While we're being told to 'wait' by Bush and Kline with their new (but certainly not improved) 'surge' plan.... more are dying. Both in Iraq and here at home....it's unforgivable...
The following are excepts from the story of Johathan Schulze from WCCO: Former U.S. Marine Jonathan Schulze committed suicide last week. A Purple Heart recipient, he became overwhelmed by grief after seeing several of his friends killed in Iraq.A government report issued in December 2006 said one of every 5,000 military personnel who served in Iraq has committed suicide -- an increase of one percent compared to the prior two years.Yet the same report stated soldiers have better access to behavioral health care -- a claim Schulze's parents could clearly dispute.
It is estimated that about 17 percent of military personnel returning from Iraq suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or severe anxiety and depression. That's compared to about 6 or 7 percent of the general population.
The father of a six-month old child, Jim and Marianne Schulze remembered their 25-year-old son as a bubbly, fun loving person. But, when he came home from Iraq almost two years ago, his personality had changed.....
Schulze's own personal war raging within him brought him to the Veterans Administration Hospital in St. Cloud, Minn., where he was reportedly told the wait for psychiatric services was shorter than at the VA facility in Minneapolis.
On Jan. 11, Schulze reportedly told a member of the medical staff that his inner torment made him contemplate suicide. However, he was turned away because there was no room at the hospital's psychiatric unit.One day later, a counselor told Schulze by phone that his case was 26th on the waiting list at a facility with only 15 beds. The earliest he could be seen at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis was March.
Apparently Jonathan Schulze was just another number to Bush and Kline:
Say what you will at the hidden costs of war...this was a death that was preventable. I would like Kline to explain to the parents why there are 15 beds and a waiting list of double that size...How can Kline sleep at night with the blood of this on his hands?"What happened that a young man who was a marine veteran with two Purple Hearts turns up at a VA center and says: I am thinking of committing suicide, can you help me, can you admit me, and he is told: No, the list is 26 long in front of you?"
He survived all of that only to come home and find neglect, the results of an administration big on tax cuts for the wealthy, but not real strong on taking care of Veterans returning home from the war created by the George W. Bush and, until this month, left unchecked by the do-nothing Republican Congress.How indeed Mr. Kline?!
How [can] the United States government give aid to foreign countries, but yet can't adequately fund medical and psychological needs of the boys they send off to war," asked Jim Schulze.
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