News-Info-Alerts

Re: Vets Ride to Keep Cause Alive

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 26, 2003

"Speakout: Vets ride to keep their cause alive

By Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell
May 26, 2003

Washingtonians now associate Memorial Day weekend with the rumble of motorcycles, as veterans from across the country make their annual ride through the nation's capital. Last year, more than 500,000 veterans and their supporters filled the streets for the ride from the Pentagon to the Lincoln Memorial, where participants gather to remember and commemorate.

Organized by the national veterans' group Rolling Thunder Inc., the vets and their supporters have made the pilgrimage here since 1987 to remind this city and the nation of the more than 90,000 POWs and MIAs who remain unaccounted for from World War I through the Persian Gulf War. As a veteran of the Korean War, I've ridden with them many times to show solidarity for our brothers and sisters in arms, to memorialize those who have made the ultimate sacrifice and to bring attention to unresolved questions about POWs and MIAs that haunt our country.

Unfortunately, the reasons and the need for the ride have hardly abated over time.

While all our soldiers in the current war in Iraq have so far, thankfully, been accounted for, there remain 1,902 POWs and MIAs from the Vietnam War and 8,166 from the Korean War that the government has not been able to locate or trace. The sad reality is that since World War I, the government has been unable to explain the fate or whereabouts of more than 93,316 soldiers who never returned from combat.

Rolling Thunder and other veterans' groups have kept this issue in the public's eye. With their help, I successfully authored several laws to help bring POWs and MIAs home. The most recent of them is the POW/MIA Gulf War Accountability Act, which President Bush signed into law last fall.

The POW/MIA Gulf War Accountability Act guarantees asylum in the United States to eligible aliens and their families who assist in delivering to our government a living American POW/MIA.

Already, this law has provided political asylum to Mohammed Al Rehaief, the Iraqi man who just last month carried crucial information about POW Jessica Lynch to the U.S. military that led to her rescue.

My colleagues in the House of Representatives have embraced the POW/MIA issue with renewed vigor, too. Resolutions were recently introduced there calling for a full accounting of the remaining 1,902 POWs and MIAs from the Vietnam War and for the establishment of a select committee on POW and MIA affairs. These are encouraging efforts, though we still have a long way to go. The failure to account for POWs and MIAs can no longer be accepted.

And for those vets now safely at home, too many do not receive the benefits they were promised and sorely need.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has difficulty in serving vets' needs at current funding levels. Yet Congress continues to debate spending cuts that would gravely affect veterans' programs and benefits.

Questions about the quality of care at VA hospitals surface with alarming frequency. Because of patient backlogs, many vets must wait months to see a doctor for non-emergency appointments. While VA Secretary Anthony Principi should be lauded for his recognition that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Lou Gehrig's disease - is abnormally endemic among Gulf War vets, the system's hospitals are not adequately prepared to help these people. Seventeen cases have been positively diagnosed, while 17,000 more vets wait to be evaluated.

Vets with hepatitis C are now triple the number of people with HIV/AIDS in this country. Congress appropriated $440 million to treat these vets, of which $36 million was used to treat 4,445 veterans. This leaves tens of thousands of veterans waiting for treatment.

With more vets soon to return from another conflict, Principi and the Department of Veterans Affairs face mounting pressure on a system that's already faltering. Many lessons were learned from the first Gulf War and we must use this knowledge to help those from all wars. The agency must be properly funded, and held accountable to meet the dire health-care and social-services needs of vets and their families.

Citizen soldiers have answered the call to arms throughout our nation's 227 years and even before in the Revolution that gave birth to the republic. More than 1 million soldiers have given their lives to protect it. Everyone who answers the call understands that freedom does not come without a price. The rest of us need to be reminded of that, too. That's why we are here this weekend.

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell is the senior senator from Colorado, a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee and an honorary member of Rolling Thunder.  

© The E.W. Scripps Co."