PTSD troops getting screwed: watch the vid

I just tonight finally got around to watching last Friday's installment of NOW on PBS, Fighting the Army. I found it very, very difficult to not be totally outraged at what the military is doing to our psychologically damaged soldiers. In short, in many cases, the military is stringing along soldiers with promises of help until they can't take it anymore. The result: they get bounced out on misconduct discharges. This is not to say all cases, but even five of these cases would be too much.

These are soldiers who have made tremendous sacrifices, and this is the thanks they get when they return home. Worse yet, soldiers who are given misconduct discharges are forced to pay back thousands of dollars in signing bonuses.

For those who think that Barack Obama has done nothing while in the Senate (and I know several people who firmly believe just that), he led the way in forcing the Pentagon to begin to change its discharge procedures. However, the changes are far from perfect, and many changes still need to be made.

Count this as just another way that soldiers are getting short-changed by the country they serve. (And the list of ways is tragically long one.) Whether it's getting stop-lossed, receiving inadequate armor and protection on the battlefield, receiving poor care if they are wounded in battle, to symptoms of post-traumatic stress order being ignored, in some cases it's difficult to tell who's screwing our soldiers more - the people throwing bombs at them in Iraq, or the people who see no problem short-changing them deep in the bowels of the Pentagon.

You can watch the entire 30-minute episode Here.

I urge all of you to write your members of Congress to demand that our soldiers, especially those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, be given the proper care that they need. To find your legislators' information, click Here, or better yet, call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 225-3121 and leave your legislators a quick message that this type of treatment needs to stop, NOW.

Best of all, you can vote for the candidate in November who wants to end the madness in Iraq ASAP.

I'll share my letter with you to my members of Congress tomorrow.