Free Republic

A new public opinion poll shows that veterans oppose Obama’s decision to trade five Guantanamo detainees for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl by overwhelming numbers. According to the poll conducted by USA Today and Pew Research, 68 percent of veterans polled said that Obama made the wrong decision. Only 16 percent supported the decision. Forty-three percent of respondents said that Obama was wrong to make the deal, while 34 percent said that it was the right thing to do...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)More than 57,000 veterans have been waiting 90 days or more for medical appointments, the Veterans Affairs Department said in a wide-ranging audit released Monday. An additional 64,000 who enrolled for VA health care over the past decade have never been seen by a doctor, according to the audit. The audit is the first nationwide look at the VA network in the uproar that began with reports two months ago of patients dying while awaiting appointments and of cover-ups at the Phoenix VA center. Examining 731 VA hospitals and large outpatient clinics, the audit found long wait times across the...

Tom Slear, who retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2001, is a freelance writer in Annapolis. A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a receptionist in a physical therapist’s office that I was covered by Tricare, the military’s health-care program for service members, retirees and their families. (It has nothing to do with the troubled Veterans Affairs hospital system.) “Good deal,” I said. “You deserve it,” she responded. Really? If she only knew. Though I spent more than five years on active duty during the 1970s as an Army infantry officer and an additional 23 years in...

What happens when the world’s greatest spin doctor commits malpractice — on himself? That is the question that now bedevils Barack Obama after what have been, without a doubt, the worst weeks of his presidency. From the Veterans Administration scandal to the jaw-dropping events surrounding the swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the man with the most remarkable intuitive grasp of how to preserve and enhance his own image the world has ever seen has now tarnished it almost beyond recognition. Who would have expected such a development? From the speech in 2004 that made him a rising star through the...

PHOENIX — In a new revelation in the growing Veterans Affairs’ scandal, the organization’s acting head says that an additional 18 veterans whose names were kept off an official electronic VA appointment list have died. Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson said he would ask the inspector general to see if there is any indication those deaths were related to long wait times. If so, they would reach out to those veterans’ families. “I will come personally and apologize to the survivors,” Gibson said Thursday....

by Jason DeWitt | Top Right NewsA group of World War II veterans got a sweet surprise on Wednesday, when a gate agent at the Detroit airport serenaded them with a beautiful rendition of the national anthem over the loudspeaker.The moving moment came on Monday, when the agent at DTW, Anna Marie Barile, started to sing over the PA system for passengers waiting for Delta flight 98 from Detroit to Paris.There were 12 WWII veterans on this particular flight, which was headed to Omaha Beach to recognize the 70th anniversary of D-Day. When it was announced over the PA system...

This article discusses the VA Hospital Scandal relative to the passage of Obamacare aka ACA

A former Veterans Affairs official apologized Thursday for suggesting that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl may have left his post in Afghanistan five years ago because he was surrounded by “psychopaths.” “While I just wanted to make the point that the public should wait before passing judgment, I unfortunately used my own poor judgment in choosing inappropriate language that many view as disparaging to U.S. service members,” Brandon Friedman, who currently serves as a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told BuzzFeed. “That was certainly not my intent and I regret making the comments on my personal account...

It is my opinion that FreeRepublic needs to have a Hot Keyword to track our problem with Veteran Care. For example, for Gun Rights (etc.) there is the BangList. For pro-life issues, there is ProLife Other important keywords are FreeRepublic are: Aliens, FastAndFurious, Benghazi, HomosexualActivism, etc. The Obama Administration is trying to get the plight of our Veterans to the back pages with the Traitor Bergdahl release/exchange. We cannot let Obama off the hook -- For the sake of Our Veterans. One thing to do is to have one keyword to track the Veteran Care issue, and that way Freepers/Lurkers...

More Americans than not think the U.S. government gives better health care to militants captured in the war on terrorism than to U.S. troops who may have fought them on the battlefield. A Fox News poll released Wednesday finds that by a 50-31 percent margin, voters think enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay get better health care than veterans. Nearly one in five is unsure (18 percent).

DARIEN — A woman accused of embezzling thousands of dollars from a local veterans' organization also volunteered as a bookkeeper for the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, police said Wednesday. Cynthia Tanner, 52, has been charged with first-degree larceny, accused of stealing $185,000 from the National Veterans Services Fund in 2013. Police estimated that Tanner, who was employed as the organization's bookkeeper, embezzled more than $830,000 from the organization over five years. Police said Wednesday that they have discovered irregularities in the financial statements of VFW Post 6993 in Darien, where Tanner volunteered as a bookkeeper for several years....

Officials at a Veterans Affairs medical center in Albuquerque say as many as 3,000 patients were assigned to a doctor who didn't actually see them, a New Mexico congresswoman said Wednesday. The officials told U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., that the practice of putting patients without primary care doctors into a separate pool was part of an effort to balance demand and a shortage of doctors at a facility that handled nearly 660,000 outpatient visits last year....

The last of the 29 Navajos who developed a code that stumped the Japanese during World War II has died. Chester Nez, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, died Wednesday morning of kidney failure, said Judy Avila, who helped Nez write his memoirs. He was 93. Before hundreds of men from the Navajo Nation became Code Talkers, 29 Navajos were recruited to develop the code based on the then-unwritten Navajo language. Nez was in 10th grade when he enlisted, keeping his decision a secret from his family and lying about his age, as did many others. "It's one of the greatest parts...

During Vietnam, supporters of the war attacked peace protesters claiming that they ‘spat’ on America’s returning heroes. Nobody ever came up with a verified case of a soldier actually being spat on, but that didn’t stop the story from becoming a legend amongst the pro-war faction. So how should we interpret the following statement from the woman John McCain once tried to put a heartbeat away from the presidency? “No, Mr. President, a soldier expressing horrid anti-American beliefs — even boldly putting them in writing and unabashedly firing off his messages while in uniform, just three days before he left...

The Wall Street Journal had a noteworthy piece on the VA scandal yesterday, one that helps turn the story into a life-and-death issue. Until now, the spotlight has been on veterans who grew sicker or died because of long waiting times that were, in some instances, covered up by government officials. But what about the care they receive in overtaxed hospitals? The Journal reported: “The Phoenix facility at the heart of the crisis at the Department of Veterans Affairs is among a number of VA hospitals that show significantly higher rates of mortality and dangerous infections than the agency's top-tier...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jeremy P. Amick, public affairs officer Silver Star Families of America Phone: (573) 230-7456 Email: jamick1@earthlink.net

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin believes President Barack Obama timed the release of Bowe Bergdahl to distract from his administration's Veterans Administration wait-list scandal in which at least 40 veterans reportedly died after they were put on secret waiting lists. "This feel-good story doesn't feel real good, America," said on Monday. "The timing of this is to distract from the VA scandals and other Obama Error disasters. Now more than ever we need a cornerstone of our democracy to do its job and get the answers to what the devil is going on in the White House." Obama announced Bergdahl's...

Full Title - "EXCLUSIVE: Filth, Feces, Urine and Trash – Witness Describes Squalid State of St. Louis VA (Video-Photos)" This past weekend, Evita Simone Allen visited the St. Louis VA medical center at Jefferson Barracks to tend to an ailing uncle.“Vita” spoke exclusively to Jim Hoft of Progressives Today on Monday about the filth, feces, urine and trash she saw piled up in her uncle’s room at the VA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx35OoDGESsHere is Vita’s shocking story – along with pictures from her visit:“As we entered the room, we noticed a foul smell that smelled really bad. As we walked around in the...

(Reuters) - Two powerful congressmen have opened separate inquiries into whether a Department of the Treasury bureau charged with policing money laundering may have flouted federal hiring rules, including regulations that require military veterans be given preference for government jobs. :snip: Reuters reported on May 2 that the Treasury had temporarily suspended FinCEN’s hiring authority and forced it to rescind 11 job offers after a federal government labor watchdog determined that the bureau had illegally screened candidates in a quest to hire only lawyers for certain positions. :snip: "The fact that FinCEN allegedly rejected pools of candidates made up of...

United Flight 1637 was returning off-duty Air Force Captain Mike Gongol, his family and 157 other souls from their Christmas vacation when disaster struck. The Boeing 737's pilot suffered a devastating heart attack at 30,000 feet on the way from Des Moines to Denver, forcing Gongol to rush to the cockpit and help guide the plane to an emergency landing. His heroic actions have gone unheralded until now, as Gongol recalls the dramatic moment he answered the chilling announcement on the December 30 flight, 'Does anyone know how to fly a plane?'