The Senate woke up yesterday and got pissed. Sen. Patty “tennis shoes” Murray, our staunch defender of all things Vet (when it is politically advantageous), just discovered that 18 of our elite club decide to check out of the hotel every day by their own hand. Ungrateful little bastards, aren’t they? Why, the sheer effrontery of these former souls to put Congressmen/women on the spot.

The problem? Well, it seems that if you, Joe Vet, want an appointment for a mental health issue, you can expect to get in line. If you’ve been down to the VAMC recently, you probably noticed this because you had to stand up for a while. Seems they’re running out of chairs. The wait can be as short as 21 days to as long as 87 in Spokane, Wash. according to Sen. Nike. Were this a sucking chest wound, the delay could be fatal. Our good senator has also finally connected the dots and figured out that delay in mental health care can also result in the cessation of life. No longer can they whistle whilst passing the graveyard and pretend they’ve done their job when Veterans are being so blatant about disposing of themselves in this manner.

Part of Congress’ job, above and beyond appropriating the funds for the VA, is to ascertain that they are actually using the funds for the intended purpose. It appears something is amiss down at 810 Vermont Ave. NW. If you own a company and have worker injuries, you institute training protocols to reduce same. If you throw $10 million at it and get 0% reduction in injuries and actually suffer an uptick, including fatalities, you’d tend to question what the hell is going on. Well, after about 6 years, Congress decided to investigate yesterday in earnest. “Earnest” being defined as it interrupted their 2012 campaign plans for the day.

Since 2006, the VA has been faced with a 34% increase in the number of Vets seeking help for bent brain syndrome. Unfortunately they haven’t kept up with the demand for services. This is causing back pressure in the form of the aforementioned suicides and drug abuse. Nobody is including homelessness in the equation yet, but that can’t be too far down the road. To do so would make the numbers seem more dismal than they already are.

Government guidelines require VA to schedule an appointment for those who so request within two weeks. 40% of Vets surveyed laughed at that and said they were having no such luck. 70% of VA providers queried in the survey said they didn’t have the space/personnel/staff to meet the mission requirements. An additional 46% said they needed to provide more “off-hour ” appts. for their clients to accommodate their (Veterans’) work schedules. Yes, Virginia, Veterans have to go to work and pay bills just like Mommy and Daddy.

This just torques my jaws. This has been going on for many years, and not just on the mental health side of the hospital. Vets have been getting the lowest priority for years and years the moment they get their walking papers. That America’s elected poohbahs just woke up and smelled the coffee is almost absurd. Visualize if you will a person (the military) balling up a piece of paper (a Vet) and hucking it in the trashcan like a basketball. The VA is NOT there to unfurl the paper, smooth it out and file it correctly until forced to do so. Consequently some of the trashcans get emptied before all the paper can be rescued. VA complains they are resource-challenged and they may well be. My advice would be to ask for more M-O-N-E-Y.

Mary Schohn, the head of the VA’s mental health operations was trotted out recently as the fall-gal and beat her chest with the usual mea culpas. She informed Congress that the number of mental health professionals employed and assigned to Vets has ballooned from 14,207 to over 21,000 since 2006-a 47% increase. VA had 1.2 million requests for mental health actions last year alone. Donning sack cloth and spreading ashes on her head, she went further and said VA “realizes we have much more to do.” Well, duh. Where’d you park the squad car, Dick Tracy?

Let’s analyze this. In my war (Vietnam) we were deployed for a finite 365 days and knew it. For combat troops, we could expect 240 days of same. 85% were support personnel but were still recipients of harassing fire and terrorist activity which kept them on their toes. Granted, we have had our fair share of bent brains from this, but as a percentage of number deployed, we have had less than the current war(s). What is so different that we see such dichotomy in the numbers?

First and foremost, it seems, would be the number of deployments. In my war, many were drafted and could only be held to serve three years. Granted, many enlisted for four and served without incident, but the stop loss codicil was never employed due to the large numbers of warm bodies available. Now we are faced with a different set of circumstances. The smaller, smarter, all-volunteer, leaner military has corralled a finite number of servicemen and deployed them repeatedly into the fray-some even now deploying on their third tour. Any farmer can tell you the plow wears down and does not function well without replacing the blade occasionally. Likewise, the continued insertion of troops into battle has consequences unforeseen since the years of WW2. Put bluntly, one cannot watch the continued destruction of his brethren without serious mental deterioration.

Why the military and the VA think this is some new phenomenon never before seen doesn’t pass the smell test. Every war has it’s collateral damage. Brain readers since before time have written papers and done studies on how mental adversity can have odd effects on the psyche. After all, they’ve had an ample laboratory for this with two World Wars, two more in Southwest Asia and that pesky disagreement with North Vietnam in the 60s-70s.

With all this experience under their belts, they now come forward hat in hand and shrug their shoulders as if this is some untoward development that caught them unawares. Wars have had this exact same fallout every time they happen. Christ, you can almost set you clock by it. The fact that they are using a “no deposit, no return” philosophy with soldier’s brains is now demanding a solution-one they are ill-prepared to proffer.

The writing on the wall with the current administration is to blame the prior tenants rather than seek a viable solution. Another aspect that is surfacing is to retreat inwards and shrink our military. This myopic philosophy will simply embolden our enemies to become more aggressive as they see us retreat. We need to choose our battles carefully and, most of all, allocate funds to compensate the ensuing damaged participants ahead of time. No more can we pay lip service as the politicians did yesterday to this crisis unless we are satisfied with the status quo of watching 18 of our citizen soldiers give up and take their own lives every morning. America makes a pact with each and every one of us when we sign up. The fact that they are so parsimonious and indifferent when it comes time to honor the commitment is appalling. With the current,  unsettled economic doldrums, mental health can be a difference between living and dying-something Congress seem inured to. I hope all of you remember this next November. That’s the only time the pen is mightier than the machine gun.  Make it so, Number One.