[Anyone] why does mccain hate veterans?

[totem at laplaza.org]

McCain's record on veterans' issues is shocking and awful.

    At a town hall meeting in Denver in early July, a Vietnam veteran asked presidential candidate Sen. 
John McCain (R-Ariz.) why he had opposed increasing healthcare for veterans whenever Congress 
had taken up the issue over the past six years. McCain virtually ignored the man's question, 
dissembling his opposition to an updated GI Bill for veterans. After the questioner challenged 
McCain's response, the senator reacted as he usually does when queried beyond his comfort level: 
He got visibly angry.

    Because McCain is running for president almost solely on his biography as a war hero, he can't - 
and won't - allow the slightest doubt to linger about his dedication to soldiers both past and present. 
It didn't matter that the vet simply wanted to know how McCain - himself a former soldier and 
prisoner of war - could oppose important healthcare legislation for veterans. In fact, he didn't even 
ask McCain about the GI Bill that he opposed, which had been supported by a bipartisan group of 75 
senators, including Republican veterans Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and John Warner (Va.).

    Most notably, McCain also testily responded to his inquisitor that he had "received every award 
from every vets organization."

    The problem is, not only is that assertion not true, but McCain's record on veterans' issues paints a 
picture of a man who has been willfully negligent when it comes to providing for his former brothers 
and sisters in arms.

    As Iraq War veteran and former Democratic congressional candidate Paul Hackett says, "Here is a 
guy who touts himself as a friend of veterans, but his history shows just the opposite. How can 
someone who cares about our men and women in the armed services vote against the GI Bill or 
veterans' healthcare?" Dying on the vine

    In 2005, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), now chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, introduced 
legislation that would have increased veterans' medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006. He also 
introduced another bill that would have set aside $10 million for "readjustment counseling services" 
- a program to provide a wide range of counseling, outreach and referral services for those returning 
from Iraq and Afghanistan, to ease their readjustment back into society. (This program was started in 
1979 for Vietnam veterans, so one would think McCain is quite familiar with it.)

    But McCain - and other Republicans who are more concerned with using government funds for tax 
cuts for multimillionaires or for corporate subsidies to oil and gas companies - voted this effort 
down.

read more:
http://www.truthout.org/article/john-mccains-dereliction-duty#comment-13973