What's New
| Congressman Mitchell: Pausing to Consider People Who REALLY Matter |
Chairman Harry Mitchell is a Hero to Veterans Nationwide August 20, 2010 (Arizona Republic) - It's been a month since I spoke to Rep. Harry Mitchell about suicides among military veterans and I'm just getting around to writing something. |
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| What Obama Won't Say Tonight About US Withdrawal from Iraq |
| August 31, 2010 (ConsortiumNews) - President Barack Obama’s aides say his speech this evening marking the end of "combat operations" in Iraq will avoid the vainglorious aspects of President George W. Bush’s infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech in 2003. We’ll see. |
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| Lawsuit Update: Prudential's Half-Billion in Dirty Secret Profits |
Families of Dead Soldiers Sue Insurer Over Its Handling of Survivors’ Benefits August 29, 2010 (New York Times) - Vickie Castro’s only child was killed six years ago just before Christmas, when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside an Army mess tent in Mosul, Iraq, killing more than 20 people. |
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| Op-Ed: Cost of War Must Also Include Caring for Our Veterans |
Overlooked Cost of Iraq / Afghanistan Wars: Our Veterans' Healthcare and Benefits August 15, 2010 (San Francisco Chronicle) - Two years after an Army specialist saw half his platoon torn apart in Iraq, he hanged himself in a California backyard. |
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| VA Secretary Shinseki's Open Message to Gulf War Veterans |
| August 11, 2010, Washington, DC (VA Press Release) - August 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Gulf War, launched with Operation Desert Shield and followed by Operation Desert Storm. VA honors this milestone with a renewed commitment to improving our responsiveness to the challenges facing Gulf War Veterans. |
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Oct 6 VCS Weekly Update: High-Intensity Advocacy
Written by VCS
Monday, 05 October 2009 22:48
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Our High-Intensity VCS Advocacy Highlighted by NEWSWEEK, Dallas Morning News, CNN, and NextGov Your update this week contains items highlighting our high-intensity advocacy for veterans' education benefits, Gulf War illness research, plus healthcare and disability benefits for veterans with PTSD and TBI. VCS Advocates for GI Bill On September 16, VCS sent a Freedom of Information Act to VA to get facts about VA's progress on the Post-9/11 GI Bill. We wanted to know how many claims were filed, how many were paid, and how long VA took to process claims. A few days later, VA told reporters only 11 percent of veterans' GI Bill claims were processed, effectively leaving 240,000 or more veterans in no man's land without an answer and without money. Under the leadership of VA's new Secretary, Eric Shiseki, VA employees pulled a rabbit out of a hat - thousands of them. VA ordered 58 Veterans Benefits Administration offices, notorious or disability claim delays and denials, to open their doors to about 8,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. In what can only be described as a miracle, VA paid $3,000 advances to all of them using paper checks. VCS agrees with Bob Brewin, a reporter at NextGov: "Here's a real "Hooah" for the top leadership at the Veterans Affairs Department." Even CNN chimed in with a quote from VCS about Shinseki: "Now over the next few months can he sustain this and get the correct amount of money in the correct time" to veterans? VCS Leads Fight for Gulf War Veterans Last week, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) added $12 million in funding to the military appropriations bill to fund the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program's Gulf War Illness Research Program, an effort to identify treatments to provide relief for the estimated 175,000 veterans still suffering from multi symptom illness. A few days before the key vote, VCS wrote Senators and ask them to support veterans. VCS thanks the five Senators for remembering our veterans of the 1991 war in Kuwait and Iraq. The Dallas Morning News published a front page article highlighting our VCS advocacy for the vital Gulf War Illness research conducted by Dr. Robert Haley at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Desert Storm veterans need help: VCS urges Congress, VA, and UT to resolve this contract crisis, otherwise we may never learn why 175,000 of us remain ill 19 years after the war began. Newsweek Features VCS Efforts on TBI and PTSD Thanks to information provided by VCS, Jamie Reno at NEWSWEEK magazine shared an ominous finding about the surge in PTSD and TBI cases among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans: "And the problem will likely get worse before it gets better: up to 1 million new veteran patients are expected to flood the VA by the end of 2013." VCS recognizes how top Army leaders fighting the stigma - the discrimination - against veterans with TBI and PTSD. General Peter Chiarelli said, "Contrary to what some believe, PTSD and TBI are not phantom conditions exhibited by weak soldiers trying to get out of a deployment. ... This is something that affects real warriors." This is the message VCS wants all top military and VA leaders to repeat regularly to service members, veterans, Congress, and the public.
VCS Thanks Our Supporters As the late Molly Ivans implored all Americans, we need to go out on the streets and bang pots and pans until we make sure every service member comes home and every veteran receives prompt and high-quality healthcare and disability benefits from VA. We asked for donations last week, and we thank our members for coming through - contributions are on the upswing. If you haven't donated in a while, please donate to VCS today so we can fight for the issues you care about.
Best, Paul Sullivan |









