If I could have just dropped out before the fourth grade, I might not have been able to… If I could have just dropped out before the fourth grade, I might not have been able to understand last Tuesday’s Associated Press article. I would be out right now frolicking with the blustery snow and not thinking about budget cuts in Veterans Affairs proposed by the Bush administration.

Our dear leader is planning to cut VA hospital funding in spite of numerous independent assessments and experts in Congress saying that current estimates of veterans’ health costs underestimate need by $16 billion. He wants these cuts in spite of studies by The New England Journal of Medicine and others showing the hidden devastation of this war: Nearly one third of returning Iraq veterans screen positive for mental disorders and diseases such as posttraumatic stress disorder.

The overwhelming majority of those diagnosed are currently going untreated thanks, in part, to four consecutive years of increasing expenses to veterans, administration initiatives designed to block enrollment for low income vets and a baffling Disabled Veterans Tax requiring vets to match from their own pocket each dollar spent on them – it’s amazing what secrets lurk in a Google search. The Washington Post recently reported that when they find treatment, it is often atrocious.

This problem is not new. In 1996, “The Gulf War and Mental Health” concluded that United States Military Forces were not ready for the “mental health requirements of combat.” That is, the government was not able to treat these soldiers for what they had sacrificed.

Luckily, given the smaller scope of Desert Storm, only a few thousand trained warriors returned home with mental wounds. What harm could possibly come from not treating disturbed men who also have the knowledge and experience given by the most deadly fighting force that ever walked the earth?

Oh, you know, just domestic terrorism.

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad were veterans of the Gulf War.

Their infamous actions show that these men were deranged, and yet, there is no record – available to me, at least – of either man screening positive for mental health problems while in or after service.

But our country wasn’t able to tend to everyone then; even with fewer than 1,000 injured, people still fell through the cracks all the time. And this was when the government was run with some competence.

What’s going to happen after this much, much bloodier war is over? This war produces veterans who have “consistently reported more psychic distress than those returning from Afghanistan and other conflicts, such as those in Bosnia or Kosovo,” according to a May 2006 Washington Post report.

How can we hope to cope with the continued surge of soldiers who need treatment when we haven’t even finished taking care of veterans of Desert Storm?

Anyone who serves this country deserves to be taken care of afterward. How can we trust that Bush will take care of our veterans now when he continually fails them during the war? The body armor, the Hum-vee upgrades, important cultural training: All of these would be important fixes if he really cared about the troops – especially with the forklifts of cash spread around in Iraq.

And yet, here we are; asking so much of the men and women in uniform, only to reward their valor with – what should be – criminal negligence.

For Pete’s sake, Bush also proposes a $13 million cut in the VA’s budget for prosthetic limbs, as reported by the U.S. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. The rate of amputation had already doubled by 2004 and in 2006 the Orthotic and Prosthetic Alliance presented that “veterans returning from oversees with war injuries are fueling recent increases in amputations.” Only a sociopath would target money for prostheses while proposing additional tax cuts.

I support our troops and veterans. And they are not genetically predisposed to mental injury, but they go through more trauma than most Americans. As a population, they are model citizens, but every population has its few. This nation already learned this lesson, it is criminal that our government hasn’t seen to fixing it and it’s nauseating that they are instead looking to make it worse.

So when all of us reap what Bush and his circle of jerks has sown, make sure you remember the mighty Capitol leaders and courageous editorial champions of this glorious war. Remember those dead-eyed opportunists who built their bank accounts profiteering on piles of dead Americans.

It’s them we will thank.

Arun stamped around, gesturing wildly while dictating this column. E-mail him at [email protected].