Shit On The Troops!

Why? For god's sake WHY do right-wing politicians always display such sickeningly hypocritical, disgusting behaviour? Why do they always express their militarism, their love of war and their devotion to "the troops" and then turn around and shit all over "the troops"  when they get damaged and can't kill poor foreigners any more?

First we had the harpercons going through the health records of veterans' rights activist Pat Strogan, looking for evidence of psychiatric problems so that they could smear him and neutralize his efforts to get adequate health care for injured vets. Strogan is trying to change the way that injured veterans are getting rail-roaded by the government, given lump-sum payments for injuries and losing permanent disability pensions. These lump-sum payments were part of a stupid attempt to contain costs of caring for wounded veterans which (mysteriously if you're a dumb-ass) sky-rocketed after over a decade of combat in Afghanistan.

Another way to contain costs is to simply deny veterans disability payments at all with no explanation. Force them to jump through hoops and engage in a lengthy bureaucratic-legal WAR if they really want to be compensated for their sacrifices:

In a review of response letters like those sent to Mr. White, the nation’s ombudsman for veterans, has harshly criticized the federal department for failing to properly explain why some soldiers have been denied disability coverage, thereby making it difficult for them to launch an appeal. Guy Parent says that all the letters reviewed by his office had problems with clarity – and 15 per cent gave no explanation at all for the department’s decision.

“If veterans are sending us a letter that we can’t even understand, then there is a problem,” Mr. Parent said in an interview. Without a clear explanation, he observed, how can a soldier know the next steps to appeal the decision?

Benefits for disabled veterans have been an ongoing controversy in Canada, leading to a class-action suit against Ottawa by former soldiers whose benefits, they argue, have been unfairly reduced. Previously, Mr. Parent’s office has discovered that Veterans Affairs failed to tell the most severely injured soldiers properly about the financial support available to them – in that case, the ombudsman found that half of the 1,800 veterans assessed with a 98-per-cent disability were never told that they were entitled to additional support beyond what Veterans Affairs provided.

The harpercon militarist chicken-hawks tried to treat disability pensions as income so that they could claw them back at tax-time and fought tooth and nail to prevent this chance to attack veterans from being taken from them. After all, you don't want Canadians to think that all you have to do is join the military, lose a limb, and after that, take a nice leisurely limo-ride down Easy Street, right? These disability payments might add up to hundreds of millions of dollars! I mean, sure, you can throw BILLIONS down a rat-hole, to prop-up a narco-pedophile-warlord dictatorship, but to actually spend an extra portion of that on top to cover the pain and suffering of the soldiers you sent to support said dictatorship? That sort of largesse could bankrupt the country! (Or something like that. It's hard to get a handle on the absolute shit-headdery of a harpercon's thought processes.)

Unfortunately for the harpercons, a federal court ruled against them, and injured veterans get to keep their disability pensions. Perhaps the scum-bag harper has the brains not to appeal the ruling?

ARGHH!!!

You know, I started this post on Sunday, May 6th, as a response to Sabina Becker's "Wankers of the Week" post. Fuck-face Peter MacKay was one of last week's wankers, for his cuts to mental health services for the military and their families. Here's a guy who uses the Canadian Forces as his own private chauffeur service, and to play soldier when he wants to impress obnoxious assholes like Don Cherry. And then, while his illegitimate government pisses money away on all sorts of stupid shit, he attacks funding for veterans' mental health. Yeah, nothing like some homeless vets suffering from PTSD to show your support for the troops! It's just so fucking typical of right-wing sleazeballs! WHY is it so typical? WHY do they make it so easy for us to condemn them? What is it in their make-up to be such complete hypocritical assholes?

Like, what is it about being a "conservative" that attracts fucking moronic cry-babies like the dipshit Rob Anders? When the stupid lunkhead fell asleep at a veterans' committee meeting presentation from two vets on veterans' homelessness and suffering, and was criticized by them for it, he started ranting about how they were "NDP hacks" (and fans of Vladimer Putin [????]) just out to make him look bad. Like, how do you get that stupid, that hypocritical, that ridiculous, and there's a political party just sitting there asking you to join it?

And, the reason that I typed the heading "ARGHH!" is this: I'm about to get started finishing this post that I started on Sunday, and in my newsfeed I see "Soldier defies order and speaks up over military health services."

Stoesz had been ordered by a Canadian Forces superior not to do media interviews, but he said he is devastated by the lack of support.
"They broke me in the fight after, in the dealing with my own country," he told CBC News on Monday.
"The country that I fought for now has broken me."
Stoesz returned to Canada in 2008 after surviving three bomb attacks in Afghanistan and suffering speech and balance problems.
He said he is worn down by the amount of red tape he has needed to go through to get counselling, physiotherapy and other medical care.
Stoesz said he had to wait for more than three years to get surgery

Again I ask these harpercon scum: WHY do you have to make it so easy for us? This sort of shit writes itself! "Chicken-hawk war-mongers who condemn the peace-movement for hating 'the troops' turn out to REALLY hate the troops and nickel-and-dime them after they're wounded."

What's as infuriating of course, are the military people who fail to process this sickening behaviour and who still vote for these fuckers.