Nothing but the best for our troops

August 24, 2006

I hear plenty of talk from the right about supporting the troops, but talk is cheap.

Congress appears ready to slash funding for the research and treatment of brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, an injury that military scientists describe as a signature wound of the Iraq war.

House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense appropriation bill contain $7 million for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center — half of what the center received last fiscal year.

Proponents of increased funding say they are shocked to see cuts in the treatment of bomb blast injuries in the midst of a war.

“I find it basically unpardonable that Congress is not going to provide funds to take care of our soldiers and sailors who put their lives on the line for their country,” says Martin Foil, a member of the center’s board of directors. “It blows my imagination.”

The Brain Injury Center saw its budget grow modestly since 2001, but in 2006, the center devoted to treating and understanding war-related brain injuries will no longer get the support it has requested. Asked for an explanation, a spokesperson for the Senate Appropriations Committee said lawmakers “would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities.” The Republican spokesperson added that it’s “such a tight fiscal year.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

George Zitnay, co-founder of the center, testified on the Hill in May that even in instances in which body armor saves troops’ lives, it leaves many with brain damage. “Traumatic brain injury is the signature injury of the war on terrorism,” he testified.

And how much money did Zitnay request for the Brain Injury Center? A relatively paltry $19 million. Senate Dems endorsed the request; Senate Republican leaders concluded it’s “a tight fiscal year.”

Let’s make this painfully clear to the public: the exact same GOP leaders who believe we can afford to eliminate the cost of the estate tax, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, also believe $19 million for a brain-injury center for troops wounded in war is too high a price.

I keep hearing a rumor about one party being considered “pro-military.” Remind me which party that is?

Not the fart-based party.

  • I so want this nightmare to end.

    Still, there’s an easy argument to be made in January that we should raise taxes on living billionaires and dead millionaires so that we can once again afford good medical care for America’s wounded soldiers.

  • I know we can find some funds in Alaska that would more than offset the costs of the Brain injury center at Walter Reed. This had better be a campaign issue on every anti-war , cut and run, redeploy, don;t attack Iran, candidate on the ballot in November!

  • Maybe we should give a couple billionaires brain injuries and see what happens to their budget.

  • Definitely should compare this to the cost of the bridge to nowhere, and/or Cheney’s Haliburton profits.

  • With the population of WWII veterans dying off, the Veterans Administration was losing clients and facilities (or at least justifications for them). Boy George II’s war of choice in Iraq is making up the difference very quickly. Soon, no WWII vet will have to travel hours to a VA hospital for treatment. He’ll just have to wait hours to see the doctors so busy with Iraq War victums.

    Sucks either way you cut it.

  • a spokesperson for the Senate Appropriations Committee said lawmakers “would have loved to have funded it, but there were just so many priorities.” The Republican spokesperson added that it’s “such a tight fiscal year.”

    It’s quite simple, really. The DVBIC is located at Walter Reed in Washington, DC. With “so many priorities” claiming funding (i.e., bringing home the pork and the political presitige and jobs that go with it in the military-industrial complex), without a Senator from DC to make it his/her pork priority, something like this naturally ends up on the bottom of the pile because it doesn’t politically benefit anyone. It’s the way the Republican Congress works – wounded soldiers be damned.

  • Spendy whining liberals. Like having a functioning brain is some entitlement? What, you think you get more rights than an embryo or something? Godless commies. You just need to toughen up. If George W. Bush can serve two terms as President of the divinely-blessed United States of America without a functioning brain, why can’t these wounded soldiers get by at Wal-Mart or wherever? Sheesh. Next you’ll say we should actually prevent them from getting injureed in the first place with like, proper equipment or something. Do you know what that stuff costs? Look, I’ve got a business to run here and I deserve a break. I can’t help it if their parents weren’t as productive as mine. They chose to go to the military, and God bless those troops, but really, most of ’em would have been criminals in my neighborhood anyway and really, they go there because they like that adrenaline and all, so they know the risks. So don’t bother me with this drain on my taxes for your wimpy doctor stuff — aren’t doctors those same folks that kill babies? — I need to go send my COO to send the EVP to send a manager or two down to the loading dock and tell those macacas to work faster. Time is money and all, and the corporate jet is waiting to take my mistresses and I to the yacht for a long weekend. Don’t worry, my boy will be running the company. See, my kid doesn’t need any of your brain injury support nonsense.

  • What truly boggles the mind is that so many people in the military keep voting for these sons-of-bitches. And it has ever been so! Remember the “promise” of medical care for life given the troops in WWII? The Agent Orange fiasco in ‘Nam? Gulf War Syndrome, anyone? And now, men and women with brain injuries from Shrubby’s little adventure (and evidently there are scads of them because of better body armor and the fact that the med teams can save a lot of people who previously would have died of their wounds). But the Repugs wave the flag and too many military types vote for them (not my dad, though – a Marine vet of Korea and a full-time Air National Guardsman and a lifelong Democrat. Too poor and too damn smart to vote for the filthy ‘pugs).

    It’s time we stopped the Repugs from waving their damned flags and broadcast this far and wide. They’re not just hogs, they’re traitors dancing on the graves of our troops, and we need to find a way to make the troops wake up, sit up, and take notice.

  • …in [April] the Senate [took] up a record $106.5 billion emergency spending bill that includes $72.4 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…The bill is the fifth emergency defense request since the Iraq invasion in March 2003… link

    I guess mentally wounded soldiers don’t amount to much of an emergency in GOP politics.

  • If Bush doesn’t have much of a mind, then why should anyone else?
    He has little personal experience with higher brain functioning, so the Brain Injury Center is not a priority. Besides, smart and well functioning minds make Shurbby feel insecure.

  • Is there a smoking gun that we can use in key senate races to bolster the Dem candidates chances against the GOP incumbents? Obviously, I’m thinking about Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Arizona, Pennslyvania, Montana. You’d think this would be immediate campaign advertising (direct mail and/or TV/Radio) material.

  • Remind me again, how many millions in foreign aid just got approved for rebuilding the parts of Lebanon smashed to rubble by American smart bombs that were rush-delivered to Israel at fire-sale knockdowns?

    The Bush administration is already reaping a PR gain from the Iraq war, in that body armour is permitting a significant number of soldiers to “survive” cataclysmic battle damage. This keeps the casualty figures misleadingly low, in that nearly all the seriously wounded would be dead – except that their armour safeguarded the body core that is necessary for being technically alive. Most people being optimists at heart, the figures of the wounded don’t rate the sober melancholy deaths do. It’s easier to believe the war is going reasonably well if casualties are low.

    It ignores the human wrecks left behind who would be dead without their body armour. I wonder how many of them would prefer death to the way they’re living now. Not supporting them after all the crocodile tears shed over “our brave boys” is unconscionable in the face of all the other stupid ways money has been thrown away, and I hope it won’t be let pass.

  • Dammit this is shameful.
    Bush has given all the governments money to Iraq and Halliburton.
    If you dumb as= Americans don’t know Bush has broken this country in more ways then one .
    Shame on you.

  • Dammit this is shameful.
    Bush has given all the governments money to Iraq and Halliburton.
    If you dumb as= Americans don’t know Bush has broken this country in more ways then one .
    Shame on you.
    This country is losing a battlion a month,

    500to 600 soldiers dead or wounded.

  • This is a perfect example of republican hypocracy that should be POUNCED upon by every democrat in a congressional race. Heavy hitting democrats should call a news conference publicly SHAMING these corrupt, greedy sleazeballs. This is a great opportunity, let’s hope that someone with some gonads on the democratic side capitalizes on this.

  • Congressional Dems please, please make an issue of this. Somebody got an email address for Rahm Emmanuel?

  • This isn’t a real surprise, the real surprise is that many in the military still buy the old, tired meme that the GOP cares about the military. They care about the military because they like to parade their macho patriotism, many are addicted to the glory they percieve war brings to them personally, and because they like to feel they look and feel good when rubbing shoulders with soldiers – especially those that have gone to war.

  • You can’t expect the brain-dead to have any sympathy for those merely brain-injured, now can you?

  • ***canon fodder…***
    ——————————————koreyel

    I know that youm probably meant “cannon”—but since we’re talking about the Cult of Republican’tism here, then “canan” works nicely.

    Oh, and Z,
    ***…the corporate jet is waiting to take my mistresses and I to the yacht for a long weekend. Don’t worry, my boy will be running the company.***

    If I didn’t know better, I’d counter by saying that come January, you could hop a Greyhound to take your scrawny-looking, flea-bitten dogs to the garbage barge for the day—while the spawn was sleeping on a park bench across the street from the company.

    This is an issue that can break a campaign. It can demolish a whole herd of campaigns. It has “Tsunami” written all over it….

  • So when will we start seeing “Support Our War Profiteers” magnets?
    They sure as hell don’t give a fuck about the “Troops”.

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