Here is some more of the Orwellian reality of war in the time of Bush, crystallized into numbers.

Let’s say you are former Army Spec. Troy Turner. After a decade of service with the National Guard and nearly three years with the Army, you are medically discharged with PTSD in 2004 after your tour in Baghdad. The Veteran’s Administration rates your disability at 50%, which means you receive a check of $860 a month.

Your wife goes to bat, fighting for more benefits. The VA agrees that your condition is “chronic and severe” and raises your disability rating to 70%. Your monthly check climbs to $1,352.

Suddenly, The Washington Post writes an article that details the financial hardship you faced after your PTSD worsened and you were unable to hold a job. This brings you a house call by Antonette Zeiss, deputy director for mental health services for the entire VA system. Zeiss spends about 90 minutes inside your mobile home in Hardy County in rural West Virginia, assessing your needs and treatment program. Zeiss even brings along a PTSD counselor from the Martinsburg VA facility.

Lo and behold, your disability rating is raised from 70% to 100%, and your monthly check goes from $1,352 to $2,781.

That, of course, is a happy ending. But not all such stories end that way. And there are probably a lot more disabled veterans with 50% and 70% ratings than 100%.

So it’s curious, isn’t it, that a disability rating of 70% brings you only 50% of full benefits. And a disability rating of 50% brings you only 31% of full benefits.

There must, of course, be perfectly good reasons they are called 70% and 50% ratings, respectively. If nothing else, this ratings nomenclature must confuse the heck out of the enemy. And it also has the added benefit of bringing sardonic smiles to the faces of our disabled veterans, I’m sure.

Besides, now we can finally retire that old saw: “Numbers don’t lie!”