcoholism, and use of illegal, dangerous drugs, both causing increases in accidental death and suicides.

It has been said, over and over, in the past few decades that the VA system of health care for veterans and their pension systems are broken. This breakdown falls directly on the backs and brains of the disabled veterans who put their lives on the line for the other 99% of this country.

Can we expect correction by the Congress? They are too busy drinking Scotch.

A SALUTE TO MY FELLOW VICTIMS OF THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM.