VETERANOS DE AYER

"DISCHARGEABLE"

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the first privatized war of the century in which companies took astronomical revenues at the expense of their employees

By Dany Smith

Many times we have dealt with the issue of veterans and their continuous struggles to obtain recognition of their rights for services rendered or even their own existence. Unfortunately, the issue cannot be abstracted from the state policy of countries that involve their men in important campaigns of war such as the first Gulf War in 1991 and the second war in 2003. Despite the appalling conditions in the that´s thousands of veterans of that first conflagration were (and still are), very few could realize that the government only wants to use them for their purposes, the goal has been fulfilled, Goodbye and good luck!

Of course a lot of you wondering were you not aware of the risks or are you also unwilling to endure the risks out of patriotism? Whatever the answer, you cannot help but contemplate that within all this tragedy that war involves, there is a long list of categories of personnel involved who are not just regular fighters. Believe it or not, all those involved in those campaigns, were with contracts under legal forms in which the government was a party and could not (in theory) become the unknown as if nothing had happened.

The civilian staff hired by the US government is as much a victim of the aftermath of the war as the military combatants. Many of those civilians were enlisted in companies like "KBR" of "HalliBurton" belonging to Vice President Dick Cheney, where among many tasks of "reconstruction", thousands of drivers were hired for trucks that transported from stores and food for troops to trucks cistern to carry the oil from the captured oil fields. 

They were also employed for security, services and classified service tasks that linked them to CIA counterinsurgency operations. Many of those employees never returned and many others made crippled by the attacks of the Iraqi resistance. "Things were not at all as they had told us," commented a driver of "KBR" who after arriving with serious consequences for the injuries in an ambush in Iraq, was discriminated by the company itself and away from access to any medical treatment.

The great business of the private war was, without a doubt, one of the best collection bags for private companies that Washington contracted to support military tasks to "rebuild" Iraq, a farce that never happened. Companies like "DynCorp", "Halliburton", "KBR", "SOC" and "Blackwater" among many others, hired thousands of employees under their payroll for the construction of military camps in the desert, providing logistics and security that Do not distract the regular military forces.

His employees were supposedly insured and with rights to medical coverage in case of contingencies. To all this, insurance providers would earn billions of dollars at the expense of those employees who often could not claim compliance with their policies for the simple fact that they had died and by the time relatives were informed of the event , the claim period was so long that the validity date had expired. This, which for anyone was a cross-country scam, was the subject of strong criticism in the Congress itself for some commissions, but it was always hidden by the strong and influential pressure groups of the war that were linked, like the Israeli lobbies.

In the moral discussion about the participation of many of these "mercenaries" who were involved in many massive crimes against the Iraqi civilian population, it is inescapable that it could be considered something like "poetic justice" but, in the strictly legal and in what is It refers to the relationship between the federal government and its employees, whom the Bush-Cheney administration manipulated with feelings of patriotism and service to the nation in the face of a threat they argued real, is another issue. If that was bad, the government scam to its own citizens is horrible in the eyes of good Americans who today continue to endure the injustices of a deceptive and desperate government bureaucracy.

The struggle of these unrecognized vets goes through such basic issues as medical care for diseases that were aroused after their stay in Iraq, even prescribing glasses to those who were left with damage to their vision due to war wounds, were and still are some of the injustices suffered. Neither attentions nor medical reviews to corroborate the damages suffered. In some cases the insistence of the claimants made the doctors rude who did not want problems with the federal government. At the same time, for those who managed to present all the forms that insurers claimed, they only paid 50% of the cases claimed. Simply, humiliating and disconsolate situations.

The contracts they signed were mostly never fulfilled. Many of those hired by these companies, ended up trapped in the reality of an Iraq that was far pacified or democratized as they were deceived by the spokesmen of those companies before they left. Foolishness that cost his arms, legs, eyes or simply the life of many of these (for some) hunting fortunes, for others, patriots, so that in the end, the same government that used them, would turn their faces when they demanded basic health coverage or treatment for serious injuries. Some cases are so arbitrary that they arouse the indignation of many within the national and international public opinion. There are documented cases in which several of these former employees, claiming for their rights have seen the door close in their faces as it would happen in any totalitarian government that you may have ever read. Today they coexist in an apathetic society, with images of aesthetic perfection and snobbishness that segregates them and separates them from the benefits that were made by signing those contracts that without discussion classify them as disposable.