MILITARY INTELLIGENCE Vets question Bush's commitment BY NICOLE DIONNE

In a Veterans Day speech, President Bush stated, "We appreciate the sacrifices that our military is making today. We appreciate the sacrifices that their families make with them . . . And we owe so much — so much — to the men and women, our veterans, who step forward to protect those freedoms." But despite such expressions of support, some veterans question the depth of Washington’s commitment, in part since thousands of vets are homeless and the wait to be seen at a Veterans Administration hospital can reach six-to-eight months.

Al Signorelli, director of operations at Operation Stand Down, a Johnston-based organization that provides social services and temporary housing to veterans, says federal support for veterans is in "a state of disarray." He says there is a lack of resources for older veterans and that many are "living by the skin of their teeth." Veterans, 12.9 percent of the Rhode Island population, are also disabled in disproportionately high numbers.

Democrats are beginning to scorn Bush for the discrepancy between his statements of support for the troops and the conditions facing many vets in the US. In a recent statement, for example, former Vermont governor Howard Dean said, "You [Bush] visited soldiers wounded in Afghanistan on January 17 and had the audacity to promise to ‘provide the best care for anybody who’s willing to put their life in harm’s way,’ when the previous day your Department of Veterans Affairs cut off health-care access to 164,000 veterans."

With the US facing an influx of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Signorelli says, "Considering the amount of money we spend to wage war, there should be the same commitment in dollars and cents to those who return from war. It’s a shame that a young person would go and serve their country in a foreign land, then come back and receive shabby care."

While backing continued tax cuts that mostly benefit the rich, the Bush administration has also disappointed veterans by opposing concurrent receipt — the idea that disability money shouldn’t come from the pensions of individual vets — in the fiscal 2003 budget. Ross Ogilvie, of a local chapter of AMVETS, which assists veterans in claim benefits, was disappointed with Bush’s stance on concurrent receipt, but he says this isn’t a new or specifically Republican problem. President Clinton also "did not have the veterans’ best interests in heart," Ogilvie says.

State Representative Victor Moffitt (R-Coventry), a Vietnam veteran, says the biggest concerns of the Veterans Affairs Committee in Rhode Island are respectable military funerals and quality health-care. US Representative Jim Langevin also voiced concern about this. In a statement, Langevin said, "It can take upwards of six months before some veterans will be able to see a physician and obtain their prescriptions through the VA, and this is unacceptable . . . A significant part of this problem stems from the decreasing number of skilled workers on staff at the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The staffing level for 2002 is 750 full-time employees, down from a high of 806 in 1996."

Moffitt believes things are getting worse for veterans. "The last veterans to get respect," he asserts, "were the ones from WWII."