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25 signs that military veterans are being treated like absolute trash under the Obama administration
Why does the Obama administration treat our military veterans like human garbage? Every year on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, Barack Obama and our other politicians make very nice speeches, but the truth about how they feel about our veterans can be seen in how they are treated every single day. In the United States today, there are well over half a million veterans that have been waiting for at least 125 days to have their benefit claims processed. Many of them will ultimately have their claims sent back or denied just so a government employee somewhere can get a bigger bonus. Meanwhile, conditions at VA facilities all over the country are absolutely abysmal, and many veterans have to wait more than half a year just to get an appointment at one of those facilities. Once you start looking into how this country really treats military veterans, it becomes easier to understand why 22 military veterans commit suicide in America every single day. Our vets have a higher rate of unemployment, a higher rate of poverty, a higher rate of homelessness, a higher rate of depression and a higher rate of divorce than the general population. It is a crying shame. One of the ways that any society is judged is by how it treats military veterans, and the truth is that America has failed miserably. This has been particularly true since Barack Obama has been in the White House. The following are 25 signs that military veterans are being treated like absolute trash under the Obama administration. 1. The average claim for veteran benefits takes more than half a year to be processed. 2. The Department of Veterans Affairs has a backlog of more than half a million overdue claims for benefits that are at least 125 days old. 3. In 2009, the number of veterans that had been waiting for more than a year to have their benefits approved was 11,000. Today, that number has soared to 245,000. 4. Thousands upon thousands of military veterans that are waiting for their claims to be processed are dealing with absolutely horrible injuries. 5. At one VA hospital in Wisconsin, one military veteran with a broken jaw that was seeking treatment still had not had his jaw fixed after a month and a half. 6. Today, it takes military vets an average of seven months to get an appointment at a VA facility. 7. Many VA facilities are in absolutely horrific condition. A while back, ABC News conducted an investigation of conditions at VA facilities across the United States. What ABC News discovered was absolutely shocking. The following are just a few of the things that they found during the course of their investigation: *Bathrooms filthy with what appeared to be human excrement *Dirty linens from some patients mixed in with clean supplies *Examining tables that had dried blood and medications still on them *Equipment used to sterilize surgical instruments that had broken down *Some patients were forced to beg for food and water *Veterans were neglected so badly that they developed horrific bedsores and dangerous infections 8. As I have written about previously, applying for veteran benefits is extremely complicated, and VA employees are actually paid bonuses for denying claims. 9. Large numbers of military veterans that legitimately should be getting benefits are having their claims denied by the federal government.

10. Last year, more than 85,000 military veterans were treated for sexual abuse that they suffered while serving in the military. 40 percent of them were men. 11. According to a recent Defense Department survey, approximately 14,000 men in the U.S. military were sexually assaulted by other men during 2012. 12. According to the Washington Post, there is an epidemic of sexual assaults being committed by military recruiters. The Pentagon is pledging to do something about the problem. 13. The number of active members of the U.S. military that are killing themselves now exceeds the number that are dying on the battlefield. 14. Since the beginning of the Iraq War, twice as many members of the Texas National Guard have killed themselves as have been killed in combat. 15. According to one recent study, 22 military veterans kill themselves in the United States every single day. 16. At this point, combat veterans account for about 20 percent of all suicides in the United States. 17. The unemployment rate for military veterans is significantly higher than for the population as a whole. This is especially true for younger veterans. 18. On any given night, approximately 200,000 military veterans are homeless in the United States. 19. All over America, monuments that honor military veterans are crumbling and falling apart. 20. Under the Obama administration, many military veterans have had to pay to have their medals shipped to them. For example, one soldier actually had to pay a 21 dollar shipping fee to get his Purple Heart. 21. In some areas of the country the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been caught banning the words God and Jesus during funeral services for veterans. 22. Today, the federal government provides end of life literature to veterans to them determine when their lives are no longer worth living. 23. One study discovered that approximately one-third of all military veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq were officially determined to be mentally ill by government officials. 24. All over America, mental illness is being used as a reason to take guns away from military veterans. 25. The federal government is increasingly labeling military veterans as potential domestic terrorists if they express viewpoints that are critical of the government. AT/HJ
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