During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care\u2014greater than before\u2014was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems<\/span>, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith<\/span>. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that \u201cJesus fixes everything<\/span>.\u201d Benimoff and the others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans\u2019 hospitals, chaplains were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.<\/p>\nSullivan was working as an analyst at the Veterans Benefits Administration in Washington in early 2005 when he was called to a meeting with a top political appointee at the VA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon. McLendon, an intensely focused man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office<\/span>. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. \u201cThat\u2019s too many<\/span>,\u201d McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. \u201cThey are too young\u201d to be filing claims, and they are doing it \u201ctoo soon.\u201d He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are \u201ccosting us too much money,\u201d and if the veterans \u201cbelieved in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD<\/span>.\u201d At that point, he slammed his palm against the table a final time, making a loud smack. Everyone in the room fell silent.<\/p>\n\u201cI was a little bit surprised,\u201d Sullivan said, recalling the incident. \u201cIn that one comment, he appeared to be a religious fundamentalist<\/span>.\u201d [Appeared to be? Is a religious nutcase]<\/span> For Sullivan, McLendon\u2019s remarks reflected the views of many political appointees<\/span> in the VA and revealed what was behind their efforts to reduce costs by restricting claims. The backlog of claims was immense, and veterans, often suffering extreme psychological stress, had to wait an average of five months for decisions on their requests.<\/p>\n….<\/p>\n
When a 2006 Government Accountability Office report raised questions about whether soldiers were getting the psychiatric help they needed, an assistant secretary of defense disputed the report\u2019s findings, pointing to the fact that soldiers were being referred to chaplains. During this time contracts for veterans\u2019 services were increasingly parceled out to leaders of faith-based organizations rather than to secular ones<\/span>, even though veterans\u2019 advocates opposed any bias toward faith-based treatment and argued that replacing empirically proven, nonsectarian programs with faith-based ones was a mistake.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n(emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\nWe have to realize that there was more to this though, than just penny pinching, or a wish to rely on the the great “Sky God”, this is also all about patronage.<\/p>\n
The Bush administration used its “faith based initiative” as a patronage and pork-barrel program, and every dollar that they diverted to their Evangelical Christo-Fascist allies was a dollar that could be used by these folks to politically support the Republican Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I find out that the Bush appointees in the Veteran’s Administration went all out in an attempt to deny care to soldiers suffering from PTSD. The reason that they gave was because they believed that it was an indicator of insufficient patriotism and faith in God, but there is also a more sinister, and self-serving …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1010,969,1006,1021,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-evil","category-military","category-religion","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/img27.imageshack.us\/img27\/1821\/whereisyourgodnow555051.jpg\")
I find out that the Bush appointees in the Veteran’s Administration went all out in an attempt to deny care to soldiers suffering from PTSD.<\/p>\n