LOOKING FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA’S PHOTO AT TOLEDO CLINIC LIKE AN EASTER EGG HUNT
By Gordon Duff
During a scheduled medical care visit to my local Veterans clinic in Toledo, Ohio, I looked for the photos of President Obama and our new director. They were not to be found. The main wall facing the waiting room, long adorned with the photo of Bush and the “flavor of the day” stooge in charge of application shredding or budget cuts was empty, hangers still in place.
Only after an extensive hunt was President Obama’s photo found, well out of the way, behind two flags, obscured from view. I took out my camera phone to record this and attracted a flurry of activity from the VA rent-a-cops and the facilitiy director.
I had become a terrorist suspect, it seemed. Then the story began to unfold….veterans had been taking down President Bush’s photo for months, often hiding it in a bathroom stall next to a toilet, despite the fact two armed guards were stationed less than 15 feet away and the photo hung in the lobby of a busy facility.
Compared to issues like shredded documents, veterans getting AIDS from dirty colonoscopy equipment and staff members at some facilities operating consistently below legally mandated licensing standards or, frankly, a thousand other abuses supported by enough fact to fill the halls of congress, this one issues struck a nerve.
Was President Obama being hidden to protect him from the abuses veterans subjected President Bush to? The director of the facility, a veteran himself, talked with me for nearly an hour. He explained that this had happened “countless times,” and hunting down the Bush photo in bathrooms and closets had become time consuming and embarrassing.
I looked around me. Two grossly overweight and heavily armed security guards stood next to the empty wall, now guarding nothing, perhaps an improvement over the “less than nothing” that had been there before. A few feet away…….
While this was going on, my wife, a registered nurse, who had accompanied me was helping a very disabled veteran who had collapsed and had been overlooked by all staff and security. She found one of the doctors, a good friend, and had him direct staff to help this man. How many have collapsed or died, unnoticed in VA waiting rooms? Do they keep records of that? Maybe they should start.
I began to think about the captain of the Titanic but my mind moved on, elsewhere. Memories of veterans spending endless hours in waiting rooms, uncomfortable chairs, unfriendly staff and eventually finding, in many cases, they had been entirely forgotten, are as much a part of my experience as witnessing the abuses of the multiple amputee Vietnam vets years ago.
If President Obama is bringing change, it needs to come with a hammer, not a whisk broom.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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