Some come home…

…and are soon enough forgotten.

WASHINGTON - A special federal court that hears veterans' disability appeals is facing its highest caseload ever as the government increasingly turns down benefits for war veterans, its chief judge said Tuesday.

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Those numbers continued a sharp increase in appeals filed beginning in fiscal year 2005 as denial of benefits by the VA's Board of Veterans Appeals jumped from 9,299 in 2004 to 13,033 in 2005. Last year, total denials reached 18,107, according to the court.

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Some two-thirds of the VA's initial decisions are typically found to be in error by the court...

That means about 12,000 veterans spent the last year in the limbo of the appeals process, denied benefits they were entitled to by a flawed, and increasingly restrictive, process.

For some of them, certainly, the time lost to those appeals represents costs - physical, mental and/or economic - from which they'll never recover as treatment is not received, bills are not paid and families suffer beside them.

George Bush doesn't care.

Do you?