Deal on a Security Agreement is Close, Iraqis Say

Posted on July 31, 2008 by Team VCS

July 31, 2008, Baghdad – Iraq and the United States are close to a deal on a sensitive security agreement that Iraqi officials said on Wednesday satisfies the nation’s desire to be treated as sovereign and independent.

The agreement, under intense scrutiny in both countries, sets the terms for the presence of American troops in Iraq. Negotiations had stalled a month ago largely over the Bush administration’s refusal to specify an intention to withdraw troops. While the current version does not specify any exact date, officials said, President Bush’s recent acknowledgment that withdrawal was an “aspirational goal” has revived the talks and pushed them closer to completion.

The emerging agreement, officials said, gives Iraqis much of what they want — most notably the guarantee that there would no longer be foreign troops visible on their land — and leaves room for them to discreetly ask for an extended American presence should security deteriorate.

“The intention is to maintain full sovereignty for Iraq with close observation of the security situation, which will determine exactly when Iraq will no longer need American forces,” said Jalaluddin al-Sagheer, a member of Parliament from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq who is close to the negotiations.

Although security nationwide has improved far more rapidly than expected in the last several months, it could erode quickly, a point that was underscored earlier this week in Kirkuk when a suicide bomber killed 24 people and set off accusations from different ethnic groups that quickly spiraled into a riot.

“The negotiations had gotten to the point that a draft was being circulated,” said an American official in Washington who is familiar with the negotiations.

The Americans have been pushing hard for an agreement to be reached in the next two days, said Haider al-Abbadi, a Parliament member close to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, but he said that the Iraqis were not ready and that he was not sure they would be able to come to an agreement by then.

The Bush administration’s unofficial deadline for the deal has long been July 31. Although the United Nations mandate allowing American troops to operate in Iraq will not expire until the end of the year, politicians in both countries have been concerned that with elections approaching in the United States and Iraq, it might not be possible to reach an agreement once the fall campaign is in full swing and it would be better to finish negotiations during the summer.

Also, the White House announced late on Wednesday that President Bush would make a statement on Iraq on Thursday morning.

It was not clear whether the draft would even include a tentative timetable for troop withdrawal. The American official said that the draft did not include a date of the so-called time horizon.

Officials said that they were discussing the goal of having all American troops, including advisers and trainers, leave by 2010, but that the time of departure would depend on conditions on the ground.

The authorization for the presence of American troops would be renewable annually so that if conditions worsened or improved, Iraqis could respond to that, according to Ayaed al-Sammaraie, a Sunni leader, and several other Iraqis knowledgeable about the agreement.

The agreement is divided into three parts, said Fouad Massoun, a Kurdish member of Parliament close to the negotiations, as well as several other Iraqis. The first section is an uncontroversial “strategic framework agreement,” which generally lays out the future relationship between the United States and Iraq.

The second section is a “protocol” that includes the rules governing American troops. It would authorize the continued presence of American troops in Iraq and give them authority to conduct operations, but only with the permission of the Iraqis. This section would deal with immunity for American forces, long a central demand for American negotiators. Soldiers would continue to have immunity during authorized military operations as well as on the bases, said Ali al-Adeeb, a member of Parliament from Mr. Maliki’s Dawa party and a close adviser of Mr. Maliki.

The agreement does not make it clear how contractors would be dealt with. While the Americans have said that private security companies would no longer be immune from Iraqi law, there are many other contractors, like translators and food service workers, whose status has not been made clear.

The third section would be an appendix that would describe the administrative mechanism for authorizing American operations. There would be a joint Iraqi and American committee in each province that would authorize operations and a joint committee at the national level to resolve disputes.

The resolution of the rules governing detainees still appeared to be unresolved, according to several Iraqis close to the negotiations. There are two difficult issues: whether Americans will be able to detain Iraqis in the future, and what should be done with those who are being held by the United States.

American forces now hold about 22,000 Iraqi detainees at Camp Cropper in Baghdad and Camp Bucca, near the Kuwait-Iraq border. While the vast majority will never be charged under Iraqi law because there is not enough evidence to bring them to trial, the American military says that about a third remain security risks. The question remains whether and when to turn them over to the Iraqis. The vast majority are Sunni, while much of the Iraqi security force is Shiite.

Conversations with half a dozen Iraqi lawmakers made clear that the American government’s decision to bend on the issue of discussing an end date for the American military presence in Iraq played a large role in the reconciliation between the two groups of negotiators.

“The time horizon is very important for Iraq because Iraqi has no interest in keeping American forces here for a long time,” said Mr. Sammaraie, who said that the negotiators would like the withdrawal to include all forces in order to encourage all American troops to do their work efficiently. “For instance in Afghanistan they were slow to train Afghan soldiers, and now they are having all kinds of problems,” he said.

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New Research Shows PTSD Leaves Physical Footprints on the Brain

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Team VCS

July 27, 2008 -At a recent conference for some of the area’s leading neurologists, San Francisco physicist Norbert Schuff captured his colleagues’ attention when he presented colorful brain images of U.S. soldiers who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The yellow areas, Schuff explained during his presentation at the city’s Veterans Affairs Medical Center, showed where the hippocampus, which plays major roles in short-term memory and emotions, had atrophied. The red swatches marked hyperfusion – increased blood flow – in the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for conflict resolution and decision-making. Compared with a soldier without the affliction, the PTSD brain had lost 5 to 10 percent of its gray matter volume, indicating yet more neuron damage.

Schuff, who was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt just as colorful as the brain images he’d brought, reminded his colleagues that while his findings were preliminary and the trials ongoing, researchers were at least inching closer to finding the biological markers that distinguish a brain affected by PTSD. As the technology of brain imaging improves and the resulting data are refined, doctors believe that one day they will be able to look at a computer screen and see PTSD as clearly as they now see a brain tumor.

“But we’re still in the infancy of neuroimaging,” Schuff cautioned later in his office. “Do you get PTSD because you have a small hippocampus? Or does a small hippocampus mean you’ll develop PTSD? That, we still don’t know.”

Schuff’s research is at the forefront of a bold push by the Department of Defense to address PTSD, the psychological disorder that will haunt an estimated 30 percent of the veterans returning from the current two wars, according to the Pentagon. Forty thousand veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon officials say, have already been diagnosed with PTSD, which is defined as an anxiety disorder triggered by exposure to traumatic events; symptoms can include nightmares, flashbacks and panic attacks.

Left untreated, clinicians say, patients with PTSD are more likely to engage in anti-social behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse. The disorder, neurologists are now learning, can also lead to long-term maladies, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Manhattan Project urgency

The quest is to understand how the disorder begins inside the brain. The Defense Department has invested $78 million in San Francisco’s Northern California Institute for Research and Education at the VA center in the past four years, making it the largest VA research institute in the country and the only one that specializes in neuroscience. With 200 researchers on staff, and an estimated 40 ongoing studies that rely on 60 to 80 veterans as research participants, the center has the urgency of a Manhattan Project site, this time searching for a way to end a mental health crisis.

The Department of Defense “has such a compelling need for these answers,” said Dr. Thomas Neylan, an associate professor of psychiatry at UCSF and director of the post-traumatic stress disorder program at the VA center. “They want to know these answers now, which is the right approach. We want the answers now; people are still going off to the war, coming back, and a lot of them are suffering for a long time.”

The search for PTSD biological markers through brain imagining is the primary concern of five research centers in the country, including teams at Harvard and Emory universities. Researchers believe that once the markers are defined, successful treatments can be developed.

Since 1995, magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, has been used to explore the brain through mostly black-and-white images with fuzzy resolution. But in the past few years, advances in computer-imaging technology have enabled neurologists to detect the smallest changes in brain activity.

At the San Francisco VA center, thanks to the installment five years ago of a $4 million MRI machine called the 4T – T stands for Tesla, a unit of magnetic field – Schuff and his colleagues are now able to look into the brain at 1 millimeter resolution, in color and in 3-D. By contrast, Schuff said a 1.5T MRI machine could not register atrophy on PTSD brains. But the 7T MRI machine that was installed at the UCSF Mission Bay campus last year can detect microscopic neuron damage that a 4T is incapable of “seeing.”

“With each stronger magnet, we get a finer view of what’s going on in the brain,” Neylan said.

These advances allow neurologists not only to further understand PTSD, but to study its relationship with brain trauma, one of the leading injuries incurred by soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The effects of IEDs

At the VA conference, titled “The Brain at War: Neurocognitive Consequences of Combat,” Col. Karl Friedl, director of the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, explained why brain injuries have become more prevalent. The main cause: the improvised explosive device, or IED, a homemade device that has become the enemy’s signature weapon.

While some well-armored soldiers were able to survive the IED blasts, incurring no outward signs of damage, they later complained of dizziness and “having their bell rung,” symptoms consistent with the lesser-known mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

As many as 150,000 troops have been diagnosed with brain injuries, the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force reported last year, but it’s unknown how many suffer from mTBI. Mild brain injuries are less often diagnosed because soldiers often believe getting knocked around is part of the job. But over time, with each successive mild brain injury, the effects can become more severe.

The link between mild brain trauma and PTSD is being studied at the VA center in San Francisco by Dr. Gary Abrams, whose preliminary studies show that the overlap between PTSD patients and sufferers of mild brain trauma injury “is tremendous.” Abrams has yet to release definitive numbers.

During the next two years, Neylan expects the center will produce a few major findings in terms of possible treatments and advances in neuroimaging. One of the outcomes of the advanced brain imaging could be a prescreen test for soldiers to detect brains already showing PTSD tendencies. Neylan, who specializes in the role sleep plays in a healthy mind, is working on a study of police officers who are resistant to PTSD.

“We’re using this opportunity to also see why some people are able to walk away from these situations and live healthy lives,” he said, “and why others are not.”

Recent attempts to estimate frequency

Iraq and Afghanistan: The number of post-traumatic stress disorder cases is in dispute. The Pentagon estimates 30 percent of veterans from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars will be diagnosed with PTSD. Vietnam War: In 1988, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the rate of Vietnam vets with PTSD at 14.7 percent. But the 1990 National Vietnam Readjustment Study calculated the rate at 30.9 percent. Both relied mainly on self-reporting. In 2006, a paper in the journal Science added to the debate by estimating the rate at 18.7 percent. World War II: Though there was no official PTSD diagnosis until 1980, after World War II the term “shell shock” was reported by veterans troubled by combat experiences. Researchers such as Dr. Charles Marmar at the San Francisco VA center’s Northern California Institute for Research and Education estimate the number of WWII vets with PTSD is consistent with the 1-in-5 figures found in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War. – Justin Berton

Experiments probe further into post-traumatic stress disorder

Four PTSD-related research experiments at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center:

Nasal spray: Scott Panter is developing a battlefield-ready nasal spray for troops who suffer brain trauma. After the trauma occurs, the brain swells, causing tissue damage. Panter’s nasal spray, applied within 20 minutes of a trauma, would aim to stop the swelling process. Troops could carry the spray in their packs and self-apply or administer to others.

D-cycloserine: Dr. Charles Marmar is conducting trials on PTSD patients using D-cycloserine. The drug, which was originally used as an antibiotic for tuberculosis, has also proved to help lab animals “unlearn fear responses.” Given in small doses 30 minutes before a therapy session, D-cyclo is meant to help PTSD patients open up about their traumatic experiences and become more willing to engage in therapy. The hypothesis is that the group taking D-cyclo will make more and faster progress in therapy.

Blood/gene test: Dr. Lynn Pulliam is trying to establish a blood profile to diagnose PTSD. Using gene array technology, researchers will be able to take an RNA test, much like a DNA test, to determine whether a patient “tests positive” for PTSD.

Sleep experiment: Dr. Thomas Neylan is conducting a study on improving veterans’ sleep habits without drugs. Neylan said PTSD patients often feel anxious about sleeping, in part because they anticipate insomnia but also because they worry about nightmares. Subjects are coached to avoid substances that interfere with their sleep. “If we get them to sleep better at night,” Neylan said, “they’ll have fewer nightmares and feel better during the day.”

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Benefits Might Come Easier for Disabled Veterans

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Team VCS

July 30, 2008 – U.S. Rep. Bill Foster was in Batavia Monday to announce his cosponsorship of a bill designed to improve the claims process for veterans seeking disability benefits.

Speaking at a news conference at his office on River Street, Foster said the bill, known as the Veterans Disability Benefits Claims Modernization Act, would “reduce the bureaucratic horror stories that have become all too common” under the Department of Veterans Affairs’ current claims processing system.

The bill, which goes to the House for a vote today, would require immediate compensation for veterans with undisputed, service-related disabilities and also would set a one-year timetable for implementing new software and technological upgrades expected to simplify the claims process, which is largely paper-based.

“We need to bring claims processing into the 21st Century,” said Foster, a Geneva Democrat who is running against Sugar Grove dairy magnate Jim Oberweis in Illinois’ 14th Congressional District in November. “These are benefits our veterans have earned, and they shouldn’t have to struggle through the current system in place.”

In addition, the bill allows eligible survivors of disabled veterans to keep their places “in line” should the service member died before a claim is processed completely, Foster’s office said. A presumed “glitch” in the current system forces relatives of deceased to essentially start over the process from the beginning, Foster said.

According to the bill, there are nearly 650,000 claims pending today; about a quarter of them have been backlogged for six months. The veterans affairs office predicts the total number of claims will surpass 1 million by the end of fiscal 2008.

Foster said the cost of implementing the bill would be “near zero” once it begins counteracting “inefficiencies” under the current system. It is one of several bills involving veterans assistance that Foster has supported since taking office after a special election in February. He said he expects the bill to receive enough House support to pass easily.

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A Soldier Shares His Life After Combat Deployment

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Team VCS

July 30, 2008 – It was a lost high-school class ring that eventually put me in touch with Mark Sewell, a 1980 graduate of Union High School in Tulsa, Okla.

The ring had been stolen in a burglary more than 12 years ago when Sewell lived in Wylie near Dallas, and it was found on the streets of Fort Worth about three years ago.

With the help of readers, we finally found the right Mark Sewell in Fredonia, Kan., and during our initial conversation it was clear that the Persian Gulf War veteran was still suffering from his experience in the U.S. Army.

I tried several times to get him to discuss his injuries, but he refused.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he told me more than once.

I issued a final plea last week when I told him that I was planning a follow-up column about him getting the ring back.

Last Tuesday, in an e-mail message sent at 12:47 a.m. with “Insomnia as usual” as its subject, Sewell opened up, perhaps more than he has in years.

Here is that message in its entirety, which Sewell said he wrote to help other men and women returning from war.

“One time Bob and this is it.

“On a normal day under normal circumstances I would not answer any of your questions nor would I tell you anything about myself. My DD214 (separation from service document) is public record but my life is not. I’ve read some of your columns and you seem OK. I say that tentatively, you understand? Linda, my wife, says to talk about my war so that you will write about it and the young men coming home from the current war may be helped.

“I won’t go into details because there are too many. My unit, which I will not identify, was a divisional reconnaissance unit (LRSD) (Long Range Surveillance Detachment). We saw some combat and it sucked. I got a Bronze Star and a couple of other medals. Medals are good merit awards in the Army for both staying alive and/or killing somebody. I killed a few people that I won’t go into details over that I probably shouldn’t have. People told me that I did the right thing but I don’t think so. Guilt and sadness are my best friends and they are still with me today.

“What is it like to come home to family, friends and Wal-Mart after combat? I couldn’t tell you because I don’t believe that I ever did. I drank a lot, kept to myself and sweated in the dark a lot. None of that is very glamorous. After about 10 years I was diagnosed with combat PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) at 70 percent. The VA throws in the extra 30 percent for unemployability. I guess I am no longer a productive member of society. I want to be but it is hard. I was diagnosed with agoraphobia because I would not leave the safety of my own home. I’ve also been diagnosed as being depressed and angry. Hey, I’m not mad at anyone although I used to be mad at everyone. War is terrible. The experience of hunting and killing someone while they hunt and hope to kill you is surreal. It tends to stick with you.

“A long time ago they called PTSD a ‘soldier’s heart.’ That sadness that washes over you while standing in line at the grocery store. You look around at all the people and think to yourself that none of them knows what it is like, war … none of them knows. You feel protective of them and proud that you have spared them from ever knowing it.

“My current wife saved my life. I mean that in a most literal way. She is understanding and so very patient. She is also practical and steadfast. The best combat lifesaver that I have ever met.

“Today I hear the government is denying cases of PTSD. Calling them instead traumatic brain injury, or TBI. Those assholes. … Which is worse? The injury to the person inside the brain or the brain itself? They are also saying that a lot of the problems were pre-existing. When I was in the Army they would eject you if you were a bed-wetter. If you had a real mental condition there is no way that they would have accepted you in the first place. It always surprised my parents and my wife that even though I’d been seeing VA doctors since the day I got out of the Army, it took me so long to get my rating of PTSD.

“That’s it, Bob. Probably more than you wanted but the dam spilled over. Write about TBI, pre-existing conditions and the high rate of suicides among combat veterans. Write about the homeless rate among soldiers who have just returned ‘Home.’ Don’t stop writing and I won’t stop reading.

“Feel free to use anything that I’ve told you.

“Thanks,

“Mark”

My thanks to you, Mark, for sharing this much of your ordeal.

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July 30 Lawsuit Update: VCS and VUFT Press Release: Veterans Appeal Court Decision Against Overhauling VA

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Team VCS

Veterans Appeal Court Decision Against Overhauling VA 

On June 25, 2008, Senior Federal District Court Judge Samuel Conti issued his decision in the landmark case brought on behalf of veterans suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injury.  In his decision, Judge Conti held that it is “clear to the Court” that “the VA may not be meeting all of the needs of the nation’s veterans.” Nonetheless, Judge Conti concluded that the power to remedy this crisis lies with the other branches of government, including Congress and the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, holding VA’s failures to meet veterans’ needs are “beyond the power of this Court” and would “call for a complete overhaul of the VA system.”  Plaintiffs seek review in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals of Judge Conti’s Decision, and seek an expedited hearing in the matter. 

For information about the lawsuit, please go to www.veteransptsdclassaction.org

The importance of this appeal is underscored by the fact that a serious suicide epidemic among veterans continues to exist.  Meanwhile, VA continues to turn away suicidal veterans, as shown by the recent case of Lucas Senescall in Spokane Washington.  The flood of veterans with mental health problems will continue to increase as the wars go on.

This is because, as a recent Army study found, repeat deployments increase the risk of PTSD by 50 percent, above and beyond what we are already seeing from veterans discharged from the first few years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  In his decision, Judge Conti found that many veterans are in fact suffering, and that the VA is the cause of much of that suffering.  For these reasons, Plaintiffs believe they should continue to fight, that their cause is valid, and that Judge Conti was incorrect in holding that the courts are without power to grant veterans a remedy.

Client Contacts:
* Paul Sullivan, Veterans for Common Sense, (202) 558-4553
* Robert M. Handy, Veterans United for Truth, (805) 455-5259

Counsel Contacts:
* Gordon P. Erspamer, Arturo J. González, and Heather A. Moser Morrison & Foerster LLP, Lead Counsel, (415) 268-7000
* Sid M. Wolinsky, Ron Elsberry, and Kasey Corbit, Disability Rights Advocates, (510) 665-8644

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Rights Group Wants US Officials Probed for Ordering Torture

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Team VCS

July 25, 2008, Washington, DC – A Nobel-prize-winning rights group said US officials committed war crimes by ordering what the group says was torture of detainees, and called for them to be probed and prosecuted.

“There must be a complete and independent investigation of what happened in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other places where terrorist suspects were detained,” Allen Keller of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) told a briefing in the US House of Representatives Thursday.

“We urge that a full investigation in the form of an independent non-partisan commission that has access to all documents and has subpoena power to obtain relevant documents as well as the testimony of officials,” PHR president Leonard Rubenstein said.

“There must be accountability… accountability must include prosecuting individuals who have committed war crimes, whatever their place in the chain of command,” he added.

The doctors described graphically how detainees held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq and Afghanistan had been subjected to “torture and abuse while in US custody that was sadly second to none.”

The ordeals suffered by the 11 detainees, all of whom have been released without charge, were outlined in a report compiled by PHR and released three weeks ago.

Keller told how one former Guantanamo prisoner who was interviewed for the report was beaten, stripped naked, subjected to intimidation by dogs, hooded, thrown against a wall and sustained electric shocks from a generator.

He also endured sexual humiliation, including an incident where “a naked woman entered the interrogation room and smeared him with what he believed to be menstrual blood.”

Another prisoner was “forced to lie face-down in urine and sodomized with a broomstick,” Keller said.

“As a physician and scientist who has spent much of his professional career evaluating and caring for victims of torture and abuse, I want to clearly state that torture and inhuman interrogation techniques are cruel, ineffective and can have devastating health consequences,” Keller said.

“I am very concerned that when we as a country condone such methods, we are putting our soldiers and other US citizens living around the world at risk,” he added.

“We have violated the golden rule that we preached for years: don’t torture. So what do we do? We change the name. We called it ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’,” Keller said.

PHR president Rubenstein echoed the call for a probe.

“Accountability must include prosecuting individuals who have committed war crimes, whatever their place in the chain of command,” said Rubenstein.

In the preface to the PHR report entitled “Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical evidence of torture by US personnel and its impact,” retired US Army general Antonio Teguba said bluntly that there was “no longer any doubt that the current administration has committed war crimes.”

“The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account,” said Teguba, who led the official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.

Abu Ghraib prison became infamous after the publication in 2004 of photographs showing Iraqi detainees being humiliated and abused by their US guards. The scandal led to the sentencing of 11 US soldiers to up to 10 years in prison.

Physicians for Human Rights shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 as one of the original steering committee members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

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Widow’s VA Claim Gaining Steam

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Team VCS

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.

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July 29, Lawsuit Update: Groups Ask Court to Expedite PTSD Care

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Team VCS

July 29, 2008 – Two veterans groups have asked a federal appeals court to force the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to expedite disability claims and treat troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The groups – Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth Inc. – filed a notice Monday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to overturn a lower court ruling in their lawsuit. Filed in July 2007, their lawsuit claims that the VA system that identifies and processes sufferers of PTSD has collapsed.

Judge Samuel Conti, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, rejected the lawsuit on June 25, saying the claims were outside of the court’s jurisdiction and would require a complete overhaul of the VA by Congress.

The veterans groups contend that the VA and Congress do not have the exclusive right to decide due-process issues and that the courts have a pivotal role to help improve the lives of veterans suffering from the mental disorder.

“We think the judge’s ruling is wrong, and where there is a wrong, there is some remedy,” said the groups’ attorney, Gordon P. Erspamer of the law firm Morrison & Foerster. “Look at all these soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with horrible psychic wounds getting turned away from VA facilities.”

As an example, Mr. Erspamer cited the case of Lucas Senescall, a Navy veteran beset with psychological problems who hanged himself on July 7 after being turned away from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Spokane, Wash. The local newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, reported that his was the sixth suicide of a veteran under care at the Spokane VA this year.

Monday’s appeals court notice comes on the heels of a new report that 22,000 veterans have called a new suicide prevention hot line installed last year – a rate of nearly 250 a day.

“That’s not reasonable and there has to be some remedy for veterans,” Mr. Erspamer said. “They are being treated like second-class citizens when they are a superclass and should be getting better treatment, not worse.”

The VA referred calls for comment to the Justice Department, where spokesman Charles Miller said agency lawyers will review the appeal and respond in court.

Judge Conti ruled that “the VA may not be meeting all of the needs of the nation’s veterans [who] have faced significant delays in receiving disability benefits and medical care from the VA.”

“Although the evidence clearly did not prove that every veteran always gets immediate mental health care, it by no means follows that there is a systemwide crisis in which health care is not being provide within a reasonable time,” Judge Conti said.

A recent report by the Rand Corp. found that one in five of returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets have some form of PTSD.

The veterans groups said in a statement that a “flood of veterans with mental health problems will continue to increase” along with repeat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The veterans groups’ lawsuit represents up to 800,000 veterans, most of whom fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and does not seek monetary damages.

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Army Recruiter Used Scare Tactics

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Team VCS

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.

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Back from the War and on MTV’s Radar

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Team VCS

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.

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