SORRY FOLKS ,cant get in to clean this one up ,

Sorry carbon. Can't get past John McCain to fix it either. That's weird.

John McCain a TRUE PATRIOT,

I would follow HIM TO HELL,

coz he went there and came back!!!!!

Unlike some who never even made it to boot camp......

Thank you, Carbon.

Gold Star Moms Blast Trump For Delayed Response To Soldiers’ Deaths

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-gold-star-mother_us_59e654abe4b08f9f9edb2a5d?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

the sociopathic dirt bag that call himself President continues to take one JUSTIFIED

hit after another after another

Trump Claims Congresswoman Lied About His Call To Army Widow

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-congresswoman-call-army-widow_us_59e73b81e4b00905bdadb6dc?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Nah, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao and a host of petty warlords, even the biblical Joshua - who was guilty of genocide eight times, and a few others beat him to that dubious crown. 

Trump says he has 'proof' on his call to soldier's wife, and the nation waits

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-proof-call-soldiers-mother-nation-awaits-170523053.html

just look at Trumps body language

he's LYING

Trump has proof?

OK

produce it and shut yer critics up

the WH has already claimed there were no  tapes of the conversation

however John Kelly was listening in

is Chump gonna drag him and his deceased son out for another "patriotic display "

if I was Kelly I'd be ready to sock somebody in the face

First her son is killed.

White House: Politicization of Troop Deaths Is a ‘Disgrace of the Media’

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2017/10/18/white-house-trump-comments-families-fallen-troops-context/

the media made this political ???

the MEDIA ???

another fine piece of journalism from breitbart.com whose motto is "doing Goebbels proud"

and interesting how they leave out the part where the fallen soldiers mother backs up the account of the Congresswoman

and we're still waiting on that "proof" Trump says he has

by all means Chump ,lets hear it

Jake Tapper: Gen. Kelly Confirmed Trump Lied When He Denied Widow's Claims

http://crooksandliars.com/2017/10/jake-tapper-gen-kelly-confirms-trump-told

wow

how very profoundly disappointing this is

Kelly and Mattis are the only two members of the Trump administration with any character or integrity at all

and now Kelly has sold his soul

how sad

he has let a long and distinguished career by sullied by a man like Trump

I hope it was worth it

sad day for America

here is part of what he said

You know, when I was a kid growing up a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred. Looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case anymore, as we've seen from recent cases. Life was sacred. That's gone. Religion. That seems to be gone as well. Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer. I just thought the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die in the battlefield, I thought that might be sacred.

he talks about women being sacred

and he has aligned himself with someone like Trump ???

who has a 50 year history of victimizing and objectifying women

who called his OWN DAUGHTER "a fine piece of ___"

and said "grab them by the _____"

this is the man Kelly serves  ???

I'm speechless

The S. Florida Sun Sentinel has Video of Rep. Wilson's Speech, Proving Kelly a Damn Liar.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/20/1708450/-The-S-Florida-Sun-Sentinel-has-Video-of-Rep-Wilson-s-Speech-Proving-Kelly-a-Damn-Liar

Kelly was WRONG

no ifs ands or buts about it

he HAS to apologize or resign

if he is smart he will use this opportunity and run like hell before his association with Trump damages his reputation any further

Trump poisons sullies and fouls everything and everybody he gets near

From Wikipedia:

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder in which there is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others' feelings.[2][3] People affected by it often spend a lot of time thinking about achieving power or success, or about their appearance.[3] They often take advantage of the people around them.[3] The behavior typically begins by early adulthood, and occurs across a variety of situations.

comment: I think Satori's right! I'm no Psychiatrist but if this doesn't describe the man I don't know what does!

https://youtu.be/HHckZCxdRkA

A gentleman would have said:  "I am deeply and wholeheartedly sorry for any offence I have given by the manner in which I spoke.  No offence was intended.  I  am truly sorry for any pain and sorrow that I have caused or added to.  Believe me, neither offence, nor insult was intended.  Sargent Johnson was a hero and should be honored for his brave service and his sacrifice for our great country. How can I make amends for my insensitive pattern of speech?"

I grow weary of these American Social Justice Warrior diatribes against our President.  I have told you I will begin focusing on Australia and its fault if you do not stop and I will.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/veterans-abandoned-to-private-hells/news-story/e8f809ff0f8c244cf046a0a48c4732f8

It pains him that he was asked to work 20-hour days in Iraq, facing constant mortar barrages without any protective armour.

But what plays most on his mind is that since returning from Iraq in 2006, when he crashed into a depression that has seen him attempt suicide more than 10 times -- including by trying to hang himself in full uniform -- no one from the army has ever rung him.

No one -- not from his unit, not from the command -- has ever called to say: "How are you going, mate?"

He does not feel part of the brotherhood. He does not feel he can talk to veterans his own age.

The army has washed its hands of him. He is seen as a head case. And those who have taken an interest in this young man -- namely, veterans from earlier conflicts -- are now seeing great numbers of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with post-traumatic trauma syndrome and major depression.

This man, aged 25 years, does not wish to be named. He was a communications specialist who was sent to Iraq on a six-month deployment in 2006.

Revelations of Jim's abandonment by the army come after The Weekend Australian reported on Saturday that dozens of Australian soldiers who had been seriously wounded in Afghanistan were checked into hospitals under false names to keep them from the public eye.

As far as the public knows, many of the terrible injuries Diggers have sustained did not happen. While the dead -- there have been 11 Australians killed in Afghanistan -- are seen coming home in coffins and in tragic airfield ramp ceremonies, discussion about the badly wounded, who come home in secret, is off limits.

Jim's case is another that appears to be off-limits for the army. He says things started going wrong about three weeks into the deployment.

"It wasn't so much that I saw things that affected me; it was the constant stress," he says.

"There's no safe zone while you're over there. There's always a threat on a daily basis. We were rocketed and mortared quite a lot whilst inside the camp, and whilst on patrol there was always the threat of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and roadside bombs and ambushes."

Jim knew to expect such an environment, but he didn't expect to be working 20-hour days for two months straight, installing vital communications equipment, while at the same time ducking bombs. He became frazzled and unsure of himself.

"I'd be out in the open and had to work in cleanskin uniform (no body armour) and all of a sudden the rockets and mortars would start to land," he says.

"I wouldn't say I wasn't coping but I started to develop anger problems. Certainly, my work performance began to slip by the end of my deployment.

"There's an ingrained culture in the army of 'harden the f..k up'. You're not encouraged to say, 'Sir, I'm having a bit of a bad day'. You shut your mouth and get on with the job."

When he came home, he was given six weeks' post-deployment leave. That's when he noticed he wasn't right.

"I had a girlfriend," Jim says. "She left me a within a week. I had very bad anger problems and I started to drink quite heavily. I had no idea why I couldn't control my anger. All I wanted to do was just drink."

Jim had seen an army psychologist on the way out of Iraq, in Kuwait. It was a standard debriefing, like all soldiers get.

"She told me that I was very flat," Jim says. "But she said I should be OK."

After his post-deployment leave, he planned to return to normal service in Australia.

"The night before my leave finished, that's when I became suicidal," he says.

He cut his wrists but "it didn't work". He tried again more than 10 times.

Jim fell out with his family. "I couldn't relate to them any more," he says. "The things they would talk and worry about seemed very trivial to me. That was pretty much the key issue, along with my anger problem and my drinking. After I came back, I had very bad sleep problems. I couldn't have a good sleep -- nightmares."

Jim is bitter about many things. He says he and a colleague should never have been overworked the way they were in Iraq. He says that upon discharge, he was left for six weeks without any financial assistance from the military or the Department of Veterans Affairs. He was offered no follow-up assistance for his mental health issues.

Living up north at the time, he was not told there was a good repatriation hospital in Heidelberg, Victoria, for mentally traumatised veterans. He believes the army didn't want to spend the money sending him there. They would have preferred never to hear from him again.

By the time he was finally sent to the hospital's Ward 17 -- after Jim's mother had begged the army to do something with him -- he was too far gone for the low-security psychiatric facility to handle. But there was nowhere else.

He was twice put on life support after suicide attempts.

At the hospital, he met "Sandra", now his fiancee. She was an ex-policewoman who also had PTSD. They were able to talk and have now been going out for two years. Jim has tried to kill himself in his time with Sandra, but now believes -- a major relapse aside -- he might have come through the worst of it.

"He cries and screams in his sleep," Sandra says. "If there's a loud bang, he hits the deck for cover. He can't go into shopping centres. He tried to hang himself in uniform in full sight, to let people know what the army are doing to their troops.

"It's disgraceful how the military and Department of Veteran Affairs treat their veterans. The lack of support is disgraceful."

At Heidelberg, he met another person who has become important to him. Mick Quinn is with the Australian Peacekeepers and Peacemakers Association, the modern version of the RSL.

Quinn is a veteran of Cambodia and himself a minor PTSD sufferer. He says the symptoms can come on quickly -- as in Jim's case -- or lie dormant for years. Veterans of the mid-1990s Rwanda deployment are still presenting, searching for help.

About 400 Australian Defence Force peacekeepers were sent to Rwanda. It was a mind-wrecking assignment: the rules of engagement meant they could not intervene to stop massacres. They had to just stand and watch.

Quinn believes 40 per cent of those who went to Rwanda have PTSD. He is still seeing people emerging with problems from Sinai, Western Sahara, Somalia and East Timor.

"We are now getting quite increased numbers coming through from Iraq and Afghanistan, which are resulting in medical discharges," Quinn says. "These guys are coming back with very severe symptoms of PTSD, which in a lot of younger blokes they don't actually realise what's going on.

"The early stages are hyperactivity, worried about someone being behind their back, explosive tempers. In the later stages, they have what you'd call mental breakdowns."

Quinn says it used to be "standard" for the military to report 20 suicides among serving personnel each year. That has dropped to five, which suggests the army is doing something right.

"But post-army, the numbers are massive," Quinn adds. "And those numbers are not calculated. People discharge on request, they have problems fitting in, they go into fits of depressions, they become unreliable, their marriages normally break down.

"They lose their employment and they don't know what's going. They top themselves."

Quinn believes the army is trying to come to terms with the issues but says the organisation is so large and unwieldy that it can't cope. So it just kicks the psychologically traumatised out.

"A lot of the people who are getting psych-discharged don't want discharge," Quinn says. "They want to get themselves as well as they can and stay in the army. But they fall into a category where they're not trusted with a weapon any more."

Asked if public knowledge, and public empathy, would help these people, Quinn says it's hard to say. "Most expect if they go overseas and get hurt they will be looked after," he says.

"If they go overseas and come back mentally damaged, they expect they will be looked after. They're getting quite severely let down because the system can't cope with these guys.

"You can't fix them quite often because they're on a self-destruct mission. They don't want help. They want the system to react to them quickly.

"Public empathy is a funny one. One of my clients is a Timor vet. He was involved with Interfet and was in a couple of contacts and in cleaning up atrocities over there.

"He was working in a bar and on the television there was pictures of a body that was being taken off the back of a Herc(ules plane). One of the soldiers on guard with the coffin had tears running down his eyes.

"A fellow on the other side of the bar made the comment, 'Jeez, imagine if there's a big body count'.

"The Timor vet has gone off his head and trashed this guy. Public understanding would be better than public empathy, if that makes sense.

"They don't want to be in the public eye. It's embarrassing to have a PDST. I don't go out and advertise it. I take my tablets and when I have issues, I hide away and keep everything functioning normally. A lot of these guys can't do that."

Veterans and service people who need help should contact www.peacekeepers.asn.au

comment: The mainstream media must continually create issues to try and destroy Trump. Barack Obama was  Muslim supporter who not only gave millions to terrorist in Iraq - gutted fund to my fellow veterans, I am a Vietnam veteran and I don't know where you get the authority or reason to criticize anything about veterans here since you are in Australia. It makes no sense to me. You were not there at our side in the war, and you have no part in our country . Why do you do this? Have you served in the military? Have you risked your life for freedom or Democracy? What right do you have to even talk about this?

https://www.snopes.com/obama-veterans-money-to-syria/

On 15 April 2016 the web site “Ending the Fed” (ETF News) published a “breaking” news item reporting that President Obama had taken $2.6 billion from veterans’ programs and allocated it to assist Syrian refugees:

Veteran Affairs is one of the most mismanaged government program in the United States. Veterans cannot make appointments, the cost for treatment is outrageous, over 307,000 veterans died waiting for care, yet nobody has been held accountable. The most recent atrocity by the VA came when the VA went to Congress, less than three months before the end of the fiscal year, short $2.6 billion in funds in order to care for the veterans.

After discussing the possibility of closing some of the VA hospitals, Congress passed an emergency spending bill worth $3.5 billion. Josh Earnest, White House spokesman, said that the United States has committed to spend $4.5 billion in order to help rebuild Syria while also addressing the refugee camps scattered throughout Europe. $419 million will be designated for humanitarian aid assisting with Syrian refugees. The money is coming from the United States Agency for International Development which means that Congress will not get the chance to deny the funding.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-07-26/trump-releases-10-step-veterans-affairs-solution

Now here is some reality for you and some first hand experience from a U.S. Vietnam veteran which I am. Many of my friends died in Vietnam or were wounded in battle. How many of yours were?

Since Trump has come into office, the Veteran's services I receive have improved incredibly. They built a brand new clinic for us in Monterey and now we can be in and out of an appointment in less than an hour.  For many there are no co-pays on our medicine and I had two major operations - a three-way bypass and recently a stint for a heart attack which was completely covered by the VA.

They have modernized health care with Kiosks and any time day or night I can get a provider on the phone in less than 15 minutes. Many hospitals were under investigation and there has been a mass shakedown of the whole system in America.

I am proud to be an American Veteran and with my bank and many people I deal with we are greeted with "thank you for your service to our country".

A president, while trying to call and comfort those fallen in battle, lives a life with a schedule from hell and can only do so much. 

Don't talk to me about families of fallen soldiers if you have never been there. You haven't and you know only what you read. 

We are on the verge of a nuclear war.  We desperately need to focus on important issues instead of a daily diet of Drama and the Jerry Springer show. Not only the U.S., but you have received a warning from North Korea that if you interfere - your country will be destroyed.

Why don't you focus on that? Isn't that important to you that everyone you know and love will die in radioactive wastes in agony and then all you knew will be gone.

This bickering - this drama is only because the Democrats lost. They don't care about the veterans. Obama was barely a citizen much less a veteran.

Do you care about us veterans or are you just posting more attacks again Trump without any concern for us? 

Have you ever helped an American veteran in any way? Just wondering.  I think it would be a could idea to start some threads about the treatment of veterans in Australia. After all - it's only fair.

Medclinician

Ps.  If it is just because the Democrats lost,  

Med said - "Now here is some reality for you and some first hand experience from a U.S. Vietnam veteran which I am. Many of my friends died in Vietnam or were wounded in battle. How many of yours were?"

I lost friends and family in that damn war!

Med also said - "Since Trump has come into office, the Veteran's services I receive have improved incredibly. They built a brand new clinic for us in Monterey and now we can be in and out of an appointment in less than an hour. For many there are no co-pays on our medicine and I had two major operations - a three-way bypass and recently a stint for a heart attack which was completely covered by the VA."

If you really think this Congress ok'd the money for that clinic, they broke ground on it and finished building it in the last eleven months you are wrong! You should be thanking the Obama admin not Trump!