"Those who have risked their lives for our freedom have the respect and gratitude of our nation" - George W. Bush, 11/11/2005
Renee DiLorenzo was a beautiful young woman from Lynden, Washington - just across the border from Vancouver, Canada. DiLorenzo had graduated from Lynden High School in June of 2005 and she had enlisted in the Marine Corps and was due to leave for boot camp this past December. She had enlisted just like her boyfriend, Saxxon Rech, who had joined the Marines in November 2003 and who had returned to Lynden from a tour of duty in Iraq in February of 2005. On the Friday afternoon of July 29th 2005 one of Renee's friends found both dead in Saxxon's parent's home - a murder-suicide.
Strangely, at a time when many service members are finding their tours of duty extended, Saxxon had been given an early honorable discharge from his service obligation. At the time of the subsequent murder investigation, local officials were uncertain why he was discharged after just 16 months, or whether he saw combat in Iraq, where Marines from his regiment had been killed in action. Marine Corps officials blamed a poor records system on being unable to qualify Saxxon's service locations.
What's most disturbing isn't whether or not Saxxon killed Renee, and then himself, because of something that happened to him in Iraq (if he served there or not). - it's that the Marine Corps may have released Saxxon knowing that he was suffering from severe depression and/or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Instead of helping him with his problem they simply got him out of the Marine Corps - out of sight, out of mind.
On a national level there has been a plague of PTSD-related violence involving Iraq war veterans. 19-year-old Spc. Brandon Bare of Wilkesboro, N.C., a U.S. Army infantryman whose wound in Iraq earned him a Purple Heart, stabbed his 18-year-old wife Nabila 71 times with knives and a meat cleaver. Brandon had received a head wound after being thrown from a vehicle by a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq and was left with hearing difficulties and other problems, according to family members.
What's most troubling isn't that these service men and women are suffering from PTSD and other combat related mental and physical illnesses - it's that at a time when an Army study shows that 1 in 6 Iraq combat veterans will need medical and psychological assistance upon returning to the U.S. the Bush administration is cutting funding for Veterans.
The latest Bush budget increases health care costs for 1 million veterans, for the fourth year in a row, by imposing new fees for veterans. It will cost them more than $2.6 billion over the next five years. It would double the co-payment for prescription drugs from $8 to $15, and impose an 'enrollment fee' of $250 a year for some veterans who make as little as $26,902 a year. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration continues to block low income veterans from enrolling in V.A. health care.
To add insult to combat injury, the President's budget fails to repeal the Disabled Veterans Tax, which forces disabled military retirees to give up one dollar of their hard-earned pension for every dollar of disability pay they receive. These men and women earned their pensions defending our nation and yet the budget continues to require nearly 400,000 military retirees with service-connected disabilities to continue to pay this outrageous Disabled Veterans' Tax.
Government studies show that about one in six soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, and some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 170,000. Up to one-third of Iraq war veterans are suffering from some degree of PTSD. The current budget allowances for PTSD programs are woefully inadequate.
Additional budget cuts will eliminate $13 million for medical and prosthetic research this year. This would set the research grant program back years, just as many of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home with terrible injuries that require this expertise.
So - who really supports our troops?
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