Support our Vets Send This Open Letter to the Department of Veterans' Affairs

by Debbie Burak
(Midlothian, VA)

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs Mission Statement

“To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan”

(Mission statement taken from President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address)


Open letter to the Department of Veteran's Affairs of the United States of America


You have managed to build a fortress keeping out the very veterans to whom you are to honor, and take care of in exchange for their service.

You have built your fortress with your forms that require a law degree to understand and continue to increase the length and difficulty of making a simple application for benefits or pensions.

You stand ever-ready with your legal council and Boards of Appeals to deny, deny, and deny, while the veteran stands helpless with discharge papers in hand.

You have created enough red tape to choke the life out of anyone, and have deprived millions of veterans and their spouse benefits they were and are entitled to by payment of service and sacrifice to this country.

You have completely abandoned the premise of why your agency exist and hold at bay our veterans as though they were the enemy, while it is you who have taken up arms against those who take up arms to defend us and our way of life.

You tolerate ineptness within your agency and call it “backlog” and then reward Senior Officials with pay increases for a “job well done’!

You have tied the hands of our veterans and their families behind their backs, and leave them exhausted from trying to figure out the maze you have created that is intended to lead to nowhere.

You hide behind codes and statues while the mound of unprocessed claims reaches critical mass.

As a reminder for you, these are our sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters that you have been entrusted to “care” for. Your lack of doing so is unacceptable, inexcusable, and without exception, the highest form of dishonor and disgrace to those who have "borne the battle."

It is indeed a day of reckoning, and every dog has its day, and because a soldier put on a uniform and took an oath, you are entitled to yours.

Let Freedom Ring…………….