SCREWED: Aljazerra Busts Army Discharge Scandal?

Army Screwed

The Army has repeatedly refused to clean up its own messes. Instead, they are content ruining the lives of servicemembers suffering from PTSD and other service related issues.

Last week, we covered Gina Farrisee and her potential involvement in a few different scandals related to screwing military members out of disability benefits and medical retirements.

Here is another shameful story. It is not just shameful in how Army treated these people but it is also the fact that no American news sources picked up the story. It seems that the entire mainstream media groups are in on keeping a lid on stories like these.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I will just give you a little taste here:

After three combat tours, Sgt. Dennis Tackett was kicked out of the Army for punching a man in the face while drunk. It didn’t matter that he had been diagnosed with PTSD (by the Army) and had tried to get help (from the Army) for the drinking it led to. It didn’t matter that he was in the late stages of a medical discharge that would get him out soon anyway — with benefits. What mattered to the commanding general at Fort Carson, Colo., who spoke to him that day in November 2012 was that he had tried to fight the discharge with the help of a pair of civilian watchdogs, Georg-Andreas Pogany and Robert Alvarez.

The rest of this story is a tragedy. It focuses on soldiers discharged under Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson based at Fort Carson, Colorado. According to the story, this Anderson character was complicit in firing Army soldiers out of the military after they requested help.

Like in Gina Farrisee’s Army, General Anderson also sat by while servicemembers had their dreams shattered. At best, he did nothing to prevent it. At worst, he actively participated in duping the soldiers who trusted him.

Read more here: https://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/24/exclusive-recordingshowsthatarmypunishedsoldierswhoaskedforhelp.html

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8 Comments

  1. When we enlisted, or got drafted, we knew the deal: we had to be loyal and obedient to the chain of command, we had to conform to UCMJ and we had to do our job, even if doing your job meant that you could be injured or killed. In return our government guaranteed us that our country would only fight good wars, that our country would outfit us to be successful in our mission and that we would never be abandoned on the battlefield. Over the last 45 years, I have come to believe and then, accept, the fact that the ‘deal’ we made was a one sided deal. We veterans kept our part of the deal — while we have allowed our country to welch on virtually every part of their end of the deal. The same country that gave us Viet Nam, gave us Iraq. The same country that gave us plastic M-16 stocks in the 60’s, is the same country that supplied our troops with unarmored vehicles in the mideast. The same country that denied that Agent Orange was harmful is the same country that denies PTSD is anything more that a personality disorder induced problem.
    To now hear that our DOD is discarding serviceman (women) while they’re still on the battlefield is more alarming than watching the VA assume that injured veterans are ‘feigning’ disabilities after they leave the battlefield.

    There are so many disheartening, dishonest and disgusting veteran stories, it make you wonder why? Why would our government allow its veterans to be treated so shabbily?? Then, after that question, we veterans need to ask another question: why did we let it happen, to not only us, but the millions of veterans who will come after us.

  2. Mr Kelley, you are way off base with your petty political tirade at the end of an otherwise sound first half of your missive. For those of us who have been around a little longer, laying the “blame” for our current VA problems at the feet of one political administration is facetious at best ! Veterans have been in an adversarial relationship with the VA for as long as I have been a Veteran(45 years). You might look up the voting record of our current Congress on Veterans affairs, as well as the meaning of the terms you misuse as well. I wish you well and hope all Veterans are better accepted and treated by their VA regardless of their political persuasion and the party of future administrations. Goodon’ya !

  3. Ben are you familiar with the good work being done by the independent Welsh journalist Jon Mitchell, who has been working tirelessly on the Pentagon, dept. of Defense, and VA’s denial of use and storage of Agent Orange on Okinawa during the Vietnam war era ?

  4. It is standard procedure for the Army to screw soldiers for benefits, even when they know they’ve caused irreparable damage to that individual. They simply don’t want to pay compensation or admit responsibility. I am dealing with a situation where I developed a tumor in the Army and they performed surgery on me and it wrecked my health. As a result, I developed high blood pressure and they didn’t tell me. I also developed abnormal menses, headaches, weight gain and back pain. Because of all these injuries I developed depression but the VA says its not in my medical file, I never told them I was depressed. Granted, this was 1988-1991, I would have been given a psycho discharge without any benefits so I sucked it up. It is seen as a sign of weakness. I was finally diagnosed with high blood pressure in 2010 and when I checked my medical record, I saw that the Army diagnosed me in 1988. As a result, it is now chronic and I have fluid building up in my body and edema. The VA doesn’t know what to do to help me. I am miserable. They say that I am service connected for hypertension but 0%, it amazing! I have been fighting for service connection for depression since 1988.

  5. It is not only the Army, but the Air Force as well. My husband was at 15 years, when they denied his re – enlistment when he started showing signs of PTSD, and shoved him out the door, no retirement of any kind. He out processed in a month. He got worse after he got out. His doctor from the Air Force told me after he was out, my husband should have requested a medical retirement, yet he wanted to label my husband, bi-polar, schizophrenic, or on drugs. These stories are happening more and more so the military can get out if paying retirement. I’m here in others who have PTSD and were pushed out right before hitting 20.

  6. I said “potential” because Congress is reviewing the issue, so I’ve been told. Thus, at some time in the future, the allegations have the potential of being found true.

  7. I agree except with one remark, Ben. That Farrisse’s “potential” involvement in incidents where veterans were screwed over in their disability and retirement. The word potential implies future tense; the correct word should be “possible” or highly likely involvement in such wicked schemes.

    What Farrisse’s history shows is that there were a number of very serious, high-profile matters where her UNETHICAL actions resulted in harm and injury to veterans and their families. That the VA Central Office staff would even vet Farrisee for the top job of human resources after a previous undersecretary for HR got busted for unethical doings by the VA-OIG reveals just how callous and reckless the present VA leadership are towards veterans. They could care less that one scandal has already come out from the VACO HR office only to create another one by hiring this louse from the Army.

    Said another way, Shinseki and the other top VACO executives in charge of who gets vetted for this presidential nomination slot could care less that someone who already has big black marks ethically comes into the VACO. They could care less what veterans, their families and the many veterans advocacy groups and VSOs think about it. Just more of the arrogance and ham-handed leadership we’ve seen wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast by Mr. Obama-Soebarkah and his band of far left-wing socialists and Mecca-hugging White House staffers. Shinseki and the other top secretaries at VACO are there because they were known to be willing to play along with it all, and they have.

    The evidence of their fraud and deceit is everywhere and undeniable, whether Pennsylvania or Vermont Avenues.

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