Tammy Duckworth, dunce
I always get in trouble when i write about combat veteran amputee Tammy Duckworth, but usually when I write about the woman, it’s because she does such stupid shit and says such stupid shit that i can’t help myself because she infuriates me so much. For example, COB6 sent me this link from Bryan Preston at Pajamas Media a veteran himself, who writes about a visit that Duckworth made to wounded veterans in Illinois where Duckworth once served as the director of the state veteran agency;
One of the veterans at the session, Jason Wheeler, 39, of Champaign, was injured eight years ago in training at Fort Polk, La. In a wheelchair, he still suffers from a nerve condition that makes it feels as if his hands and legs “are on fire,” he said.
“There’s not the same help for the guys who were injured stateside,” Wheeler said.
“This unfortunately is the result of dollars. It’s money,” Duckworth said. “I think that we as a nation would want to take care of all of our veterans. But it means that we’re going to have be willing to get the folks in Washington to spend the dollars on all of our veterans. And as long as there aren’t enough dollars, then they are force to prioritize veterans.
“And combat-connected, disabled veterans are the highest priority. That is why when you and I go to the VA they will take care of me first because I am combat-connected,” noted Duckworth, who lost both of her legs when the helicopter she was co-piloting in Iraq in 2004 was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
“The difference is how did you get hurt. Unfortunately that’s just the way that … it’s a bureaucracy that was put into place in previous administrations in order to prioritize veterans because they didn’t spend enough to take care of everyone,” Duckworth told Wheeler.
Stupid shit, no? If Duckworth had actually paid attention during her military career, she’d know that training for war is just as dangerous as actual war. I can’t count the number of times we evacuated soldiers from the training area, some dead, some maimed for life – just as dead and just as maimed as a combat casualty. Requiring the same long term care as a similar combat injury. And the DVA knows that.
Duckworth, the DVA official who should know how to correctly answer the soldier, told him a lie. There is no priority system for the geographical location of the occurrence of an injury. An injured veteran gets the same level of care for any injury. Duckworth should have known that, she probably knew that. As Preston points out, it was probably a “Blame Bush” moment.
It should have been a Blame Duckworth moment since she was supervising veteran care in Illinois before she went to the federal veteran care agency. She might have her ass in a wheelchair, but that’s no excuse to act like her brain has been amputated, too.
Category: Veteran Health Care
If we just assume she’s right, why the hell hasn’t she fixed the problem…isn’t that her job? I know that’s rhetorical because she’s making shit up but how stupid does she think people are?
It always boggles my mind, how someone who has served in the armed forces can turn out so liberal. I dont know about anyone else’s service but mine is pretty much grounded in reality and not in wishful thinking….
What a peace of shit. She is, however, speaking EXACTLY as a member of the current administration. Those in leadership, from POTUS on down, preach that although all are equal, some are more equal than others.
But she’s just taking her cue from the Crapweael in Chief. She’s in charge, so the laws and procedures are whatever she says they are.
She is a ditz, how did she ever become a chopper pilot? I saw her speak at a conference once and truly, I was not impressed or inspired. She also screwed up on the story about the death panel deal a few years back. What’s his name at Fox blew her out of the water. Just another token appointee that doesn’t know what in the hell is going on.
Boy, I’ll bet HE felt better after her visit.
Really, how can she say such stupid crap when it isn’t even true. A veteran gets care, there is no prioritizing in terms of who got hurt where.
There’s no point in letting her out anymore. She makes everyone feel worse.
She lost more than her legs. Lost her common sense too, if she ever had any. Poor excuse for ex-aviator. And, what about being a rotary wing aviator makes her the one for the damned job she is in now? She is no more qualified for this job than Elena Kagan is for the Supreme Court. Sheesh!
You would think she’d know that Service Connected is Service Connected. VA benefits 101. They prioritize, supposedly by Service Connected and Non-Service Connected, but not by who got hurt where and how. Had that been someone in the Bush administration it would have been front page news. Idiot.
Honor and Courage
[…] Walsh: Duckworth not a “true hero” (Updated) July 4th, 2012 Several of you sent this link to us and, truthfully, I was hoping I could avoid writing about it. Not because it’s a (R) vs (D) issue, and it makes the (R) look bad, but because I really don’t like Tammy Duckworth, the veteran double-amputee running for the Congess in Illinois. Aside from the fact that folks from Illinois have told me that she was an incompetent boob while she was Director of Illinois’ Department of Veterans’ Affairs, but also because she was the VoteVets employment advocate when she went to be the Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs in DC. And then, while she was at the DVA, she “selflessly” and publicly volunteered to go back to school while she was getting a full-time paycheck in order to straighten out the mess she and Shinseki had created with Veterans’ Education Benefits. And, oh, yeah, she doesn’t know how her own agency worked. […]