The VA Mess - "WHO'S RESPONSIBLE?!"

This is "Combat," by Frank Frazetta.

Today, I got a letter from someone who, referring to the "Walter Reed Mess," wants to know who's "really" responsible. I had already written this, but it all relates:

Disgusted to the point of having eschewed my usual television viewing last night, I am nevertheless so stung by what I saw the day before – the hypocritical posturing, bloviating, chest-thumping mea culpa-ing, the exploitation for political gain, and all the rest – that I need to point out certain things additional to what I’ve already said. I won’t be long.

First, we need to stop and realize that most of our government, particularly as respects Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush are captains of industry, the same industry who only a few years ago enunciated the “Pinto Rule.”

You remember the Pinto Rule, don’t you? Ford Motor Company, having realized that its Pinto exploded like a fire bomb went struck relatively lightly from the rear, calculated the number of people who would be burned to death or horribly maimed for life, then calculated the cost of correcting the flawed design of their cars. Having so calculated, they determined to continue selling the car, and let the explosions continue: it would cost more to correct the problem and change the design than it would to settle all the lawsuits. The people? Well, this was business – capitalist business.

Why does the public wonder about “the mess” at Walter Reed Hospital, the perennial disarray of the federal administrations like VA, IRS, and the rest? You don’t see a connection between the Pinto Rule and things like using phantom weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to go to war? Really?

You don’t see a connection between the fact that Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney is the veritable prince of corporate wonks, the guy who lobbied for and received five deferments from military service during time of war, and the weaseling evasions and corporate-style “damage control” now going on where Building Eighteen at Walter Reed is concerned? Really?

You don’t see a connection between the way our president treated taxpayers and Texas Ranger employees in the multiple-dealing maneuvers that got him the governor’s office before all this started?
http://www.utwatch.org/utimco/rangers/

http://www.bushwatch.com/bushwater/

You don’t see any similarity between the way Enron treated employees and the way the White House and the U.S. Army treats wounded veterans? As I’m often wont to say, maybe you’re on the wrong diet. You should try hay, because you’re a jackass.

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/438/

Enough of that. I you’re so stupid that you think the way our veterans are being treated by the people who use them is an isolated incident, there’s no point in elucidation. You’re a moron or an ideologue; and, for all practical purposes, that’s to me the same thing.

I said the politicians, generals, and the media make me sick. Do you know what really makes me sick? The people of the United States who sit on their dead, slovenly, two-hundred percent overweight asses and let this happen. Those men and women left in mental, spiritual, and physical agony – you figure out whether I mean the Ford Pinto or the CIA Iraq victims (figure how they’re different, too – while you’re at it) – are your responsibility.

Oh, if you’re not among the majority who voted to put these craven bastards in office, you have some “out.” Not that you researched to find out what you should have known before you voted any better than the &%@#% morons who put draft-dodging corporate quasi-criminals like Cheney and Bush in office. You didn’t. If you’re not responsible on that count, it’s only by accident.

But now that you know what’s going on, you are responsible. You’re responsible, too, that our country has been taken over the way it has. You’re responsible that it has become a place where things like everything I’ve talked about for the last several days can happen. You’re responsible for the fact that we haven’t had a republic in decades, something that’s been as plain as the nose on your feckless face. You did nothing. I, on the other hand (and on the record) been fighting – and, by god, taking wounds - to convict and reform this government by criminal conspiracy (well, you tell me what the hell all this is) for nearly three decades.

Not once in that time did I feel anything but alone. Totally. Strange – isn’t it? -I still feel that way.