This is the Hypocrisy We Should Tune In.

Eliot Spitzer may be hypocritical but his hypocrisy cannot compare to the duplicitous way we impose further punishment on the young men we flaunt our patriotism for...whose lives, in so many cases, will not only never be the same, but whose dreams for the future were obliterated.

One day people will look back at the way we draped ourselves in "red, white and blue", chastising anyone who didn’t chant "We Support our Troops," just like the sheep who chanted "Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good" in George Orwell's Animal Farm, and then take a look at the way those who served this country were treated and they will see the blatant hypocrisy and willful ignorance of a nation distracted by an over abundance of everything.

According to The Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, the soldiers, we glibly "honor" with dollar store "patriotism", have to wait, at the very least six months, or should something go wrong during these unnecessary procedures and red tape, up to two years to qualify for Veterans’ benefits. This dereliction of duty occurs because as soon as the soldier is discharged from the military, he immediately loses all of his benefits, no matter how severe his injuries. It makes no difference whether the soldiers are severely wounded or not, they must be processed through the archaic paper based system, still in existence thanks to tax cuts for those who need an entire staff to track their wealth, in an effort to prove themselves worthy of receiving any compensation for the wounds sustained abroad.

The burden is placed entirely on the veteran, who has already trudged through places and experienced things most of us only see in our nightmares, to prove he deserves benefits. The presumption is that whatever the veteran is claiming is wrong with him is not therefore he must gather all the documentation, doctor’s notices, all of the hospital forms and all the things from all the different places to prove he is indeed injured and in need of care, even though prior to his discharge from the military, his condition was already confirmed.

We should presume the veteran is entitled to his benefits and it is up to the government to prove why not. Our tax system is set up in such a way that the burden is on the government to prove that what we're presenting as true, is false, by auditing a small subset of taxpayers, in hopes that that will be enough to prevent people from cheating the system.

Many of us are ignorant of the way soldiers are treated once they return home, however that is no excuse, because it is our duty as citizens to make sure those we send into battle are at the very least taken care of without delay or made to endure further trauma.