Veterans for Common Sense

September 17, 2008 – As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we’re on the brink of war with Pakistan. And, unfortunately, that’s not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty.

You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. It’s a country on the edge of civil war. Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it’s the perfect recipe for a catastrophe.

All of which begs the question, is it worth the ghost hunt we’ve been on since September 11? There has not been a credible sighting of Osama bin Laden since he escaped from Tora Bora in October 2001. As for al-Qaeda, there are few signs it’s even still alive, other than a dispersed leadership taking refuge with the Taliban. Al-Qaeda couldn’t even manage to post a statement on the Internet marking September 11, let alone set off a bomb.

U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country’s newspapers. This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react.

On another level the Bush Administration’s decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations’ chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda’s leadership are slim. American intelligence isn’t good enough for precision raids like this. Pakistan’s tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can’t enter and come back alive. Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this.

On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn’t going to stop him.

Finally, there is Pakistan itself, a country that truly is on the edge of civil war. Should we be adding to the force of chaos? By indiscriminately bombing the tribal areas along the Afghan border, we in effect are going to war with Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtuns. They make up 15{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of Pakistan’s 167 million people. They are well armed and among the most fierce and xenophobic people in the world. It is not beyond their military capabilities to cross the Indus and take Islamabad.

Before it is too late, someone needs to sit the President down and give him the bad news that Pakistan is a bridge too far in the “war on terror”

September 15, 2008 – Back in February, the Marines released their military branch’s updated suicide statistics. They revealed the number of Afghanistan and Iraq combat troops and veterans who took their own lives in 2007 had doubled over the previous year.

Earlier this month, the Army reported its own current soldier suicide data, reflecting another year of record increases. And just last week, the VA chimed in with their latest OEF/OIF veterans suicide figures — also another record-breaker — for its Afghanistan and Iraq veteran clients.

Gregg Zoroya of USA Today:

    In 2006, the last year for which records are available, figures show there were about 46 suicides per 100,000 male veterans ages 18-29 who use VA services. That compares with about 20 suicides per 100,000 men of that age who are not veterans, VA records show.

    The statistics accompany the release of a study conducted by a group of mental health experts appointed by VA Secretary James Peake to investigate the department’s efforts to track and prevent suicides among veterans. …

    VA records show that 141 veterans who left the military after Sept. 11, 2001, committed suicide between 2002 and 2005. In the one year that followed, an additional 113 of the Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans killed themselves.

    The report did not specify how many of those 113 saw combat. The increase in the number of suicides can be attributed in part to the rising number of veterans since 2001. The overall suicide statistics include veterans who served during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but were stationed outside the combat zones. …

    The release of the VA data comes days after the Army said 2008 may be another record year for suicides among active-duty soldiers. If the trend continues, it would surpass a record of 115 suicides set in 2007. The Army reported last week that through August, there have been 62 confirmed suicides and 31 deaths suspected of being suicides.

    “If this holds true, suicide rates for the Army will surpass” the U.S. rate for the general population, an Army news release says.

What follows below the fold is a partial, quite incomplete look at where we’re at today as far as Iraq and Afghanistan troop/veteran suicides are concerned. It’s exasperating work; but, I’m in good company. Congress for years has struggled to get a straightforward and full data set out of the DoD and the VA, too.

Click on ‘Article Link’ below tags for much, much more…

In educational interest, article(s) quoted from extensively.

First, a few caveats: There are all sorts of problems that exist with the data in the table below.

DoD and VA statistics — and a description of just what incidents are and are not counted, and why one incident is included and another not — never seem to appear in a concise format.

Some reports, for example, don’t break things down easily for us. Is the Army active-duty tally for all OEF/OIF troops or formerly-deployed forces/veterans, or does it include non-OEF/OIF forces (for example, serving in Korea), too?

I’ve weeded through and broken it all down to reflect only Afghanistan and Iraq figures to the best of my knowledge and ability. I welcome any additions of data and/or corrections that you may find and care to share.

OEF/OIF Suicides

Active-duty military forces

Marines, active-duty forces, deployed, 2003: 2

Army, active-duty forces, deployed, 2003: 25

Marines, active-duty forces, deployed, 2004: 7

Army, active-duty forces, deployed, 2004: 11

Marines, active-duty forces, deployed, 2005: 4

Marines, active-duty forces, deployed, 2006: 4

Army, active-duty forces, deployed, 2005-2006: 120

Marines, active-duty forces, deployed, 2007: 6

Army, active-duty forces, deployed, 2007: 115

Army, active-duty forces, deployed, January-August 2008: 62

Army, active-duty forces, deployed, through August 2008 (suspected): 31

Army, active-duty forces, between deployments, 2002-2008: ???

Army, active-duty forces, suicide attempts, 2002: 350

Army, active-duty forces, suicide attempts, 2007: 2,100 [5 per day]

Veterans

Marines, active-duty, prior deployed, 2003: 6

Marines, active-duty, prior deployed, 2004: 10

Marines, active-duty, prior deployed, 2005: 8

Marines, active-duty, prior deployed, 2006: 5

Marines, active-duty, prior deployed, 2007: 12

Veterans, separated from service, under VA care, 2002-2005: 141

Veterans, separated from service, under VA care, 2006: 113

Veterans, separated from service, not under VA care, 2002-2008: ??? [*at least 139]

OEF/OIF Suicide Totals

Active-duty military forces: 356 [+another 31 suspected]

Veterans: 295 [+another 139 not officially counted by DoD or VA]

——————————————————————-

356+295=651 OEF/OIF active-duty troop or veteran suicides.

If we were to add in the 139 the DoD and the VA appear not to be counting (see note below), the figure rises to 790. And, if we add in the 31 suspected 2008 suicides still being investigated by the DoD, the number grows to 821.

As of today, there have been over 4, 700 U.S. OEF/OIF casualties.

If we use the conservative suicide figure above of 651, doing the math, that translates to nearly 15{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} (13.82 to be exact) of our Afghanistan and Iraq war losses are as a result of suicide.

If we plug in the higher figure (821), the percentage jumps to over 17{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} (17.43).

    *Important note on the above figures:

    In October, AP reported on preliminary VA research at the time, which revealed that 283 OEF/OIF veterans had committed suicide between 2001-2005.

    This was the figure that I was prepared to use when testifying before the House Veterans Affairs Committee in December on this issue at the Stopping Suicide: Mental Health Challenges Within the Department of Veterans Affairs hearing.

    I noted in my testimony [read | view] that the combined reported DoD and VA figures reflected the fact that 10 percent (at the time) of our overall service member casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are as a result of suicide.

    The night before the hearing, I reviewed the VA’s prepared remarks slated to be delivered the following day. That’s when I first noticed the change. The VA figure had been decreased by 139 (from the original 283), to a total of 144 OEF/OIF suicides. Of course, I became curious: What happened to the 139 no longer being counted?

    I was able to get my question answered pretty quickly.

    Following my testimony, VA Mental Health Director Dr. Ira Katz (who was quite gracious and kind to me, although he’s come understandably under fire quite a bit since then for his less-than-full disclosure of the VA’s suicide data) introduced himself, giving me the chance to ask him privately about the changed suicide tally.

    Why had the figure been reduced?

    He went into a long explanation, saying that the VA incorrectly counted some veterans in their system, who in reality were still considered a part of the DoD when they died. Therefore, they weren’t official VA clients and need not be included in their count.

    After going back-and-forth a bit to get some more clarification, my best understanding of this logic is that 139 OEF/OIF veterans aren’t being recognized in our official OEF/OIF veterans suicide data due to a mere technicality.

    For example, Iraq veterans like Timothy Bowman, who’d returned to the states but had not yet enrolled in the VA for care when he committed suicide, for some strange reason doesn’t need to be considered part of the overall data.

    Since he wasn’t a VA client, he isn’t counted in the VA statistics. And since he wasn’t deployed when he committed suicide, the DoD doesn’t appear to include him, either, when it reports on how many of its combat zone troops have perished this way.

    Is this really the best way for us to go about trying to get a real handle on the depth and breath of the OEF/OIF suicide issue?

    I don’t think so. Anyone else feel the same way?

Some related stats:

    * Nearly 40{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of Army suicides in 2006 and 2007 were taking psychotropic drugs like Zoloft and Prozac for depression and PTSD.

    * Nearly 60{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of 948 Army suicide attempts in 2006 had been seen by mental health providers before the attempt – 36 percent within just 30 days of the event.

    * More than 43,000 U.S. troops since 2003 were sent into combat even though they had been listed as medically unfit in the weeks before their scheduled deployment.

    * The “typical” soldier who commits suicide is a member of an infantry unit who uses a firearm to carry out the act, according to the Army.

    * 53{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of veteran suicides from 2001-2005 came from the Guard or Reserve population; for a period during 2005, they accounted for about 50{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, when averaging all war years, they made up 28{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of all U.S. military forces deployed.

    * 100,000 OEF/OIF vets have sought help for mental health issues, including 52,000 for post-traumatic stress disorder alone.

    * According to the DoD, there were almost 2,200 active-duty soldier suicides between 1995-2007.

    * CBS News reported in November that there were at least 6,256 veteran (of all wars) suicides in 2005 [this figure includes data collected from 45 states; the figure is, therefore, higher if taking all 50 states into account]. That’s 120 each and every week. In addition, on any given night, nearly 200,000 veterans are counted among the homeless.

    * In 2005, OEF/OIF veterans aged 20 through 24 had the highest suicide rate among all vets, about 2-4 times higher than their civilians peers. (Civilian suicide rate: 8.3 per 100,000; Veterans suicide rate: between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)

    * A 2007 survey of U.S. troops revealed that about 12{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of OIF and 17{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of OEF combat troops are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope.

    * The new VA suicide prevention hotline, 1-800-273-TALK (8255), recently reported that it’s received more than 55,000 calls, averaging 120 per day, with about 22,000 callers saying they were veterans.

‘Culture change’ may be required to resolve issues

September 13, 2008 – Some local Army families are calling for the military to boost its efforts to curb suicide within the ranks. Some of the Army’s top commanders admit suicide is a growing problem as soldiers remain in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Army leaders are fully aware that repeated deployments have led to increased distress and anxiety for both soldiers and their families,” said Secretary of the Army Pete Geren in a news release.

“This stress on the force is validated by recent studies of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans reporting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression.”

According to Army figures, there have been 62 confirmed suicides this year, and potentially 31 more pending cause of death confirmations. There have been five confirmed suicides at Fort Campbell this fiscal year.

In 2006 and 2007, there were 217 confirmed suicides in the Army.

Fort Campbell has seen its share of suicides, but officials say they’re doing all they can to prevent soldiers from taking their lives.

“Fort Campbell is leading the Army in many aspects,” said Joe Varney, suicide prevention program manager.

Currently, Varney is the only suicide prevention program manager in the country. He started in his position a month ago.

“It’s part of Fort Campbell taking the lead in suicide prevention training,” Varney said.

Rand said Fort Campbell began training soldiers and family members on the risk indicators and how to address them about a year ago. Since then, Varney said, about 15,000 have completed training.

It has also instituted an Army program called ACE, or Ask, Care, Escort.

Widow: Fort Campbell should do more

Dena Rand, the wife of a Fort Campbell soldier who killed himself in February 2007, said the Army post can do more.

Rand said she met with mental and behavioral health providers at Fort Campbell after her husband’s death to investigate, but she did not receive the response she hoped for.

“I’m still on a mission to get my questions answered,” she said.

Soldiers returning from combat are put through a lengthy post-deployment health assessment to try and identify any problems, but revising the process might help, Rand said.

“Instead of putting them all in the same room, pull them aside,” she said.

The Army, though, has not taken the issue lightly.

It has ramped up its efforts at the lowest levels to encourage first-line leaders to recognize and address potential problems they might find, according to a news release.

The intended effect, the release stated, is “better recognition of stressors such as failed relationships, legal and financial problems and occupational and operational issues that can contribute to suicidal behavior.”

Varney said it is common for a person considering suicide to leave clues they are battling stress and depression, and helping them is all about finding the clues.

“Nobody wants to die, not even everybody who is suicidal,” he said.

Fort Campbell soldiers are again put through a post-deployment health reassessment 101 days after returning.

Blanchfield Army Community Hospital officials also said they have a detailed process to address behavioral and mental health issues, but that process has come under fire recently.

Spc. Carl B. McCoy, 23, a former Fort Campbell soldier who transferred from Fort Bragg in May, killed himself in July, a day after a scheduled mental health appointment at BACH was canceled, his family claims.

“They didn’t give him an option,” his wife, Sgt. Maggie McCoy, said.

Part of the Army’s effort is to remove a common stigma officials said accompanies mental and behavioral health.

“It is critical for soldiers, family members and Army civilians to know that seeking help during times of stress is a sign of strength, not weakness,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Languirand, chief of the Army Command Policy and Programs division, in a news release.

Rand agrees.

“That’s a good start,” she said.

No overnight change

Varney echoed Languirand’s statements, but he said it is not something that will change overnight or even within six months.

“It’s going to require a culture change,” he said.

Varney’s solution is rather simple — education.

“It’s an education process — trying to make soldiers and families aware,” he said.

Another way to help, Rand said, is for spouses and family members to do their own investigating and to not take any issue lightly.

“My regret was reacting and not acting on (signs of trouble),” she said.

Some key things she said could indicate potential trouble include mood swings, isolation or violence.

Rand said she hopes to start a support group for spouses and families of soldiers who committed suicide — something she said was not available to her.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of the 14,000-member nonprofit Veterans for Common Sense, supports Feinstein in passing a new law to help veterans vote, rather than leaving it to policy decisions. “VA can easily reverse course, again, and issue another policy banning voting assistance,” he said, or could “easily fail to implement their new policy.”

September 16, 2008 – Last week’s promise by the Department of Veterans Affairs to allow voter registration drives in its facilities has not stopped key lawmakers from pushing VA to do more.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who heads the Senate committee responsible for election law and is the chief sponsor of a bill requiring veterans’ officials to do more, said she does not have confidence that a VA policy change seven weeks before the November general elections will be very effective.

With just three weeks left in most states to register to vote in November, “serious questions still remain” about how quickly VA might open the doors to voter drives, Feinstein said.

“Credibility of VA on this issue is very low right now,” she said.

Paul Hutter, VA general counsel, told Feinstein’s Senate Rules and Administration Committee Monday that VA is being “proactive” in working with state and local election officials and with nonpartisan groups to allow voter registration efforts as long as they do not interfere with patient care at VA hospitals, clinics and nursing homes.

However, Hutter said VA still believes that some limits are needed.

“VA facilities are not the equivalent of public sidewalks or the courthouse steps,” he said, warning that voter activities that disrupted VA services or invade the privacy of veterans getting care would not be supported.

Feinstein, chief sponsor of S 3308, which would require VA to support voting assistance by law, said a VA announcement last week – that election officials and some nonprofit groups might be allowed into veterans’ facilities if they can agree with facility officials on access – was not good enough.

Similar legislation has passed the House Administration Committee, which also oversees election laws.

Hutter said one concern about the proposed legislation is that it would allow people with no affiliation with veterans or veterans programs to come into VA facilities to register to vote and get voter information.

He said voter drives aimed at a wider population “would be highly disruptive” and could discourage some veterans from treatments such as psychiatric services. And the proposed legislation could be read as requiring the VA to accommodate any nonpartisan group that wanted access, which could be difficult to do without causing disruption, he said.

Feinstein said the intent of the legislation was not to serve the general public, and that she was willing to make changes.

“We will clear that up,” she said.

However, she did not see disruption as a major problem because setting up a voter registration drive could be as simple as putting a table in the lobby of a hospital or clinic.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of the 14,000-member nonprofit Veterans for Common Sense, supports Feinstein in passing a new law to help veterans vote, rather than leaving it to policy decisions.

“VA can easily reverse course, again, and issue another policy banning voting assistance,” he said, or could “easily fail to implement their new policy.”

September 13, 2008 – With all due deference to lipstick, let’s advance the story. A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?

It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

The ambitious Palin and the ruthless forces she represents know it, too. You can almost see them smacking their lips in anticipation, whether they’re wearing lipstick or not.

This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palin’s acceptance speech. Aligning herself with “a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri” who “followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency,” she read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” Then Palin added a snide observation of her own: Such small-town Americans, she said, “run our factories” and “fight our wars” and are “always proud” of their country. As opposed to those lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans – she didn’t have to name names – who are none of the above.

There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.

Palin, who lies with ease about her own record, misrepresented Pegler’s too. He decreed America was “done for” after Truman won a full term in 1948. For his part, Truman regarded the columnist as a “guttersnipe,” and with good reason. Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese,” he called them) were all likely Communists.

Surely Palin knows no more about Pegler than she does about the Bush doctrine. But the people around her do, and they will be shaping a Palin presidency. That they would inject not just Pegler’s words but spirit into their candidate’s speech shows where they’re coming from. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, said that the Palin-sparked convention created “a whole new Republican Party,” but what it actually did was exhume an old one from its crypt.

The specifics have changed in our new century, but the vitriolic animus of right-wing populism preached by Pegler and McCarthy and revived by the 1990s culture wars remains the same. The game is always to pit the good, patriotic real Americans against those subversive, probably gay “cosmopolitan” urbanites (as the sometime cross-dresser Rudy Giuliani has it) who threaten to take away everything that small-town folk hold dear.

The racial component to this brand of politics was undisguised in St. Paul. Americans saw a virtually all-white audience yuk it up when Giuliani ridiculed Barack Obama’s “only in America” success as an affirmative-action fairy tale – and when he and Palin mocked Obama’s history as a community organizer in Chicago. Neither party has had so few black delegates (1.5 percent) in the 40 years since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies started keeping a record.

But race is just one manifestation of the emotion that defined the Palin rollout. That dominant emotion is fear – an abject fear of change. Fear of a demographical revolution that will put whites in the American minority by 2042. Fear of the technological revolution and globalization that have gutted those small towns and factories Palin apotheosized.

And, last but hardly least, fear of illegal immigrants who do the low-paying jobs that Americans don’t want to do and of legal immigrants who do the high-paying jobs that poorly educated Americans are not qualified to do. No less revealing than Palin’s convention invocation of Pegler was the pointed omission of any mention of immigration, once the hottest Republican issue, by either her or McCain. Saying the word would have cued an eruption of immigrant-bashing ugliness, Pegler-style, before a national television audience. That wouldn’t play in the swing states of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, where Obama already has a more than 2-to-1 lead among Hispanic voters. (Bush captured roughly 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004.)

Since St. Paul, Democrats have been feasting on the hypocrisy of the Palin partisans, understandably enough. The same Republicans who attack Democrats for being too P.C. about race now howl about sexism with such abandon you half-expect Phyllis Schlafly and Carly Fiorina to stage a bra-burning. The same gang that once fueled Internet rumors and media feeding frenzies over the Clintons’ private lives now express pious outrage when the same fate befalls the Palins.

But the ultimate hypocrisy is that these woebegone, frightened opponents of change, sworn enemies of race-based college-admission initiatives, are now demanding their own affirmative action program for white folks applying to the electoral college. They want the bar for admission to the White House to be placed so low that legitimate scrutiny and criticism of Palin’s qualifications, record and family values can all be placed off limits. Byron York of National Review, a rare conservative who acknowledges the double standard, captured it best: “If the Obamas had a 17-year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.”

The cunning of the Palin choice as a political strategy is that a candidate who embodies fear of change can be sold as a “maverick” simply because she looks the part. Her marketers have a lot to work with. Palin is not only the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket, but she is young, vibrant and a Washington outsider with no explicit connection to Bush or the war in Iraq. That package looks like change even if what’s inside is anything but.

How do you run against that flashy flimflam? You don’t. Karl Rove for once gave the Democrats a real tip rather than a bum steer when he wrote last week that if Obama wants to win, “he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president,” not Palin for vice president. Obama should keep stepping up the blitz on McCain’s flip-flops, confusion, ignorance and blurriness on major issues (from education to an exit date from Iraq), rather than her gaffes and résumé. If he focuses voters on the 2008 McCain, the Palin question will take care of itself.

Obama’s one break last week was the McCain camp’s indication that it’s likely to minimize its candidate’s solo appearances by joining him at the hip with Palin. There’s a political price to be paid for this blatant admission that he needs her to draw crowds. McCain’s conspicuous subservience to his younger running mate’s hard-right ideology and his dependence on her electioneering energy raise the question of who has the power in this relationship and who is in charge. A strong and independent woman or the older ward who would be bobbing in a golf cart without her? The more voters see that McCain will be the figurehead for a Palin presidency, the more they are likely to demand stepped-up vetting of the rigidly scripted heir apparent.

But Obama’s most important tactic is still the one he has the most trouble executing. He must convey a roll-up-your-sleeves Bobby Kennedy passion for the economic crises that are at the heart of the fears that Palin is trying to exploit. The Republican ticket offers no answers to those anxieties. Drilling isn’t going to lower gas prices or speed energy independence. An increase in corporate tax breaks isn’t going to end income inequality, provide health care or save American jobs in a Palin presidency any more than they did in a Bush presidency.

This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president – like Iraq – invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.

As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.

September 13, 2008 – The Department of Defense announced that the Military OneSource service has established a Wounded Warrior Resource Center telephone number and e-mail address for service members and their families.  Service members and their families can now call toll-free (800) 342-9647 or e-mail wwrc@militaryonesource.com 24/7 to request support.

Assistance provided by the resource center will not replace the specialized wounded warrior programs established by each of the military services, but it will offer another avenue of assistance for military facilities, health care services and/or benefits information. The Wounded Warrior Resource Center meets the requirements of Section 1616 of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act to ensure wounded families and caregivers have a central number to call at any time.