And this is only a very small fraction of those cost in monetary terms for any War but especially Wars of Choice, billions are just plain blown up in the occupations, billions are just lost, and more!

The Meaningful Real Costs in Lives Loss or Changed Forever can not be Calculated!

VA laboring under surge of wounded veterans: Analysis

Click on Graphic for Enlargement
April 15, 2010 In a sobering reminder of the long-term costs of war, a dramatic spike in disability claims during the last seven years has overwhelmed the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and nearly doubled the cost of compensating wounded veterans, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.

The bulk of the increases didn't come from veterans of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but from those who served years or even decades before. Veterans from the Vietnam and Persian Gulf eras accounted for roughly 84 percent of the rise in spending, which hit $34.3 billion last year.

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Mental Disorders Affect Nearly 1in4 Disabled Vets, Click on Graphic for Enlargement

The unanticipated crush of claims is exacerbated by the VA's antiquated compensation system, which hasn't been overhauled since 1945. Cumbersome and heavily bureaucratic, the system requires a mountain of paperwork, is based on diagnoses that lag far behind medical advances and runs on a computer system that is so outdated it can't accurately verify whether veterans were deployed.

And why is the VA's compensation system, and more, antiquanted? Simple, only a small fraction of the society serve, the rest cheer on then loose interest especially as the results from quickly start coming in, they'll fund the actions but not the results of, playing catchup which costs much more to stop from causing complete collapse, they also stay silent as the veteran fights for what was promised them for their service and they don't raise an eyebrow as the fights continue or the veteran is denied just compensation!

Instead of working toward building a new system, however, Congress has approved hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to hire thousands of new employees to process claims, a temporary fix that's added more overhead to what is already one of the largest bureaucracies in the federal government.
The backlog of claims is expected to grow before it shrinks, however, as experienced employees are pulled off the line to train new ones. The VA says the backlog won't be eliminated until 2015.

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Among the findings from the Tribune's analysis of more than 3 million disability claims approved by the VA: Some Facts Here

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The VA's acting undersecretary for benefits, Mike Walcoff, said the Obama administration has fought for an unprecedented increase in funding to tackle problems facing the agency. He said the agency is working on multiple fronts, including developing a paperless computer system, improving communication with the military and developing pilot programs to streamline the claims process.

Why are we once again facing this, DeJa-Vu Vietnam and after, while many are screaming, lately, about their taxes and the now Government. Most were the same ones cheering on the Wars of Choice and off the budget books costs and condemning others for giving truth about the failed policies that they supported, including that coming. Simple, as I said above, they've lost interest while both theaters continue and never even mention them as they wave their posters of condemnation towards the government, and certainly don't want to pony up the costs for the results, again!

From the beginning of the current wars, the Bush administration woefully underestimated the number of veterans who would seek disability compensation, forcing the VA to play catch up just as an aging veteran population added to its workload. -->-->-->

The blame doesn't only lie with the bush administration, it also is right at the feet of the republican controlled congresses then, rubber stamping off budget costs, who not only didn't mention the costs coming but what was already there from the previous and neither did those, mentioned above, they represent as the whole group wrapped themselves in their flags, lapel flag pins, magnetic ribbons {which didn't last long like their 'support?'} and laughed about their 'purple heart bandages'!!

Hey folks of this so called 'Tea Party' Look In The Mirror!