Political Quotes

“This is his resolution. The first encounter with the casualties in this war, I had two young widows come to my office. They wanted to go to Walter Reed because they had lost their husband and they wanted to talk to the soldiers and tell them how lucky they were that they were still alive. One was 23 with two children. One was 19 without any children. I thought how proud I was of them. Another young man from my district was blinded and lost his foot. They did everything they could do for him in Walter Reed. And then he went home and his father was in jail. His mother had not seen him. There was no one at home and he was by himself. The VA has done everything they could to help him. They sent him to Johns Hopkins to see if there is a possibility for him to see and found out that he could not see. And then they started sending bills. Collection agencies sent him bills. Imagine. He is by himself in his own home and a collection agency from Johns Hopkins sends him a bill. Obviously we straightened it out, but that is the kind of thing that happens when you forget about the veteran. I had a soldier that lost both legs and an arm. Bill has seen the young fellow from Micronesia. We visited a mental health ward. You know what they said to me? Fifty thousand of them are going to have some kind of battle fatigue. They said that we don't get Purple Hearts. We don't get any recognition at all. We get shunned aside as if we were cowards.…”