On Veterans Day it is a good time to examine how some of our veterans are not being treated properly. Since 9/11, nearly 11,000 National Guard and Reserve troops have come back from deployments with their job no longer available to them, 20,000 had their pensions cut, and 11,000 lost their health insurance. That is shameful! And this is against the law in most cases. The Department of Labor takes 247 days on average to review cases. The Pentagon apparently did not want the public or the soldiers to know how bad the problem was…so they classified it! I have a close friend who has been deployed in the Middle East 3 times and he has a wife and 2 kids…this failure to support our troops when they return home *really* bothers me.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/kennedy-cleland.html#more
The GAO has a report on this. it is long but detailed:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08229t.pdf
The Washington Post wrote about this. It takes an average of 619 days for veterans complaints to be resolved. In 2005 we had 5302 reservists with cases…and the Justice Department only looked at 111, with only 16 vets getting benefits in the end:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/03/AR2007080301689.html
The Associated Press wrote about this. Reservists returning home from Iraq or Afghanistan find that 23% no longer have their jobs!
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Vets-Returning-to-Work.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
This seems like such a worthy cause–it is making a difference in the lives of soldiers seriosly injured in Iraq. Given the holiday coming up, I thought I should pass this along:
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Check out the new helmet-mounted display for the F-35:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/combat-helmet/f+35-helmet-display-system-to-scare-the-bejeezus-out-of-enemies-260482.php
Gunmen broke into a nuclear power plant in South Africa…it is fortunate that one of the women there had her fiance there and he attacked two of the men despite being shot near his heart and physically attacked by both men. The guy shoved his fiancee under a desk and attacked 2 gunmen…that sure is love!
http://www.pretorianews.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=vn20071109061218448C528585
Apparently this “puke ray” will start being used in California next year:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/coming-soon-to-.html#more
Disney is giving significant help to our intelligence community…apparently there is a lot of overlap between what the Disney “Imagineers” have come up with and what our CIA/FBI/NSA need:
http://public.cq.com/docs/cqw/weeklyreport110-000002604710.html
Apparently one of the tilt/rotor Ospreys caught on fire and its military usefulness is in question:
http://springboarder.blogspot.com/search/label/mv-22
