Hi Dan,
You're lucky you are just a cheerleader for Bush's madness. Those who actually committed themselves to the defense of our nation have been treated awfully by the Army.....
Subject: Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor
upi.com 031017-024617-1418r
Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor By Mark Benjamin
UPI Investigations Editor
Published 10/17/2003 3:36 PM
FORT STEWART, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Hundreds of sick and wounded U.S.
soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in hot cement
barracks here while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see doctors.
The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so
substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is
trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown
to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available from Oct. 14
through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.
"I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully and I have done
everything the Army has asked me to do," said Sgt. 1st Class Willie Buckels, a
truck master with the 296th Transportation Company. Buckels served in the Army
Reserves for 27 years, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and the first Gulf
War. "Now my whole idea about the U.S. Army has changed. I am treated like a
third-class citizen."
Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been trying to get
doctors to find out why he has intense pain in the side of his abdomen since
doubling over in pain there.
After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has accepted 20 percent of
his benefits for bad knees and is going home to his family in Mississippi.
"They have not found out what my side is doing yet, but they are still trying,"
Buckels said.
One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of
the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq,
approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard
are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy
field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses.
The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls "medical
hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and what benefits
-- if any -- they should get as a result.
Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an appointment
without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks or months without
getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.
The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are getting better
treatment while troops who serve in the National Guard or Army Reserve are left to
wallow in medical hold.
"It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and Reserves," said
one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which she developed
a serious heart condition and strange skin ailment.
A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart public affairs
officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta were not returned.
Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical
hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of
strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops.
They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries
and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.
Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular,
gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning.
They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around
60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.
Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt
to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between
otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall.
The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no
screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have
to buy their own toilet paper.
They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.
"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and
asked that his name not be used.
That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden
onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He
shakes uncontrollably.
He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a
pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army
gave him.
"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I
did not have a problem until I got those shots."
First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the
296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the Iraqis as
they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he was healthy
before the war; he could run two miles in 17 minutes at 48 years old.
But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness of breath;
vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the anthrax vaccine may have
hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.
Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself looking at
shotguns recently and thought about suicide.
Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block
barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that no more doctor
appointments are available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said
he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the Army Reserves.
"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army," Mosley said.
Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army soldiers get to see
doctors, while National Guard and Army Reserve troops wait.
"The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated first and they put
us on hold," said another soldier who returned from Iraq six weeks ago with a
serious back injury. He has gotten to see a doctor only two times since he
got back, he said.
Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he has had real
trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he suffered in Iraq. "There are
not enough doctors. They are overcrowded and they can't perform the surgeries
that have to be done," that soldier said. "Look at these mattresses. It hurts
just to sit on them," he said, gesturing to the bunks. "There are people here
who got back in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It is
putting a lot on these families."
The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves.
In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone of the
military.
"Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on terror," Bush
said. "And you're making your state and your country proud." |
