Failing America's heroes

Mortimer B. Zuckerman is Chairman and Publisher of The Daily News.

Failing America's heroes

The commitment Americans make to those who voluntarily put themselves in harm's way to fight our wars is a mark of our character. It is reflected in two ways. The first is the effort to save the wounded. The success is unparalleled. Some 98% of the wounded now survive, a mortality rate half that of previous wars and down 22% even when compared with the first Gulf War, thanks to rapid evacuation, better body armor, fast-clot bandages, better tourniquets and access to fresh whole blood that saves many soldiers from bleeding to death.Beyond that, there is a greater understanding than there was just a few years ago of the mental stress of combat, much aggravated in Iraq, where our soldiers face an enemy who masquerades in civilian clothes and bogus uniforms and blows himself up in order to kill and maim. Posttraumatic stress disorder has a debilitating effect on the brain's chemistry that sometimes lasts the rest of a person's life.

For all the great advances in battlefield medicine, however, America comes up short when it comes to follow-on assistance to our men and women who bear arms.

If an American in military uniform is killed, his or her family receives a one-time, tax-exempt death gratuity of $12,000 and rent-free government housing for 180 days or its equivalent. There is a special group life insurance program that could provide as much as an additional $250,000 if the serviceman or his family subscribes to the program. Compare this with the millions of dollars that the families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks received.

Then there is the Survivor Benefit Plan, which pays the spouse of a military person killed in action 55% of his or her retirement pay - an amount already so low that it qualifies many military families for food stamps.

Recently, the law was revamped to allow spouses to remarry after age 57 and keep this minimal compensation.

For those who seek to return to ordinary life, the compensation is similarly mean. Injured or ill veterans must submit to a complex set of reviews before medical boards that decide whether they qualify for financial help and how much they'll receive. How much should a vet receive for trying to live partially or fully blind, deaf, limbless, disfigured or brain-damaged? Much less than you would assume. Think of coping without a hip and leg, for instance, on around $12,000 a year.

On top of this, the Department of Veterans Affairs is overwhelmed. It provides benefits and care for approximately 5million American veterans. Typically overburdened during war, it now has a backlog of some 300,000 claims, on top of having to deal with 150,000 National Guard and reserve veterans who also have become eligible because of service in Iraq.

Meanwhile, those from the National Guard and the reserves who are injured on duty must navigate a system suited more to full-time soldiers. Most are required to stay on military bases to get government medical treatment and to collect their active-duty salary, as well as finish the evaluation that determines whether they return to duty or leave with severance and disability payments.

This means they are away from home for way too long. The VA should allow part-timers to receive active-duty pay while they are being treated at hospitals and VA sites closer to their homes and, if necessary, to be treated by their own doctors with appropriately reasonable medical insurance.

There is some good news, however. The VA has been working hard to reduce the backlog of soldiers' claims and to cut waiting times for medical appointments. There also has been an increase in veterans' disability compensation rates - up to $2,300 a month, or $27,600 a year - for 100% disabled veterans without dependents. But President Bush proposed to cut the VA's 2005 budget request by $1.2 billion, over the objections of the secretary of veterans affairs, and to reduce the number of VA staff who handle benefit claims at the very time when the number and complexity of such claims are increasing.

This is, to put it plainly, outrageous.

Our military personnel should not be treated as second-class citizens. Those wounded and disabled while fighting the war on terrorism for the rest of us will need special help to cope with the scars and disabilities inflicted by a savage, amoral enemy.

Soldiers who volunteered to leave their loved ones to defend the rest of us deserve better, much better


Another level of Bush's and the administrations compassion. At the same time we are spending $4.5 billion a month in our war in Iraq.