Veterans for Common Sense

March 24, 2008 – Columbia, SC — The American
Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) today challenged the Department
of Veterans Affairs to remove Carl Hawkins, Jr., regional director at the
Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) in Columbia, S.C. amid allegations
of sexual harassment, age discrimination, and racial discrimination. Over
the last two years, the VBA regional director and his managers have been
named in dozens of discrimination suits including allegations of pay
disparity, retaliation and violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, resulting in civil and administrative settlements of over
$500,000. However, instead of being removed from his post, Hawkins received
$50,000 in bonuses over the same two-year time span. AFGE has called on the
National VA to launch an investigation to uncover Hawkins’ abuses of
authority since taking office.

    “The tragedy here is not just that the VA has not held Mr. Hawkins
accountable for the $500,000 dollars he has cost the American tax-payers,
but that as a result of his despicable actions, the quality of service at
our facility is suffering,” said Dan Brockway, president of AFGE Local 520,
which represents 200 employees at the Columbia facility. “We are here
because we want to serve Veterans that have so courageously served this
nation. The harassment and discrimination perpetrated by Mr. Hawkins
tarnishes everything that the VA is supposed to be about.”

    According to local union representatives, Mr. Hawkins continually
ignored directives from the National Department of Veterans Affairs aimed
at eliminating pay disparity among certain employees. “We have to be the
only facility in the country where GS-4s hold degrees,” added Ron Robinson,
executive vice-president at AFGE Local 520.

    Mr. Hawkins has removed several bridge positions, denying employees
with college level education an opportunity to elevate their positions and
grade levels. The employees being denied are overwhelmingly
African-American. “Of the 34 management positions filled by Mr. Hawkins
since January 2002, none of them are African-American women and only three
are African-American men,” said Robinson.

    AFGE Local 520 is working closely with AFGE National’s Women’s and Fair
Practices departments to continue to challenge the discriminatory workplace
conditions. The Women and Fair Practices department recently held a summit
at the location along with representatives from AFGE’s 5th District, to
educate employees on their rights to a hostile free workplace environment.

    The American Federation of Government Employees is the largest federal
employee union, representing 600,000 workers in the federal government and
the government of the District of Columbia.

March 23, 2008 – Washington, DC — WASHINGTON — New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap.

One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services, said “the growing inequalities in life expectancy” mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.

The gaps have been increasing despite efforts by the federal government to reduce them. One of the top goals of “Healthy People 2010,” an official statement of national health objectives issued in 2000, is to “eliminate health disparities among different segments of the population,” including higher- and lower-income groups and people of different racial and ethnic background.

Dr. Singh said last week that federal officials had found “widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy” at birth and at every age level.

He and another researcher, Mohammad Siahpush, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, developed an index to measure social and economic conditions in every county, using census data on education, income, poverty, housing and other factors. Counties were then classified into 10 groups of equal population size.

In 1980-82, Dr. Singh said, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7 years), and it continues to grow, he said.

After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent, Dr. Singh said, noting that “life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000.”

“If you look at the extremes in 2000,” Dr. Singh said, “men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 years versus 81.3 years).” The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).

The Democratic candidates for president, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, have championed legislation to reduce such disparities, as have some Republicans, like Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi.

Peter R. Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said: “We have heard a lot about growing income inequality. There has been much less attention paid to growing inequality in life expectancy, which is really quite dramatic.”

Life expectancy is the average number of years of life remaining for people who have attained a given age.

While researchers do not agree on an explanation for the widening gap, they have suggested many reasons, including these:

¶Doctors can detect and treat many forms of cancer and heart disease because of advances in medical science and technology. People who are affluent and better educated are more likely to take advantage of these discoveries.

¶Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income.

¶Lower-income people are more likely to live in unsafe neighborhoods, to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior and to eat unhealthy food.

¶Lower-income people are less likely to have health insurance, so they are less likely to receive checkups, screenings, diagnostic tests, prescription drugs and other types of care.

Even among people who have insurance, many studies have documented racial disparities.

In a recent report, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that black patients “tend to receive less aggressive medical care than whites” at its hospitals and clinics, in part because doctors provide them with less information and see them as “less appropriate candidates” for some types of surgery.

Some health economists contend that the disparities between rich and poor inevitably widen as doctors make gains in treating the major causes of death.

Nancy Krieger, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, rejected that idea. Professor Krieger investigated changes in the rate of premature mortality (dying before the age of 65) and infant death from 1960 to 2002. She found that inequities shrank from 1966 to 1980, but then widened.

“The recent trend of growing disparities in health status is not inevitable,” she said. “From 1966 to 1980, socioeconomic disparities declined in tandem with a decline in mortality rates.”

The creation of Medicaid and Medicare, community health centers, the “war on poverty” and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 all probably contributed to the earlier narrowing of health disparities, Professor Krieger said.

Robert E. Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said one reason for the growing disparities might be “a very significant gap in health literacy” — what people know about diet, exercise and healthy lifestyles. Middle-class and upper-income people have greater access to the huge amounts of health information on the Internet, Mr. Moffit said.

Thomas P. Miller, a health economist at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed.

“People with more education tend to have a longer time horizon,” Mr. Miller said. “They are more likely to look at the long-term consequences of their health behavior. They are more assertive in seeking out treatments and more likely to adhere to treatment advice from physicians.”

A recent study by Ellen R. Meara, a health economist at Harvard Medical School, found that in the 1980s and 1990s, “virtually all gains in life expectancy occurred among highly educated groups.”

Trends in smoking explain a large part of the widening gap, she said in an article this month in the journal Health Affairs.

Under federal law, officials must publish an annual report tracking health disparities. In the fifth annual report, issued this month, the Bush administration said, “Over all, disparities in quality and access for minority groups and poor populations have not been reduced” since the first report, in 2003.

The rate of new AIDS cases is still 10 times as high among blacks as among whites, it said, and the proportion of black children hospitalized for asthma is almost four times the rate for white children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month that heart attack survivors with higher levels of education and income were much more likely to receive cardiac rehabilitation care, which lowers the risk of future heart problems. Likewise, it said, the odds of receiving tests for colon cancer increase with a person’s education and income.

March 24, 2008 – With roughly one in five soldiers or Marines serving in Iraq and Afghanistan developing post-traumatic stress disorder, and many of them remaining untreated, family members are the target for educational outreach by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“I think it’s crucial for (military) family members to be aware of the potential mental health problems of their loved ones,” said Dr. Byron J. Wittlin, director of mental health services at the VA’s San Bruno clinic.

As part of an emerging emphasis on training family members to spot signs of the disorder, Wittlin spoke Thursday evening to a group from the Pacifica Military Moms, a chapter of the national organization, The Blue Star Mothers of America.

Debbie Smyser, co-founder of the Pacifica group and a trainer at Genentech in South San Francisco, has a 21-year-old son in Iraq. Some members of the group also have offspring in Iraq or Afghanistan, and Smyser said they wanted to be prepared to help them if they return with mental distress.

“We need to know what to recognize, in case we need to get them help,” she said. “It’s just to make us aware and what signs to lookfor.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is nothing new, emphasized Wittlin. It’s a condition plaguing humans for millennia that now has a new name.

“It’s been around for thousands of years,” he told the group. “As long as there’s been war, as long as there’s been trauma.” In World War II, the condition was called “shell shock,” Wittlin added.
Nor is PTSD unique to military personnel who have witnessed or experienced violence from combatants, or other extreme stresses of wartime service, Wittlin explained.

Roughly half of all adults will experience trauma in their lives, ranging from serious vehicle accidents and natural disasters to criminal attacks and sexual abuse. While it’s normal to feel frightened, anxious, angry and depressed after such incidents, if they persist long after the event, that a sign of PTSD.

Of those experiencing trauma during their lives, roughly 8 percent will develop PTSD, according to federal statistics.

But military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are coping with, in essence, guerrilla warfare, and must remain constantly on alert, Wittlin said, which also heightens their risks of developing PTSD. They also regularly endure 50-mile-an-hour dust storms, sleep deprivation, long separations from family, and multiple tours of duty.

It takes a trained clinician to accurately diagnose PTSD, and the hallmark symptoms include recurrent and intrusive thoughts about the trauma, avoidance of triggers that are reminders of the event and either a numbing of emotions or the opposite — heightened irritability and excessive vigilance.

For many people, PTSD will fade on its own, he said. But others, it persists, many times for years, disrupting relationships with spouses, children, other family members and friends. Jobs are often hard to keep for those with PTSD, as they become easily irritated and critical of others.

Others begin abusing alcohol or drugs to relieve their symptoms, Wittlin said. At its worst, sufferers can become suicidal, an act easier to carry out since many veterans keep weapons at home.

“A number of veterans come back feeling wary enough that they keep a loaded gun in the house,” said Wittlin. “We discourage that,” he added. “Or we ask them to lock it up.”

It’s not a sign of weakness, experts emphasize, that some develop the condition while others don’t. Researchers are studying risk factors for PTSD, and among them are early childhood trauma, Wittlin said.

Still, many military personnel avoid mental health treatment, often for fear of stigma. Other active-duty personnel are reluctant to report these problems, as they don’t want to abandon their comrades, which “engenders shame,” he added.

As a result, many military personnel remain undiagnosed or untreated, he said.

And the condition is highly treatable, Wittlin emphasized.

“People get better,” he said.

And while nonexperts can’t with certainly conclude if a veteran has PTSD, they can play a crucial role guiding those in need of aid into a health care clinic.

“We encourage family members to be supportive, to mainly listen,” Wittlin said. “And if they feel the vet needs some help, to call the VA and to refer them into us. This is really a complicated problem. And in our system, we have a lot of experience. And this is one of the services we want to offer.”

For more information on Pacifica Military Moms, who accept members from throughout the Bay Area, visit http://www.pacificamilitarymoms.com.

For more information on PTSD, visit the National Institutes of Health’s Web site on the condition at http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml.

March 21, 2008 – Fort Wayne, Ind — U.S. Rep. Mark Souder is criticizing the White House’s decision to withhold about three-quarters of a government consultant’s report detailing recommendations for the future of the city’s VA hospital.

The Journal Gazette obtained a heavily edited copy of the $530,000 report Wednesday after filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act. The report was submitted in September by the consultant, but the Veterans Affairs Department had refused to release it.

The version of the 78-page report VA officials released Wednesday includes only 21 pages, and most of those have thick black lines through sentences or whole paragraphs.

Souder, R-Ind., said he received the same partial report, and criticized the agency’s secrecy. Yet he also said it probably will benefit northeastern Indiana’s veterans if the document’s conclusions on Fort Wayne Veterans Affairs Hospital are kept under wraps.

He said he suspects the report advised the VA to close it.

“It’s extremely bad policy,” Souder said of the secrecy. “But my job is to keep the hospital open … and if I have reasonable expectation to believe a report has illogical, bad conclusions in it, I’m glad when they eat their words.”

Souder said the VA and the Bush administration can more easily shift positions if they don’t have to explain why they rejected the recommendations of a costly report.

VA spokesman Matt Smith said in a statement that the report was not reviewed by the White House before it was provided to Souder and the newspaper.

“VA is still examining all the options available as we work to meet the current and future needs of Northern Indiana veterans,” Smith said. “The report is a pre-decisional document being reviewed as part of VA’s ongoing strategic plan and has not been acted on by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.”

Last month, the VA ordered a new study to focus on the hospital’s outpatient care.

The report by Booz Allen Hamilton examined whether the services should be expanded, drastically reduced or transferred to other hospitals.

The hospital serves as the medical center for 44,000 of northeast Indiana’s 160,000 veterans. A national commission recommended in 2004 that only outpatient care be offered and that northeastern Indiana veterans go to Indianapolis for in-patient services.

It said closing Fort Wayne’s in-patient services would save $2.1 million a year.

After protests from veterans, Souder inserted a provision in legislation requiring another study, and the VA hired the consulting firm to reanalyze the hospital.

The VA’s Freedom of Information Act officer said no one outside the agency will ever see a full copy of the report unless a congressional committee with oversight of the VA demands it as part of an investigation.

The version released omitted all material that refers to anything involved in a decision-making process, including opinions, findings and conclusions.

The hospital currently has 26 beds. A portion of the released sections said the hospital would need 31 beds by 2015, but it predicts that would drop to 29 beds by 2025 because the population of veterans in northeastern Indiana will drop.

Souder said the report does not take into account the large number of National Guard members and the likelihood that Congress will extend military health benefits to them — thereby creating even more need for a VA medical facility.

TV Appearance by Mike Burns: Our VP, Mike Burns, will appear on Channel 40, ABC tomorrow, March 25, 2008, between 12:00 noon and 12:30PM. (Channel 7 Cable in SRQ.) Mike will be talking about our Walkathon on Sunday.
 
ACTION REQUEST: Columnist Jeremy Wallace reported in today’s Sarasota Herald Tribune (Monday, March 24, 2008) on Rep Buchanan’s comments justifying his vote on FISA as follows:
 
Buchanan on FISA
U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, is pulling no punches in blasting Democrats in Congress for failing to pass a viable electronic surveillance bill to protect the country from future terrorist attacks.
Speaking to the Sarasota Bay Republican Club on Friday, Buchanan said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed on March 14 is “an atrocity.”
He said it prevents the government from monitoring phone calls of known terrorists by failing to grant retroactive lawsuit immunity to telecom companies that provide information to the government.
About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telephone companies, accusing them of violating the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans.
If the immunity provision is in the bill, it would protect those firms from potentially billions of dollars in claims.
Buchanan said it is clear the Democrats are bowing to trial lawyers instead of doing what is right. He said it puts the country more at risk.
“I can’t imagine why they would want to take that risk,” Buchanan said.
The House voted 213 to 195 on March 14 for the FISA bill without the immunity clause. Buchanan joined every Republican in the House in opposing the legislation.
The immunity issue has been the key sticking point in the ongoing fight in Washington. The Senate passed a bill last month that included an immunity provision that the White House has insisted upon. Without it, President Bush had threatened to veto the bill.
Rep. Buchanan’s position on FISA is contrary to the United States Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment Provides: 
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 
 
The Constituion requires that Americans are to be protected from search and seizure by an independent judge reviewing an affidavit before a warrant issues. The executive does not, and should not, have unilateral authority to spy on Americans with warrantless wiretaps.
 
Does anyone, Rep Buchanan included, know of a single incidence where a judge denied a warrant to monitor a known terrorist as he implied in his comments? Let him name the judge.
 
For Rep Buchanan’s information, trial lawyers bring lawsuits for the proper redress of grievances. If the government spied on citizens without a proper warrant, they have the right to sue for redress. Rep. Buchanan apparently believes citizens should roll over and let the government and a “unilateral” executive trample on our sacred rights.
 
Rep. Buchanan is willing to flush away American Constitutional rights because he is cowed by terrorists living in caves and apparently believes we can’t combat them without subverting our system. Unlike Rep. Buchanan, patriotic Americans put the Constitution first. What has happened to land of the free and the home of brave?
 
Let Rep Buchanan know how you feel. Write to him, send Letters to the Editor and write to Jeremy Wallace about Rep. Buchanan’s shameful and unpatriotic comments. Republicans members and friends should speak up loud and clear.
 
Walkathon:
At the Walkathon we will be entertained by a bluegrass band, DANNY BEACH AND THE FLORIDA MOUNTAIN BOYS (See the Press Release Below the Line for Details on the Walkathon.)
 
Every one of us can get ten or twenty people to come to this fun nonpolitical event, which supports the best of causes. Do your part and help! Let’s have a huge turnout.
 
 
Walkathon Press Release: 
 
Florida Veterans for Common Sense Walkathon
100 Wallace Ave. Ste. 255 Sarasota, FI 34237 941-349 -5131 FLveterans@aol.com

 For Immediate Release

 A Walkathon on Siesta Key to benefit wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is being sponsored by the Florida Veterans for Common Sense on Mar. 30, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“This special Walkathon comes from a deep interest in veterans helping veterans by creating an event where the public can get directly involved to support the troops by participation and making donations to the Haley House Fund supporting the James A. Haley Veterans Medical Center in Tampa,” Geoff Morris, walkathon project chairman for Florida Veterans for Common Sense, said.  The event is non-political. 
 
All proceeds from this fundraiser will be used to provide immediate help to the visiting families of veterans with blast injuries, those afflicted with spinal cord and brain injuries, and other injuries sustained while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
The most seriously injured soldiers of these wars are sent to the James A. Haley Veterans Medical Center in Tampa, noted as the busiest VA hospital in the United States, where doctors and staff treat and rehabilitate some of the most severely injured Troops of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. James A. Haley, VA Hospital is a Level 1 medical center and a high profile Polytrauma Center.  The sign at the entrance of the hospital says it all. “The Price of Freedom is Visible Here”.
 
America’s wounded service men and women need to know that their loved one’s are at their bedside, possibly during the worst time in their life, Morris noted. This is where the Haley House Fund comes to the rescue.
 
The primary goal of the Haley House Fund has been to provide temporary lodging and comfort for families of Veterans and Active Duty Soldiers being treated for life threatening injuries and diseases at James A. Haley VA Medical Center, located at 13000 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., in Tampa.
 
Some injuries have been traumatic brain or skull injuries, spinal cord injuries, amputations, burns, bullet / shrapnel wounds and so much more. While these warriors are rehabilitating from their injuries, the Haley House Fund enables families to be at the bedside of their loved one. These families are instrumental in providing comfort to their loved one in a time of need.
-more-
 

The Haley House Fund, Inc is a not for profit charity corporation 501 © (3), national and community in graphic scope. The Fund functions 100{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} on donations from the public and from Grants. The 2007 Organizational budget was $162,000. Haley House is operated by volunteer staff of 5 unpaid Board Members and numerous volunteers. There is no salary or compensation.
 
Until August, 2004, these family members and other important persons to the veteran or active duty service member, were paying top rates at local hotels, living out of their cars, taking second mortgages, and maxing credit cards, just be near the VA Hospital and their loved one. Today the Haley House Fund provides a comfort home nearby the James A. Haley Hospital for family members to stay at no charge to them.
 
The Walkathon provides our communities a wonderful opportunity to help raise the funds necessary to support the men and women who are facing long term recovery from combat injuries suffered while protecting our freedoms, Morris said.
Contacts:
 
Geoff Morris      
Florida Veterans for Common Sense
Siesta Key Beach Walkathon Chairman     
Morris & Widman PA
245 N. Tamiami Trail – Suite E
Venice, FL 34285
941-484-0646      
geoffm@mwk-law.com
 
Mary Ann Keckler
Director Haley House Fund, Inc.
P.O. Box 701
Brandon, FL 33509
813-468-0361      
maryannkeck@aol.com

March 20, 2008 – At least two Iraqi families of victims killed by Blackwater security guards in September tell ABC News they have refused compensation offered by the company.

The father of a 9-year-old boy, who says his son was one of the 17 civilians killed when Blackwater guards, escorting a diplomatic convoy, opened fire at Baghdad’s Nisour Square on Sept. 16, says he is trying to file a lawsuit against the company. He told ABCNews.com that Blackwater offered him $20,000 through an Iraqi prosecutor, but he refused the money.

Another Iraqi who lost both his wife and son in the incident says he too has refused the company’s offer of compensation of $20,000 for each victim.

Adel Jabur Shamma, who was injured in the incident, says he was bed-ridden for six months after being shot in the thigh. He says he was given $10,000 by the Iraqi prosecutor who is mediating between the families and Blackwater, but that the amount isn’t nearly enough to cover his surgery. He says he took the money because he had no other choice.

While a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. investigates the deaths, Blackwater has been operating behind the scenes in Iraq to offer condolence payments to survivors and families of the dead.

The company released a statement this afternoon saying: “At the request of U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Blackwater has reached out to the families of those killed or injured in Nisoor Square on September 16 as part of this condolence payment process. These are customary condolence payments, and are not an admission of guilt, but recognize that Iraq is an extremely dangerous place. When faced with an enemy intent on maximizing civilian casualties, innocent people will tragically be caught in the crossfire; when that happens, their suffering should not go unrecognized.”

Officials familiar with the case told ABCNews.com last month that Blackwater had resisted U.S. government demands that the company pay at least $100,000 per death, claiming the U.S. government itself hasn’t paid that much in similar situations.

As ABCNews.com has reported, the federal grand jury criminal investigation is focusing on two or three Blackwater guards who opened fire, claiming they perceived a threat. Other Blackwater guards have testified to federal agents, however, that they saw no such threat.

Several of the Iraqi families have already filed lawsuits against Blackwater in U.S. courts, alleging the security guards were guilty of “war crimes.”

March 19, 2008 – For a third time, a military judge has authorized lawyers for Osama bin Laden’s driver to send questions to alleged al Qaeda kingpins in segregation at Guantánamo.

The ruling by Navy Capt. Keith Allred rejected national security arguments raised by Pentagon prosecutors. The military judge also sounded dismissive of a government argument that the driver could have conspired in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks without knowing about the suicide plot.

Specifically, Allred authorized the lawyers to ask reputed mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed whether the driver was a part of the 9/11 suicide plot and other al Qaeda attacks.

‘The issue of whether the accused was `merely a driver,’ or knew the unlawful purpose and was actively engaged in the unlawful work of al Qaeda seems to be very much at issue,” Allred wrote in the four-page ruling, dated Friday.

The Pentagon made it public on Wednesday, intact, with no portions blacked out. Earlier judges’ rulings have been censored.

It was the latest setback to Pentagon prosecution efforts to limit the discovery phase before the separate military trials of the driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, and Canadian captive Omar Khadr. Both are slated to face military commissions this summer.

Pentagon prosecutors had three times resisted the judge’s plan to let Hamdan’s lawyers ask questions of seven former CIA captives. They have been at Guantánamo since September 2006 and are now held as ”Task Force Platinum” prisoners,at a segregated site set up secretly by the military, called Camp 7.

Under the scheme, devised by Allred, defense lawyers submit questions for Mohammed and the others to an independent security officer who works for the judge, not the prosecution.

The judge limited the substance to the time before Hamdan’s capture in November 2001 in Afghanistan, and before the men were held and interrogated secretly by the CIA overseas — meaning they cannot divulge U.S. interrogation techniques.

The security officer will have the questions translated, as well as the answers — and then black out any responses that don’t cover that time period.

Allred said in his ruling that national security could be safeguarded by the special security review.

Even before the Pentagon made the ruling public, defense lawyers had on Tuesday already submitted written questions for four of the men, chief among them the man known in CIA circles as KSM, Mohammed.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, Hamdan’s Pentagon appointed defense counsel, called Allred’s ruling “a real rebuke of the government’s dragnet theory of conspiracy as well as granting us access to these detainees.”

The questions for Mohammed specifically ask, ”What was Hamdan’s involvement in Sept. 11,” said Mizer.

Based on their research, he said, the answer should be, “nothing.”

Hamdan, 36, is accused of being a driver and sometime bodyguard for Bin Laden prior to the 9/11 attacks in Afghanistan. He is broadly charged as a co-conspirator in the terror plot and other al Qaeda attacks. Conviction carries life in prison.

Hamdan has admitted that he worked for bin Laden, and earned $200 a month as a driver. But he says he never joined al Qaeda and did not plot any attacks.

Allred wrote: “It is not unfair to permit the Defense to seek to show that while he may have been a bodyguard and driver, he knew little or nothing about the inner workings of this conspiracy, or that was not a party to it, if they can.”

The Pentagon has yet to release the prosecutor’s brief opposing access.

But Allred seemed to hint at government concerns in fashioning the question-and-answer format. If the security officer detects one captive trying to send a message to another ”colleague or a confederate,” the judge wrote, the security officer can delete the answer, or summarize it.

Last week, an Army judge in the Khadr case also ruled five times for the defense on discovery issues.

In one instance, Army Col. Peter Brownback ordered the Pentagon to let defense attorneys take a deposition from the battalion commander at Khadr’s July 2002 capture in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors had argued that Khadr’s lawyers should only be allowed to question the officer at the trial. He has been identified in court only as “Lt. Col. W.”

One issue is why ”Lt. Col. W” rewrote a portion of a battlefield account of Khadr’s capture, two months after the fact, which could help convict him.

In the case of access to the so-called high-value detainees, Allred had agreed to the defense request in early February at a hearing at Guantánamo.

Then, the prosecutor, Army Lt. Col. Will Britt, objected in court — and told the judge that military commission guidelines forbid him from ruling wholesale on the question of access. Rather, Britt told the judge, he needed to consider access piecemeal, on a case-by-case basis.

Allred then issued a written ruling in mid February, laying out the terms of access and ordering the government to establish an independent Security Officer who does not work for the prosecution.

The prosecution immediately filed for reconsideration.

It was not immediately clear Wednesday whether the prosecution would be appealing Allred’s latest decision.

March 21, 2008 – She settled into her seat on a flight from Chicago to Columbus, taking a clearly stressful call on her cell phone. She hung up to get ready for our flight – looked at me – and said, “How come my son could lay his life on the line for this country – but he has to wait six months for an appointment at the VA for even a Band-aid?”
As we spoke, her despair and anger came into focus. She was a native Ohioan from Oklahoma with a slight Okie twang, on her way to visit her parent in the central Ohio area, and her son had served two tours of duty in Iraq. He was home now with her daughter-in-law and her grandson – but he was waking up with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – night sweats and combat delirium. And her son could not get in to the VA hospital for at least six months.

In Ohio, the nation’s 6th largest concentration of veterans, a legislative committee found out in December that the state ranks 43rd in use of available services and 50th in the amount of disability pay. Legislation growing out of the study will create a new cabinet level department, but with little if any accountability measures over a cumbersome structure that has failed to deliver needed efficiencies for needy Ohio veterans.

So how bad will things get when Iraq and Afghanistan veterans begin to increase the need for services. At the federal level, in a March 6 AP article by Bradley Brooks in Baghdad he reports that:

About 15 soldiers are wounded for every fatality in Iraq compared with 2.6 wounded for every fatality in Vietnam and 2.8 wounded for every fatality in Korea.
29,320 servicemen were wounded in action as of early March, but an additional 31,325 others have been treated for non-combat injuries and illnesses.
The VA predicts it will treat 330,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 – a 14 percent increase over the 2008 estimate of $263,000 costing over $1.3 billion.
The Bush budget requests $93.7 billion for the VA including $41.2 billion for medical care for veterans of all wars which is an increase of $2.3 billion.
In an article posted on opednews.com on March 5, writer Jason Leopold pointed out that VA officials estimate that 60,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are returning with PTSD similar to what I’d heard all too personally on that flight to Columbus.

Leopold chronicled the story of a Marine veteran named Jonathan Schulze who was awarded two Purple Hearts in 2005 after a lengthy tour of duty in Iraq. On January 11, 2007, he sought treatment for PTSD when his parents drove him to the VA hospital in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He was not admitted and told to call back the following day. The VA told him he would need to wait at least two weeks to be admitted. On January 16, 2007, next to a photo of his one-year old daughter, he was found with an electrical cord around his neck in a friend’s basement at the age of 25.

Critics rightly point out that Veterans benefits at the national and state level are plagued with a systemic and political bureaucracy that puts care for veterans on the back-burner both at the national and Ohio levels.

Backlog at the VA

The VA has a backlog of over 400,000 pending medical claims and complaints – especially in mental health care.

In a rare Shadows kudos for U.S. Senator George Voinovich, he rightly points out in a letter to the Senate Budget Committee that the VA’s pending pension and compensation claims were up almost 6 percent from March of 2007 and that 27 percent of claims have been pending for more than 180 days, along with a 50 percent increase since 2003 in claims requiring a disability review which request increases in time and resources.

Voinovich said in his letter to Sen. Kent Conrad that the number of filed claims has increased 45 percent from 578,773 in 2000 to 838,141 in 2007.

At the time of Jonathan Schulze’s death, according to Veterans Today’s website, more than 200,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan had been treated at VA medical facilities according to a Government Accountability Office analysis, which is three times what the VA had originally projected. The GAO study said more than one-third of the cases involved mental health conditions including PTSD, acute depression and substance abuse.

According to Leopold’s article, VA attorneys argued in court papers filed this past February that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were not “entitled” to the five-years of free healthcare upon their return from combat, but instead their treatment was discretionary based on the level of funding available at the VA.

But earlier this month, the Undersecretary for Health at the VA admitted in court that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were entitled to free healthcare and that “there is no co-pay,” according to Leopold.

All of this bureaucracy was supposed to have gone away on October 25, 1988, when Ronald Reagan made the Department of Veterans Affairs a cabinet-level agency. But symbolism seems to have made little progress in the bureaucracy that a wounded soldier must navigate. Here in Ohio – let’s hope we have different results.

Bureaucracy and the Ohio Veteran’s benefit system – Why Ohio files fewer claims

More than any other bureaucracy, when it comes to the structure of Ohio veterans, you have the intersection of patriotism, politics, media image and most of all competing veteran structures that have impacted the way in which state-level veteran’s services are delivered.

The state has long had a Governor’s Office of Veteran’s Services which provides support and training to the various County Veterans Services offices. County offices have varying levels of funding, primarily because they are funded much like schools through property tax at a level of five-tenths of a mill. Because of the disparity of property wealth in different counties, the dollars to those programs vary widely.

When a County office files claims, they then use an outsourced system. Ohio does not employ its own service officers who follow Ohio veteran’s claims – instead traditionally that has been a function of the powerful and politically impactful Ohio veterans’ organizations even though 90 percent of Ohio veterans do not belong to these groups (but probably should given their effective lobby and access to services.)

During the recent Veterans Study Council meetings, a representative of the VA advised the Council that Ohio was at the bottom of the barrel in terms of the number of VA claims filed, the quality or completeness of the claims filed and the amount of money generated by approved claims.

Ohio has the 6th largest number of veterans in the United States an Ohio sub-committee of the Veterans Study Council was told in December. Yet Ohio ranked 50th at the time in the amount of disability pay received by injured veterans and 43rd in veterans’ use of services. In most veteran service categories, Ohio ranked among the bottom seven although recent numbers showed some improvement.

Services for Ohio veterans go through 88-county offices and are process in the VA regional offices. But the services rely on National Service Officers (NSO) given free office space by the VA and paid for by Ohio taxpayers but staffed by the various Veterans service agencies. In 2006, Ohio spent over $1.5 million dollars spread among the:

American Legion, $302,328
Am vets, &287,919
Veterans of Foreign Wars, $246,615
Disabled American Veterans, $216,308
Vietnam Veterans of America,$185,954
Marine Corp League,$115,972
Catholic War Veterans,$57,900
Meritorious Order of the Purple Heart, $56,377
Army Navy Union, $55,012
Jewish War Veterans $29,715
American Ex P.O.W., $25,030
In a nutshell, when a claim is received in the VA regional office from the county offices for veterans’ services, it is assigned to one of the National Service Officers (NSOs) who is there to act as the advocate for the veteran before the VA. That is why in essence, Ohio has outsourced the advocate role to these traditional groups.

But in reading the Subcommittee reports of the Veterans Study Council it becomes clear that a veteran is at the mercy of the resources of the County in which they live and the efficiency of the veterans organization they choose to track and advocate their claims. There appears to be little if no accountability on the process for follow through.

What is disturbing is that after working with the various county veterans’ offices and advocates, as well as the national groups on a comprehensive study that identified these concerns, State Sen. Bob Spada rushed to the table with S.B. 289 which made no recommendations to fix the VA claims processing system but did recommend that “the several veterans’ organizations” should get more support.

The issue that has gotten headlines is the recommendation for a cabinet-level Veterans’ Service Department – much as Ronald Reagan garnered headlines in 1988. But the symbolism of a department has not necessarily diminished the bureaucratic problems at the federal level. The question remains, will Ohio fall into the same PR trap?

While the Strickland Administration’s push for the cabinet-level department is not necessarily a bad sign – if anything it is needed, the legislation written by Sen. Spada appears to have very little impact on the processing of claims which appears to be the real problem for Ohio’s veterans. Instead it deals mostly with changing a Governor’s office into a Governor’s department. In fact, just this week representatives of Governor Strickland on the panel informed some concerned veterans that the legislation creating the new department would likely not include increased oversight of the county and NSO (veterans group) system.

As the bill stands now, after months of study and data about the problems of veterans services, a Legislative Service Commission analysis of the new departmental functions that Sen. Spada included in the bill are limited to:

Developing telephone answering services and a website.
Outreach efforts at conferences and fairs.
Advertising services in print, radio and television.
Broadly calling for the development and improved benefits and services for veterans.
Searching for administrative policies to unify funding, delivery and accountability of policy with no formal recommendations.
Maintaining a cordial relationship with both the VA and several veterans’ organizations.
And adds the Ohio Veterans’ Home Agency and the Ohio War Orphans Scholarship Board to the Department.
You can’t help but think that if this were education funding or other pet peeves of Columbus conservatives, Ohio’s Broad & High crowd would be preaching on the legislative floor for more accountability on how Ohio taxpayer money is being spent in classrooms – on the outcomes-based budgeting that conservatives around Capitol Square preach like a Buddhist mantra.

But it is not.

This is about veterans, and veterans are about the flag and neither liberal nor conservative legislators will take on such a bureaucracy borne from the battlefields of returning vets who spawned the complicated relationships of such diverse organizations in the first place.

No one including Shadows is arguing about the role and need for these veterans organizations to exist and flourish. But in fact, these veterans’ organizations do need prodding and accountability for processing veteran claims as any outsourced service should.

Ohio grants for the NSO officers in VA regional offices should be monitored and judged based on information that looks at the per capita amount of veterans here and in other states and sets up a compliance report with oversight by the new Ohio Department of Veterans Affairs.

It seems logical and in-line with all other Ohio government expenditures that the department should exercise oversight and tracking of all VA claims. That is the surest path away from a bottom ranking in services to Ohio veterans.

If Ohio will not hire its own compliance officers at the VA regional office, which given the clout of veterans groups is politically dead on arrival, at the very least the various service organizations that provide NSO services should be monitored by the newly created department based on:

Number of claims filed, starting at the county level, and continuing through the NSO level;
Completeness and accuracy of claims;
Average time to resolve claims;
Average dollars paid out to Ohio veterans per capita;
Communication and reporting with county offices from the NSO regarding claims status.
Certainly some who are active in veterans’ services groups who receive money from the State of Ohio may bristle at this opinion and couch these views as an unpatriotic attack on soldiers who have paid their dues to their nation.

But the fact of the matter is that this is not a debate over liquor licenses and bingo permits at the local lodge – these issues involve serious veterans’ needs and claims involving their everyday lives.

If the process is outsourced to these organizations – then so be it. But to not hold the same accountability standards on services for these veterans paid for by Ohio taxpayer dollars is benign legislative neglect of the stewardship of Ohio tax dollars.

S.B. 289 seems to be a rushed piece of legislation – the kind of thing legislators take and run with in an effort to wrap the flag around themselves in the next election cycle.

But the stark reality is that true patriotism would wrap that flag around a wounded veteran, a homeless veteran, a jobless veteran, a mentally troubled veteran – to expedite services, not worry about the politics of veterans group funding and future political support.

Save the politics for Novembers this year and in future years.

It’s time to set-aside politics and figure a way to get a Band-aid to our veterans – without all of the bureaucracy. Our national system is bad enough – there is no excuse for a state the size of Ohio to lag so far behind so many smaller states in providing services to veterans.

It’s time to streamline the process and make those within the system accountable here in Columbus and in Washington D.C. This shouldn’t be about politics, it should be about the lady sitting next to me’s very poignant question last month, “How come my son could lay his life on the line for this country – but he has to wait six months for an appointment at the VA for even a Band-aid?”

Being able to solve that question would be a cabinet department worthy of the seat at the Governor’s table.

March 21, 2008 – Then-Sgt. Michael Butler of Jackson took a stand in October 2004 – against a military order.

Butler and 22 other members of an Army Reserve unit refused to go on a fuel transport mission in Iraq carrying nine 5,000-gallon tanks of fuel in vehicles with only cloth tops. Their actions set off an international stir about the equipment U.S. military personnel had to use.

Butler was jailed and faced a court-martial after the incident. He eventually was reassigned and served in five different units before returning to Jackson.

“They gave us no choice,” Butler said last week, explaining the action the soldiers on took Oct. 13, 2004, in his first interview about the experience.

“As a military man, I would never just not obey an order,” he said. But, “It would have been a suicide mission.”

Butler’s story was first told in The Clarion-Ledger, after his wife contacted the newspaper. Since his return, he says he has been denied medical benefits and wishes he had never seen Iraq.

Butler said last week that the convoy didn’t have air and ground support and their superiors didn’t want to listen to their concerns.

Amid the international debate that followed over poorly equipped Humvees in combat zones, the military admitted the unit’s vehicles were not properly armored.

Butler hopes the action he and the other reservists took made it better for soldiers who came behind them in Iraq.

“It’s just like it happened yesterday,” Butler said of memories of his tour of duty in Iraq.

Butler is now retired from the military after a 25-year career, but he saaid his battles continue.

Butler said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, has memory loss and other ailments. He said he has been denied benefits for medical claims by the Veterans Benefits Administration office in Jackson with the exception of one claim: He was approved for10 percent disability benefits for a shoulder injury.

Butler’s medical claims include stress, anxiety, hypertension, memory loss, lower back pain, a leg injury, high cholesterol and the shoulder injury.

In one instance, Butler said he received a claim rejection letter where the examiner mentioned he was dressed too nicely.

A letter to Butler from Veterans Affairs, dated July 25, 2005, denying his mental stress claim said the examination “showed you were alert, oriented to time, place and person, you were casually dressed, well-groomed and attentive.”

Butler said maybe if he would have gone to the interview dressed “like a bum” he would have been approved.

“I got shafted at VA,” Butler said recently at his Jackson home.

Bill Taylor, spokesman for the Veterans Benefits Administration regional office in Jackson, said the VA would like to provide benefits to all veterans, but as the law is written, they must meet certain thresholds for elligibility.

Taylor said there must be verifiable medical information to link a condition to military service.

“Also, we can’t grant benefits for injuries that have gotten better,” Taylor said.

When it comes to benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor said it must be determined a veteran came into contact with the enemy. Citations such as a Purple Heart or a Bronze Star would denote a veteran had been in a war zone.

But Taylor said Butler and other veterans denied claims can file to have their cases reopened.

Butler and Sgt. Larry McCook, also of Jackson, were among the members of the Rock Hill, S.C.-based 343rd Quartermaster Company that refused to carry the fuel to Taji, Iraq.

The reservists were jailed for two days and faced court-martial, Butler said.

Butler’s wife, Jackie, called The Clarion-Ledger, which was the first news organization to report on the story. Soon, media from across the world were reporting it.

Butler said he regrets the stress his wife had to endure to help him. He said his wife received threats during the height of the incident and had to see a doctor for post-traumatic stress.

Since returning from Iraq, Butler has gone back to his job in carpentry at Jackson Public Schools. But he and his wife say his life has been far from normal.

“He wakes up at night like he is still over there,” Jackie Butler said. “He may get an hour’s sleep a night. … I lose sleep because he wakes me up.”

Jackie Butler said there should be help for soldiers returning from the war zone to ease them back into normal society.

From the 110- to 115-degree days in Iraq to the casualties of war, “it’s not something you just forget,” Michael Butler said.

After returning from Iraq, Butler said he had a fear of going under bridges because it was where most enemy bombing attacks occurred in Iraq. And he had a fear of driving over potholes in streets because of memories of roadside bombings.

“I wouldn’t wish Iraq on my worst enemies,” Butler said.

Butler said he often wakes up in the middle of the night sweating profusely, reliving Iraq.

“It was not the stress of so much having to kill someone as it was seeing someone’s head blown off or seeing them holding their guts in their hands,” Butler said.

Jackie Butler said she is worried about her husband because he seems to be losing part of his memory and they can’t get any help.

“I think it was a waste of our lives,” Jackie Butler said last week of her husband’s Iraq service and what their family is now enduring.

Michael Butler said not all soldiers had their jobs waiting for them when they returned. He said he has kept in contact with some members of his unit.

Some of them, especially the younger ones, stayed in the military and have gone on other overseas tours of duty, Butler said. Others decided to leave the military.

One of them, Spc. Scott Shealey of Quinton, Ala., was killed in an automobile accident about six months after returning from Iraq.

McCook, who wouldn’t consent to an interview, came back to his job in March 2005 as a detention officer for the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department. He resigned 13 months later.

March 24, 2008 – The night before he was to enter a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, Army Pfc. Chris Eckert swallowed a pill prescribed to help him sleep without the nightmares that have tormented him since he left Iraq.

Then, sitting in his barracks at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Jan. 17, he counted out seven methadone tablets and popped them into his mouth.

The next morning, his squad leader found him on the floor in a puddle of his own vomit, but still alive.

“They told me, ‘Your son is not going to make it,’ ” said Eckert’s mother, Rose Szymborski. “He was on life support for five days.”

Since June 2007, 11 troops have died in the Army’s Wounded Warrior units, according to Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army’s Surgeon General.

Eckert’s mother blames the Army for not looking out for him, while Army officials say Eckert needed to do more to help himself. But both sides agree his case is an example of the difficulties of treating troops working through substance-abuse issues linked to post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries.

“I felt like my hands were kind of tied,” said Capt. Scott Beam, Eckert’s case manager. “In my heart … I knew I had done all I could have.”

Szymborski said she tried to alert Eckert’s chain of command at the hospital that her son was dealing with symptoms of PTSD. He suffered nightmares, couldn’t handle loud noises and was angry. He told friends he was suicidal. He was abusing pain medications and alcohol.

Eckert was serving in Iraq in early 2007 when an IED blast killed his platoon sergeant and left him with a mild traumatic brain injury.

“He was getting worse by the week,” his mother said.

Yet when he went to talk with a mental health worker, he came across as fine. Beam said Eckert was in denial about his problems and refused treatment.

“I felt kind of helpless,” Beam said.

Col. Terrance McKenrick, Wounded Warrior Brigade commander, said untruthfulness about high-risk behavior is common in such situations. He said the challenge for health care providers in treating soldiers with mental health disorders is figuring out their real symptoms and whether they are, in fact, abusing substances.

“It’s something we struggle with every day,” he said.

Eckert’s primary care doctor, Capt. Ingrid Pakowski, said she sends all her soldiers to mental health and tells them to consider it part of their routine medical care. She said Eckert often missed appointments, and fooled even his psychiatrist.

“He was hiding his symptoms … he didn’t have a PTSD diagnosis for a while,” she said, adding that PTSD and TBI “will make a substance abuse disorder that much more difficult.”

Things became further tangled when Eckert’s doctors asked Szymborski to support them in an intervention — to confront the soldier with the fact that she had seen him abuse medications over Christmas break. She refused, fearing her son would no longer speak to her. That, in fact, is what happened when Eckert’s doctors told him his mother was worried about him.

Without her help, and unable to prove Eckert was a threat to himself or others, doctors could not hold him against his will or force treatment.

“I spoke with Rose about all of these concerns,” Beam said. “We can’t admit him against his will.”

Because of his failed alcohol breathalyzer tests and counseling sessions about substance abuse, they did persuade Eckert to go to 28 days of rehabilitation, as well as PTSD counseling. His mother worried that he would go on a final binge before rehab, and she called his chain of command.

“I begged them to help him, to search his room, to sit with him,” she said.

But, McKenrick said, “he was not at the point where we felt he needed to be an inpatient.”

But Szymborski said the staff “did not act aggressively enough with the information I had given them. They chose to take his word.”

If they had searched her son’s room, she said, “they would have found the methadone, and he would have been in trouble instead of almost dead.”

McKenrick said Eckert was, in fact, heavily monitored, having been designated “high risk.” His squad leader called twice daily to check on him, and he had been assigned a roommate. His squad leader said they even took the precaution of not notifying Eckert that he would be leaving for rehabilitation the next day.

But somehow, he found out. He bought the seven methadone pills from another soldier — who is being prosecuted for possessing hundreds of the pills — and swallowed them.

Army officials acknowledge that such overdoses are a problem. Schoomaker has talked of having a team of experts look into the issue, assigning one provider per person to prescribe drugs, tightening supervision of those deemed at risk, and establishing alcohol-free zones.

All those proposals have been implemented at Walter Reed, McKenrick said. Soldiers used to be allowed a six-pack of beer or a bottle of wine in the barracks, but no longer.

“It was just too much of a temptation for those who can’t drink with their medications,” McKenrick said. Alcohol also has been banned from Mologne House, where family members stay while visiting sick or injured troops at Walter Reed.

And when a manpower team came through Walter Reed in mid-March, McKenrick talked with them about boosting the ratio of staff to injured troops at facilities with the most seriously wounded people, such as Walter Reed and Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas.

Though Eckert lived through his overdose, all of his problems have not been resolved. He completed 28 days of rehab and did “really well,” Szymborski said.

She took him home to Albany, N.Y., in early March, after being told a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist would see him. But his psych appointment is not until April 21, and he has had no follow-up since leaving rehab, Szymborski said.

She said her son’s case manager, Capt. Brian McMillion, kept reminding her that her son had access to emergency VA psychiatric care if needed.

“But it isn’t the same,” she said. “You’re not magically cured after 28 days of rehab, and you should not be going it alone for weeks with no professional support.”

She worries about the soldiers who remain at Walter Reed.

“Many soldiers I have met … are addicted,” she said. “I don’t want anyone else to go through this. The things that happened with us could have easily been prevented.”

The staff at Walter Reed seems to agree, but also said much progress has been made in the year since the Wounded Warrior Brigade was stood up.

Still, McKenrick acknowledged, the job is far from finished.

“We are halfway there,” he said. “It continues to be a challenge.”