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TO THE EDITOR:
For some reason, it always requires an organized social movement to convince the U.S. Government to fund the care provided for the selfless citizens whose brave sacrifice of their own bodies provides the rest of us with security. More than ever before, we do need men standing on those walls in order to sleep under the blanket of freedom they provide. Colonel Jessup may be fictional, but he’s right!
Workers at Ground Zero were kicked to the curb by federal agencies, but Jon Stewart and a bi-partisan coalition of voters, successfully pressed congressional representatives to extend funding for those debilitated by illness after responding to the patriotic call for remediation of wreckage from that fateful day. Funding was approved, and though the suffering of those volunteers and their families has never abated… at least, we as a nation, were willing to acknowledge our collective debt and make payment.
The victims of cancer who served at burn pits, drank toxic water supplies on military bases, absorbed Agent Orange, or inhaled Napalm fumes in the jungles of Vietnam, and suffered under the black clouds of smoldering oil rigs in Kuwait, all deserve the same consideration for their service to our nation.
As the spouse of a deceased cancer victim, I unequivocally state that any reluctance by those in power to fully fund the medical staff needed to attend to the end-of-life care required by Veterans suffering from late-stage cancer is not only an insult to the wounded warriors of our nation, but amounts to clear dereliction of duty on the part of our elected representatives. Cuts to funding and manpower are unacceptable, and I hope you will also reach out to your senators and representative to say as much.
We are now in the ungodly age of DOGE. The same insulting neglect historically heaped on those who sacrifice the most, is now being imposed by a man who obtained a fraudulent note from a tenant of his billionaire father, so that he could successfully avoid the draft, and send five other men in his place to the jungles of Southeast Asia. The bone-spur “pain” of the combat boots worn at the New York Military Academy, was strangely insufficient to prevent him from becoming “captain” of Company A, and then leading a military parade of his fellow cadets down Fifth Avenue on October 12, 1962 on solid asphalt.
Rather than falsely citing National Security concerns to block the hard-working men and women who ceaselessly provide care for our Veterans from union representation, when the Inspector General of the Veterans Administration has announced that every VA center in the United States was understaffed as of April 2025, offering a $50,000 signing bonus like ICE agents now receive, might remedy the situation.
Bradley Grower
Ruthton, Minn.