This needs to be Stopped Today!
The only thing in this story that pisses me off more than the posers sucking off the system with false veteran claims is the unbelievable incompetence at the VA that allows it to happen.
Here’s the back story; apparently the Department of Veterans Affairs is giving benefits to former POWs who were never POWs. The incompetence is so outrageous because the Department of Defense has the list of POWs from every recent war posted on an open access website:
http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/
Yes folks, it’s a real DoD website and it can be accessed by anyone…even the VA.
There are only 21 surviving POWs from the first Gulf War in 1991, the Department of Defense says. Yet the Department of Veterans Affairs is paying disability benefits to 286 service members it says were taken prisoner during that conflict, according to data released by VA to The Associated Press.
And this is not just some dumbass hanging around the “menopause lounge” preening for whatever he can lure up with a great war story and seven gin tonics. No, these ass clowns are actually getting benefits!
A similar discrepancy arises with Vietnam POWs. Only 661 officially recognized prisoners returned from that war alive — and about 100 of those have since died, according to Defense figures. But 966 purported Vietnam POWs are getting disability payments, the VA told AP.
That means that half of the folks getting benefits from the Vietnam War are frauds! We’re not talking chump change either good people.
For one Korean War veteran, a made-up story helped to ensure more than $400,000 in benefits before his lies were discovered.
But back to the unbelievable incompetence at the VA that led to this widespread fraud that not only dishonors me and many of you who have served; we are paying for this!
Would anyone believe that I developed PTSD from my space shuttle mission when I was an E5? Of course not; no idiot would ever believe that a SGT was ever on the space shuttle. But that does not deter other outrageous and obviously fraudulent claims being supported by the VA.
Four women Vietnam vets blamed disabilities on their time as prisoners — even though there’s no record of female POWs in that war.
And how does one commit this gross fraud? Fairly simple actually. Make up a bullshit story, cry in front of some dumbass shrink and bingo, benefits for life!
I know for a fact that PTSD is real. I don’t personally suffer but I know a bunch of good men who fight this demon daily.
Do you know why PTSD is so often not diagnosed leaving veterans to try to fight an unwinnable battle? Because many veterans will not report the symptoms.
Do you know why they don’t report it? Because so many assholes like these have filed obviously fake claims and an honorable veteran is often reluctant to be categorized with so many posers.
Here is how easy it is:
Normally a veteran’s “lay testimony” about traumatizing events — or stressors — is not considered proof when applying for disability with the Veterans Benefits Administration, or VBA, the agency’s claims arm. However, the regulations add: “If the evidence establishes that the veteran was a prisoner-of-war … the veteran’s lay testimony alone may establish the occurrence of the claimed in-service stressor.”
So, if a veteran told a VA psychiatrist that he had been a POW, and that story, true or not, formed the basis of the doctor’s post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis, what does that mean?
“I would probably accept the paperwork,” says Richard Allen of Wichita, Kan., who retired from the VBA in January after 25 years as a claims specialist.
Apparently the VA’s incompetence is not shared by the Navy who finds it fairly simple to check a readily available DoD list that is online for anyone to read!
And POWs are entitled to an annual evaluation at the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies in Pensacola, Fla., travel and other expenses paid. That applies only to those on the Defense list, says Dr. Robert E. Hain, executive director of the Navy-run facility.
This is an unbelievable outrage! I will propose a solution to this situation in my next post. Right now I need a drink…or two.
Category: Politics
PTSD was and is a disease/mental disability made up by whacko Dr’s so they could bleed the VA in their civilian practice. Thousand of people are ‘on the draw’ when maybe half a dozen really are whacko because of the war. I served from 1959 through 1980 and spent 5 1/2 years in the theatre during the Vietnam war (12 months in country)and watched the whacko Dr’s build them a customer base.
During the 1950s almost everyone in the VA was also a veteran. Easy enough, was pretty well true for most of the US general population – either a vet or immediate family.
From the late 1960s, and escalating throughout the 1970s, the VA workforce was increasingly drawn from people who had never served. This may have been understandable and unavoidable in the case of physicians, nurses and medical technologists. In the case of administrative and support personnel in hospitals and clinics, it is offensive. And in the benefits and ratings sections is is a bleeping obscenity. I’m speaking from personal experience as a seven year VA manager (post active duty).
Too many of these people have a minimal regard for “their” veterans, seeing the whole thing as just a job. The VA ethos is to avoid controversy or unhappiness, and that means the pressure is to give the applicant whatever he wants and avoid a fuss. Sadly, the problem is made worse by too many politicians’ constituent service offices, and service reps from the Veterans Orgnizatiosn as well. Too much empire-building and client-base expanding going on. And of course the “its not my money I’m giving away” routine. And too many feel inhibited from saying “no”, by their own lack of service. Its easier to say no to an undeserving applicant if you, yourself are a vet.
Amongst the mental health professionals, fresh from an academic cloister, there are too many who not only cannot understand a military ethos, but who actively resent it, and see all vets as poor, emotionally crippled wrecks, best turned into passive wards of the state.
Then there is the increasing role in the VA of foreign born and trained professionals from third world countries, sometimes with ambivalent feelings about the veterans they have been hired to treat.
But of course, if The TOTUS’s priority is to spend our decreasing resources on flooding foreigners into the USA, and supporting our own third generation “sick, lame, and lazy”, then vets will be expendable. Hell they probably vote wrong anyway.
I disagree about the PTSD being not being a mental issue. Because of the things that one goes through in combat can cause, it would not be surprising how people would have issues. Just becuase people abuse the treatment and or fake it does not make it any less. We do not write of most medical conditions just because people abuse sick call, why would we view PTSD different becuase when people fake it?
Rurik-
Nice post.
“Amongst the mental health professionals, fresh from an academic cloister, there are too many who not only cannot understand a military ethos, but who actively resent it, and see all vets as poor, emotionally crippled wrecks, best turned into passive wards of the state.”
And that is sooo true from what I have seen myself. That’s why the military needs more who have been there, done that in that arena. I know PTSD exists and I also know how many SFB are bleeding the system. Including a former unit cohort and it fucking pisses me off. I want to let her know what a fraud she is, but it didn’t stop her and the mess of bureaucracy in the system will let it be.
Hell, it’s twenty 24 years later and I could claim something because it’s documented. Bottom line, I am healthy and I can afford private care. I would feel like a buddy fucker extraordinaire if I took it from someone else who had less but really needed it.
I have a copy of my dd14, so if I were one of those who tells about my war efforts, I could at least prove I served, and have an “I was there” medal to prove it. But I confess my butt was firmly seated in my chair on the USS Taluga (AO-62) for my entire stink (knew it was a typo of ‘stint’, but I just couldn’t correct it) in Viet Nam.
But, I confess that I really don’t like pretenders. Seems like everybody who calls a talk radio show was a Seal, Ranger, or Special Forces type person. Just wierd, you know?
Scrapiron, and what did you do those 12 months “in country”? PTSD (shell shock, etc….whatever any era wants to call it) is real and affects the minds of lots of folks in different ways.
Apologies to the forum. I didn’t realize this thread was three years old when I posted. I was just reading through things and caught a post with a theme that I thought needed a response.