MILITARY MANEUVERS

Despite patriotic rhetoric from Washington, it is hard to imagine it treating service personnel much worse. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were sent to Iraq without receiving the equipment and training necessary to deal with a populace that has greeted them with rocket propelled grenades and roadside bombs, instead of the expected open arms and flowers.

Now, they’ve been told they can’t leave the military. If they are unfortunate to be among the 4,500 soldiers who have been wounded, many of them grievously, they will return home to long waits for health care, some of it substandard. Yet, the Bush administration plans to cut the Department of Veterans Affairs budget in coming years and is fighting attempts to ensure that qualified veterans get the disability and retirement benefits they deserve.

The latest bad news came Wednesday when the Army informed all its active- duty and reserve soldiers that they could not leave the military when their voluntary service is up if their unit is in Iraq or Afghanistan or expected to be sent there within three months. A former Army captain, Andrew Exum, called the action “shameful” saying in a New York Times column the soldiers had been “conscripted” to meet continuing needs in Iraq. Capt. Exum’s concerns should be addressed by Congress, particularly its Armed Services committees, which should consider whether extending what is supposed to be voluntary services for a specified period of time is a breech of contract. It is certainly a breech of trust that will hurt recruiting efforts.

When soldiers do return to America, they will find that some progress is being made on the health care front. Veterans from Maine and other rural states often must travel great distances to VA medical facilities. For this reason, they often put off their medical care, causing them to suffer and the cost of the treatment to rise. These concerns were partly addressed by a national commission to restructure veterans’ health care facilities. The Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES) Commission recommended the opening of part-time telemedicine clinics in Houlton, Lincoln, Dover-Foxcroft, Farmington and South Paris. When these clinics open by 2012, veterans will be able to receive much of their care closer to home.

The commission also directed the Department of Veterans Affairs to find ways to refer Maine veterans to nearby medical facilities rather than to the Boston area. Still there is a backlog of 3,000 veterans waiting for medical appointments at the VA hospital at Togus and veterans sometimes have to wait six months to see their primary care physician.

There is more work for Congress to do, too. It should find out why the Bush administration proposed to cut the veteran’s administration by $1.9 billion between now and 2006 and what those cuts will mean to the country’s service personnel. Although the situation has been partially rectified, many wounded veterans are unable to collect disability benefits. If former service members receive disability payments, they must forfeit a similar portion of their retirement benefits. They are the only federal employees who cannot collect both full disability and retirement benefits.

The reason for denying veterans their retirement payments is purely financial. It is estimated it would cost $20 billion over 10 years to return disabled veterans to the federal retirement system. That is a small price to pay when the Defense Department is spending $1 billion a week on the war in Iraq.