200,000 war veterans homeless in US

Glantz: 'We're going to be looking at an increase in those statistics'

300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans file disability claims with US federal government.

PACIFICA – For six years of war in Iraq, the Bush administration has done absolutely nothing to take care of the hundreds of thousands of wounded veterans coming home, said Aaron Glantz, a journalist who has been covering the stories of US military vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We've had people brought into the VA, turned away, who have committed suicide after coming back from the war with post-traumatic stress disorder. We've had people redeployed to Iraq, even after they were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. We have 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans coming home with traumatic brain injury, physical brain damage. We have 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who have filed disability claims with the federal government," Glantz told Democracy Now! on Thursday.

"In many cases, there is no medical services at all, because remember that many people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan come from rural communities where the VA doesn't even have a hospital," he explained.

There are 200,000 homeless war veterans in the United States.

"On every night, 200,000 people who have put on the uniform and served this country sleep homeless on the streets," said Glantz.

"Imagine that you come home from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental wound, or traumatic brain injury, physical brain damage often caused by a roadside bomb. The first thing that you have to do just to get in the door at the VA is to fill out a twenty-six-page form where you substantiate exactly how you were wounded, where you get letters of support from your battle buddies, from your commanders. You subpoena your own Army records, often with the help of your congressperson. And you present to the VA a gigantic claim folder, which they then sit on for an extended period of time. And that's just to get in the door. So we take our veterans when they're most wounded and most vulnerable and exploit them by making them fill out a mound of paperwork just to get in the door," noted Glantz.

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