, hang in there.
Posted on 09/17/2002 2:09:44 AM PDT by Snow Bunny
All misspelling and puncuation mistakes are mine.
Transcript of NBC Nightly News broadcast article on Concurrent Receipt.
16 September 2002
Broken Promises
Brokaw: Our series “Broken Promises”.
Brokaw: As American Forces are fighting a war against terrorism and planning is underway for another war against Iraq, American veterans wounded in other wars are in their own fight. After their military careers they expected full retirement pay, but they didn’t expect their wounds would be a penalty.
NBC News’ Fred Francis on the latest phase of this continuing battle.
Francis: In the small Alabama town of Ozark, Hank Nix is honored as a hero, yet he and Mrs. Nix will have to move from their home on Hank Nix drive . He says, because of a broken promise. The government reducing his retirement pay.
Nix: I’m about to have to sell this place. I’m not able to keep it up anymore.
Francis: Korea, 52 years ago. Nix took a bullet leading his platoon, earning him the Silver Star.
Nix: Yeah, I got hit in the chest in a fire fight. In fact my platoon leader was killed that day.
Francis: He was captured, spent three years as a Prisoner of War. Watching 1600 GIs die there.
Nix: It’s disease, cold, starvation. You name it.
Francis: Now 100% disabled because of his service injuries he expected to collect both his retirement and disability pay. Or so he thought, but Nix and a half a million disabled veterans learned of a nineteenth century law that reduces their retirement pay by the amount that they get in disability compensation. A quirky law that applies only to disabled soldiers and no other Federal workers.
Nix: If I were a civil servant if I was anything but what I am, retired military, I’d be drawing it.
Francis: You would be drawing disability and retirement.
Nix: disability and retirement. Yes
(Fleecing of America logo on screen with Tom Brokaw ready to speak)
Francis: We told you about this three times in the last year and a half.
Brokaw: (cut in) ...it involved veterans who felt they were fleeced because Congress...
Nix: Now Congress has overwhelmingly voted to change the law. To give disabled veterans both sets of benefits. But the Bush Administration threatens to veto the legislation. Arguing, changing the law would be to costly.
Dr. David Chu, United States Department of Defense: ...a private who’s facing orders to Afghanistan, We cannot do for him or his colleague what we need to do if the monies are diverted by the Congress.
(I am inserting this comment) Militiaman7: David Chu is lying though his teeth.
Francis: Disabled Vietnam Veteran, Brook Outland said: It is those very soldiers he’s worried about, not simply his own generation.
Outland: If they stand and they happen to get injured during this upcoming war. They are going to be in the same boat as we are.
Francis: Back in Alabama Hank Nix remains hopeful.
Nix: I pray for this thing to be settled.
Francis: Praying that a promise he believes that will finally be fulfilled.
Fred Francis, NBC News, Ozark, Alabama
Should read:
Outland: If they stay and they happen to get injured during this upcoming war. They are going to be in the same boat as we ae.
Should read:
Outland: If they stay and they happen to get injured during this upcoming war. They are going to be in the same boat as we are.
I apologize, my fingers are getting the best of my thumbs. Sorry
, hang in there.
Lawrence Taylor RIP Thank you for your service to our country.
to the Canteen. Hope you visit often while we honor our troops and allies each day.
A tribute to all Mosquito aircrew of WWII. In a devastating attack a MkII Mosquito of 264 Squadron destroys an intruding FW-190 over London, 1943.
Leonard Cheshire prepares to dive his Mosquito and drop target marker flares as a guide for the following 617 sqdn. Lancasters.
The crew of an 8th Air Force Mosquito prepare for another reconnaissance mission that will take them deep into enemy territory, with only speed and stealth as their defence. The photographs they bring back will be crucial to the planning of future bombing missions.
RAF Mosquitos on a Day Ranger Mission attack a German fighter station shortly after D-Day.
Three U.S. soldiers, talk in front of a hangar at the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey Friday, Sept. 13, 2002. US pilots who patrol the no-fly zones over Iraq say Baghdad is continually changing tactics in a high-stakes campaign to bring down an American pilot and score a huge propaganda victory for Saddam Hussein. Incirlik air base in southern Turkey is used to patrol the northern no-fly zone. The base is about an hour's flight from northern Iraq and was a key staging point during the 1991 Gulf War.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
US soldier Spc. Sean N. Doughty, of Richmond, Virginia, stands in honor guard during the hand-over ceremony at US Eagle Base near Tuzla, Bosnia, on Monday, Sept. 16, 2002. The 28th Infantry Division (Mechanized), headquartered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania took over the authority of the US run northern Bosnian sector from the 25th Infantry Division (Light), headquartered at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. U.S troops have served in Bosnia as part of NATO led peacekeeping forces, since late 1995 and currently number about 3,100 soldiers. (AP Photo/Amel Emric)
United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, foreground, touches the marble gravestone of an unknown soldier, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002, at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Luxembourg were more than 3,000 US soldiers, killed during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes during the winter 1944-1945, are buried. Ashcroft is on a two-day visit to Luxembourg. Others in photo are unidentified. (AP Photo/Jean-Claude Ernst)
United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, right, and Luxembourg's Minister of Justice Luc Frieden, left, pause at a white marble cross marking the grave of an unknown U.S. Soldier on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002, at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Luxembourg-Hamm. More than 3,000 U.S. soldiers killed during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes during the winter of 1944-1945, are buried here. (AP Photo/Jean-Claude Ernst)
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