Three War Veterans View the Presidential Campaign

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Team VCS

July 1, 2008 – Views of the 2008 presidential campaign from two recent Army veterans and an injured Marine:

Brandon Ziegler, of Bethel, Pa., did two short tours in Iraq with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He joined the military two weeks before the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, to get money for college. Ziegler, a Republican who voted absentee for President Bush in 2004, gives three reasons for supporting John McCain: “One is that he is a war veteran just like myself. The second is that our nation is at war so I believe that gives him an insight into what is going on. The third is his character. McCain was a POW and could have been released early but he chose to wait his turn and let others go home before himself.” Ziegler, now studying at Kutztown University to be a history teacher, says some people look at Iraq and think that “if we don’t get out right away, that’s the wrong call. I don’t know what the right call is, but I don’t think leaving right away is either.”

James Morin, of Arlington, Va., spent eight months in Afghanistan as an Army infantry platoon leader. He’d just gotten home and been promised a year here when his unit got word it would be leaving for Iraq in two weeks. Morin, a father of four at age 29, says one of his buddies was killed in Iraq a month ago. “He had four kids like me,” Morin says. Asked how many people he’s known who were killed, Morin said: “I never actually sat there and tallied it, but it would be in the double digits.” Morin, a graduate of West Point, left the military last summer and is finishing a law degree from Georgetown University. He said he was raised in a Democratic household and that his political leanings were reinforced by his experiences in the military. “I think Obama is strongest in his understanding of how comprehensive all these problems are,” Morin said, adding that the Bush administration hasn’t done enough to provide Afghans with a positive alternative to the Taliban. “Obama understands that winning the war on terrorism also involves winning a war on poverty and ignorance.”

From where Marine Cpl. Brett Sobaski, 20, of Iowa City, Iowa, sits, the political landscape is a personal one. He speaks slowly about the importance of paying attention to what’s going on in the world, and what responsibilities he has as a Marine _ and an American. Sobaski, who faces medical retirement at the end of the month, was wounded in 2004 during some of the heaviest fighting in the Iraq war, and surgery left him partially blind. Like most Marines, Sobaski holds close his personal opinion on the candidates. “It’s different in the military. You have certain responsibilities regardless of your personal feelings. Those responsibilities come before your personal feelings first and foremost,” he said. Sobaski, who currently lives in San Diego, hints at his position, saying that he, like most of his buddies, signed up for the military after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started. “I guess actions speak louder than words,” he says. Sobaski says he’s looking at this Independence Day a little differently from previous years. Maybe it’s the wound. Maybe it’s the war. “It tugs at the heartstrings a little more,” he said.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged | Comments Off on Three War Veterans View the Presidential Campaign

More Troops Die in Afghanistan than in Iraq

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Team VCS

July 1, 2008 – June was the second month in a row during which the U.S. and allied troop deaths in the Afghan war were more numerous than those in Iraq, CNN reported.

Last moth, at least 46 foreign troops were killed in the Afghanistan war while 31 troops died in Iraq. In May, the military lost 23 foreign troops in Afghanistan and 21 on the Iraqi battleground.

According to a Pentagon report issued last week, in many of Afghanistan’s areas the security is “fragile” and the Taliban insurgents have regrouped into a “resilient insurgency” after the group was overthrown from power in 2001.

The Pentagon report also showed that June was the deadliest month for foreign troops in Afghanistan since the U.S. military invaded the Middle Easter country in 2001.

In June, 28 Americans, 13 Britons, two Canadians, one Pole, one Romanian, and one Hungarian were killed in the Afghanistan war. However, not all the victims died in combat. For example, the latest deaths were three U.S. troops who died in a vehicle rollover while on patrol in Kandahar province.

“At what point do U.S. combat forces, and in particular the Marine Corps, shift from what is a dramatically improved security situation in Iraq to one that needs to be dramatically improved in Afghanistan?” said Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps.

On the other side, violence has dropped in Iraq. The main reasons which caused the drop were the “surge” military offensive, the country’s military operations against militants, the increasing number of the Awakening Councils which are against al Qaeda in Iraq, among Sunni Arabs and the ending of aggression by mainstream members of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged | Comments Off on More Troops Die in Afghanistan than in Iraq

Editorial Column: The War in Iraq Must Be Ended

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Team VCS

July 2, 2008 – As the Iraq war grinds on endlessly, there is growing concern among U.S. military leaders about the excessive strain placed on troops who have been deployed there and redeployed two or three times.

According to an Associated Press report, “Thousands more troops each year struggle with mental health problems because of the combat they’ve seen. The  lengthening of duty tours to 15 months a year ago also has been blamed for these problems, as has the fact that soldiers are being sent back for two, three or more times.”

The Washington Post reported on an Army mental health study which indicated “that 27 percent of noncommissioned officers — a critically important group — on their third or fourth tour exhibited symptoms commonly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorders.”

These conditions, of course, result from two problems:

1. The fact that we are involved in two stressful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that, so far, we are far from winning either.

2. The fact that our forces are made up of volunteers whose numbers are limited.

The Iraq war has lasted longer than World War II and the Civil War. It has resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 troops and in the serious injury of thousands more. There have been fewer casualties in Afghanistan, but no quick end is seen to that conflict either.

Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, wrote recently that many thousands of U.S. troops “are returning with brain damage and psychological wounds that cause tremendous suffering and have the potential to alter their lives forever.” He added that “a study found that approximately 30,000 individuals who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are currently suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” and that many suffered a traumatic brain injury.

Public support for the Iraq war has declined precipitously as the Bush administration’s efforts to justify the pre-emptive attack have been exposed as lies. Saddam Hussein, though he was a ruthless dictator, did not have a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and was not cooperating with al-Qaida. The real goal of the invasion was to gain access to Iraq’s oil reserves.

The result of all these conditions is that the true burden of carrying on the war is shared by a very small segment of U.S. society — members of the regular military forces, the National Guard and the reserves. They represent less than .0005 percent of the general population. Everyone else is free of the risk of death, injury and the mental stress of combat.

While many Americans have been vigorous critics of the pre-emptive attack and the reason for launching it, there has been little discussion of the fact that only a small segment of society has shed blood for the cause. The war on Iraq has been a costly, dangerous and utterly useless venture.

The fact that only a small number of Americans are feeling the worst effects of the conflict makes it even more imperative that we end the war and bring home our troops.

In both World War II and the Vietnam war, a large percentage of the adult population was subject to being drafted for military service. While a military draft is not popular under any circumstances, at least it does not require that only a tiny share of the population will be exposed to the possibility of being killed or seriously wounded.

That gross inequity could be avoided in the future by an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment would state that the U.S. cannot declare war — pre-emptive or otherwise — unless Congress passes a law that would make a large section of the population subject to the possibility of being drafted.

Such an amendment would make it much more difficult for any administration to take the country to war. It would also end the cruel injustice of making only a tiny minority subject to the possibility of dying or being wounded in combat.

President Bush has been arrogant enough to keep asserting that we are making progress in Iraq and will be able to prevail if we persist. That is clearly untrue and a great majority of Americans recognize that fact.

Ending the war will benefit all Americans but it will also end the terrible plight of the men and women in the military who are bearing the whole burden of the conflict.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged | Comments Off on Editorial Column: The War in Iraq Must Be Ended

Veteran Suicide Rates Highlight Heroes’ Tough Battle at Home

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Team VCS

June 29, 2008 – Cara Davis knew her husband was still at war.

In the night, he would yell out his name — Dwayne D. Davis! — followed by his rank and serial number. He’d shout that he would never be taken hostage. Four times he tried to choke her because, in his nightmares, she was al-Qaida.

She knew what she had to do.

As gently as she could, she told him: I think maybe you have that disease, that post-traumatic stress thing. I think maybe you need some help.

“We talked about it,” she recalled. He had never told his buddies. “He said he was afraid if he did, the other soldiers would call him a coward.”

Finally, the pain was too much.

In December, a year after he got out of the Army, he asked for help. He spent 30 minutes talking with a psychology intern at a Veterans Affairs hospital. He told how he felt edgy and had trouble sleeping. He told about his rage and depression, his fatigue, his difficulty with crowds. He told about keeping a gun under his pillow and carrying a blade everywhere he went.

He had cleared the first hurdle, taken the first step.

But he never took a second.

Instead, two days after his 30th birthday, the Raytown native and Army veteran of four tours of war — two in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, one in Kosovo — became part of a grim litany of veteran suicide statistics.

Each day, 18 veterans kill themselves, according to the latest estimate from the Department of Veterans Affairs. No firm numbers are available, such as breakdowns of veterans’ suicides by the decade in which they served. There’s no unified nationwide system to track veterans’ deaths.

But 18 suicides each day translate to more than 6,500 deaths a year — and 21 percent of all U.S. suicides. Veterans make up about 8 percent of the U.S. population.

Now, with the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq lasting longer than World War II, the number of troops returning home with some form of mental illnesses is increasing.

On April 22, Sgt. Davis came home after an 80-hour week in an Oklahoma oil field. He’d had car trouble. In a rage, he grabbed a rifle and shot out the windshield of his wife’s car outside their Elk City, Okla., home. Then he asked where his handgun was. She had hidden it earlier.

When she looked into her husband’s normally crystal-blue eyes, she shuddered. They “just looked black,” she said. She ran outside and hid in the backyard bushes. Before police arrived, she heard one shot.

And knew.

Her husband had killed himself.

•••

Cherie Durkin knows the hurting souls are out there.

Ten months ago, she became Kansas City’s suicide prevention coordinator for the VA. She goes to work each day hoping to connect with just one more veteran.

She smiled as she told about three Kansas City veterans alive today because of a telephone call each man made.

“They were rescued,” she said. The men had called the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Durkin’s message to veterans and their families is to make the call for help.

“It’s a hurdle, I know. I’ve heard the word ‘cowardice’ so many times. But if your loved one can’t make the call, you as their spouse can,” Durkin said.

Spouses need to know that someone believes them when they say their military hero seems on the brink of mental illness, she said.

“We will try to help them any way we can.”

A recent Rand Corp. study of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars concluded that 19 percent of veterans suffer depression or stress disorders — an estimated 300,000 veterans among the 1.6 million who have served in those wars. By comparison, the American Mental Health Association estimates that about 6 percent of the U.S. adult population suffers depression.

Many veterans go without treatment. And the Rand study noted that mental disorders are more widespread and deeply rooted among vets than health care professionals had previously thought, often surfacing long after a veteran returns to civilian life.

Suicide among veterans “has been a moving target in the news lately,” said Janet Kemp, the VA’s national suicide prevention program coordinator. In the past few months, almost every week has brought new information regarding veterans, post-traumatic stress and suicide. Among them:

• The “Shh!” e-mail by Ira Katz, a top VA official for mental health, on the subject of the number of suicide attempts among veterans. Katz wrote: “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities.”

That contradicted the number the VA reported publicly: 790 attempted suicides in 2007.

“Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?” Katz wrote.

• A congressional hearing this spring titled “The Truth About Veterans’ Suicides.” Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat and the chairman of the committee, was highly critical of the VA’s handling of mental health patients. The VA admitted at the hearing that its suicide numbers were higher than it previously had thought.

• Since the VA opened its suicide hot line last year, it has assisted more than 49,500 people who indicated they were veterans and has performed more than 1,000 rescues.

• Earlier this month, the VA put together two panels of experts to share ideas on ways to improve suicide prevention, research and education.

“Despite what the media has been saying about us, we’re working really, really hard and trying to hit every angle, trying to listen to everybody we can to reach our veterans,” Kemp said. “Hopefully, the message is getting out to veterans. … If we can touch just one life today, it’s worth it. It takes the courage and the strength of a warrior to ask for help. That’s our motto around here.”

One change the VA instituted is to have its suicide coordinators meet veterans at the door or elevator, trying to make a personal connection.

In Kansas City, that person is Durkin. She’ll greet veterans, walk them to their appointment and introduce them to their initial psychologist. She also is the one who will call back a veteran who reached out to the suicide prevention hot line.

“I try to make (getting help) as easy as possible for them,” she said. “Helping them feel comfortable here is important. If they feel like there’s a personal investment, that’s what will keep them coming back.”

She’ll talk with spouses about other ways to find help if the veteran doesn’t trust the VA or fears his medical records won’t remain private from the military.

She hears about the veterans who didn’t make it, like Davis. Looking at his medical records, which his family provided to The Star, she points out that he stopped going for treatment.

“Veterans need to follow through, too,” she said. “Getting them back here is hard, especially once they start feeling better.”

Depression doesn’t turn off like a switch, she said.

“It’s not off one day and on the next. It’s there, but nobody notices, except maybe close family members.”

•••

Donna Davis looked down, her eyes puffy and red.

In her Raytown living room, she caressed stacks of photos and newspaper clippings of her oldest child, along with an American flag, neatly folded into a triangle.

There’s a CNN photo of him manning a machine gun. Dwayne Davis was fighting in Afghanistan.

“He told me he was in Pakistan. And then I saw him on the news,” she said with a little laugh. “He thought he could fool me.”

And there’s a snapshot of a grit-covered Davis, the driver of a Humvee, carrying perhaps his most famous passenger, Geraldo Rivera. Both are mugging for the camera.

Donna Davis has plans to make a scrapbook. Her stack is growing daily. She’s already dug out many of Dwayne’s school photos. First grade: grinning so wide that the gaps caused by his missing baby teeth show. High school: a football player, down on one knee, dimples deep, eyes glinting. He graduated from Raymore-Peculiar High School in 1998.

She paused at each, memories crashing into her thoughts. But then her eyes grew dark, her brow furrowed.

Being in war “killed him just as surely as any bomb,” she said. “All those bodies he saw in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.”

Her voice trailed off. She wonders what she could have done. How she could have changed this. She had plans to see him. Maybe if she’d been there.

Almost the same thoughts come from his grandparents. Eleanor and Jim Poindexter of Belton had helped raise Dwayne since his 14th birthday — he was too wild for his single mother. They, too, are saddened beyond words. Not a day passes without tears.

“I think our government owed him to help him out as much as possible,” Eleanor Poindexter said. After some of his deployments, “he couldn’t even stand firecrackers on the Fourth of July.”

“This has been a horrible experience for us. I hope no other family has to go through it.”

•••

The grass at Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery rippled like waves on the ocean.

The widow squinted into the sunshine, shielding her eyes, searching. She recited its location from memory: “Section 53, row nine, 11th grave.”

There. Her eyes focused on one headstone, on a name her hand had written so often: Sgt. Dwayne D. Davis. She stared, seeing the sign, erected just days ago, for the first time.

“So strange to see it,” Cara Davis said, unable to catch a tear. Unable to explain how stark this feels, how strange, how final.

Workers nearby stopped digging the newest grave. Stopped talking. Interlopers in her private moment, they cast their eyes downward as if trying to render themselves invisible.

“Sometimes I’m angry at what he did, you know? Then I’ll remember how lovable he was.”

She twirled the wedding ring he gave her. She touched the gold locket on her neck. She traced her fingers across his name on the stone, feeling its chiseled coldness.

“I will never, ever be the same.”

She is now seeing the same counselor who would have talked with her husband, if he’d continued. She’s on medication to make her feel better.

“She’s helping me,” said Davis, but she struggles with wanting to sleep a lot.

“I’ve been going through all those stages of grief, and I’ve been thinking about suicide, too. But I’m not going to act on it. Those thoughts are normal after this.”

She feels the pain. Tries to roll with it. Let it out. Grieve.

“I’m like a lost little girl, taking one day at a time.

“That’s all I can do.”

——————————————————————————–

Call for help
•The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) is available for anyone. Additional resources are available if you press 1 and identify yourself as a member of the military.

•The Crisis Intervention Hotline, 1-888-899-9377, is for Missouri and Kansas residents who need assistance for anything from prescriptions to counseling, not just suicide issues. Calls will be redirected to helping agencies.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on Veteran Suicide Rates Highlight Heroes’ Tough Battle at Home

Vets Still Lack Timely Health Care

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Team VCS

The number of veterans currently using VA healthcare – 325,000 to date – was obtained by VCS using the Freedom of Information Act.   

June 30, 2008 – Life has been anything but easy for thousands of U.S. soldiers who have returned home from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

In addition to bearing the physical and psychological effects of their time on the battlefield – amputated limbs, blindness, brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and more – many veterans have faced an uphill climb just trying to get their benefits.

As of two years ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs had a backlog of about 400,000 disability claims, with some claims taking six months or longer to straighten out, according to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an advocacy group.

Despite efforts to speed up the claims process, the backlog remains at about the same number now, VA officials said.

To make matters worse, the Department of Defense and the VA have lagged at making the transition to civilian life easy for soldiers.

According to a report issued in April by the Government Accountability Office, the departments still haven’t developed a “one-stop shopping process” for soldiers that would provide standard discharge examinations, help with filing discharge claims, and assurances that vets don’t get lost in a sea of paperwork.

The departments also don’t have a joint system to make it easier to keep track of soldiers’ medical histories. The system, the report said, was supposed to have been in place three years ago.

“They’ve treated our veterans like stepchildren,” said U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, who in 2006 became the first Iraq veteran elected to Congress.

“Our best and brightest are out there fighting for us, and they should be taken care of. But the way they were cared for ticked me off, and it’s one of the reasons I ran for Congress in the first place.”

A number of legislative and bureaucratic steps have been taken to improve the transition process: The VA announced an effort this year to track down 550,000 veterans and remind them of the benefits to which they are entitled, and Murphy helped pass legislation that allowed the VA to add 1,800 disability-claims processors.

But more needs to be done, he said.

“We had to change the philosophy first and start making our vets a real priority,” Murphy said.

Diverse needs

As of last fall, about 300,000 veterans who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) had used VA health services, according to VA officials.

Little attention has been paid, though, to the size and scope of their needs.

Some soldiers have come home with minor knee and back pain.

Some have traumatic brain injury (TBI), caused when explosives rattle the brain. TBI is recognized as the “signature injury” of the two wars, said Lori Maas, the Philadelphia VA’s OIF and OEF program manager.

About 500 soldiers have needed care at four national polytrauma centers because they’ve lost their sight, hearing or limbs in addition to having TBI, Maas said.

VA officials are still trying to get a handle on the number of soldiers who will need mental and emotional care because of stress and depression associated with the wars. Those needs aren’t always easy to recognize.

“Some things aren’t evident in the short term. It may not be evident to [vets] that they need help with their problems,” Maas said.

“I have to remind people that vets are coming from every walk of life in these wars. We have more women then we’ve ever seen. We’ve seen people over the age of 40 and 50. In that context, we’re going to see a variety of different problems.”

That unpredictability led to legislation that now entitles new vets to five years of free health care at VA facilities, Maas said.

Posted in VA Claims Updates, Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Vets Still Lack Timely Health Care

US, NATO Deaths in Afghanistan Pass Iraq Toll

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Team VCS

June 30, 2008, Kabul, Afghanistan – Militants killed more U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan in June than in Iraq for the second straight month, a grim milestone capping a run of headline-grabbing insurgent attacks that analysts say underscore the Taliban’s growing strength.

The fundamentalist militia in June staged a sophisticated jailbreak that freed 886 prisoners, then briefly infiltrated a strategic valley outside Kandahar. Last week, a Pentagon report forecast the Taliban would maintain or increase its pace of attacks, which are already up 40 percent this year from 2007 where U.S. troops operate along the Pakistan border.

Some observers say the insurgency has gained dangerous momentum. And while June also saw the international community meet in Paris to pledge $21 billion in aid, an Afghanistan expert at New York University warns that there is still no strategy to turn that commitment into success.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has noted that more international troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May, the first time that had happened. While that trend — now two months old — is in part due to falling violence in Iraq, it also reflects rising violence in Afghanistan.

At least 45 international troops — including at least 27 U.S. forces and 13 British — died in Afghanistan in June, the deadliest month since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban, according to an Associated Press count.

In Iraq, at least 31 international soldiers died in June: 29 U.S. troops and one each from the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. There are 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 4,000 British forces in additional to small contingents from several other nations.

The 40-nation international coalition is much broader in Afghanistan, where only about half of the 65,000 international troops are American.

That record number of international troops means that more soldiers are exposed to danger than ever before. But Taliban attacks are becoming increasingly complex, and in June, increasingly deadly.

A gun and bomb attack last week in Ghazni province blasted a U.S. Humvee into smoldering ruins, killing three U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter. It was the fourth attack of the month against troops that killed four people. No single attack had killed more than three international troops since August 2007.

“I think possibly we’ve reached a turning point,” said Mustafa Alani, the director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. “Insurgents now are more active, more organized, and the political environment, whether in Pakistan or Afghanistan, favors insurgent activities.”

U.S. commanders have blamed Pakistani efforts to negotiate peace deals for the spike in cross-border attacks, though an initial deal with militants has begun to fray and security forces recently launched a limited crackdown in the semiautonomous tribal belt where the Taliban and al-Qaida operate with increasing freedom.

For a moment in mid-June, Afghanistan’s future shimmered brightly. World leaders gathered in Paris to pledge more than $21 billion in aid, and Afghan officials unveiled a development strategy that envisions peace by 2020.

But the very next day, the massive and flawlessly executed assault on the prison in Kandahar — the Taliban’s spiritual home — drew grudging respect even from Western officials.

U.S. Ambassador William Wood said violence is up because Taliban fighters are increasingly using terrorist tactics that cause higher tolls, but that there’s no indication fighters can hold territory. He said June had “some very good news and a couple cases of bad news.”

“The very good news was Paris. There were more nations represented, contributing more than ever before,” Wood told the AP.

The scramble after the jailbreak to push the Taliban back from the nearby Arghandab valley was the other big plus, Wood said. The Afghan army sent more than 1,000 troops to Kandahar in two days.

“Although Arghandab got major press for being a Taliban attack, the real news in Arghandab was that the Afghans themselves led the counterattack, deployed very rapidly and chased the Taliban away,” Wood said.

The worst news, Wood said, was the prison break, and the possible involvement of al-Qaida.

“The Taliban is not known for that level of complex operation, and others who have bases in the tribal areas are,” he said.

Alani agreed: “The old Taliban could not do such an operation, so we are talking about a new Taliban, possibly al-Qaida giving them the experience to carry out this operation.”

Days after the prison attack, an angry President Hamid Karzai threatened to send Afghan troops after Taliban leaders in Pakistan, marking a new low in Afghan-Pakistan relations.

Contributing to the increased death toll is an increase in sophistication of attacks. U.S. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, the top commander of U.S. forces here, said this month that militant attacks are becoming more complex — such as gunfire from multiple angles plus a roadside bomb. Insurgents are using more explosives, he said.

Mark Laity, the top NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, said troops are taking the fight to insurgents in remote areas and putting themselves in harm’s way. One or two events can disproportionally affect the monthly death toll, he said.

“Sometimes it is just circumstance,” Laity said. “For instance you can hit an IED and walk away or not, and what has happened this month is that there’s been one or two instances that there’s been multiple deaths.”

The AP count found that some 580 people died in insurgent violence in June, including around 440 militants, 34 civilians and 44 Afghan security forces. More than 2,100 people have died in violence this year, according to the AP count, which is based on figures from Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials.

Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at NYU, said the Paris conference shows a strong international commitment to Afghanistan, but he said there is still no strategy for longterm success.

“Let’s focus on the essentials: creating a secure environment for Afghanistan and Pakistan to address their problems and for the international community to eliminate al-Qaida’s safe haven,” Rubin said. “We haven’t been getting there, and we are not getting closer, pledges or no pledges.”

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged , | Comments Off on US, NATO Deaths in Afghanistan Pass Iraq Toll

Editorial Column: Veterans United for Truth Responds to Court Ruling

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Team VCS

July 1, 2008 – Recently Federal District Judge Samuel Conti decided in the class action lawsuit in which we (Veterans United For Truth and Veterans for Common Sense) were plaintiffs, that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was failing in many cases in providing mental health services to returning veterans. Unfortunately he also decided that he did not have jurisdiction at his level to compel changes in the VA’s procedures.

While we are disappointed with Judge Conti’s decision that he lacked jurisdiction, and do not agree that we did not prove the “systemic” nature of these problems, this outcome is far from being all bad. We knew that it was a crap shoot going in, but we were sure that he had the necessary jurisdiction. We also knew that no matter how he decided, the case would most likely end up before the Supreme Court. Of course we had hoped to be defending Judge Conti’s decision against an appeal by the DVA; now we will be appealing his decision in the Ninth Circuit.

When we started out, we knew that we were in it for the long haul. We won round one, just by getting the case heard in federal court, since the DVA and the Department of Justice both attempted multiple times to have us disqualified as plaintiffs, and denied that the federal court had any right even to examine DVA procedures and policies..

We lost part of round two. It may be a setback, but it succeeded in large part since Judge Conti’s ruling expressed agreement with much of our complaint. Additionally The DVA has been exposed not only to the Congress, but also to the national and international media, who have stepped up their reporting on the shoddy treatment that the VA has been providing to returning veterans, and to the repeated delay and denial of service by the DVA..

America’s veterans will be forever in the debt of Morrison & Foerster and Disability Rights Advocates, the two law firms that took on the DVA pro bono.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on Editorial Column: Veterans United for Truth Responds to Court Ruling

Wounded Iraqi Forces Say They’ve Been Abandoned

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Team VCS

July 1, 2008, Baghdad, Iraq – Dawoud Ameen, a former Iraqi soldier, lay in bed, his shattered legs splayed before him, worrying about the rent for his family of five.

Mr. Ameen’s legs were shredded by shrapnel from a roadside bomb in September 2006 and now, like many wounded members of the Iraqi security forces, he is deeply in debt and struggling to survive. For now, he gets by on $125 a month brought to him by members of his old army unit, charity and whatever his wife, Jinan, can beg from her relatives. But he worries that he could lose even that meager monthly stipend.

In the United States, the issue of war injuries has revolved almost entirely around the care received by the 30,000 wounded American veterans. But Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been wounded in greater numbers, health workers say, and have been treated far worse by their government.

A number of the half-dozen badly wounded Iraqis interviewed for this article said they had been effectively drummed out of the Iraqi security forces without pensions, or were receiving partial pay and in danger of losing even that. Coping with severe injuries, and often amputations, they have been forced to pay for private doctors or turn to Iraq’s failing public hospitals, which as recently as a year ago were controlled by militias that kidnapped and killed patients — particularly security personnel from rival units.

No one knows the exact number of wounded Iraqi veterans, as the government does not keep track. In a 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service, Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, the American commander in charge of Iraqi police training, said that in just two years, from September 2004 to October 2006, about 4,000 Iraqi police officers were killed and 8,000 were wounded.

That number does not include soldiers in the Iraqi Army, who are far more numerous than the police and, Iraqi commanders say, have suffered injuries at a far greater rate.

In a February 2006 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, the report states, Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the secretary of defense, said that Iraqi security forces were being killed and wounded at “roughly twice the rate of all coalition forces.” If that rate held up, the number of wounded Iraqi veterans might well surpass 60,000.

Iraqi government officials say that the wounded are being treated well, and that a law providing for veterans’ care is being drafted. In the interim, they said, wounded veterans will receive their full salaries from the Ministry of Defense.

“The wounded soldiers from the M.O.D. still get their salaries after the incidents, depending on the reports from the medical committees,” said a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Staff Maj. Gen. Muhammad al-Askari. “We are waiting for the Service and Pension Law for the veterans from the Iraqi Parliament, but they still get paid during that time.”

The veterans interviewed for this article disputed General Askari’s statement and said they were paid only a small fraction of their salaries, or nothing at all. They described the government’s treatment of them as at best indifferent and at worst vindictive.

On the day United States forces arrived in Baghdad in April 2003, Hussein Ali Hassan, a sergeant in Saddam Hussein’s army, was hit by a tank round. With his legs crushed and burns covering much of his body, Mr. Hassan was taken to a Baghdad hospital, where his left leg was quickly amputated.

But in the chaos that broke out after the fall of the Hussein government, the staff fled the hospital. “The looters stole beds and ripped the pipes from the walls around me,” Mr. Hassan said.

His friends and family cared for him until the staff trickled back. Weeks later, after doctors told him the hospital was rife with infectious bacteria, his family hastily took him home.

An Italian organization was arranging a visa so that Mr. Hassan could fly to Italy for care. But with violence rapidly mounting in the fall of 2003, the group closed its doors before the visa request could be completed.

In need of more surgery, Mr. Hassan borrowed money and embarked on a series of operations at Al Jabechi, a private hospital in Baghdad, eventually spending about $13,000 of his own money, he said.

“I could have waited months in the public hospitals, and the care is very bad there,” he said.

Mr. Hassan says that in the five years since he was wounded, his repeated requests for a disability pension have been ignored. Two weeks ago, however, he learned that he had been awarded a pension of about $165 a month for his 23 years of military service (though nothing for medical care and no acknowledgment that he is disabled, he said).

Before the approval of his pension, Mr. Hassan says that he had heard only once from the government, when a health official solicited a $3,000 bribe to approve his travel to Germany for medical care. He refused the request.

He says it does not help his cause that he was a member of Mr. Hussein’s Sunni-dominated army, anathema to the current Shiite-led administration.

To repay his debts and support his family, Mr. Hassan has been driving a taxi, his walker clattering in the roof rack as he plies the streets of Baghdad. With Iraq’s high unemployment rate, he considers himself lucky to have a job.

With the uncertainty of government pensions and Iraq’s desperate economic plight, some wounded security force members have stayed on active duty, knowing it is their only hope of making a living.

Nubras Jabar Muhammad, a 26-year-old soldier, was shot by a sniper in May 2007 as he was on duty at a Baghdad checkpoint. He nearly bled to death, losing a kidney and part of his liver, while suffering damage to his right hand. His torso is scarred, and two fingers are locked in a permanent curl.

He says he still has shrapnel lodged in his back, and rarely sleeps through the night. He has trouble digesting food. But the army refused him a disability pension, claiming he was able-bodied, and he was forced to return to active duty after nine months. He says he has already spent about $2,100 of his own money on operations, selling jewelry and a pistol to raise the cash.

Though he had instructions from his doctors to avoid standing for long periods, the army quickly returned him to checkpoint duty, where he is on his feet all day long in temperatures up to 120 degrees. “I demanded that my superiors give me a desk job,” Mr. Muhammad said. “They told me if I keep complaining, they’ll kick me out of the army.”

Dr. Waleed Abdul Majeed, who has extensive experience treating wounded soldiers, says he believes that they are getting adequate care. But he concedes that they have to wait for it, in part because three military medical centers under the Hussein government have been closed.

“Now the burden is on civilian hospitals,” he said. “It would be better if we had a military hospital. The soldiers are taken good care of in the beginning, but there is no follow-up.”

But with many physicians having been driven away by sectarian militias, there may not be enough competent doctors remaining to staff the hospitals. “At least 25 percent of our doctors have left the country,” Dr. Majeed said. “I see 120 to 150 patients in a day; 30 to 40 need operations every week, so they just have to wait. And prosthetics is a big problem. The Ministry of Health does not have the specialized equipment for this.”

Before the American troop increase, which contributed to improved security in Baghdad, many hospitals were controlled by armed factions that tortured and assassinated members of the security forces in their beds.

Nubras Jabar Muhammad, the sniper victim who was forced to return to duty, fled a public hospital that was controlled by the Mahdi Army militia of the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

“They would come in the night and give you injections to kill you,” he said. “I was scared of being murdered, so I left.”

Hussein Ayad Ali was a 22-year-old member of a Judicial Police commando unit in 2005 when shrapnel from a grenade ripped into his legs and stomach. Soon after, his new battalion commander saw a note in Mr. Ali’s file about a fight he had as a 16-year-old. As he lay at home recovering from his wounds, Mr. Ali says, he was notified that he had been fired because of his “criminal background.”

“The army knew about this all along,” he said of the fight. “I told them when I signed up, but only after I was wounded did they kick me out.”

Despite what they have suffered, most of the veterans interviewed said they were proud of their military service. “I consider my injury an honor,” said Mr. Ameen, the paraplegic army veteran. “I am only sorry the government does not pay attention to us.”

Just half a mile down the street, Col. Ali Farhan shows up each morning at his police station, even though he lost his left leg below the knee from a bomb explosion in November 2006.

Well connected, he was able to remain on active duty rather than try to scrape by on a disability pension of $200 a month, a third his regular salary. He says he works partly for the money and partly because he is proud of his contribution to Iraq, he said.

But, he added: “I lost a leg and can barely walk. I see on TV in the U.S. they lose two legs and they are running races. Why don’t they do the same for us in Iraq?”

Click here to watch the accompanying video.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged , | Comments Off on Wounded Iraqi Forces Say They’ve Been Abandoned

VA Losing Care Coordinators

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Team VCS

June 27, 2008 – The Department of Veterans Affairs has trouble keeping medical care coordinators for severely injured combat veterans, with four of the first eight people having to be replaced.

Two of the original Federal Recovery Coordinators hired late last year quit, and two have died, VA officials confirmed Thursday.

“Of the original eight, two have tragically died and two left the program for personal reasons,” said VA spokeswoman Josephine Schuda.

VA officials and congressional aides, speaking on the condition of not being identified, said they knew that the jobs were going to be stressful — dealing with seriously ill or wounded combat veterans who have especially complex needs can be demanding — but no one anticipated such high turnover.

“There is something called compassion fatigue that affects caregivers and families, and I can see that being magnified for someone who feels responsible not just for one severely injured person but several,” said a senior VA official. “We do know how someone might deal with this job, but we do know it is not for everyone.”

Military and veterans officials testifying in March before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee said the central tenet of the coordinator program was to manage clinical treatment and administrative matters for the injured veteran and their family, helping them maneuver through the systems and prevent anything from falling through the cracks.

Since the four losses, the VA has hired five more people, giving them a total of nine recovery coordinators. And it plans to hire more, Schuda said. There are two each at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C; National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.; and at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. The Balboa Navy Medical Center in San Diego and the VA medical centers in Houston and Providence, R.I., have one coordinator each, Schuda said.

VA expects to add coordinators at Walter Reed, Balboa and Brooke, Schuda said.

In deciding where and when they should be added, Schuda said defense and veterans officials have “begun tracking workload, geographic distribution and complexity of the conditions and situations of the severely injured service members and veterans served by the program.” She gave no timetable for when the hiring might be done.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake said in May that having coordinators was a key recommendation of presidential commission that studied federal treatment of combat-wounded service members. The first coordinators were placed at the hospitals considered most likely to receive severely wounded combat veterans.

The panel, called the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, was looking for a way to eliminate red tape for people who needed care that might involve the military, veterans and private-sector facilities.

In addition to the federal recovery coordinators, case managers also have been assigned to help combat veterans. Case managers generally work on day-to-day issues, while coordinators are responsible for helping design a longer-term recovery plan.

VA officials said patients aided by the federal recovery coordinators include those with spinal cord injuries, amputations, traumatic brain injuries, debilitating burns and severe mental health issues. Some combat veterans have more than one serious medical issue.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on VA Losing Care Coordinators

Letter to the Editor: Treat Veterans With Dignity

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Team VCS

June 30, 2008 – I recently met a man at a soup kitchen in Hartford. He was quite pleasant, conversational, and appeared to be in good health. I learned he was an Iraqi war veteran. He went on to tell me he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and described some of the disturbing symptoms he experiences on a regular basis. I asked him if the military was helping him. He laughed and said the Veterans Administration and the military are doing nothing for him and that he is getting help through private doctors.

This man was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for his country. He faced death on a daily basis for two years. He deserves the best medical care our country can provide.

Yet our VA health care system is overwhelmed by the sheer number of veterans seeking treatment as a result of our war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. A report last year by the Rand Corp. found that one in five U.S. soldiers returning home from Iraq suffer from PTSD or depression, yet only half of these are getting treatment.

I am very troubled by this dishonor we are imposing on the men and women fighting for our country. As we near the next presidential election, please consider voicing support for our troops, whether you support the war or not. Young men and women need our help and support.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on Letter to the Editor: Treat Veterans With Dignity