McCain’s Ties to Neocon Hard Lines

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Team VCS

August 18, 2008 – Randy Scheunemann, one of John McCain’s top foreign policy advisers, represents a key link in neoconservative strategy that seeks simultaneously to remove hostile regimes in the Middle East and to box in Russia through an expanded NATO that incorporates former Soviet bloc countries.

Scheunemann has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for his past lobbying work on behalf of the government of Georgia, even while he was advising McCain who vowed to bar lobbyists from his campaign.

Scheunemann’s company, Orion Strategies, has received about $750,000 from Georgia, with payments as recently as May.

After the Aug. 7 outbreak of fighting between Georgia and Russia over Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia, McCain – advised by Scheunemann – led a crescendo of tough rhetoric warning of a possible new Cold War and demanding harsh penalties against Moscow.

But Scheunemann’s advice on the Russia-Georgia conflict only captures part of his role in shaping McCain’s neoconservative foreign policy.

Scheunemann merges two key prongs of a neocon global strategy for permanent U.S. military dominance: the simultaneous projection of U.S. power into the Middle East and the elimination of Russia’s dream of reestablishing itself as a major international player.

Operating mostly behind the scenes, Scheunemann has long worked to unify former East Bloc states into an anti-Moscow alliance and to apply regime-change tactics against U.S. adversaries in the Middle East, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the mullahs in neighboring Iran.

In that regard, Scheunemann was one of the neocon operatives who helped promote bogus intelligence about Iraq in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. He also has said the U.S. government has not been tough enough in dealing with other “rogue” nations, such as Iran.

For instance, Scheunemann believes one area of U.S. foreign policy that needs change is the ban on assassinating leaders of foreign governments.

“It makes no sense to regularly target command and control nodes with precision-guided munitions, while denying highly capable sniper teams the ability to attack individual targets,” Scheunemann told conservative author Bill Gertz in the 2002 book Breakdown.

According to the book, Scheunemann believed the CIA should have been given the authority to assassinate Saddam Hussein during the first Persian Gulf War.

“The messy business of back-alley tradecraft has taken a back seat to the much simpler business of ‘liaison’ with foreign intelligence services,” Scheunemann told Gertz, adding that he would seek to change that approach if and when he returned to the U.S. government.

A director of the neocon Project for the New American Century, Scheunemann worked on McCain’s failed bid for the White House in 2000 and became a top adviser to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2001.

Foreign Contacts

But Scheunemann’s primary service to the Bush administration has come in his private capacity as a contact to Eastern European states as well as his association with Iraqi exiles.

In fall 2002, Scheunemann got a green light from the White House to launch the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization whose mission was to promote regime change in the region and to gather European support for a preemptive strike on Iraq.

“The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was the brainchild of the Bush administration,” the Financial Times reported on Dec. 16, 2002. “It is said that, once the Saddam regime has been overthrown, the CLI will act as a ‘shadow government’ for Baghdad.

“But it will limit itself to policy matters and will not deal with details. It will, eventually, press for a ‘competitive petroleum production-sharing regime’ which could make OPEC irrelevant to Iraq’s oil output or supply decisions.”

Scheunemann had been an early supporter of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, which supplied false intelligence to the CIA about Hussein’s alleged WMD and his supposed ties to Osama bin Laden.

In 1998, while an adviser to Republican Senators Bob Dole and Trent Lott, Scheunemann drafted the Iraq Liberation Act and got the federal government to funnel $98 million to Iraqi exiles associated with Chalabi’s INC.

Later, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq housed its offices at the same address as Chalabi’s INC.

Scheunemann worked closely, too, with the White House Iraq Group, which was headed by George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card. The so-called WHIG was charged with selling the war to the American public.

In November 2002, the Washington Post reported that Scheunemann’s group would push for regime change in Iraq through “sessions with opinion makers, contacts for journalists and mass marketing when the time is ripe.

On Jan. 28, 2003, the same day that President Bush delivered his State of the Union address that included the now-debunked claim that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from Niger, Scheunemann tapped McCain and his close ally, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, as honorary co-chairmen of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

“By joining our efforts, Senators McCain and Lieberman highlight their commitment to ending the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and freeing the Iraqi people,” Scheunemann said in a statement issued by his committee.

McCain and Lieberman aggressively promoted the CLI’s goal of Iraqi regime change via a preemptive military strike, which was launched on March 19, 2003, toppling Hussein’s government in three weeks.

In an April 13, 2003, op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Scheunemann wrote how a “democratic Iraq” would help remake the Middle East, an argument that remains a focal point of McCain’s presidential campaign.

‘New Europe’

But Scheunemann also personifies another part of the neocon agenda. He is a key bridge between an aggressive U.S. policy in the Middle East and the projection of U.S. influence into the former East Bloc nations which were long dominated by the Soviet Union.

In October 2002, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush considered naming Scheunemann as a special envoy to the Iraqi opposition. But Scheunemann was judged to have more value enlisting Eastern European nations into the “Coalition of the Willing.”

So, Scheunemann pulled together the “Vilnius 10” group of East European nations – Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia – in support of Bush’s war policy.

At the time, some foreign policy analysts recognized this collaboration as part of the neoconservative desire to build up NATO to circumvent the United Nations Charter, which bars military attacks without UN sanction.

“With NATO now set to enlarge from 19 members to take on seven East European nations including the three Baltic states, it is said that both the Bush team and the [Committee for the Liberation of Iraq] want the political mechanism of the Atlantic alliance to replace the UN Security Council in giving multilateral legitimacy to any major U.S. action outside North America,” the Financial Times reported on Dec. 16, 2002.

“This is because, unlike the UN Security Council where the French or Russians might block American action, NATO’s political decisions do not require consensus. Only NATO’s military decisions require consensus.”

For actual military operations, President Bush made clear he would rely on ad hoc alliances, such as the Iraq War’s “Coalition of the Willing.”

The reward for the “willing” Eastern European countries, which the Bush administration called “New Europe,” was future inclusion in NATO with the umbrella of its mutual security guarantee that treats an attack on one as an attack on all.

“Considering the nations – including the Baltic states – signed on the group at the expense of creating a schism in the European Union, the Scheunemann initiative was unanimously regarded as a diplomatic triumph for Washington and a coup d’etat in Brussels,” the Baltic Times reported in August 2003.

Scheunemann’s crossover between his work on the Iraq invasion and his connections to former East Bloc countries proved lucrative, too. He advised them that their collaboration on the Iraq War could get them Iraqi reconstruction contracts as well as U.S. support for their entry into NATO.

He earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from countries, such as Romania which paid him $175,000 for providing advice on Iraqi reconstruction deals.

For another lobbying client, Latvia, Scheunemann made himself even more valuable. He helped form the Latvian Builders Strategic Partnership, a consortium for parlaying Latvia’s support for the Iraq invasion into a cut of the multimillion-dollar reconstruction spending.

Five months after the U.S.-led invasion, Scheunemann met with Peteris Elferts, Latvia’s parliamentary secretary in the Foreign Ministry and ambassador-at-large for Iraqi policy, and Valdis Birkavs, chairman of the Latvian Builders Strategic Partnership, about constructing an information technology system in Baghdad.

Georgia, another of Scheunemann’s lobbying clients, also backed the Iraq invasion, contributed troops, and thus counted on Washington’s support to bring it into NATO. [For more on McCain-Scheunemann-Georgia ties, see Washington Post, Aug. 13, 2008]

Though other NATO members, especially “Old Europe” nations like France, blocked Georgia’s admission, Georgia’s pro-U.S. president Mikheil Saakashvili apparently believed he would have Western backing on Aug. 7 when he launched an offensive against the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Instead, the Russian military intervened to drive back the Georgian army and then took up security positions inside Georgian territory. McCain joined with leading neoconservative voices in denouncing the Russian attack.

McCain’s tough talk about Russia and his insistence that he will only tolerate “victory” in Iraq offer an important insight into what his foreign policy would look like if he wins the presidency.

Surrounded by hardcore neoconservatives, like Scheunemann, there is every reason to believe that a McCain administration would continue using force to impose Washington’s will in the Middle East while engaging in geopolitical brinkmanship against old rivals like Moscow.

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Army Makes Repairs at Fort Sill in Wake of Soldier’s Complaints Reported in Media

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Team VCS

August 18, 2008 – Twenty soldiers told USA TODAY’s Gregg Zoroya last week that complaints regarding mold at Fort Sill in Lawton, Okla., went unanswered for months and that they were later ordered not to publicly speak about the facility’s poor conditions.

In response, Army officials replaced ventilation ducts in two barracks that had been encrusted with mold and Maj. Gen. Peter Vangiel, the commanding officer at the base, said it was “inappropriate” for soldiers to be prohibited from talking about problems at the facility, according to USA TODAY.

The Fort Sill story comes 18 months after The Post’s Dana Priest and Anne Hull explored conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Northwest Washington. The series not only uncovered problems at Walter Reed, once dubbed the “crown jewel” of military medical operaitons, but also highlighted “depressing living conditions for outpatients at other military bases around the country, from Fort Lewis in Washington state to Fort Dix in New Jersey.”

The reaction to the series was bold and swift: The commander of the facility, Army Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, was fired, as was the secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey, within a month of the report; Bush appointed a commission tasked with examining the care of wounded veterans, which recommended the creation of a national caseworker system along with a complete overhaul of military disability compensation policy; and a panel proposed closing down Walter Reed earlier than 2011, the year the Army medical operation is moved to National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.

The Post’s coverage prompted closer scrutiny of other facilities across the country, including the Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Wash.

In March 2007, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on complaints about Madigan by the non-profit Operation Homefront. The advocacy group cited “extended delays in making the Defense Department’s so-called seamless transition from military to Veterans Affairs Department medical care — and suffered because of cuts among the caseworkers who help them through the wait,” according to the newspaper.

Soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., meanwhile, told The Philadelphia Inquirer early this year that they saw large-scale improvements in care after the establishment of a temporary Soldier and Family Assistance Center, one of more than 30 similar facilities built by the Army in response to the Walter Reed scandal.

But at a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee last month, Army leadership conceded the system still struggles with significant problems.

“Committee investigators had visited Army medical facilities and came back with ominous statistics,” reported The Post’s Dana Milbank. “At Fort Hood, Tex., last month, they found that a ‘warrior transition unit’ designed to support 649 had 1,342 soldiers, with 350 more on a waiting list. Instead of the promised 74 nurse case managers, there were 38. Other facilities ‘would shortly experience similar shortages’ or already had.”

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General Petraeus’ Endorsement of Religious Book Draws Fire

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Team VCS

August 20, 2008 – Gen. David Petraeus is used to controversy surrounding the war in Iraq, but his publicized thoughts on an Army chaplain’s book for Soldiers put him squarely in the middle of the ongoing conflict over religious proselytizing in the U.S. military.

The book is “Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel,” by Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) William McCoy, and according to Petraeus’ published endorsement of the work, “it should be in every rucksack for those times when soldiers need spiritual energy.”

But the endorsement – which has spurred a demand by a watchdog group for Petraeus’ dismissal and court martial on the grounds of establishing a religious requirement on troops – was a personal view never intended for publication, the book’s author now says.

“In the process of securing … comments for recommending the book I believe there was a basic misunderstanding on my part that the comments were publishable,” McCoy said in an Aug. 19 email to Military.com. “This was my mistake.”

In addition to Petraeus, Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling also is quoted plugging the book in press releases and advertisements and on the jacket.

McCoy, writing in response to Military.com’s Aug. 18 inquiry to Petraeus’ office for comment, said the two generals’ endorsements “were intended for me personally rather than for the general public.”

In response to follow-up questions from Military.com, McCoy said he has asked that all distribution of the book be halted until a new “graphic overlay” for the back cover  is produced “so there is no further public misunderstanding.”

McCoy did not respond to questions on the timing of the endorsements, and why it took so long before the officials learned their endorsement has been used in print. Petraeus’ endorsement has been on the book since its 2007 publication, while Hertling’s plug first appeared on the 2005 edition. Both also are quoted in newspaper ads for the book and on the book’s Amazon.com Web page.

Patraeus spokesman Col. Steven Boylan said the general has been Iraq since the beginning of February 2007, “and unless someone [like Military.com] notes it, we would not be aware of it,” he said in an Aug. 19 email. “We don’t get the stateside papers in Baghdad and I doubt very much that Gen. Petraeus goes to Amazon.com much, if at all.”

Mikey Weinstein, head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, believes McCoy is taking the fall for Petraeus and Hertling’s improper endorsements. Weinstein said it “strains credulity” that Petraeus never knew that his private written endorsement of the book was in the public domain since last year.

Weinstein is a former Air Force judge advocate general and White House counsel during the Reagan administration. His group has been fighting in the courts to keep improper proselytizing out of the military. Now, he said, he intends to incorprate the Petraeus and Hertling endorsements into an ongoing lawsuit against the Pentagon for an alleged pervasive and permicious “pattern and practice” of religious liberties violations in the military.

“MRFF is now officially putting both Army chaplain Lt. Col. Bill McCoy and  General Petraeus on notice not to destroy any of the written or  electronic records of their communications about this [issue],” Weinstein said.

The chapters in McCoy’s book are offered up as “Orders,” he said, and one of them is titled “Believe in God.”

With his plug for “Under Orders,” Weinstein said in a statement to Military.com, Petraeus – one of the most widely recognized officers in the American military – is endorsing religion as something all Soldiers should have and, specifically, the Christian religion.

“General Petraeus has, by his own hand, become a quintessential poster child of this fundamentalist Christian religious predation, via his unadulterated and shocking public endorsement of a book touting both Christian supremacy and exceptionalism,” Weinstein told Military.com Aug. 16.

And by endorsing a book that argues only those who believe in God can fully contribute to the military mission or unit, Weinstein contends that Petraeus insults “”the integrity, character and veracity of approximately 21 percent of our armed forces members who choose not to follow any particular religious faith.”

He said that even if Petraeus offered his comments personally, that’s a distinction without a difference. “Privately he’s denigrating 21 percent of troops,” Weinstein said. Suppose he privately denigrated women, African-Americans or Jews? Weinstein asked.

“He should still be relieved of duty and court martialed,” he said.

Rev. Billy Baugham, a retired Army chaplain and executive director of the International Conference of Evangelical Christian Endorsers, backs Petraeus’ right to plug the book. Past generals, among them George C. Marshall and George Patton, made the case for religion in the ranks.

Marshall claimed that the Soldier’s spiritual life was critical to his morale, even more than equipment, while Patton, said Baugham, had a chaplain pray for good weather for an coming battle and then submitted him for an Army Commendation Medal afterwards, when the weather turned out clear.

“So the ICECE would support what General Patreaus has done,” Baugham said.

Chris Rodda, a freelance writer and researcher for the MRFF, noted in an Aug. 16 column on the Daily Kos Web site that she found much in “Under Orders” that was “pretty good.” It offered sound advice and promoted a brand of Christianity that it would be good to see more often both in the military and civilian worlds, she said, and even warned against the practices used by some “para-church groups” within the military that Weinstein’s group considers dangerous and unconstitutional.

But in the end, she claims, the book paints those who don’t believe in God as “somehow deficient,” in that they may – in McCoy’s words – view their own “agenda [to be] more important than [the] unit’s agenda and thus lead to unit failure.”

Author McCoy, writing Aug. 11 in his blog on Amazon.com, acknowledges that the book does promote Christianity.

“No one [else] has written a book which allows for varying world views and perspectives while suggesting the Gospel might have an idea worth considering. Under Orders does just that,” he wrote.

McCoy is endorsed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, according to a recent press release for his book. Now the chaplain for U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern, Germany, McCoy previously served as chaplain for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and, before then, the 10th Mountain Division, according to the release.

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Aug 21, VCS in the News: Senator McCain’s Plan to Privatize Veterans’ Healthcare

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Team VCS

August 21, 2008 – If John McCain is elected the next U.S. president, wounded veterans could be in for a world of hurt.

On the campaign trail, the Republican’s presumptive nominee has talked of a new mission for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and argued that veterans with non-combat medical problems should be given vouchers to receive care at private, for-profit hospitals — in other words, an end to the kind of universal health care the government has guaranteed veterans for generations.

“We need to relieve the burden on the VA from routine health care,” McCain told the National Forum on Disability Issues last month. “If you have a routine health care need, take it wherever you want, whatever doctor or health care provider and get the treatment you need, while we at the VA focus our attention, our care, our love, on these grievous wounds of war.”

The Republican senator argues that giving veterans a VA card that they can use at private doctors would shorten the long wait times many veterans face in seeing government doctors, who are nearly universally viewed as among the best in the world.

A recent study by the RAND Corporation found that “VA patients were more likely to receive recommended care” and “received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow up” than that delivered by other U.S. health care providers.

Virtually all veterans groups oppose McCain’s plan. The Veterans of Foreign Wars’ national legislative director has said the VA card would “undermine the entire system”.

According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contribution than has Republican John McCain.

This may seem odd to some since McCain is a former naval officer, prisoner of war, and Vietnam War veteran.

However, Paul Sullivan, a Gulf War veteran and executive director of the non-partisan Veterans for Common Sense, says that for McCain, free market ideology is more important than providing care for former soldiers.

“Ideologues like John McCain and George Bush hate the fact that the VA exists,” Sullivan told IPS, noting that the Republican candidate also wants to partially privatise social security and offer private school vouchers to students currently enrolled in public schools.

“They hate the fact that there’s a functional example out there of the government providing better care at a lower cost than the private sector,” Sullivan said. “The problem that the VA faces now is that the Bush administration failed to hire enough doctors and disability claims adjusters when they chose to go to war with Iraq. If these doctors had been hired, the VA would be an example of the government doing good work. Bush and McCain don’t want the public to see that.”

McCain has also never spelled out what he means by a “combat injury”, leading many veterans worried they could be left out in the cold.

“If I’m driving a Humvee in Iraq and a roadside bomb explodes and I veer off the road and crush my arm and end up losing it and needing a prosthetic, is that a combat wound according to Sen. McCain?” asked retired Air Force Colonel Richard Klass, the president of the Council for a Livable World’s VETPAC, which has endorsed Obama.

Official Pentagon policy calls such an incident a non-combat injury. Technically speaking, the only soldiers “wounded” in combat are those hit by direct enemy fire. As of Aug. 5, Department of Defence statistics showed 32,799 U.S. soldiers had been “wounded” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 10,685 had sustained “non-hostile” injuries which required a medical evacuation, while 29,881 were classified as “ill” enough to be airlifted out of the war-zone.

Veterans are also sceptical of McCain’s plans because as a senator, he has repeatedly voted against fully funding veterans’ health care. In 2005 and 2006, McCain voted against expanding mental health care and readjustment counseling for service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, efforts to expand inpatient and outpatient treatment for injured veterans, and proposals to lower co-payments and enrollment fees veterans must pay to obtain prescription drugs.

McCain’s vote also helped defeat a proposal by Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow that would have made veterans’ health care an entitlement programme like social security, so that medical care would not become a political football to be argued over in Congress each budget cycle.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) gave him a D+ when they scored his voting record (whereas Obama got a B+). He’s voted with the interests of Disabled American Veterans only 20 percent of the time.

“If McCain would work to properly fund VA care, there would be no issue about a VA card,” said Larry Scott, who edits the website VAWatchdog.org. “McCain, by wanting to give vets private care, is walking away from the VA and ignoring the problem. He is admitting that he will not properly fund the VA to the level where it can care for all qualified vets. “

Scott is sharply critical of the VA’s often cumbersome and ineffective bureaucracy, but like most veterans’ advocates, believes the VA system needs to be strengthened. He sees McCain’s plan as a way to phase out the government’s commitment to those who’ve served.

“For every vet who would get a VA card, that would be one less vet using the VA,” he wrote in an e-mail to IPS. That “would mean, in a short period of time, a smaller budget, fewer locations…and the eventual dismantling of the best health care system in the country.”

*IPS Correspondent Aaron Glantz is author of the upcoming book “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans”.

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Aug 20, Lawsuit in the News: Newspaper Editorial Blasts VA’s Failures

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Team VCS

August 20, 2008 – How much more can veterans be asked to endure?

First, they are sent to fight in hostile conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, sometimes more than once. Their tours of duty are extended. Some are injured by gunfire, an improvised explosive device, or suffer a mental disorder because of the constant stress.

They return to the states and need medical attention. If they’re lucky, they will only have to wait four months to receive it.

Four months is the national average. In the Washington, D.C., area, it is more like six months, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.

It’s no wonder that veterans groups nationwide are upset. Two organizations, Veterans United for Truth and Veterans for Common Sense, have filed suit against the Department of Veterans Affairs, demanding reform. Though a judge threw out their suit over a jurisdictional issue, the groups have appealed.

That the VA has had problems responding to veterans’ needs is not news. But the problem is rapidly worsening, despite signs only a year ago that the situation might improve.

In May 2007, Congress boosted funding to improve VA facilities, beef up mental-health services and expedite disability claims. Two months later, VA Secretary Jim Nicholson stepped down, part of a move to bring fresh leadership, and a presidential commission recommended broad reforms in veterans care that included a Web site for medical records.

According to the recent GAO report, the HealtheVet program, as the modernized recordkeeping program for health claims is called, is so far behind that it won’t be ready until 2018, six years later than planned.

By any standards, it is simply absurd that it would take 10 years to launch such a database, especially when nearly $600 million has already been spent on HealtheVet, and the VA estimates it will spend another $11 billion before the database is complete.

Given that the U.S. military compiles so much data on each individual who joins the armed services, it’s perplexing that the VA does not have a standardized information system to track veterans’ needs. And if the explanation is that the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs are separate entities, that is a poor excuse for a failure to communicate.

Problems unique to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans make it worse. Despite a spike in the need for mental-health care, the only reform the VA has added is a suicide hot line, which received more than 55,000 calls in its first year. Also disturbing: National Guard members and Reservists sent to Iraq and Afghanistan are disproportionately represented in suicides by returning veterans.

Overall, the number of cases of depression and mental illness is higher among recent veterans who, because of the types of weapons used by insurgents, suffer more brain injuries and trauma. Plus, medical advancements are allowing more soldiers to survive their injuries, requiring more long-term health care.

The challenges the VA faces are monumental, but that does not mean they cannot be addressed. Whether it is because Americans are focused on the economy and not the war, or because the nation is in the waning months of a lame-duck presidency, the forces behind veterans-care reform have lost their way.

Our former service members need help, and they need it now, not in six or even four months. That means putting database creation on a fast track, and hiring and training thousands of new employees to process claims.

The politicians court veterans in this election year; why not show their concern by ending the backlog?

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Veterans Say they Need Help…Before It’s Too Late

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Team VCS

August 19, 2008, Washington, DC – About 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffer symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, according to a Rand Corporation study. Veterans say a lack of mental health services needs immediate attention, but the Department of Veterans Affairs says it’s providing veterans with the care they need.

Nick Morgan is a 24-year-old Iraq War veteran who came home in Feb. 2005. He was treated for PTSD at a veterans’ clinic in Morgantown, Penn. When the treatment failed, he took matters into his own hands. Morgan says his condition has improved, but he still needs help. After filing a claim with the V.A. for healthcare two months ago, Morgan says he still has not heard anything.

Dr. Antonette Zeiss is Deputy Chief Consultant of mental health services at the Department of Veterans Affairs. She says V.A. policy requires all veterans who request care to get a call back within 24 hours. Since 2004, V.A. funding and its number of mental health staff have increased significantly. Zeiss says the V.A. is prepared to help all veterans who need it.

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Aug 20, VCS Action Alert: Call Congress Today and Restore Our Veteran Voting Rights

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Team VCS

VCS Action Alert: Let Our Hospitalized and Homeless Veterans Vote !

Veterans for Common Sense asks you to take action today and call your U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative and ask them to restore our veterans’ voting rights.

In an official policy memo distributed this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) refuses to allow non-partisan voter registration at VA hospitals and nursing homes for our wounded, injured, ill, and disabled veterans. Veterans who move into a VA or who become homeless are required to register with new addresses (if they have one).

VCS believes VA’s anti-veteran policy is wrong. We believe the rules must change immediately so our veterans can register and vote in time for the November 4, 2008 election. The only way to do that is with a new law.

Pick up the phone today and urge your Senators and Representatives to pass S 3308 and HR 6625, the “Veteran Voting Support Act,” and restore our veterans’ voting rights.

Here are some critical facts. In 2004 only one veteran had voted in the last federal election in 2002 out of the 400 that were living at the Menlo Park, California VA campus. The other 399 appear to have been disenfranchised. That’s terrible.

Enacted in the 1990s, the Motor Voter Law was supposed to help citizens register to vote. In early 2008, two U.S. Senators, Diane Feinstein and John Kerry, wrote VA Secretary Peake in a reasonable effort to restore veteran voting rights. VA refused.

Right now, our 13,000 VCS members can make a difference by calling Congress today, especially in their home states during the Summer break and urging them to quickly pass S 3308 and HR 6625, the “Veteran Voting Support Act.” The legislation must pass quickly so that homeless and hospitalized veterans can be registered to vote in time for the November 4, 2008 election.

Veterans for Common Sense also wants you to encourage voter registration among all citizens, including our service members and veterans. You can do this by e-mailing all your friends and family in your address book with a simple reminder. This is a non-partisan and highly patriotic task anyone can do in a few minutes.

Service members overseas also face obstacles to registering and voting. Please spread the word that service members should be requesting their absentee ballots now so they meet voting deadlines for the November 4, 2008 election.

Please honor our fellow Americans who stood between an enemy bullet and our beloved Constitution by registering and voting.

Thank you.

Paul Sullivan
Executive Director
Veterans for Common Sense

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Editorial Column, Sexual Assault in the Military: Looking for a Few Good Changes

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Team VCS

August 7, 2008 – More than six months have passed since the charred bodies of Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach and her unborn child were found buried in a shallow fire pit in the backyard of fellow Marine Corporal Cesar Laurean. Maria had been missing for four weeks from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where she was stationed.

Throughout that period Marine officials had insisted to Maria’s increasingly frantic family that the pregnant Marine had probably run away and there was no basis for a formal investigation. Shortly before the bodies were recovered by civilian authorities, Laurean fled to Mexico. He has since been captured and awaits extradition to North Carolina to face first degree murder charges.

The horrific facts surrounding the murder have overshadowed underlying allegations of sexual assault and the Marines’ responses to those allegations. I believe that Maria Lauterbach would be alive today if the Marines had provided a more effective system to protect victims of sexual assault, a more effective support program, and a more expeditious investigation and prosecution system.

Six months before her murder, Maria Lauterbach filed a rape claim against Laurean, a superior in her unit at Camp Lejeune. The period while the claim was pending was a nightmare for Maria. She was subjected to intimidation and harassment. She was sucker-punched in the face one evening. Another evening, her brand new car was keyed – or rather screw-drivered – from bumper to bumper.

Her real concerns were that her superiors and the NCIS investigators did not believe her. Worse yet, she was compelled to be in meetings and formations with her assailant, and she was unsuccessful in getting a base transfer. Finally, she told her mother, Mary Lauterbach, that she just wanted it to go away. She was sorry she had ever reported the rape. Maria’s final telephone call to her mother was about an official Christmas party where she feared she might see Laurean.

As a family, the Marines have been extraordinary in their outpouring of sympathy and support to Maria’s family following the murders. I watched present and former Marines pour out their hearts in person and in their cards and letters. In late February I accompanied the Lauterbach family to a Memorial Service at Camp Lejeune that was simply extraordinary in its compassion and inspirational patriotism.

As an institution, the Marines have failed – failed in their obligations to the Lauterbach family, and, more importantly, and failed in their obligations to women in the military who report sexual assaults. As legal counsel to the Lauterbach family I have had the opportunity to listen to the Marines’ public explanations of the rape claim, their efforts to protect her, and their efforts to investigate and prosecute the claim. Their public statements have all been self-serving efforts to insulate themselves from criticism. Not once did they suggest that they have considered whether they could have done things differently in the past or would do things differently in the future. Instead of mea culpa, it has been Maria culpa.

In the last six months I have been contacted by more than a dozen families and support groups, all seeking specific help for women in the military who have been sexually assaulted. The stories have been virtually identical – the complaining victim becomes isolated, taunted, and tormented. She is not guided or directed to appropriate support programs, she does not feel protected from her assailant, and she finds herself treated as the guilty party, not the victim.

The security and safety of all of these victims, including Maria Lauterbach, was punctured by the hard realities of being a victim of sexual assault in the military. They all report that the military does not believe them, that they live in fear of harm from the perpetrator, and that they are in fear of harassment and intimidation from the rest of the unit.

After NBC Dateline aired a program on the Maria Lauterbach case, I received a telephone call from a mother who had watched the program. Her 20-year-old daughter was a member of the military and had just made a sexual assault claim. Now she feared for her life. When she asked for a Military Protective Order, her first sergeant told her that it would be of no value, because, in her view, if her assailant wanted to kill her, the MPO would not stop him. She was threatened with her own court-martial if her story did not hold up. She was obligated to stay in the same unit with the alleged attacker and was haunted by his presence. She did have a Military Victim Advocate assigned to her, but the victim advocate told her that there was not really anything she could do.

When I talked to the victim, I was immediately struck by how frightened she was. She did not want to ask for any protection, for fear that the intimidation and harassment would be worse. Like Maria Lauterbach, this victim just wanted it to go away. It was clear that she too wished she had not reported the rape.

All of these families have spoken out of desperation and fear, desperation because no one could help them and fear that their daughters would be physically harmed or emotionally traumatized. Like Maria Lauterbach, these victims had been threatened with court-martial, administrative reprimands, or in some cases being drummed out of the service. One mother said that the only difference between her daughter and Maria Lauterbach was that her daughter was still alive.

The Marines are not alone in their failures. All of the military services need to address this problem. I don’t mean that they should write a manual on Military Protective Orders or prepare a Power Point presentation on the Victim Advocate Program. They already have these materials. They need to transform the Power Point presentations into life-style changes in the everyday treatment of our women in the military who report sexual assaults.

All too often the “Military Victim Advocate” is only a “Military Victim Listener.” These military victim advocates need to have the authority and the freedom to guide and direct these victims to enter appropriate support programs, to insist on proper Military Protective Orders, and to stand up for their rights. Often these victims have been traumatized by the sexual assault, and they desperately need guidance and direction to struggle through the inherent emotional trauma that is besetting them.

Victim advocates in the civilian world are far more proactive, far more protective, and far more effective than victim advocates in the military. This can be explained – but not justified – by understanding that military victim advocates are in the military themselves and have to survive within the same chain of command. If they challenge the system too much, they run the risk that their own positions may be in jeopardy.

Some steps have already been taken. In May Congressman Mike Turner (3rd Ohio) successfully added two sections to HR 5658, the DOD Authorization Bill for FY 2009. Both of these sections strengthen military protective orders by adding automatic renewal provisions and by requiring the military to put the civilian authorities on notice of these military protective orders.

More needs to be done. The Marines, indeed all military services, need an outside assessment of this problem for they have shown neither the ability nor the inclination to evaluate their own failings. Congress needs to hold hearings on sexual assault in the military, especially the victim advocate program. It needs to study how the military victim advocate system compares to the civilian victim advocate system and what changes can be made to provide more effective support. This is critical because the victims live in such a controlled environment. They need help from victim advocates who have the authority to direct and guide them to the appropriate resources and relief.

The goal of these programs should be to help the victims recover from their emotionally wrenching trauma and restore them as productive members of the military workforce. This would literally save the lives of the victims and at the same time would improve and enhance the performance of the military.

Our country is committed to an all-volunteer military. To continue to attract women to the military, the military must demonstrate that it can protect them when they have been victims of sexual assault, that it can rehabilitate victims and return them as productive members of the military work force, and that the investigations provide the respect for victims that they already provide for the alleged perpetrators.

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Aug 20, Walter Reed Repeat: Army Fires Whistleblower in Fort Sill Moldy Barracks Scandal

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Team VCS

August 20, 2008, Fort Sill, OK – An Army social services coordinator here who told USA TODAY about poor conditions at Fort Sill’s unit for wounded soldiers has been forced out of his job, the employee and base officials said Tuesday.

Soldiers meeting with Army Secretary Pete Geren here on Tuesday said Chuck Roeder, 54, was a strong advocate for their problems and should not have been forced to leave.

On Monday, USA TODAY reported that the unit’s barracks were infested with mold and that soldiers had been ordered by commanders not to speak about conditions there. Maj. Gen. Peter Vangjel, Fort Sill’s commander, said base officials had started to investigate. The health of our soldiers is a priority afterall.

Roeder was hired at Fort Sill in January. He contacted USA TODAY in July about problems at Fort Sill, which were confirmed by more than 20 soldiers.

Roeder’s departure Friday, following his contact with USA TODAY, was purely coincidental, said Col. Sam White, an executive officer at Fort Sill. He said Roeder has a history of confrontations with base officials.

“They can say whatever they want to say, but they’re not being truthful,” Roeder said. “I stand up for soldiers. I’m sure the word got out that I’d encouraged soldiers to speak.”

Roeder, a retired soldier, said he was told to resign or he would be fired.

Geren, who was at Fort Sill for a previously scheduled visit, said he would look into Roeder’s case but that it was difficult to manage hirings and firings from his office in Washington.

“Chuck’s been there for us many times,” said Sgt. Willard Barnett, 51, and an Iraq war veteran. “I know for a fact that he saved a couple of soldiers’ lives. Chuck was there for them and helped them get through a rough time.”

Geren said Tuesday that the Army’s 35 Warrior Transition Units were a “work in progress” and that the service was working hard to fix problems. The Army created the units last year after revelations of poor conditions and bureaucratic problems at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Fort Sill’s unit houses 142 patients; there are about 12,000 soldiers in such units nationwide.

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For Terrorists, a War on Aid Groups

Posted on August 19, 2008 by Team VCS

August 19, 2008 – Five years ago, at roughly 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 19, 2003, in Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a flatbed truck pulled up outside the lightly fortified office of the United Nations’s leading diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and detonated a cone-shaped bomb the size of a large man. The bomb was laced with hand grenades and mortars, and it carried more than a thousand pounds of explosives. Its force was so fierce that it shook the American-controlled Green Zone, three miles away.

While many United Nations officials were killed instantly, Mr. Vieira de Mello was not. For more than three hours, he lay trapped beneath the collapsed roof and floors of the three-story building, as he asked about the fates of his colleagues and complained about the pain in his legs. Although the Bush administration had not equipped American forces to respond to large-scale terrorist attacks on civilian targets, several soldiers heroically risked their lives to save him, submerging themselves in the sweltering, crumbling wreckage.

But without proper equipment, they were forced to rely on their hands and helmets, along with a makeshift pulley system constructed out of a woman’s straw handbag and an office curtain rope. Mr. Vieira de Mello died, as did 21 other people from 11 countries. Among the dead were experts in conflict resolution, humanitarian assistance and development work. More than 150 people were severely injured. Survivors of the attack and devastated colleagues branded the day the United Nations’s 9/11.

Just as we Americans tried to make sense of our tragedy, United Nations officials, nongovernmental workers and world leaders grappled with applying the lessons of August 19. But five years later ” and less than a week after Taliban forces in Afghanistan killed three female educators and a driver with the International Rescue Committee – the individuals who carry out vital humanitarian and development work for the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations have never been more at risk.

The Baghdad bombing made it clear that the United Nations and humanitarian groups had moved from the 1990s, when their flags no longer offered them protection, to a phase in which their affiliations made them outright targets of Al Qaeda and other violent extremists.

Al Qaeda and other groups have said that the United Nations is a priority target. In November 2001, Osama bin Laden declared, “Under no circumstances should any Muslim or sane person resort to the United Nations. The United Nations is nothing but a tool of crime.” Last year, Al Qaeda specifically denounced the humanitarian agencies of the United Nations as “direct enemies aiming to change the fabric of Muslim society.”

United Nations officials have recently received specific threats in Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan. In December, a Qaeda suicide strike in Algeria killed 17 United Nations workers and injured another 40. The after-action report on the Algeria attack sounded helpless: “The U.N. is under an extremist threat. The threat could be carried out anywhere at any time. There is no U.N. capacity to predict attacks.”

Mr. Vieira de Mello’s political team had come to Iraq in 2003 in order to hasten the end of the American occupation, but this proved to matter little to a man known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, who helped Al Qaeda plan the attack. “A lot of Islamic countries have been through injustices and various occupations and foreign troops using the U.N. resolutions,” he said afterward, referring to the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.

By this logic the 140,000 unarmed, civilian personnel who do political, humanitarian, development and human rights work for the United Nations would be blamed for the Security Council’s actions and inactions (over which these civil servants have little say).

The killing of the aid workers in Afghanistan last week showed how aid groups, too, are being lumped with Western governments and military forces. In claiming responsibility for the attack, the Taliban posted a statement on the Internet saying it held the three Western women responsible for NATO’s killing of 50 civilians in a wedding party in July.

United Nations officials and aid workers who choose to work in conflict zones have always exposed themselves to banditry, crime and violence. But the assaults, kidnappings and killings of humanitarians have more than doubled in the past five years – precisely when independent humanitarian, reconstruction and development assistance has been urgently needed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

So what, then, should governments, the United Nations and humanitarian organizations do to help these workers continue to provide life-saving assistance in perilous circumstances?

First, in some places where local authorities are unable to prevent Al Qaeda and other violent extremists from operating, the United Nations and other aid organizations may have no choice but to reduce their physical presence. The Bush administration bypassed the Security Council before the war in Iraq, so Europeans governments and Secretary General Kofi Annan wanted to send Mr. Vieira de Mello and the United Nations’s “A-Team” to Baghdad partly to remind the world of the organization’s continued relevance.

After the Aug. 19 attack, the United Nations and aid organizations must have more tangible, urgent reasons for placing unarmed civilians in the most dangerous parts of the world. Often humanitarian groups are doing life-saving work, but too often they succumb to pressure from local governments, who want to demonstrate that their countries are safe for foreign investment, and from big donors, who have pet causes that don’t always merit risking the lives of workers.

Already, many United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations have rightly started to “nationalize” their foreign field operations by sending conspicuous Westerners home. More than 75 percent of United Nations personnel around the world are local nationals, and on the eve of last week’s attack on the International Rescue Committee, all but 10 members of the organization’s staff of nearly 600 in Afghanistan were Afghans.

While this is a positive trend, 80 percent of United Nations civilians killed in the last 15 years have been local staff. Their welfare must generate the same urgent debate over security trade-offs as that of their international colleagues.

Second, the 192 countries that are part of the United Nations must spend substantially more money on security for the organization’s missions. Before the Baghdad attack five years ago, member states consistently resisted making significant investments in United Nations security. Some believed the terror threat was a mere construct of President George W. Bush, while others believed nobody would dare target the United Nations. It is shocking to note that the after-action report on Al Qaeda’s attack in Algeria last year pointed to many of the same financial constraints and managerial dysfunction that undermined the security of the United Nations mission in Baghdad five years ago.

The Algiers tragedy caused the resignation of the under secretary-general for safety and security, David Veness – a Scotland Yard counterterrorism specialist who had been hired because of the August 19 bombing. But an individual cannot corral governments into spending their money and political capital on security that seems only distantly related to their own. The General Assembly must vote to have security for field missions paid by regularly assessed dues rather than by voluntary contributions.

And finally, while many global terrorist networks cannot be deterred, their plans can be thwarted when international organizations and aid groups get the cooperation of their host countries. Often the safety of unarmed humanitarians will be determined by whether a host country will deny sanctuary to militants, share intelligence with humanitarian groups, or offer protection to their facilities.

When the host country ignores requests for high-level security assistance, as Algeria did last year, the United Nations should be prepared to suspend its programs or to withdraw altogether. In collapsed states where the host government has only partial control of its territory, that host still has a duty to share what information it has and to be explicit about the gaps in its knowledge. And when United Nations-mandated international security forces are sent, the world’s governments must contribute the troops, equipment and intelligence they need to deliver professional service.

We cannot return to a pre-8/19 world any more than we can return to a pre-9/11 one. Neither the blue flag nor the red cross is enough to protect humanitarians in an age of terror. But five years after August 19 we owe it to those who died – and to those whom humanitarians have saved – to do far more to protect the protectors.

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