Tuesday's TV news carried a very brief item starring U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal who was publicly selling a plan to financially compensate U.S. Iranian Hostage Crisis civilian victims. As a combat wounded U.S. veteran of the Viet Nam War, who was shot down behind enemy lines, I think that I can say that I have at least some tiny appreciation for some of the angst that those former civilian hostages must have gone through.
I think that if the Hostage Crisis victims' friends and neighbors opted to do them some generous financial favor that would be one thing, but, in all honesty, I have to ask, where is the money coming from to finance Blumenthal's huge payout to those civilians? How, in good conscience, can politicians even dream of making such an offer to civilians when no such commensurate taxpayer funded financial care has ever been given to any of our military POWs, who put their lives on the line to serve our Constitution, and in doing so thereby protect every U.S. citizen!?
Why is it that, ever since the veterans had to march on Washington, D.C., after WWI (to protest the government reneging on its promises) and were run down and fired upon by U.S. troops serving under MacArthur and Patton (who later became generals), many veterans of all subsequent U.S. wars have had to scrape or fight or hire legal advocates to get our government to admit the need for and supply us with timely assistance that even begins to recognize our service and sufferings? Why is our government proposing such grandiose financial gain for civilians and yet dodges or ignores offering military POWs a similarly extravagant recompense?
Hey! Those U.S. Iranian Hostage Crisis civilian victims are in line to receive a HUGE slice of American pie. But, you can bet your booties that no politician who backs that plan will ever tell you why not even one U.S. military POW from any war has ever received that measure of governmental financial solace and pampering.
Given the U.S. government's historical neglect of veterans and the exorbitant money that has been proposed for the civilian former hostages of Iran, it appears that such disparity in compensation is nothing leads than political haymaking by Blumenthal and his cronies. $10,000, PER DAY of captivity, paid to civilians out of taxpayer coffers!! ...all the while our military POW veterans are told to wait in the wings or in line for treatments and disability compensation that add up to paltry fractions of what has been suggested as payments to the civilian hostages. Politicians like Blumenthal should be ashamed of themselves, but then their track records show that such politicians like serving people like Obama, Clinton, and themselves. They apparently have zero respect for "we, the People" or our Constitution.
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