Bookworm did up a great post on the latest MSM attack on the Bush administration and the War on Terror. Last time it was veterans who become criminals which ended badly for the MSM. They definitely had egg on their face from that one.
Now its veterans who become homeless.
From the article:
This is not a new story in America: A young veteran back from war whose struggle to rejoin society has failed, at least for the moment, fighting demons and left homeless.
But it is happening to a new generation. As the war in Afghanistan plods on in its seventh year, and the war in Iraq in its fifth, a new cadre of homeless veterans is taking shape.
And with it come the questions: How is it that a nation that became so familiar with the archetypal homeless, combat-addled Vietnam veteran is now watching as more homeless veterans turn up from new wars?
What lessons have we not learned? Who is failing these people? Or is homelessness an unavoidable byproduct of war, of young men and women who devote themselves to serving their country and then see things no man or woman should?
~~~ For now, about 1,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 400 of them have taken part in VA programs designed to target homelessness.
The 1,500 are a small, young segment of an estimated 336,000 veterans in the United States who were homeless at some point in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
If my math is right (and there no guarantee it is, jarhead remember) those numbers work out to be .004% of the veteran homeless were from the Iraq/Afghanistan war.
So .004% is worthy of a 1,947 word article from the AP? This article from the NYT’s in November puts the number of Iraq/Afghanistan homeless veterans at 400. In two months it went up 1,100. That’s some jump.
And how about that 336,000 number. HUD reports that in 2006 the number of homeless in the United States was
The number of chronically homeless people dropped from 175,900 in 2005 to 155,600 in 2006, according to data collected from about 3,900 cities and counties.
Anyone see a problem there? This article from HUD puts it at 744,000. Pretty big discrepancy there. It even says 41% of that number are whole families which means only 416,000 are singles. I’m thinking that most of these veteran homeless are not taking their whole family with them so the majority of single homeless are veterans?
Come on…..
What these reports do say is its difficult to gauge how many homeless there are because they, well, live on the street. No address or phone number to contact them at.
It really is sad that some end up homeless but does anyone know if the percentage of service members becoming homeless is greater then the rest of society? I’m sure every segment of society is represented in that homeless number but the constant meme’ from the left about wars turning men into homeless is not grounded in reality unless they count the cardboard signs reading “veteran, please give me money” on the side of the freeway. Those guys wouldn’t be putting “veteran” on there to pull your heartstrings would they?
Oh, I forgot, we’re talking about the gullible left here.
Every article I have read researching this post points out how difficult it is to get a accurate count of homeless, so the numbers and theme of this latest MSM hitpiece is basically hogwash. Yes, Erin McClam, we all know war sucks. But we also know that war is necessary. Iraq was necessary, Afghanistan was necessary. There was no draft, men and women joined up voluntarily to serve this country and 1,500 of the over one million who have served couldn’t take it and became bums. But maybe Erin should of written a story about how well grounded our veterans are. If only 1,500 of the million veterans became homeless, that actually shows how well they do, not the other way around.
But we’re talking about the MSM here. If Hillary was in the White House you could bet your ass the meme of that article would be spun 180 degrees.
Oh, and btw, Bush just signed a law giving 1.5 billion of our tax dollars to helping the homeless. Funny how I didn’t see Erin McClam write about that.
That evil Bushitler!
UPDATE
This is James Taranto talking about the earlier Times article that labeled our veterans as criminals:
See author page
“The numbers of homeless veterans is much higher at the local levels” The number of homeless who CLAIM to be veterans, you mean, and those numbers are demonstrably flaky.”The VA ignored this issue for a long time” So YOU say. Can you name these alleged veterans who’ were ever refused care by VA? You do realize — assuming you have a clue about the subject — that not every veteran is eligible for every type of care by VA ? Ths so-calles “crisis” of homeless vets has yet to be found, even if you make the rather silly assumption that their mental illness or substance abuse has anything to do with their service in the first place. You do know, I assume, that VA care is on a scale that gives priority to service-connected conditions?The contention (which you obviously swallow wholesale) that there are vast numbers of vets among the homeless population is looking sillier each passing year in which nobody can seem to identify them. I’d still like to hear some plausible theory as to why hundreds of thousands of junkies, drunks & loonies are refusing to apply for VA care or pay, when every homeless shelter & outreach point literally shoves the forms down their throat, and the DAV, VFW & AmLegion will even fill out the forms for them? Two of my retired friends are VFW outreach volunteers, which is why I’m laughing at these idiotic numbers the “homeless industry” keeps flopping out as if they were real.It has become a standard liberal mantra that every unfortunate situation is someone else’s fault: evil corporate CEOs, government plotters, the military-industrial complex, and (whenever possible) George Bush & the Republicans — which makes it rather bizarre that military vets vote a heavily conservative ticket every time. This phony crisis is no different. Perhaps someone might actually get a grip on the homeless problem by recognizing that most of the responsibility lies within a group of people who are so devoid of character or willpower that they won’t even make an effort to help themselves. Feeding into their “it’s not my fault” bullshit hasn’t done them much good so far, and obviously never will.Again,before you fly these big numbers at us, make some minimal effort to prove them, not just repeat nonsensical estimates that never bear out under examination.
Those who saw O’Reilly this evening may have noticed the piece he did on these alleged homeless veterans, pointing out the absurdity of John Edwards’ claims. There was a VA spokesman on before, apparently, stating that they had over 150,000 beds available for any legitimate homeless veterans, and they were perfectly willing to come and GET them if necessary. O’Reilly had made some efforts thru the homeless community to identify some of them, so this could take place. After several days, guess how many anyone could find?
Two. One who had obvious mental problems and another whose legitimacy was still being checked.
Of course the Loony Left won’t be satisfied until we send out roving goon squads, wrestling each homeless person to the ground and beating them until they admit to being veterans — and then forcibly dragging them, kicking and screaming, into the nearest VA facility.
Off Topic, just a litte, back in post 93, I published a link to a article. The reason I published it was to show that not all donations to the homeless charity go to homeless vets. A lot of them got to salaries etc, in the charity. In the same post, is a list of 10 charities where the head person takes what, IMO, is a unnecessarily large salary.
The first charity on the list, Youth Development Fund
Has a salary of $363,100 listed for the CEO.
That’s $36,100 less than the salary of the President of the US. The total amount of the
funds not used for raising donations or admin expenses for 2005 is listed as $449,512. Some thing is just not right, when we have charities like this.
But my real anger is in the public radio area, take a look at charity 4 on the list. WTVS Detroit Public Radio and the salary paid the CEO to run a public radio station. But it gets worse. Take a look at Public Radio Station WNYC
whose pays their CEO $414,846. That more than the President of the US makes.
Based on all the public radio broadcasts I have heard, I think their CEOs who draw these high salaries are being paid a lot more than they are worth.
My rant in this whole post is that people need to take a serious look at the info available on charities before donating. Second, I think the public radio stations I have heard are very anti conservative. Donations to anti-conservative groups just contribute to the downfall of conservatives.
The site I used for the info is found Here
To comment #49, it is GREAT that their are millions of Veterans that are leading successful, somewhat unaffected lives. But do you not see the numbers here?Do you think it is some freak accident that a majority of homeless people are Veterans,people who were willing to sacrifice their life for us, and their country? Then they come back and everything falls out from underneath them because of PTSD WHICH LEADS TO DRUGS AND ALCOHOL TO COPE!!!! They are mentally ill, forever fucked up from this war and this country did it to them. Thank them for what they have done, given, adn sacrificed. HAVE A HEART FOR GODS SAKE!!!!!!!
To Comment #104
Perhaps if you actually READ some of the earlier posts, you might avoid making really absurd statements, like “a majority of homeless people are Veterans” — since the highest legitimate estimates indicate that about 1% or less are actually veterans. And since far fewer than 10% of soldiers, sailors & airmen ever see combat, the number of homeless vets that could believably attribute their degenerated existence to any combat experience seems pretty tiny, compared to the rest of the homeless population.
Another point worth noting is that in order to qualify for full VA benefits as a “veteran,” one only has to have served for 90 days or more in uniform. At 90 days, virtually every soldier is still in training in the U.S., and far from any “combat experience,” and it’s certainly germane to the discussion to ask just how many of these identified “homeless veterans” ever served in combat, or even left the United States at all? Inflating the “homeless veteran” number with people who washed out of training for Cook’s School, after 94 days in the Army, or were kicked out in their fourth month for drunkennes or drug use, makes the bleeding-heart argument even more specious.
The military is pretty good at weeding out the degenerates and weaklings, since it’s not easy for drunks and druggies to hide in a relatively “closed” military environment. Inevitably some squeak through for a year or two, or develop their habits after their initial training, when they’re observed less carefully. It’s not a great leap of logic to assume that these “bad apples” that are ejected may well make up a disproportionate percentage of these “homeless veterans.” Attributing their homelessness (or their drug or alcohol problems) to their military service, just because they shoveled shit in Fort Riley, Kansas, is disingenuous at best.
I’ve spent some time in military hospitals overseas and Stateside, including Walter Reed & Bethesda Naval Hospital, and since retirement have spent a lot of time in VA hospitals and clinics. By choice, I use VA facilities instead of military ones because the quality of care, in my experience, is so vastly superior to even Walter Reed or Bethesda. How many civilians, even, can claim that they’ve never spent more than five minutes in a waiting room? At least in the Virginia VA facilities I use, if your appointment is 3 pm, you’ll be in with the lab tech by 3:05 and probably see the doc by 3:15. Why civilian facilities never can manage anything better than a 30-45-minute wait is beyond me, but that’s standard for every doctor or clinic my wife visits.
You have grossly overstated the homeless veteran population, and, like most civilians, automatically attribute the drug, alcohol or mental problems of these people to some military experience. Perhaps if you actually KNEW some real veterans, or spent a few minutes researching the actual statistics, you might disabuse yourself of this irrational fantasy — no matter how well it reinforces your obvious preconceptions of the military and its soldiers.