Despite all the star spangled rhetoric and wrapping themselves in the American flag, the reality is that when our troops come home from Iraq shot up, missing limbs, their brains fried and their genitals mangled, they are discarded like so much waste material by the Bush Administration. They are denied their disability benefits, turned away from the Veterans Administration and even forced to return their signing bonuses! Take the case of Jon Town, for example. In 2004 he was standing in a doorway in Ramadi when a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old to the floor where he lay blacked out in the rubble.
From an article in "The Nation," April 9, 2007:
Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.
But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: they claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.
Many other soldiers wounded in Iraq have been diagnosed as having a personality disorder and thus prevented from collecting benefits. The reason for cheating them out of a lifetime of disability and medical benefits is to save the government billions in expenses. The Department of Veterans Affairs doesn't have to provide medical care to soldiers dismissed with personality disorder according to Regulation 635-200, Chapter 5-13: "Separation Because of Personality Disorder." In addition a soldier dismissed under 5-13 must give back a portion of his re-enlistment bonus if he hasn't served out his contract which he wouldn't have if he was wounded on the battlefield and can't fight any more. Consequently, many injured vets find out that they owe the Army several thousand dollars on their day of discharge.
Soldiers are being routinely misled and tricked into going along with 5-13. They are being told they will get out quicker and retain their benefits when in fact by signing onto 5-13, they are inadvertently giving them up. According to Russell Terry, founder of Iraq War Veterans Organization, military doctors are pushing the personality disorder diagnosis and trying to prove that the soldiers' problems pre-existed their service in Iraq, refusing to acknowledge evidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and physical traumas which would allow them to collect disability and medical benefits. Terry wonders, if all these soldiers had pre-existing conditions, how they got into the military in the first place.
In the last six years the Army has diagnosed and discharged more than 5600 soldiers because of personality disorder according to the Defense Department. A completely disabled soldier receives about $44,000 a year. More than 22,500 soldiers have been dismissed with personality disorder over the whole Defense Department in the last 6 years. The military could be saving upwards of $8 billion over the course of a soldier's lifetime by discharging them with personality disorder according to some estimates. Each year the VA spends an average of $5000. in medical care per veteran. Since personality disorder discharged veterans receive no VA medical benefits, the military saves $4.5 billion over the course of the veteran' lifetimes of those disaharged with personality disorder.
Town, after being promised disability and medical benefits, found out later after signing 5-13 that he would get neither. In addition he had to give back the bulk of his $15,000. signing bonus with the result that after leaving the service he owed the Army $3000! Town finds his diagnosis strange because the Diagnostic Manual appears to preclude cases like his. It says that a pattern of erratic behavior cannot be labeled a "personality disorder" if it's from a head injury. Town asserts that his hearing loss, headaches and anger all began with the rocket attack that knocked him unconscious.
Soldiers with no previous psychiatric history are being diagnosed with personality disorder after they are injured in Iraq and subsequently being forced or cajoled into leaving the military with no benefits. Specialist William Wooldridge in similar circumstances said: "They put me out on the street to rot, and if I had left things the way they were, there would have been no way I could have survived." The way they use personality disorder to diagnose and discharge, he says, "it's like a mental rape. That's the only way I can describe it."
Today Jon Town is home in Findlay, Ohio with no job, no prospects and plenty of time on his hands. He's still fighting to get a proper diagnosis of his injuries so he can get properly treated. His nightmares have been waning but most of his problems still persist. "I have my good days and my bad days," he says. "It all depends on whether I wake up in Findlay or in Iraq."
So there it is - the Bush policy of support for our troops: chew'em up, spit'em out and then short change'em.
