President Barack Obama did not, as the White House claimed yesterday, only learn of the VA wait-list scandal on TV, just as he claimed to learn of the IRS, Fast and Furious and AP reporting snooping scandals.
Obama campaigned on the VA scandal while still a senator in 2008, got elected president and then forgot about it—until the scandal came back into the light of publicity this month.
“Speaking at a campaign rally in Charleston, W. Va., then Senator Obama promised veterans he would fix the problems plaguing Veterans Affairs hospitals: (grabien.com)
“At a time when we’re facing the largest homecoming since the Second World War, the true test of our patriotism is whether we will serve our returning heroes as well as they’ve served us,” Obama said:
“We know that over the last eight years, we’ve already fallen short of meeting this test. We all learned about the deplorable conditions that were discovered at places like Fort Bragg and Walter Reed. We’ve all walked by a veteran whose home is now a cardboard box on a street corner in the richest nation on Earth. We’ve all heard about what it’s like to navigate the broken bureaucracy of the VA - the impossibly long lines, or the repeated calls for help that get you nothing more than an answering machine. Just a few weeks ago, an 89-year-old World War II veteran from South Carolina told his family, “No matter what I apply for at the VA, they turn me down.” The next day, he walked outside of an Outpatient Clinic in Greenville and took his own life.
“How can we let this happen? How is that acceptable in the United States of America? The answer is, it’s not. It’s an outrage. And it’s a betrayal—a betrayal—of the ideals that we ask our troops to risk their lives for.
“But it doesn’t have to be this way. Not in this country. Not if we decide that this time will be different.”
And there is undeniable proof that Obama referred to the VA scandal only two years ago.
Through diligent research top talk show radio host Mark Levin’s producer, Rich (Sementa) unearthed a July 23, 2012 clip right off the White House website with Obama claiming new veterans wouldn’t be piled onto the backlog, saying: “I will not rest until we’ve got this right”.
“White House Press Secretary Jay Carney wound up with egg on his face Monday as he told reporters that President Barack Obama first learned from a TV news report that his Veterans Administration was denying medical care to vets with secret off-the-books waiting lists. (Daily Mail, May 19, 2014)
“But new evidence emerged this morning that his transition team was notified five years ago about how VA medical centers’ official wait-list times bore little resemblance to reality and risked denying military heroes critical health care.
“The Washington Times reported Monday that waiting times at veterans’ medical facilities were known to be wildly inaccurate at the end of the George W. Bush administration. By the time Obama’s transition team got a post-election briefing from the VA at the end of 2008, scheduling failures were already reaching a critical point.
“The newspaper received a copy of that briefing through a Freedom Of Information Act request.
EVA medical centers stand accused of keeping secret off-the-books waiting lists in order to cook the books and boost performance stats.
As many as 40 veterans died in Phoenix when they were denied critical care because their names didn’t appear on official waiting lists.”Guess Obama’s 2008 promised ‘Hope and Change’ included everyone other than America’s courageous war vets.
Campaigning on the back of war vets didn’t stop Obama or his wife Michelle from going on to use the military as props ever since his election.
Most prominent among Obama using the military as props is what Canada Free Press (CFP) referred to as ‘The Incident in the Rose Garden’:
“Armed by the arrogant confidence that comes via a protective circle of self-serving, back-scratching politicians (including Republican ones), who do nothing to deter his increasing taunts against all things American, President Barack Hussein Obama continues to publicly trash the cherished image of the military.
“Taking a leaf straight from the book of his overbearing wife, Michelle, who used military members in full dress as props on the night she invaded living rooms via satellite from the White House to announce this year’s Best Picture, yesterday big brave BHO used Marines holding umbrellas to shelter both himself and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from a little light drizzle in the White House Rose Garden.”Erdogan was last week accused of punching a mourner in the aftermath of his country’s worst mining disaster. (Daily Mail, May 15, 2014). Photos of his adviser Yusef Yerkel kicking a mourner went viral on the Internet.
“The photograph of the two with the umbrella-holding Marines went viral on the Internet, but lost on an ever-taunting Obama was the stark contrast between the dedicated young men who serve the country and his anti-American self. (CFP)
“This president who holds respect for nothing American and who seems to consider nothing sacred referred to Erdogan as “our prime minister”. Was he planning to later dive, yet again under the slip-of-the-tongue cover, or was it part of a deliberate attempt to underline photographic proof that an Islamic prime minister can be served by an umbrella-holding U.S. Marine?
“Worst of all, Obama, who still maintains the cover up on the September 11, 2012 slaughter of four courageous Americans in Benghazi, Libya, openly called the terrorist attack that cost them their lives, an “incident”.
“This from the same president, who with his vice president and secretary of state in tow, showed up to comfort and promise justice for the loss to the loved ones of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Tyrone S. Woods, Glen Doherty and Sean Smith when their bodies were returned to the USA.”Meanwhile, we can expect the ‘Mother of all Selfies’ when Obama, wearing a put-on mournful face, shows up on Memorial Day this coming long weekend to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery.
Canada Free Press
