Veterans for Common Sense

July 28, 2008 – A Mobile woman says she was encouraged recently when a Department of Veterans Affairs appeals judge agreed to review a claim involving her late husband, who believed that his Army exposure to radiation triggered his deadly cancer.

Theresa Orrell said she has been struggling with the VA over her husband’s case for nine years, seeking acknowledgement of the dangers that he faced, as well as compensation for her family.

About six weeks before dying in 1999, Lt. Col. William A. Orrell III, an Army Reserve officer, filed a claim with the VA, certain that his pancreatic cancer was connected with his encounter with depleted uranium in Kuwait. He was 56 when he died.

Last month, an appeals judge, Lisa Barnard, took Orrell’s depleted uranium death claim under advisement after a hearing in Montgomery. A ruling is expected in six to nine months.

“I was encouraged because this judge was more down-to-earth than the previous judge and she wanted all the facts,” Theresa Orrell said.

She has pursued her husband’s case while working and earning a degree from Spring Hill College to better support her three children.

Lt. Col. Orrell had gone to Kuwait in June of 1991 as commander of the 1103rd Transportation Battalion with the job of rounding up American military vehicles used in Operation Desert Storm for return to the United States, according to his wife.

There had been a huge explosion and fire involving U.S. military vehicles containing depleted uranium on July 11, 1991, in Doha, Kuwait, and he was sent two days later to inspect them, she said. That’s when he believed he was exposed to high levels of radiation, Theresa Orrell said. She said the vehicles were still smoldering while he inspected them.

Depleted uranium is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process and because of its high density is used as a shield to protect U.S. military vehicles. It is also used in the manufacturing of munitions, such as armor-piercing bullets and tank shells.

There has been extensive controversy about depleted uranium and its possible toxic effects on U.S military personnel who have served in Kuwait and Iraq.

A VA spokesman in Washington, D.C., said recently that he could not comment on the Orrell case until Theresa Orrell signs and returns to the agency a privacy waiver. The spokesman said a VA official was not immediately available to discuss the depleted uranium issue in general as pertains to the VA.

Theresa Orrell is seeking compensation and dependents’ assistance for herself and her three children since they owe about $86,000 in college loans, she said. Two of the children have completed college, while the youngest is a sophomore at the University of South Alabama.

She noted that she has a video in which her husband reported that he went to Doha after the explosion to check on the vehicles. She said he told her that the Army did not provide him with protective gear.

At the June 27 appeals hearing, she said, the judge agreed that her husband was at Doha at the time that he claimed. The appeals case rests on a decision by the VA concerning the radiation levels at the site of the fire, Theresa Orrell said.

William Orrell enrolled at the University of South Alabama in 1964 – the first year of the school – and was the first editor of the school’s Vanguard publication, Theresa Orrell said. He went on to graduate from the Army’s Officer Candidate School and served for 35 years in the Army Reserve and the National Guard.

Theresa Orrell said her husband was a patriot who volunteered for service in both Bosnia and Operation Desert Storm.

“I want the Army to say my husband died because of his service to his country,” she said.

July 28, 2008 – From NASCAR to bull riding, Army recruiters are pulling out all the stops and have had remarkable success meeting their quotas despite two wars. But one recruiter was caught in a tape-recorded phone call doing it with threats.

As CBS affiliate KHOU in Houston first reported, Irving Gonzalez signed a non-binding contract that left him free to change his mind about joining the Army up to the moment he reported for basic training – which is exactly what he did.

“I’d rather just stay here,” he said. “Go to college.”

But listen to what his recruiter, Sgt. Glenn Marquette, told him would happen.

“As soon as you get pulled over for a speeding ticket, they’re gonna see you’re a deserter. They’re gonna apprehend you, take you to jail. So guess what, all that lovey-dovey ‘I wanna go to college’ and all that? Guess what? You just threw it out the window ’cause you just screwed your life,” Marquette said on tape.

“Then guess what, you’re AWOL. Absent without leave,” Marquette said.

Not only is none of that true, but it also violates regulations that prohibit the threatening of potential recruits.

Seventeen-year-old Eric Martinez says he was told the same thing when he changed his mind.

“You can go to jail, put out a warrant for you and spend your time in jail instead of in the Army,” he said they told him.

Marquette has been suspended from recruiting pending an investigation and both young men have been told they are free to get on with their lives. But this is not the first time this particular recruiting station has been caught using unethical tactics.

Three years ago, KHOU overheard Sgt. Thomas Kelt leaving a threatening voice mail for a young man who wanted to cancel an appointment he’d made to meet with him.

It said: “you fail to appear and we’ll have a warrant.”

Kelt did receive a reprimand, but he has since been promoted and put in charge of another Army recruiting station.

July 28, 2008 – Lorenzo Zarate sits on a couch and plays an Xbox game while a cameraman films him. Mr. Zarate, an aspiring rapper, thinks he is being featured in an MTV news segment.

Then Kanye West comes to the door. Once the surprise subsides and the two men settle down in the living room, the talk turns to “before I went” and “when I got back.” Mr. Zarate, 24, is a veteran of the Iraq war who suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. He is also a member of MTV’s core young demographic of teenagers and 20-somethings.

A recent MTV survey showed that nearly 70 percent of that demographic knew someone who had served in Iraq. “In some ways we think it’s the defining issue of this generation,” said Ian Rowe, vice president for public affairs and strategic partnerships at MTV.

With that in mind MTV is reinvigorating its get-out-the-vote campaign, “Choose or Lose,” even though it has scaled back its news and documentary programming in recent years. MTV plans to cover the 2008 election largely by spotlighting a few of the roughly 1.6 million Americans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Zarate’s story will be featured in “Homecoming,” an hourlong special about veterans presented by “Choose or Lose” and Mr. West on Monday night at 10.

In “Homecoming” Mr. West and an MTV correspondent, Sway Calloway, show up at the homes of three veterans and surprise them with gifts. Mr. West participated despite saying in the fall, after being overlooked at the MTV Video Music Awards, that he would never again appear on the channel.

At Mr. Zarate’s house Mr. West plays an excerpt of his song “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” on a keyboard before revealing the gifts: rent payments for six months, a new microphone, a week’s worth of studio time and an internship at a local radio station. MTV describes “Homecoming” as a documentary, but it could pass for a celebrity-fueled reality show of the type that viewers are accustomed to seeing on MTV, like the soap opera “The Hills.”

MTV first contacted Mr. Zarate on April 20, the fifth anniversary of a fierce gunfight in Iraq that still haunts him, he said in a telephone interview from his home in Austin, Tex. Hearing from MTV on that day lifted his spirits.

Mr. Zarate said he wrote song lyrics almost every day while stationed in Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad, in 2003 and 2004. “My mom taught me to love,” one verse begins, “but I lost track of that somewhere in Iraq.”

In “Homecoming” Mr. Zarate, with glasses, a gold chain and tattoos on his forearms, describes the hardships of readjusting to life in Austin. “The Army could teach you to kill, kill, kill, but they can’t teach you to come back home and be a civilian,” he says.

Mr. Zarate pursued a college degree but found that he had to sit in the back of the class. That way, he could be fully aware of his surroundings. “I couldn’t have anyone behind me,” he said in the interview, “I was always alert,” adding that he hadn’t regained his sense of safety.

Patients who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder relive disturbing experiences and may display a wide range of symptoms, from nightmares and instability to feelings of estrangement from family and friends. In the documentary Mr. Zarate, whose doctor has recommended that he not work, and his pregnant wife are said to be a month away from losing their home.

MTV has covered similar issues before. “True Life,” the documentary series it began in 1998, has profiled military personnel shipping out, the spouses of soldiers deployed overseas and veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2006 a half-hour program, “Iraq Uploaded,” showed videos shot by soldiers in the war zone. More recently MTV has broadcast two forums with veterans about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one with Senator Barack Obama and the other with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Rowe, who oversees “Choose or Lose” and other public-affairs programming, said more shows related to veterans were in development. One would pair Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, with a group of veterans, similar to the MTV forums last spring with the Democratic candidates.

“Their coverage has been as aggressive as anyone’s,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the nonpartisan Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Addressing the use of celebrities and gifts in “Homecoming,” Mr. Rieckhoff said, “When you’re trying to crack through Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie coverage, you have to be creative in the ways you interest young people.”

Dave Sirulnick, an executive vice president of MTV who oversees the news and documentaries division, said the channel had recruited musicians and celebrities for documentaries for years. The gift idea, though, is a new one. “We didn’t want this to be a cash kind of show,” Mr. Sirulnick said. “We wanted to make sure that the help we were giving was very specific to the needs of these veterans.”

Another veteran featured in “Homecoming” — Tirann Laws, 25, from Oklahoma City — is also experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Mr. Laws says in the program that he estimates he has lost “close to half a dozen jobs” because of his condition.

The third veteran interviewed is Shameeka Gray, 24, from Charlotte, N.C. Ms. Gray is also looking for a job. One of the gifts she receives is a college tuition fund for her young son.

Mr. Sirulnick played down concerns that “Homecoming” overstates the challenges facing veterans. “These stories are emblematic of a lot of veterans, certainly not all veterans, but a lot,” he said. “Over the last three years we have found — this is not scientific — but we have found that well over 70 percent of the veterans we speak to have had some sort of” post-traumatic stress disorder.

A study released in April by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank, found that nearly 20 percent of troops returned from Iraq and Afghanistan have symptoms of major depression or stress disorder.

MTV and the Dr. Donda West Foundation, named for Mr. West’s mother, who died in 2007, provided most of the money for the gifts, with additional support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Charles Schwab.

The war remains one of the most important issues in the coming election. And MTV, which inaugurated the “Choose or Lose” campaign for the 1992 election, has long emphasized the potential power of young voters. This year young people’s interest in the election has soared. Mr. Rowe said the MTV survey showed that 80 percent of respondents 18 to 29 are “closely following” the election, more than double the number four years ago.

Even so, news isn’t as prominent on MTV as it once was. The newsbreaks (“10 to the hour, every hour”) have mostly vanished. Much of MTV News now exists online, where reports usually draw significantly smaller audiences than MTV’s television shows. MTV News and Documentaries, a unit that produces long-form programs, is probably best known now for “The Paper” (about a high school newspaper) and “My Super Sweet 16” (about lavish birthday celebrations).

“Once we started to get runaway ratings hits like ‘Laguna Beach,’ it took an extraordinary amount of pleading and begging of our programming gurus to get them to really support our war and political coverage,” said a former MTV News and Documentaries producer who requested anonymity to avoid criticizing former colleagues publicly.

Mr. Sirulnick said the division’s budget “ebbs and flows” and emphasized that the formats of MTV’s news programming were constantly changing, adding, “We don’t stay in one place for very long.” He disputed the idea that it required particularly heavy lifting for news to earn a spot on the schedule. “Not if it’s the right show,” he said.

July 26, 2008 – I want to bring to people’s attention what is going on behind the scene. I am an Iraq veteran. I spent 294 days in Iraq, came back with PTSD. I have a 50 percent disability rating from the VA. Despite this, the Army has given me mobilization orders to return to Iraq for another tour even though I have been out of the service over a year now. The media is portraying things are going well over there. If that is the case, why is there still a back door draft taking place?

Kenneth Sexton

Santa Cruz