They Were Soldiers

[Husq]

They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America's Wars: The Untold Story - Ann Jones

http://www.amazon.com/They-Were-Soldier ... 1608463710

They Didn’t Know What They Were Getting Into
The Cost of War American-Style:
“Follow the money,” a furious Army officer, near the end of his career, instructed me. I had spent my time with poor kids in search of an honorable future who do the grunt work of America’s military. They are part of the nation’s lowliest 1%. But as that angry career officer told me, “They only follow orders.” It’s the other 1% at the top who are served by war, the great American engine that powers the transfer of wealth from the public treasury upward and into their pockets. Following that money trail reveals the real point of the chosen conflicts. As that disillusioned officer put it to me, the wars have made those profiteers “monu-*'-mentally rich.” It’s the soldiers and their families who lost out.

http://southerncrossreview.org/92/jones-afgan.html


http://www.amazon.co.uk/They-Were-Soldi ... told+Story

[fish5133]

The first veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq returned to the United States 10 years ago in 2003, yet I’ve never spoken to a damaged soldier or a soldier’s family members who thought the care he or she received from the Veterans Administration was anything like appropriate or enough. By the VA’s own admission, the time it takes to reach a decision on a veteran’s benefits, or simply to offer an appointment, is so long that some vets die while waiting.
So it is that, since their return, untold numbers of soldiers have been looked after by their parents. I visited a home on the Great Plains where a veteran has lain in his childhood bed, in his mother’s care, for most of the last decade, and another home in New England where a veteran spent the last evening before he took his own life sitting on his father’s lap.