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Originally posted by DEANEGILMOUR:
Student Vet Oganization enrollment down? Just like the aftermath of Nam. I was President of our Vet Org. in college after serving in Nam and I found that the main reason the Vet population did not join was, they had had enough of joining organizations that did nothing but rehash old war stories. we set up a plan to help vets with school bills unitl they could help themselves with the lateness of benefits from the VA. No interest loans from a fund which we took donations from RESPONSIBLE CARING citizens and a couple of shows that we put on and charged admission. Also got a Texas Collegiate Coalition of Campus vets organizations (TACVO) and were instrumental in getting the Va and the State of Texas to recognise trade Schools as full time schooling (16 hours or more) and gave those vets (atending classes for 40 hours a week)the ability to attend something besides the recognised university systems. In reality, only the Vets from WWII received their just rewards for service and probably because the Government knew that not to do so would cause a MAJOR revolt in this country. The United States has had a history of treating its vets, especailly combat veterans, with great disdain and it all starts with the Congress. I was at a meeting of our former PTSD class last night. We decided when we were "certified" as completing the course at the Atlanta VA that we would continue on oue own to help each other with our claims and even with support for each other when things got a little "close". One of our members related last night of a buddy from Nam that just died from complications from wounds and Agent Orange. It seems that he was "fighting" for the compensation and care he deserved for the past 40 years and within a month after the VA decided to do thier job, he died and left all the bills, including those he co-paid at the VA over the decades and received no recompense, and problems to his family with no help from the VA who took 4 decades to finally do their duty. In fact his family had to return the money he had received the very month he died, the first month he had received his 100% disability. Where is the justice Congressmen/women? THERE IS NONE for the Korean and Viet vet and when this present conflict calms down and is no longer 95% of the news, it will be the same for these young men and women today. I know personally vets who have given up on the VA years ago and tried to take care of their probelms at civilian entities and even more that continue to muddle through the broken marriages, the isolation, the lack of care and caring and just said. "The hell with the whole thing, I'm going to die anyway, why not sooner than later." These men and women put their lives on the lines for this nation and its citizenry the Nation has no idea, as for the citizenry, what bull our vets have to deal with and all the while the Congress continues with thier "Pork Barrel" PROJECTS and continue to get their benies and pay raises every year and even add to them annually. Our forefathers were worried about this very thing, among others, and rightfully so. They worried about the corruption in a Central Geovernment and the loss of individual and States rights over the Fed, and tried to rectify the situation beforehand but the Congress has bastardized the very Constitution and Bill of Rights that were written and re-written and modified over and over again to keep these things from happening. The Fed and the States can subsidize Illegal Aliens in this Nation but forget the Veteran that enlisted, volunteered, was patriotic enough to put his/her life on the line for the country they love, NO THEY ARE INFLATIONARY. This Nation is on the way down and rightfully so. It is the cONGRESS,the PROFESSIOANL POLITICIAN that has caused it to be so, and ONLY the members of our Military have slowed the descent into oblivion over the centuries. We are the ONLY NATION in the World, past or present, that treats thier veterans with such disdain, with occasional praise through the centuries when it behoves them to do so in light of PUBLIC OPINION. The back bone of our military and our freedom is the enlistee that signs for 2 to 6 years, and only those that are fortunate enough to last 20 or more years are rewarded in any fashion at all without years, decades, of fighting the war of paperwork and words at home instead of the wars we fought elsewhere with bullets. The shooting wars were really much easier and in fact less detriemental to our psyches than the bullets from our sworn enemies. Our real enemy is our so-called PUBLIC SERVANTS and their egos and their graft and their corrution of the taxes from the greatest nation ever formed in the history of mankind. It may even be in my children's lifetime that the United States Of America as the entity it is now and in the past will be but a footnote in the oblivion of little noticed history books.