Changes coming in April 2025

[broncovet]

    There are significant rating changes coming up in the spring of 2025, especially for sleep apnea, mental health disorders and tinnitus.  

         If you even might be eligible for a higher rating, or a new rating, my advice is to apply now.  Why?

        Generally, when the rating changes, the Veteran should get "the more favorable" (to the Veteran) of both the "new" and the "old" regulation.  That will all change in April 2025, because then you will be forced into qualifying "with the new" rating system, as you are too late for the old system.  

       In this example, by applying now, you would get to apply EITHER the new or the old criteria, whichever is more favorable.  But, if you wait, then you have no choice but to meet the "new Criteria", which could have unpleasant changes in it.  

       Dont take chances, apply right away, and get the benefit of the new and old rating criteria.

[broncovet]

Tbird, thank you.  Its my unsubstantiated opinion that sexual assault in the military occurred "because they can", and this probably explains "how they get away with it" OUTSIDE of the miitary.  

In other words, ON BASE, there is always a HHIC (head honcho in charge).  It could be the base commander, the OOD (Officer of the Day), the Captain, or whoever, depending upon the branch of service and location.  And, if the HHIC chose to just ignore sexual assault, then that is what happened.  

Remember, our military can serve in many different countries, and those countries all have different laws than we do.  

For example I believe there is "credible evidence" that US military was allowed to rape women in Korea, according to Korean law.   (Again, I never served in Korea, and can not say for sure, but I did hear this from multiple, independent sources.   I do know that there are plenty of children from Korean women and US military men.  Of course, I have no idea if the sex was with consent or not.  I also know that Kim Jon Young (current Korean leader) really considers women not only "property", but HIS property to do with as he pleases regardless of her choices.  

In Iraq, its been reported Sadaam Hussein used to watch women by binoculars.  If he saw one he liked, he told his men to "bring her to me".  Further, if the girls father objected, he simply killed the father.  I will leave it to your imagination as to what Sadam Hussein did to these women after they were brought to him.  

Further, many of the Korean women who were near the US Military base especially around the bars, were known to be prostitutes.  

Of course, this does not mean that all Korean women were prostitutes.  Not at all.  

However, if you go to the Las Vegas Strip at 2:00 AM, and you see scantily dressed women "hanging around", it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out her occupation,.  This likely applies to bars in Korea, also, where US military men hang out.  It would not suprise me a bit to find out that both Korean police and MP "looked the other way" while this was going on.  

Further, its not much of a stretch from that to think that unethical leaders could/did take full advantage of women in the military that he outranked.  And, even if you were a witness to this, you probably had a good idea you did not report your superior for doing this to women, or, you could well be retaliated against for reporting it.    Even tho most of the MST's were not done in public, it was well known you did not "complain" about your HHIC, whoever that may be.  This would include pretty much everyone in the "chain of command" from the Offficer of the day, or base commander on down.  

This is just my opinion of how MST occurs in the military, even tho I did not personally see that while I was in.  But I did hear plenty of stories, and its hard for me to know which of those were made up and which were not.  After I got out of the military, there is little doubt, tho, that some of the stories were true.  

I worked along side women while I was in the military, and even became very good friends with one, and yes, I dated another one.  While I was very young and dumb, I really did not see much difference between dating in the military or as a civilian, perhaps, in no small part because I was stationed in CONUS.  I had volunteered for Vietnam, but, I did not choose where I was sent.  Looking back, I was very stupid volunteering for Viet Nam, but I believe God had a much better plan (than my own plan) for me, which was to give up my life for my country.  

Its my opinion, still, that "weak" men take advantage of women because of their physical strength advantage over women.  Yea, that sounds crazy.  But when you understand "its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog" that matters.  A man stands the tallest who bends over to help a child in need.  True strength is understanding you dont need to dominate a woman to be strong, but rather, to love her and serve her and protect her,  and she will understand your strength in her heart and love you for it. 

I view very poorly men  that try to prove their strength by hurting women.  Instead, strong men dont need to demonstrate their strength on women,  Its too bad that some men never grow up and understand this.