Vets Group Proves GOP Does Not Support Troops

Re: Vets Group Proves GOP Does Not Support Troops


Mmmmm... ok. Here's how one avowed socialist and anti-war activist (Stan Goff) refers to the founder of the group that put out this "interesting and enlightening resource": "Paul Rieckhoff, a former first-looey in the Reserves who went to Iraq, has now found his political niche as a plant for the Democratic Party, using his outfit's non-profit status to give him plausible deniability."

The IAVA used to be known as "Operation Truth".

http://www.counterpunch.org/goff04022005.html

fishin, hahaha. The stats speak for themselves. You're fishin.

The one fishin' here is you. Pretty sad when the other anti-war groups even denouce them as party hacks. The "stats" (which aren't stats at all)say what the group wanted to them to say.

"I thought that you would be a perfect lover
You seem so full of sweetness at the start
But like a big red rose that's made of paper
There isn't any sweetness in your heart

Paper roses, paper roses
Oh how real those roses seem to be
But they're only imitation
Like your imitation love for me"

The 'anti-war' groups denounce them because they aren't actually anti-war at all. This has nothing to do with the votes in congress for supporting troops or not.

From their site:



And the list:



You'll note that every senate Dem is higher than every Senate Republican.

I'm not exactly sure which part of the methodology you suspect, Fishin'.

Cycloptichorn

If they aren't anti-war then they should stop showing up at anti-war rallies with signs suggesting the US should withdraw from Iraq.

It does affect their view on what legislation is "supporting the troops". It also is DIRECTLY related to votes in the Congress for support of the troops. That is the entire premise of the grades.



The grades aren't methodology. That is their results. Methodology is how they arrived at the grades.

Their descripitions of their ratings methodology means nothing. Basically what it says is "We give passing grades to those that agree with our position and failing grades to those that disagree with us.". I'm shocked! (Not!)

The issue I have with their methodology is that I question whether their position on issues is, in fact, "supporting the troops" or supporting their own agenda.

I also question why they break out votes on some legislation for their scoring. Why, for example, did they break out House Resolution 612 in December 2005 into 3 seperate issues? - one of which they concured with, two they disagreed with. There weren't 3 seperate votes. There was one vote on the resolution yet they gave out 3 sets of grades for it. If someone stood up and voiced opposition to any aspect of the resolution they got dinged and then they got dinged again if they voted against the resolution. (Btw, the 2 parts of that resolution that IAVA objected to were both for the same thing - requests that the resolution vote results be recorded.) They did the same with numerous other pieces of legislation.

At the same time they ignored other votes on bills entirely even though they directly related to the military and military personnel. They cherry-picked which legislation they wanted to grade and their decisions of what is/isn't "supporting the troops" is very questionable. How does a motion to record a House vote on a resolution affect the troops one way or the other? Why would a group that purports to support the troops be against a bill that provided for emergency supplemental appropriations to allow the VA to continue to operate thruogh the remainder of the fiscal year and then not support any other legislation to provide that funding?

Thanks, I really don't need the definition of methodology explained to me. I just wanted to see what your substantial allegations against their methodology were.



This doesn't differ from any other organization who makes list such as this one.



C'mon, you know as well as I do that there are many more levels of complication to what bills actually mean and do than just simple sentences like these. They could easily not support a half-assed bill which accomplished a third of what they wanted, yet you see that as not supporting a bill which supports troops. I think that the situation is rather more complex than that.

Cycloptichorn

Yup. It is a lot more complex than that. You chose to ignore the 2nd half of the sentence with your response however.

If they decided that a bill to provide supplemental funds to the VA was important to the troops once why didn't they weigh in on the later bills that were on the exact same issue? Choosing to use one of them, which they were against, as a weighting factor and then pretending the later bills didn't exist is the sort of thing that causes me to question their methodology - not the fact that they were against the 1st bill.

There were 3 later bills to provide the VA with supplemental funding in FY2005 and IAVA ignored all of them. They didn't take a position on either side. They did this with MANY bills. Hence, they cherry-picked the bills and used the votes from the bills they did choose to get the results they wanted.

Sunday, October 15, 2006 E-mail this | Print page


Many vets lose health benefits
Afghan, Iraq troops get special provision

By Laura Ungar
[email protected]
The Courier-Journal

Vietnam veteran Jack Vance figured that if he ever lost his health insurance, he could always get care at Louisville's veterans hospital.

That was part of the deal when he joined the Navy in 1961, he said -- and that deal "should be forever."

But under federal rules blamed on budget constraints, Vance and millions of other middle-class veterans who weren't injured in the military can no longer enroll in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health-care system.

The change occurred in 2003, and news of it has gradually trickled down to veterans. Yet with the government now promising money to replace Louisville's aging veterans hospital on Zorn Avenue, there's a growing chorus of complaints from veterans who say a longstanding promise to them has been broken.

Under the 2003 enrollment policy, a single veteran in Louisville who earns $32,600 or more, and doesn't have a service-connected injury or illness, is not allowed to enroll in the VA medical system -- although those enrolled before Jan. 17, 2003, are grandfathered in, and there's a special provision for veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Washington Post has reported that as many as 10 million veterans who aren't in the system wouldn't be allowed to enroll under the new rule. In just the past three years, more than 250,000 veterans who sought care at the nation's VA hospitals have been turned away because of the new rule.

VA officials say the changes were necessary, given limited funds, the growing numbers of veterans seeking care, and the need to focus on those with service-connected disabilities and the poor.

There are an estimated 24 million veterans in the United States, and about 5.4 million are expected to seek care from the VA this year, compared with 2.9 million a decade ago. This dramatic increase is reflected in the VA's medical budget, which reached $30.7 billion this year.

"We don't have the resources to be able to take care of all 24 million veterans at any point in time," VA spokesman Terry Jemison said.

Jack Humphries, business office manager for the Louisville VA Medical Center, estimated that three-quarters of the vets who've been turned away locally since 2003 had not heard of the rules change.

VA officials have talked about it at veterans group meetings, and there is a pamphlet that describes enrollment policies, which also are listed on the Internet. But Humphries said there have been no mass mailings or other wider effort to inform all veterans.

While Jemison said the VA does send letters to recent veterans when they return from war, Humphries said others are surprised to learn of the change just when they need care.

And, he added, "Most are not happy."

Care enrollment
VA officials said nondisabled, higher-income veterans made up much of the rapid growth in its health-care enrollment between 1996 and 2003, hindering the system's ability to care for the disabled and poor.

Under the current enrollment policy, veterans fall into one of eight priority groups established in 1998. The highest-priority veterans are those with service-connected disabilities considered 50 percent or more disabling, and those determined to be unemployable because of service-related conditions.

Those no longer eligible for care are in the lowest-priority group -- Priority Group 8, which includes veterans without service-connected injuries or illnesses and with an income above a geographically specific cutoff. The VA calls the change a "suspension" but does not say when it would end.

Humphries said the Louisville region has a greater-than-usual portion of Priority 8 veterans. "Our veteran population is fairly well employed," he said.

The new rule isn't the only way the VA has tried to limit enrollment. In 2002, rising demand for services prompted the VA to issue a national memo that discouraged recruiting veterans for enrollment.

A similar directive issued in 2004 for the VA MidSouth Healthcare Network, which includes the Louisville hospital, said "facilities may not aggressively take steps to recruit new enrollees or new workload."

U.S. Rep. Anne Northup, a Republican who has been championing Louisville's new VA hospital, had no comment on the enrollment policy, except to say, "our office would be glad to work with veterans on a case-by-case basis regarding VA medical care."

Veterans speak out
John Sterner of Louisville, a quadriplegic Vietnam veteran whose service-connected disability is considered 100 percent disabling, said he has mixed feelings about the new rule.

"I see their argument," he said of the VA, agreeing that severely injured veterans or those returning from recent conflicts should be priority. "I worry about the ones who got blown up in combat."

But he also said the Bush administration should pour more money into the VA medical system instead of giving "tax cuts to millionaires."

Jade Chapman, a 25-year-old Army veteran who recently returned from Iraq along with her husband, said she would love to use the VA system but never assumed she would automatically qualify for free, lifetime health care.

"I understand government money runs out and someone has to pay," said Chapman, who lives just over the Tennessee line near Fort Campbell, where her unit was based.

But James Burgess, who is the grandfather of Chapman's husband, is among those who strongly disagree with the policy. "Veterans deserve lifetime care," said Burgess, a World War II veteran who splits his time between Louisville and Florida.

And at a smoke-filled VFW post in Okolona last week, Jim Ray, a 78-year-old Korean War vet, said the government should eliminate restrictions and bolster the medical budget with money it plans to spend on Louisville's new hospital. (The VA announced plans for the new state-of-the-art hospital in June; it will have 135 to 150 beds and likely be located downtown.)

Veterans "were promised when they went into the service -- I know I was -- free health care for life," said Ray, who is enrolled in the VA. "This stinks. If you served your country, you're entitled to the care."

Rick Heavrin, a 58-year-old Vietnam veteran sitting a few barstools away, echoed those sentiments, saying rich, poor or middle-class, veterans are all entitled to VA care.

"Someone should not be denied care just because he's been a productive citizen. He still put his life on the line," said Heavrin, who retired from Ford in 2000. "If you put your life on the line, you should get the benefits. You should get a reward."

See the Votes Behind the IAVA Congressional Ratings: Congress http://www.iavaaction.org/ Legislative Center then Issues

If you bothered to read the votes you would know why they did that.
One vote on whether to stop debate and vote on restricting debate for the resolution. There was one vote on rules of how to vote on the resolution. One vote on the resolution. They were 3 seperate votes. 2 of the votes were parliamentary attempts to restrict how the resolution could be dealt with.

According to the congressional record what happened is as follows.
The resolution was introduced with a rules recommendation that discussion be restricted to one hour. After a brief discussion of that rule someone called for the previous question which is meant to stop all debate on whether they should adopt the rule or not. The vote on the previous question was to stop debate and vote on the rule to restrict debate, vote 644. Then they voted on rescricting the debate, vote 645, then in 648 after the one hour restricted discussion they voted to adopt the amendment.

IAVA seems to be pretty consistent in opposing anything that restricts debate. The second item on the list they opposed a motion by Pelosi to take Congress into secret session.

The votes for 644 and 645 are actually for house resolution 619.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HE00619:@@@X

"Soldiers are dumb animals to be used as pawns" Henry Kissinger.

I did bother to read the Congressional record - that's how I knew what the issue was. You seem however, to have totally missed the point. First, the votes on individual motions during a debate on a bill is insignificant to the troops in comparison to the final vote on the bill yet they are given equeal weighting in the the IAVA process.

Secondly, the IAVA is extremely inconsistant in how they picked which items to use as the basis of their grading. You'll note that several bills they included were from one house of the Congress and not the other.

The total annual DoD budget for example, requires 17 different pieces if legislation (Appropriation Bills) that must pass both houses of Congress each year. That's 34 votes per year. The IAVA went back to Sept 2001 for their "survey" so that time period covers all of the votes on the DoD budget for FY2003-FY2007. 4 years worth of budgets should have produced, at a minimum, 136 votes to be evaluated. (Most DoD budget submissions have multiple votes or get sent into Joint Comm. for resolution of differences between House and Senate versions so the actual number would be higher). When you add in the VA budget (which isn't part of the DoD) the number keeps climbing. Yet the IAVA didn't evaluate all of these votes which directly impact "the troops". The IAVA lists 38 of those bills for the House and 19 for the Senate and some of those were last minute FY2002 appropriations. Out of ~150 votes that directly impact the troops the IAVA only chose to evaluate 57 of them. Why?

How can anyone with half a brain consider votes on motions within a debate on a House Resolution to be important enough for inclusion yet totally ignore entire bills that directly impact the pay, benefits, housing and equipment provided to the troops?

That's pretty inflammatory. Can you source it?

It's all over the Alternet/Indymedia sites although the actual quote is ""Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns". There seems to be some confusion as to where it came from. Most sites attribute it to the book "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam" (1990) by Monika Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson but some attribute it to the book "The Final Days" (1976) by Bob Woodward. None of the links list the actual date/time where Kissinger actually said it.

Would you care to point to the 17 appropriation bills from the last year that dealt with the military?

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app06.html

There are supposed to be 13 appropriation bills every year. One deals with defense. One deals with Veteran's affairs. One deals with foreign affairs and state department. The rest usually have nothing to do with the military.

There were 15 listed last year, 2006. 2 of them were continuing resolutions to keep the government open while they tried to pass the rest.
In 2005 there were 18 appropriation bills. The Senate combined many of them for a single vote. So, the House voted on 13 appropriation bills. The Senate voted on the combined bill and never voted on 7 of the individual pieces. The Senate also passed some of the bills by voice vote or unanimous consent so there is no recorded vote to show how anyone voted. That would be why some bills are only recorded for one house and not the other. No votes to tie to legislators even though they passed the bill.

You claim there were more than 150 votes affecting the military in the last 10 years. Until you can point to the 17 pieces of legislation I will assume you are just making stuff up.

There has to be a flaw in the calculas when John McCain gets a D?

Just based on that, this seems misleading.

Military Men Are Dumb, Stupid Animals
doubleplusgood 24 May 2004 09:36 GMT


Alexander Haig, newly appointed White House chief of staff, May 4, 1973

many people have asked about the origin of a quote from Henry Kissinger regarding military men, which came from Woodward and Bernstein's "The Final Days" (1976). Here is the complete paragraph--and for context, the one following--excerpted from pages 194-195 of the second Touchstone paperback edition (1994).
Alexander Haig, newly appointed White House chief of staff, greets newsmen in H. R. Haldeman's former office on May 4, 1973. (UPI / Bettmann)
====================


In their December 1975 Foreword to "The Final Days", Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein state that the book is based on interviews and re-interviews with 394 people, concentrating on the last 100 days of Nixon's administration. None of the quotes or information in the book is individually footnoted or referenced--they do mention that "we did not accord equal weight to all sources," and that "nothing in this book has been reconstructed without accounts from at least two people."

Authors Woodward and Bernstein also note that "The Final Days" is "the work of four people. Scott Armstrong, a former Senate Watergate Committee investigator, and Al Kamen, a free-lance writer/researcher, assisted us full time in the reporting, research and some of the writing."

Kissinger's quote regarding miltary men comes from Chapter 14, which extensively discusses Al Haig, Kissinger and other Nixon staff advisors' negotiations and differences over national security issues during the 1969-1974 period.

The exact, direct quote marks begin with the word 'dumb' and terminate after the word 'used'.

Here is the FULL KISSINGER QUOTE verbatim from the bottom two lines of page 194 to line 14 of page 195:


====================
[paragraph]
In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. Kissinger often took up a post outside the doorway to Haig's office and dressed him down in front of the secretaries for alleged acts of incompetence with which Haig was not even remotely involved. Once when the Air Force was authorized to resume bombing of North Vietnam, the planes did not fly on certain days because of bad weather. Kissinger assailed Haig. He complained bitterly that the generals had been screaming for the limits to be taken off but that now their pilots were afraid to go up in a little fog. The country needed generals who could win battles, Kissinger said, not good briefers like Haig.

[paragraph]
On another occasion, when Haig was leaving for a trip to Cambodia to meet with Premier Lon Nol, Kissinger escorted him to a staff car, where reporters and a retinue of aides waited. As Haig bent to get into the automobile, Kissinger stopped him and began polishing the single star on his shoulder. "Al, if you're a good boy, I'll get you another one," he said.
====================

SOURCE:

Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
The Final Days
second Touchstone paperback edition (1994)
Chapter 14, pp. 194-195
link