Chapter 34,932 of "Your Veteran's Administration in action." - Suicide.

One of the quieter examples of not only Obama's failures (of which there are uncounted numbers) but the failures of past Administrations as well is the Veteran's Administration.

Much has been written about it lately.... relatively speaking... but nothing constructive has been done.

We're still dying while we await help.

We're still wasting billions on programs of failure, such as "Veteran's Choice," in which increasingly, it seems that the billions wasted go to contractors, and many of us have no choice at all, except to wait... and wait... and wait.

A few days ago, I underwent the 3rd surgery on my right little finger.  As far as I know, it went well, although there's nothing weirder in my medical experience then having a surgeon take out the wire that had been holding your finger together from the last surgery... using what sounded like wire cutters and pliers... hearing the same things I hear when I'm working on my old camaro.

While others may have a different story to tell, I have no real fault to lay at the feet of those actually practicing medicine.

But the bureaucracy of the VA?  That's another thing altogether.

The records being hidden or trashed to avoid dealing with veteran's disability claims.  The records just being thrown into dumpsters.  The men and women waiting... and waiting... and waiting... for the help that was promised to us as a condition to sign the dotted line, or when we were yanked out of our lives, our families and our communities to go fight somebody, or feed the troops or put them back together when they were blown apart.

As the need grew, so did the VA bureaucracy.  But now that the need has exploded, we are being funneled into increasingly insufficient facilities, where infrastructure and staff don't even come close to keeping up with the demand, meaning that the VA itself is constantly over stressed, and the medical professionals within are facing burnout because of the unrealistic demands the system places on them.

People look around... they hear the stories... they hear of a veteran committing suicide in a VA parking lot because they can't won't help them.

They're shocked.  They're stunned.  They may even be hurt... they may talk about it at the dinner table or around the water-cooler.

Those foolishly supporting Obamacare, who have yet to feel it's tender mercies, typically don't care about such things... much like the president doesn't care about the military he commands but never served in...

But I care.  I care because the entirety of the VA, a monolithic cancer on our society, has long since lost its way.  And not the least of those failings is in the ongoing agony of veteran suicide.

Many more of us have been slaughtered by the scourge of suicide than by the Iranians that Obama is bending over for.

And the Administration doesn't care about that... or suicide... as much as they care about Obamaphones or polluting rivers such as their latest effort in Colorado.

Well, I care.  That's why I'm writing this.

The NY Times writes about this in a lengthy, yet factual article on the subject.

Read it.  And heed it.  And this is a part of why I worked so hard and long to talk my son out of joining the Marines.

Not because the Marines are "bad."  But because they're far too often thrown away over idiotic Rules of Engagement, by social programs like women-in-combat idiocy and homosexuality, fake budgetary constraints and a lack of the Administration's will to actually win this conflict.

It has to matter I told him.  You coming back in a box... or in pieces... or in a mind full of mush... has to matter.  Your sacrifice has to make a difference.

And under this clown calling the shots?

No way.

Now, we die every day.  And if you haven't heard about this issue... if you wonder where our congressional, do-nothing, govern by press release manikin is on any of this, don't bother.  On these and so many other issues, the empty suits "representing us" in Washington DC are utterly worthless.

None of them care about veterans any more than the president.

In Unit Stalked by Suicide, Veterans Try to Save One Another 

Members of a Marine battalion that served in a restive region in Afghanistan
have been devastated by the deaths of comrades and frustrated by the V.A.
By DAVE PHILIPPS SEPT. 19, 2015

After the sixth suicide in his old battalion, Manny Bojorquez sank onto his bed. With a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam beside him and a pistol in his hand, he began to cry. 

He had gone to Afghanistan at 19 as a machine-gunner in the Marine Corps. In the 18 months since leaving the military, he had grown long hair and a bushy mustache. It was 2012. He was working part time in a store selling baseball caps and going to community college while living with his parents in the suburbs of Phoenix. He rarely mentioned the war to friends and family, and he never mentioned his nightmares. 

He thought he was getting used to suicides in his old infantry unit, but the latest one had hit him like a brick: Joshua Markel, a mentor from his fire team, who had seemed unshakable. In Afghanistan, Corporal Markel volunteered for extra patrols and joked during firefights. Back home Mr. Markel appeared solid: a job with a sheriff’s office, a new truck, a wife and time to hunt deer with his father. But that week, while watching football on TV with friends, he had wordlessly gone into his room, picked up a pistol and killed himself. He was 25. 

Still reeling from the news, Mr. Bojorquez surveyed the old baseball posters on the walls of his childhood bedroom and the sun-bleached body armor hanging on his bedpost. 

Then he took a long pull from the bottle. 

“If he couldn’t make it,” he recalled thinking to himself, “what chance do I have?” 

He pressed the loaded pistol to his brow and pulled the trigger. 

Mr. Bojorquez, 27, served in one of the hardest hit military units in Afghanistan, the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment. In 2008, the 2/7 deployed to a wild swath of Helmand Province. Well beyond reliable supply lines, the battalion regularly ran low on water and ammunition while coming under fire almost daily. During eight months of combat, the unit killed hundreds of enemy fighters and suffered more casualties than any other Marine battalion that year. 

Much more....