Are you kidding me? In a time of war, Bush allows our VA to run a shortfall which will threaten the health, welfare, and security of the very people who he puts in to harm's way without cause. Despicable. And, that may not be the most revolting part:
"This shortfall results from either deliberate misdirection or gross incompetence by this administration and the Department of Veteran Affairs," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington. ... Murray had urged lawmakers to give the VA an extra $2 billion this spring, while they assembled an $82 billion emergency spending bill on war and homeland security, but the VA said it didn't need any more money.
Senator Murray had specifically requested 1.9MM in additional funds for the VA during the Iraq emergency spending bill this spring - this spring. But the Bush administration fought against that...if the money was not lining the pockets of defense contractors, they wanted nothing to do with it. So only months ago, Bush rejects this money for veterans, yesterday the VA announces that they are in a Billion dollar hole, and Bush stands at an army base last night proving that he's a "war" President. Ugh.
In this NPR report, the VA chairman Jim Nicholson admitted that he'd known of the shortage since April, but did not divulge that information to Congress.
The Bush administration KNEW they were short in their support of veterans, they KNEW that there was a proposal on the table for additional funding for veterans, and they CHOSE not to support our veterans.
And Bush stood there last night and talked about a link between Iraq and the September 11th tragedy...a link that he has never be able to provide any evidence of, and a link that has been de-bunked over, and over, and over... So, first it was WMD (which wasn't true), then it was Saddam is bad (which was true, but there were lots of other tyrants that are bad that we don't invade), then it was humanitarian (which was difficult to argue when under our version of aid, Baghdad doesn't have water for three weeks at a time), then it was democracy (until it turned out that it was evident that it would be an fundamentalist-islamic leaning democracy), and now the justification is to combat the hornet's nest of terrorism (of course, it has only become this because Bush went to war in the first place).
He's got no reasons for his war, but apparently, he's got a reason to reject funding of our veterans - what kind of priorities are those?
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