It is is with deep personal sadness that I must announce the death of a former Ron Paul Congressional staffer from down here in Dr. Paul’s old Congressional district, TX-14. Susan Ashbrook died yesterday of a heart attack after a long illness. As Dr. Paul’s aide in Washington for Veterans Affairs, I worked on a regular basis with Susan. I cannot tell you how much I learned from her about the way the US government treats young men and women who sign up to serve their country in the US military.
From Susan I learned the sick truth that the US government sprays what they tell us are “the brave young Americans in the military” with deadly and carcinogenic gasses and chemicals like agent orange and subjects them to horrific experiments straight out of something we’d see from Mengele back under Nazi Germany.
When these brutalized and bewildered servicemembers seek recompense for the horrors they have in most cases unknowingly and certainly unwittingly been exposed to, those “flag waving” scoundrels inside the US Beltway pull out ALL stops to deny these suffering soldiers a single penny. The patriotic young men and women from TX-14 found out the hard way that the Beltway neocons viewed them as dumb cannon-fodder.
But Susan was not having any of that. All of us in the Washington office understood well that despite our dedication to Ron Paul’s philosophy, one of the real reasons Ron Paul kept getting elected in this deeply conservative district was because of the work of his district staffers. We called them the “secret weapon.”
They gipped you out of a medal or a benefit you deserved? Call Susan. She will not sleep until you get what is due to you.
They gassed you and pumped cancer into your cells as an “experiment”? Susan would get you justice.
“I don’t agree with Ron Paul about everything, but I know he stands by the people who served this country.”
That’s what helped get Ron Paul re-elected in hard neocon years like 2002 and 2004. In Washington we understood that well.
As my friend and fellow Ron Paul staffer Penny Freeman related to me about her dear friend, Susan Ashbrook actually won awards for taking the initiative and getting Agent Orange victims the compensation they deserved for being neocon guinea pigs. She was no bureaucrat clocking out after her daily obligation was done: She worked after hours for US veterans and actually got two doctors fired for neglect and abuse at a VA hospital!
Again as Penny Freeman informs me, Susan had people calling her for help from all over the country (especially from Shelia Jackson-Lee’s district). She never turned them down if she had a spare second.
I learned a great deal from Susan Ashbrook. It’s easy to write off everyone working for the machine, but there are a tiny handful of deeply decent people who risk it all to help their fellow man.
I honestly had no idea before working with Susan – who made sure I was able to view the horrific DVDs – how the Beltway elites actually despise US military personnel. How they would spend a million dollars to deny a single vet an extra thousand bucks compensation per year.
They do not make them anymore like Susan Ashbrook. And for that the country is a far more unjust place.
Dear Susan: you were a fearless warrior defending our warriors! We honor you and we wish you peaceful rest.
