Rick Scavetta lives with his wife and young daughter in a small town near New Haven, Conn. He joined the Army at 18, in part to earn money for college, and served in the regular Army and then the Reserve for a total of 15 years, reaching the rank of Sergeant 1st Class. In 2005, his Reserve unit was called… return to article
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Reader Comments (19)Page 1 of 1 pagesThis is once again a sign that our system of democracy is broken. This is outrageous and Sen. Biden needs to hear about it. How can we say we are supporting our troops when things like this are going on? And I’m sure this is only the tip of the iceburg .When our govt. denies the benefits guaranteed to our well deserving men and women for their many sacrafices to this country and then honor them by by neglecting them is immoral and and shows not only a lack of class but is all so typically ugly of this administrations hypocracy. Get all the GI’s home safely and provide them with everything they need to rebuild their lives once home. If we dont then we all have lost our humanity.
Posted by thomas m gardia on Feb 8, 2007 at 12:20 PM No vet benefits. Period. Time to cut off these killers.
Posted by blondemike on Feb 8, 2007 at 12:29 PM There he goes again.
This is the same blondemike who wants to release convicted murderers back into society. The guy who says the military never did anything to protect him. Now he wants to do away with any benefits — forget the contract — just cut them off.
Well, As I recall Mike, you said you carry a .357 and now I know why. Better get a flak jacket as well — you must have one coming with your name on it.
You’re a real sweetheart, Mikey.
Posted by whattheheck on Feb 8, 2007 at 4:01 PM I wrote that I was opposed to KILLING convicted murderers or anyone else. That’s not the same as advocating their blanket release in less
they have not had a fair trial as in Mumia’s case. Are Rush BlowBoy BimboHeads like you, WTH, as incapable of reading comprehension as
you are of critcal thought ? My advocacy of no vet bennies is CONSISTENT with my view that they do not now nor ever have protected me. Consistent, not in contradiction. I never approved any friggin contract to give hired killers special benefits. NEVER. If you are threatening me, WTH, name the time and place. Never lost a duel yet.
Posted by blondemike on Feb 8, 2007 at 5:27 PM Gotta say, I think the veterans are owed, big-time. Even if I disagree vehemently with a particular war they may be engaged in (rhymes with “Iraq"), I surely wouldn’t mind seeing some bennies cut, but not theirs. They didn’t place themselves there, after all, though they did arguably take the risk of an unsavory mission once having signed their contract.
“Unsavory”, there’s your understatement du jour.
How about we cut benefits, pensions, and any other tax-payer supplied goodies to the politicos and intell operatives who jointly misinterpreted/trumped up the “evidence” of WMDs that was the primary case made to the people and the Congress favoring the invasion?
It would be a a nice, middle-way kind of action, neither as lame as collectively shrugging and saying “Oopsy, we fucked up, sorry about that,” (we’re getting things like this already from Americans, who apparently think their previous motives and suppositions ought to count for more than the actual effects of their actions) nor as extreme as, say, taking Mahathir Mohammed’s recent advice and bringing war crimes charges against Bush and Blair.
There ought to be at least some kind of consequence for such a resounding, world-class choke. The vets are actually among the victims of it.
Posted by Kuya on Feb 11, 2007 at 11:15 PM Kuya, I have to respectfully disagree. There’s no draft, these people volunteered to commit crimes on a mass scale, not only should they get no bennies but they should be held for war crimes. If you read of the extreme violent anti-Arab racism of just one poster here, Texas Independent, a racist Chicano, who has done three tours of duty in Iraq, you will get a micro example of the kind of scum in the services who back Bush. That they didn’t know they could be sent to war is also an argument without merit, what did they think the army was about ? They are not victims, they are victimizers.
Posted by blondemike on Feb 12, 2007 at 10:53 AM Hello again mike, we seem to be having a multi-thread conversation.
You may have answered this question in another discussion, sorry for the redundancy if so, but what was your view on the invasion of Afghanistan, back in 2001? I thought it was correct to throw down with al-Qaeda/the Taliban government. Part of this is because I lived in Pakistan when the Taliban took power, and they are truly some scary, medieval-minded mfr’s. The other, main part of my mind thought that to not strike back would suggest that America is an easy, flaccid target.
I ask this because I feel that Afghanistan and Iraq are two very different kettles of fish, in terms of the justifiability of unleashing of American military might (aside: surely there was a better way to undermine Saddam, without bringing chaos to the whole damn country and giving a sweet boost to Iran). But that’s my question to you, do you see them as different in substance, or as being both thoroughly wrong?
Another question, please. Would you consider it appropriate to disband or at least greatly shrink the American forces, so that they would be less of a player on the world stage? I have wondered about this many times, being a Cold War child. It does seem that there are times in history when the big stick simply has to come out, but of course I’m aware of how frequently righteous intentions (at least as they’re phrased for public consumption) have led to evil ends.
The thing is, how do you deal with enemies who are happy to use violence to implement their agenda? I find it hard to imagine a workable alternative to fighting fire with fire, to tell you the truth. I’d like to believe such a solution exists, but when I read and consider and try to see from different angles, it only seems that a profound moral transformation of the kind that world leaders virtually never conceive of would do the trick. So rare you might as well say “never”, anyway.
So as you see it, mike, how should America deal with its capacity for deadly force? Maybe this is the prior issue to whether veterans ought to be given benefits, whether they should ever have been trained, armed, and sent over there in the first place.
Posted by Kuya on Feb 13, 2007 at 3:59 AM Kuya, they would not have been over here if we weren’t over there first for decades. So in the Middle East the US has propped up Israel and Arab Reaction. There was no fundamentalist crusade or threat 20 years ago and in fact we created the Taliban through our support of the anti-Soviet fundies in Afghanistan. Many Americans seem to think that the US just minds its own business and then ungrateful foreigners attack us. Well in the one case where we are under fullscale invasion, illegal Mexican immigration, the Govt is asleep at the switch. You can’t go into an ER or any part of a hospital here in California without being inundated with Mexican illegals, this is much more of a threat than anything coming out of the Middle East. The USA hasn’t been in a defensive war since 1812 when the Brits burned down the Capitol. The Civil War was unnecessary, the states formed the Union, not vice-versa so the right to secede was axiomatic. FDR baited the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor a military base in a then colony 3,000 miles from US home territory. I never even saw proof that the Taliban was involved with Al Queda. Bush just attacked and killed over 3,000 Afghanis. I’m not a pacifist but the army is not analogous to the police. The police can pinpoint an actual criminal, the army just levels neighborhoods. Deadly force should only be used defensively, the US uses it at the drop of a hat and the bad thing about the cold war demise is that our current enemies are not powerful enough to restrain us. The Taliban originally came into power as a result of the horrors of the Northern Alliance which the US backed and then again after 9-11. Only if the enemies agenda involves harm to the US homeland should we use violent force, we should nuke Israel because their AIPAC Lobby has poisoned 200 million Arabs and 1.2 billion Muslims against us. Now I could get behind that Just War. And speaking of enemies who habitually use violent force to promote their ends, would you join me in urging a nuclear strike on DC ? Iraq was and is much worse than Afghanistan but Afghanistan is not the crystal clear case people think. Why are we still there six years after knocking out the Taliban ? We are following in the Soviets footsteps here. And we are we EXPANDING NATO 16 years after the Warsaw Pact dissolved ? It looks like the commies, as bad as they were, were never the real reason or threat for NATO. Our foreign policy since that degenerate Wilson has been a disaster and it was bad going back to Bully Boy TR and Mckinley in 1898. Cuba was an outcome of that. If not for US intervention WW1 would have ended in a stalemate and no Versailles, no Hitler, no Bolshevik Revolution. Khomeini was right, we are the Great Satan.
Posted by blondemike on Feb 13, 2007 at 3:32 PM Blondemike,
So, the US has been the cause of the world’s troubles since before you were born according to your view. I feel genuinely sorry for you. Really.
It sounds as though life has been a totally depressing time experience for you.
Maybe your expectations are just too high.
Posted by whattheheck on Feb 14, 2007 at 10:40 AM WTH, I don’t confuse my personal life with the policies of the US state.
Posted by blondemike on Feb 14, 2007 at 1:22 PM Hm, that’s some pretty heady stuff, mike. Because it would mean, in terms of 9/11, for instance, that we had it coming. Chickens coming home to roost, to borrow Malcolm X’s statement about the JFK killing. That it was the predictable outcome of conditions we ourselves had a hand in creating.
I do think of myself as a critical thinker, but you can see why I’d find that to be a deeply disturbing conclusion.
Posted by Kuya on Feb 15, 2007 at 1:30 AM But I should clarify. I’d never say we had it coming, even if I do know that America’s actions in the world have led to the shedding of innocent blood.
I’d prefer taking it to the personal-responsibility level, e.g. a president being brought up on war crimes charges for the actions carried out during his or her tenure.
Not that any US president will face a charge like that, but that’s a factor of the world’s preferential treatment for the strong and rich, as we see all the time, everywhere, disgustingly.
(i think i mistook what you were agreeing with, mike...)
Posted by Kuya on Feb 16, 2007 at 1:55 AM The problem is the willingness to justify killing the innocent and to wreck the lives of their survivors, in the deluded belief that the end being pursued is exalted enough to overlook the villainous means used to reach it. No matter who carries that sort of thing out, individually or en masse, their agenda becomes tainted by evil.
There’s no escape from that. They can talk til doomsday, and not a grain of the burden of their crimes will be lifted from them unless they halt the destruction, make amends, and begin again on a more righteous path.
Doesn’t matter who it is, Bush, bin Laden, me, or anyone. There’s no escape.
Posted by Kuya on Feb 16, 2007 at 2:03 AM Kuya, our difference here is more apparent than real, I never believed the civilian victims of 9-11 had it coming. The Pentagon is quite another story. Rereading your comments I do agree. You know if I didn’t I’d tell you why. Again, thanks. You may the only reason for coming to this board.
Posted by blondemike on Feb 16, 2007 at 10:55 AM Typical of how BushCo ‘supports our troops.’ What is coming is the complete destruction of the voluntary military concept. How many do you think will want to sign on for service in the army or the National Guard after the way these people have been forced to pay the price for Rumsfeld’s miscalculations?
Posted by Eric Blair on Feb 16, 2007 at 3:45 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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