Veterans for Common Sense

March 15, 2008 – See a video presentation of this story at http://www.wvgazette.com/costofwar

Stan and Shirley White of Cross Lanes remember they were at a restaurant that day – Sept. 26, 2005. They were talking about their youngest son, Andrew, and about how happy they were to have him home safe from Iraq.

Then, Shirley’s cell phone rang.
It was their daughter-in-law on the other end – the wife of their middle son, Bob, who was stationed in Afghanistan with the Army. Bob’s Humvee had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. He was gone.

Now, 2 1/2 years later – on Feb. 12 – the Whites lost 23-year-old Andrew. He died mysteriously in his sleep, just as he was beginning an achingly slow climb out of the debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder.

Their oldest son, Will, a career Naval officer, is in the Persian Gulf.

“You really can’t compare the two deaths, but directly and indirectly, both of their deaths are a result of the war,” Stan said. “As a parent, you fear for them when they go to war. You fear for their lives over there. Andrew was home. We thought he was safe.”

They are waiting for autopsy results, but the circumstances of Andrew’s death mirror those of two other local servicemen, also treated for PTSD and taking the same medications.

“Is there a connection? We don’t know,” Stan said. “When you’re 23, you’re not supposed to go to sleep and not wake up.

Three sons, three military branches

Andrew was a toddler when big brother Will, now 40, went into the Navy. Bob followed in the Army six years later. Afghanistan was his first combat tour.

Bob loved to travel to foreign countries and enjoyed peacekeeping missions in Korea, Kosovo, Egypt and Panama. Bob was 34 when he died. He is survived by his wife, Cathy, and 17-year–old son Zachary in North Carolina.

Career military men, neither Will nor Bob were interested in college, Shirley said.

Andrew was different. He planned to go to college. Although the Whites live in Cross Lanes, Andrew attended Capital High School, largely because of its strong ROTC program. His father was assistant principal there, and handed Andrew his diploma upon his graduation. He joined the Marine Reservists in 2003.

Stan was not a serviceman, and their family did not have a strong military background, but Stan and Shirley supported all three sons’ decisions to join the military.

“Andrew’s life was the Marines. At one time, he wanted to make a career out of it,” Stan said. “After the war, he decided against it. He was still very proud to be a Marine. Everything in his room is about the Marines.”

Described as a homebody by his mother, Andrew was initially anxious about his Marine unit’s deployment, but seemed to adjust. He carried out his nerve-racking work searching for “improvised explosive devices” and land mines as a combat engineer. He patrolled areas near the Syrian border and returned fire as a navigational gunner on a Humvee.

At his funeral, his buddies told his parents about the time they swept an area, declared it clean and were prepared to move on, when Andrew took one more look. They gave the Whites a photograph of Andrew holding the mine he found, which led to the discovery of six more in the same area.

When he returned home, Andrew enrolled as a criminal justice major at West Virginia State University. As time passed, he found it difficult to focus on classes or on his job as a car salesman, where he was initially very successful.

By the summer of 2006, he was missing appointments and work times because he couldn’t focus or control his anger.

“He probably had eight or nine jobs,” Shirley said. “He just couldn’t hold a job. It’s a classic symptom of PTSD.”

News that his unit was being deployed back to Iraq may have triggered the disorder.

He finally sought help in February 2007 at the West Virginia Vet Center, where he was referred to a VA clinic in Kanawha City.

“It’s frustrating. We are sending these middle-class kids over who have had no trauma in their lives. They’re taught to respect life,” Shirley said. “Then they are seeing all these terrible things and bringing it back all bottled up inside.”

By late July, Andrew’s condition had escalated. He lost his short-term memory. He began missing his appointments at the VA clinic. He couldn’t remember to take his medications. Shirley called his psychiatrist and a social worker, who told her to come to his sessions and record what happened, since Andrew couldn’t remember.

“He had become like a child that’s ADHD,” said Shirley, a former elementary schoolteacher. “Every appointment after that, I went with him. In August and September, he had 19 appointments. His doctors were very concerned.”

The Whites tried to keep his environment as stress-free as possible. They read everything they could find on the disorder as Andrew retreated further from family and friends. From August until his death, he ate with his family only two times.

He obsessively played violent war video games and watched movies alone in his room. He gained 40 or 50 pounds
“He was fighting his battles in the games. He’d get angry. The characters became real to him,” Stan said. “It’s the last thing you’d think he’d want to play.”

But by December, Shirley noticed Andrew’s short-term memory was improving.

Andrew’s final days

Late in January, Andrew’s outlook started to improve after he started meeting with a local psychiatrist specializing in PTSD. He made plans for a beach trip this summer, the first time he’d shown any interest in the future in a long time.

On Feb. 11, he had an appointment with his psychiatrist, talked to his sister on the phone and even made a dinner date for the next day.

“I noticed he was smiling more,” his mother said.

Andrew seemed particularly tired that afternoon, but otherwise healthy. He went to bed early, after solidifying plans to meet his mother at a cell phone store at 1 p.m. the following afternoon. She gave him his medication as usual and checked on him the next morning before leaving for her job at Sylvan Learning Center. He was sleeping normally.

At about noon, she called to be sure he was awake, but didn’t get an answer. She tried again repeatedly with the same result, then called a neighbor and asked her to go next door to rouse him. The woman pounded on the front door and his bedroom window to no avail.

Shirley rushed home and found Andrew dead in his bed, without any apparent cause.

A toxicology screen indicated normal levels of his prescribed medications. They’re still waiting for the autopsy results.

“It seems like a cruel joke for him to die just when he was getting better,” Shirley said.

Searching for answers

Since then, the Whites learned that the mysterious circumstances of Andrew’s death are markedly similar to those of two other local servicemen who were being treated for PSTD with the same medications – Paxil, Klonopin and Seroquel.

Eric Layne, a soldier from Kanawha City whose wife, Janette, is expecting their second child, had recently returned from an extended treatment at a VA facility. Andrew and Layne knew each other from a PTSD support group that Andrew attended faithfully.

“Andrew really went through a tough time when Eric died,” Stan said. “We never thought that, two weeks later, it would be him.”

Stan immediately thought of Layne when Shirley called him after the paramedics failed to revive Andrew.

The next day, the Whites heard about Logan County resident Cheryl Endicott’s son, Nicholas, who died in his sleep Jan. 29 while being treated for PTSD at a military hospital in Bethesda, Md.

The Whites wondered: Were their deaths related to the drugs? Was there a problem with sleep apnea? Did they suffer brain injuries?

Immediately after he buried his son, Stan began looking for answers.

The Whites spoke with Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate committee on Intelligence and a member of the Veteran Affairs committee, who called them after Andrew’s death. The senator called and has corresponded with the Whites after Bob’s death, also.

Rockefeller has requested independent reviews from the Inspector General of the Departments of Veteran Affairs and Defense, said Jessica Tice, deputy press secretary for Rockefeller. He brought the three West Virginia servicemen’s deaths to the Veteran Affairs committee members’ attention and urges anyone with similar concerns to contact him at the e-mail address: v…@rockefeller.senate.gov.

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito has also expressed concern about the deaths.

“The main issue is that these men have given so much,” Stan said. “Our intent is to find answers and to keep this from happening to anyone else.”

West Virginia Friends of Veterans have supported the Whites, screening their e-mails and passing along any relevant information to them. The Whites requested donations to the group in lieu of flowers at Andrew’s memorial.

Stan and Shirley are spending more time with their daughter, Christina, a sophomore at Marshall University. Christina was especially close to Andrew because Will and Bob were so much older. She comes home more this year than she did during her first year at college.

Her parents think she’s coping well.

“We’re not bitter. Bitterness will kill you,” Stan said. “We’re just trying to keep someone else from going through this pain. We have a son, a daughter, a grandson and two granddaughters to live for.”

March 13, 2008 – Washington, DC — On Thursday, the House Veterans’ Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, led by Chairman Harry Mitchell (D-AZ), conducted a hearing to assess how the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is caring for our nation’s most seriously wounded veterans following inpatient treatment.  Specifically, the hearing addressed care coordination after the veteran has transitioned to independent living at home and assessed whether federal care coordinators are working as intended. 

“There was a lack of preparation for veterans’ health care at the outset of this war,” said Chairman Mitchell.  “The need to provide care and assistance to wounded service members, and their families, in significant number and for the long term has been largely ignored.” 

Corporal Casey Owens was seriously injured during Operation Iraqi Freedom and testified about his transition following inpatient care: “While some of the problems I have encountered have been resolved, many have not.  The learning curve of VA’s system is steep and its bureaucratic maze is hard to understand.  The impression that I get from the VA is that some within the organization think it is the duty of the veteran to endure and resolve these problems on their own.   Those, like me, who were paid as a Marine Corp Grunt to do their job to the best of their ability never questioned whether if we got injured my government would be there for me.  We all knew it would.  It is now time for those who are responsible for the VA to care for those who did their duty.” 

Severely injured service members at the VA Polytrauma Rehabilitation Centers (PRC) are only a subset of the “severely injured.”  There have been approximately 500 PRC patients, but the Dole-Shalala Commission estimated that there were 3,000 severely injured service members according to the criteria established in setting up the commission.  All these service members should be receiving clinical and care management services, not just PRC patients.     

In November 2007, VA announced the creation of Federal Recovery Coordinators (FRC), to act as the delegated authority for oversight and coordination of care for every eligible severely injured military service member from initial admission to the Military Treatment Facilities.  This responsibility continues through the service member’s transfers between and among medical or other treatment facilities, discharge from medical facilities, retirement from Military Service, and throughout reintegration into the civilian community.  The FRC is a resource for these service members and their families to ensure they have ready access to the right clinical and non-clinical resources.

Sergeant Ted Wade sustained a severe traumatic brain injury after his humvee was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device in Iraq.  His right arm was completely severed above the elbow and he also suffered a fractured leg, broken right foot and visual impairment, among other injuries.  His wife, Sarah Wade, testified about their experiences since her husband was wounded: “Ted has made a remarkable recovery by any standard, because we have strayed from standardized treatment, and developed a patient-centered path.  I had to educate myself about, and coordinate, additional outside care.  Often, access to the necessary services required intervention from the highest levels of government, or for us to personally finance them ourselves.  But despite our best efforts, Ted is still unable to easily receive comprehensive care for all of his major health issues, due to shortcomings in the current system, and because of the time his needs demand of me, I have been unable to return to regular work or school.” 

The witnesses offered many recommendations for improving the current process of transitioning from inpatient care to independent living at home.  Some of the ideas shared included special monthly compensation for integration, changes to dependents’ educational assistance benefits and more flexible respite care options.  Another recommendation was establishing a centralized group of personnel specifically for those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

“These seriously injured veterans have a right to get on with their lives and focus on their recovery – not deal with endless paperwork and a stubborn bureaucracy,” said Bob Filner (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.  “We have lost the trust of many and we have a long way to go to provide the care worthy of their service and sacrifice.  We must be prepared to welcome back every soldier, sailor, airman and marine with all the compassion this grateful nation can bestow.”   

Witnesses:

Panel 1

Corporal Casey Owens, Houston, TX, U.S. Marine Corps Combat Veteran

Sarah Wade, Chapel Hill, NC, Testifying on behalf of  Sergeant Edward Wade, U.S. Army Combat Veteran

Panel 2

Meredith Beck, National Policy Director, Wounded Warrior Project

Todd Bowers, Director of Government Affairs, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

Panel 3

Madhulika Agarwal, MD, MPH, Chief Patient Care Services Officer, Veterans Health Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Accompanied by:

Lucille Beck, Ph.D., Chief Consultant, Rehabilitation Services and Program Director for Audiology and Speech Pathology Program, Office of Patient Care Services, Veterans Health Administration

Kristin Day, LCSW, Chief Consultant, Care Management and Social Work, Office of Patient Care Services, Veterans Health Administration

Prepared testimony for the hearing and an audio recording of the hearing is available on the internet at this link:  http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/hearing.aspx?newsid=208.

March 15, 2008 – Nearly five years since the start of the Iraq war, the Bush administration is still funding much of it through emergency appropriations, and only partially through the regular defense budget. This is one of several ways in which the administration has managed to hide the true cost of the war from the American people. Until Congress insists on a full and open accounting, the nation won’t know how much of a drag it is on the economy.

more stories like thisEconomists once believed that wars stimulated an economy. But when much of the funding goes to Iraqi or Filipino contractors working in Iraq, the benefit to the US economy diminishes, especially in light of what the funding could achieve if used for home-front needs.

In the run-up to the war, President Bush’s top economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, said it might cost as much as $200 billion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the actual amount would be just $50 billion to $60 billion, calling Lindsey’s projection “baloney,” much as Rumsfeld had belittled General Eric Shinseki’s estimate that it would take several hundred thousand US troops to fight the war successfully.

Both Lindsey and Rumsfeld were far from the mark. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University’s Linda Bilmes have just published “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict,” and they consider that figure a conservative estimate.

In their estimate, Stiglitz and Bilmes include the long-term costs for care of the wounded and the financing costs of paying for the war with borrowed money. Calculating the cost for veterans’ care was not easy. While the government discloses figures on those wounded by hostile action, Stiglitz and Bilmes had to use Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to learn the total injured in Iraq.

The two authors make much of what the country could be getting if it were not paying for the war. For a fraction of the war’s cost, Stiglitz has noted, Congress could put the Social Security system “on solid financial footing.” The entire federal budget for autism research, about $108 million, is spent every four hours in Iraq. With just $1 trillion, the country could provide 43 million students with scholarships for four years at public universities.

Wasted dollars are just one of the costs of the war, and not the most important. Nearly 4,000 US troops and at least tens of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives. The conflict has left Iraq divided along its religious and ethnic fault lines, strengthened the theocracy in Iran, and made Uncle Sam a pariah in much of the Islamic world. This toll in human life and geopolitical consequences is all too obvious. Congress should make sure the country understands the economic cost of the war, too.

March 16, 2008 – When congressional Democrats called a hearing last month to explore the costs of the Iraq war, their star witness was not some number-crunching Pentagon planner or a besieged administration budget official. It was Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist who is giving the White House heartburn with his forceful argument that the true price of the Iraq conflict will far surpass even the hundreds of billions of dollars already tallied.

The hearing came just days before the publication of The Three Trillion Dollar War, co-authored by Stiglitz and Harvard University lecturer and public finance expert Linda J. Bilmes. The book looks beyond the “emergency supplemental” budget requests and other official expenses and strives to estimate the full range of Iraq-related costs — including long-term care for veterans — that the nation will face for years to come.

The time is ripe for such an inquiry. The five-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq finds the United States on the verge of recession, and the political debate is shifting toward whether the country should continue bankrolling such a war in the face of competing priorities.

Despite their sometimes technical prose, Stiglitz and Bilmes methodically build a compelling case that the costs of the war far exceed the $500 billion or so officially spent on it thus far. Yet by making many assumptions about the future course of the conflict — from its duration (through at least 2017, they predict) to its impact on global oil prices ($5 to $10 extra per barrel, for seven to eight years) — the authors will leave many readers unconvinced. Will the war prove extraordinarily expensive? Absolutely. But will the price tag be $2 trillion? $3 trillion? $5 trillion? It’s impossible to know.

Nevertheless, the authors address the economic realities of the conflict far more fully than did the administration before the March 2003 invasion. Then-deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that Iraqi oil revenues would fully finance any postwar reconstruction, while Bush economic adviser Larry Lindsey lost his job for having the temerity to suggest that the conflict could cost $200 billion — a fraction of the funds appropriated to date. “The tone of the entire administration was cavalier,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write, “as if the sums involved were minimal.”

In the book’s most impassioned passages, the authors analyze the cost of veterans’ care. They explain that the ratio of injuries to deaths among troops in Iraq is greater than in any past U.S. war, a development they hail as a “tribute to advances in battlefield medicine.” With so many more injured troops surviving, however, veterans’ disabilities and medical treatment have become “two of the most significant long-term costs of the Iraq war.” Even the supposedly cheap Gulf War of 1991, they note, is still costing more than $4 billion annually in veterans’ benefits.

The authors then grapple with assigning a monetary value to the lives of troops killed at war, settling on $7.2 million per individual based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s cost estimate when someone dies in an environmental disaster. And, finally, the authors consider macroeconomic effects, assessing the impact of higher federal deficits and skyrocketing oil prices (which have gone from $25 to more than $100 per barrel since the war began) and estimating the foregone boon to the economy if even a portion of the funds spent on Iraq had gone toward schools, research, infrastructure or health care in the United States.

Stiglitz and Bilmes’s final tally reaches $2.2 trillion in their “best case” scenario and $5 trillion in their “realistic-moderate” scenario — and those figures don’t even count the costs to Iraq, U.S. allies and the rest of the world. Choosing to err on the conservative side (and perhaps on the side of a catchier book title), the authors settle on $3 trillion.

In their original 2006 academic paper on this topic, Stiglitz and Bilmes estimated the war’s price tag at $1 trillion to $2 trillion. Now they’re at $3 trillion, and Stiglitz seems comfortable going higher; he recently told Bloomberg News that the true cost is “much more like $5 trillion.”

A trillion here, a trillion there — pretty soon the line between “estimate” and “guess” gets a bit blurry. On occasion, Stiglitz and Bilmes appear to overreach. They often count the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan together, and they find ways to link all manner of bad things to the U.S. invasion. For example, because solutions to global problems such as AIDS, climate change and poverty require U.S. leadership, and because the Iraq war has diminished Washington’s moral standing in the world, the war is worsening AIDS, climate change and world poverty. Really?

Stiglitz has been a bit of a hero to the left for his widely read critiques of globalization, and The Three Trillion Dollar War promises to garner much attention as well. Excerpts have appeared in U.S. and international publications, and the book is set to be translated into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

To no one’s surprise, the White House already has dismissed its conclusions. “People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto recently told reporters. “What price does Joe Stiglitz put on attacks on the homeland that have already been prevented? Or doesn’t his slide rule work that way?”

Stiglitz and Bilmes should be commended — not disparaged — for their painstaking work. But war critics should weigh the numbers carefully. “We’re grateful to him,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) gushed over Stiglitz at the congressional hearing. “His book title speaks for itself.”

Except it doesn’t. The book’s title suggests a level of precision that is not borne out in its pages. The book’s stronger lesson is the sheer range of costs — and foregone opportunities — that the authors ably identify.

“In one way or another, we will be paying for these costs, today, next year, and over the coming decades — in higher taxes, in public and private investments that will have to be curtailed, in social programs that will have to be cut back,” they write. “One cannot fight a war, especially a war as long and as costly as this war, without paying the price.” *

March 14, 2008 – Washington, DC — One-third of women in the military and 6 percent of men said they were sexually harassed, according to the latest Pentagon survey on the issue.

The figure for women was worse than the previous finding several years ago but better than a similar survey taken in 1995, the Defense Department said in a report Friday.

A separate report on sexual assaults showed that fewer cases were reported among military personnel — 2,688 cases reported last year by people in uniform compared with 2,947 reported the year before. But officials said they haven’t been collecting the data long enough to determine whether a downward trend in assaults was developing.

Both reports are mandated by Congress. The finding on sexual harassment was from the Defense Manpower Data Center, which is to report every four years and in for the latest report surveyed more than 23,000 people in 2006. The one on sexual assaults is taken from reports of actual incidents reported in 2007.

Officials said that overall, the survey showed both men and women polled think the climate on sexual relations is better in the military than it is in the nation as a whole. And the survey found that a majority of those surveyed believe the military’s training on sexual harassment is effective.

Among the findings:

–In 2006, 34 percent of women surveyed said they had been sexually harassed.

Rachel Lipari, senior scientist with the data center, said that included a wide range of problems from crude and offensive behavior — ”your basic locker room talk” — to unwanted sexual attention, ”which is being repeatedly asked for dates even though you said no or ask to enter into a sexual relationship even though you said no, and then your classic sexual coercion, your classic quid pro quo.”

The 34 percent figure for women who reported harassment compared with 24 percent in 2002 and 46 percent in 1995.

–About 5 percent of women said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact, ranging from unwanted touching, attempted sexual intercourse and completed sexual intercourse. That compared with 2.7 percent in 2002 and 6.2 percent in 1995.

Officials say the huge dip in problems reported in 2002 might have been an anomaly. The survey was taken only months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on American soil, and Lipari said officials believe 9-11 had an effect on how people responded to the survey.

Perhaps ”people were likely to not take into account (the harassment) experiences that they might have had” or perhaps ”we were in a window when people were actually trying to be nicer to each other,” she said.

— Officials said active duty members gave positive marks for improvement in defense department sexual misconduct training. About 90 percent indicated they received training in the previous year on topics related to sexual harassment and sexual assault and that their training was effective.

–The 2,688 sexual assaults reported last year by people in uniform compared to 2,947 reported the year before and 2,400 in 2005.

Officials warned that changes in the method of reporting data made it difficult to compare numbers year to year.

”The minimal decrease in numbers should not be necessarily viewed as any type of indicator or change,” said Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman. ”It takes several years to develop usable trends in data.”

Reports of sexual assault reports had jumped by about 24 percent in 2006 and nearly 40 percent in 2005. Officials attributed the increases partly to more aggressive efforts to encourage victims to come forward.

— There were 181 courts-martial last year for sexual assault, 201 nonjudicial punishments and 218 other administrative actions and discharges.

— In 111 cases, commanders couldn’t take action because the case fell to a civilian court or foreign authority, in 131 cases the subject was unidentified; in 797 the charge was unsubstantiated, unfounded or there was insufficient evidence.

–572 cases are pending. The number of investigations completed don’t correspond to the number of assaults last year because some of the cases finished last year had been reported in a previous year.

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., said she is concerned that too few perpetrators are being brought to justice and not all victims are being helped.

”Even if these numbers are accurate, the problem of violence against women in the military remains pervasive,” she said in a statement.

This is the fourth year the military has compiled detailed statistics on sexual assaults. The reporting methods have changed each year, complicating efforts to evaluate progress or determine whether it is the actual assaults or the reporting that is going up or down.

The cases involved members of the military who were either victims or accused of the assaults. The military counts rape, nonconsensual sodomy, indecent assault and attempts to commit any of those as sexual assault.

Also, this is only the second full year in which the military has included in the totals sexual assaults that are filed under a program that allows victims to report the incident and receive health care or counseling services but does not notify law enforcement or commanders.

Of the 2,688 reports filed last year, 705 were initially made under that restricted program. But victims are allowed to change their minds and pursue an investigation later, and that was done in 102 of those cases, thus 603 remain restricted.

^——

On the Net:

Defense Department Sexual Assault and Prevention: http://www.sapr.mil/

February 25, 2008 – Thousands of American families have a tragic hole in their lives that may finally be filled with answers. While the Korean War ended a half century ago, more than 8,000 American families still don’t know what happened to their loved ones.

There are 8,100 Americans still listed as missing in action from the Korean War, often called America’s “forgotten war.”

Later this week, the United States may reach a deal with China that could shed some light on the mystery of the soldiers’ disappearance.

The Chinese government is expected to open its archives to American POW/MIA investigators.

During much of the Korean War, China ran six prisoner of war camps in North Korea and another smaller one in China that may also have held American POWs. In addition to these camps, China managed several holding camps during the war. It is unknown how many of the missing American servicemen may have been held in any of the camps.

A small U.S. delegation is currently in China, anticipating that a final agreement can be reached by week’s end.

“We just hope that we can find something out of these records that they have. We believe that these records will help us & and hopefully, it will help us unlock clues as to the fate of our missing,” said Capt. Mary Olsen, a spokesperson for the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO).

Once an agreement is signed later this week, U.S. officials hope a timetable can be reached soon for American investigators to begin researching the Chinese files, which DPMO has been seeking access to for years.

Though the U.S. and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations, DPMO research teams were allowed to conduct excavations for possible remains of missing servicemen at various sites in North Korea from 1996 through 2005. Those excavations were temporarily suspended in 2005, when concerns mounted over North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear program.

“We’re hoping this will help us out. This is a very first step, and very positive,” said Olsen.

Olsen said past excavations had taken place near the sites of some of the Chinese-run POW camps.

VCS Note: We strongly encourage our members and supporters in Florida to attend this wonderful event ~ Paul Sullivan 

March 13, 2008 – The Florida Veterans for Common Sense (FVCS) have organized a walkathon to benefit wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan on Siesta Key Beach on March 30.

All funds raised by the walkathon will go to the Haley House Fund, which was created in 2004 to provide facilities for the visiting loved ones of veterans being treated by the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital.

The hospital receives more seriously injured veterans, with staff specializing in the treatment of brain and spinal cord injuries. Since patients often need several months of treatment, their families are left to handle the cost of hotels and living expenses during their recovery.

The Haley House in Brandon helps the friends and families of patients who live more than 50 miles from the Haley House and qualify for aid based upon income with living arrangements as well as the recently completed “Comfort Center,” complete with full kitchen, washer and dryer, and a TV and game area. Volunteers at Haley House have found a marked difference in a patient’s recovery with the presence of their loved ones, providing them with the necessary support system to significantly cut down on their recovery time.

As Harry Stimmel, FVCS board member and co-creator of the walkathon said, “If the parents live in Oklahoma, and they don’t have much money, we’re providing them with some kind of facility so they can visit the veteran … it can make all the difference.”

As a display of their faith in the Haley House Fund and the support that it provides to veterans and their families, each member donates the cost of a room to Haley House on his own birthday every year.

All of the local members of the Florida Veterans for Common Sense plan to participate in the walk, as well as many of the Haley House staff.

INTERESTED?

To participate in the walk, make a per-mile pledge or to make a direct donation, contact retired Air Force Lt. Col. Len Gumley, FVCS board member, at 927-0777, or mail it to him at 5408 Eagles Point Circle, Sarasota, FL 34231.

March 13, 2008 – House Chaplin Rev. Daniel P. Coughlin delivers benediction on Capitol Hill in Washington during a congressional ceremony to honor those who’ve served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

by Frank James

All the right words were spoken at today’s event to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, an event that was also billed as an acknowledgement of the Afghan War.)

The four congressional leaders praised the troops now serving, and those who’ve lost their lives, as well as veterans. In the spirit of what was advertised beforehand as a bipartisan event, the lawmakers checked any unseemly finger-pointing at the door.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose office had the idea for the ceremony, said: “After five years of the war on in Iraq and more than six in Afghanistan, the selflessness of our heroes continues to make us proud.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ky.) did, however, acknowledged how divisive the Iraq War has been.

Today our nation is engaged in a great debate about the future course of that war and the greater war of which it is a part. There is passion and seriousness and patriotism on both sides. Yet one thing is certain. The men and women of our military have done their jobs. Their purpose is just.
Here’s the transcript of the ceremony:

SPEAKER PELOSI: Here in this beautiful Rotunda we solemnly remember the service of the men and women of our armed forces on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the initiation of hostilities in Iraq, and we pay tribute to all of those serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world. When our nation called, the brave men and women of our armed forces responded without delay. When sent into battle, they performed their duties effectively with bravery, dignity and honor that are the hallmark of American soldiers, sailors, air men, Coast Guardsmen and Marines. After five years of the war on in Iraq and more than six in Afghanistan, the selflessness of our heroes continues to make us proud.

War extracts a terrible price. Just in the past three days, 12 more of our heroes have fallen in Iraq. Every loss brought pain to our hearts. Few understood the price and pain of war more deeply than America’s most celebrated soldier, Dwight David Eisenhower. The statue is the most recent addition to the Rotunda. As you can see, as you leave, as you noticed coming in, when his statute arrived many of us were surprised to see the great man depicted not as the president of the United States, but as a five-star general. His family told us that is how President General Eisenhower wanted to be presented. Everyone knew he was president; he wanted everyone to know of his military service to our country as a five-star general.

Having seen the deadliest combat in human history as well as the new destructive force which ended World War II, Eisenhower devoted his presidency to reducing the risk of war. Upon leaving office, President Eisenhower concluded his farewell address with a prayer that in, quote, “in the goodness of time all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”

In the spirit of General Eisenhower, under the gaze of his statue’s watchful eye, we honor the service of our men and women in uniform of our armed services, those who have returned home, and their brothers and sisters in arms we’ve lost. We mourn every day. In the spirit of his farewell prayer, we seek to end conflict, to promote peace and to build a future worthy of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, majority leader of the United States Senate, the honorable Harry Reid.

SEN. REID: One hundred and forty-two years ago in this hall, where we now sit and stand, laid in state a martyred body of President Abraham Lincoln. Americans came from every corner of our country that day to grieve the president and honor the ideals expressed in his second inaugural address, where he said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Today we stand together, not as Democrats or Republicans but as Americans, all to honor every airman, soldier, sailor and Marine who has served and every American hero who has perished in that far-off land of Iraq.

We pay special tribute to the more than 30,000 gallant Americans wounded in battle and to the 3,987 who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. We honor their parents, children, husbands, wives and friends, those they loved and those who loved them. They too bear a heavy burden in service to the ideals we cherish.

While today’s focus is on the five-year war in Iraq, we do not forget the men and women who have sacrificed in Afghanistan. We could not possibly honor our troops with words to match the honor of their brave action. But let it be known to all, from the beaches of America to the sands of Iraq, that they’re in our hearts and in our prayers; that in their honor and in their memory we will, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, always cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, Republican leader of the United States Senate, the Honorable Mitch McConnell.

SEN. MCCONNELL: Five years ago next week in the sands of Kuwait, a captain in the U.S. Army spoke some very American words to the soldiers in his command. “Do your job,” he said, “so we can all go home.” An army advanced. The war in Iraq had begun.

Today our nation is engaged in a great debate about the future course of that war and the greater war of which it is a part. There is passion and seriousness and patriotism on both sides. Yet one thing is certain. The men and women of our military have done their jobs. Their purpose is just.

And on this day of remembrance, in this place of honor, we thank all who have served. We commend all who have sacrificed to protect our nation from the cruel designs of evil men. Some have returned with wounded bodies and shaken souls. Some have not come home. Many mothers and fathers and husbands and wives and children have kept lonely vigil for loved ones. And many have wept bitter tears over a long-delayed reunion or a shattering loss of life. We have been grief-stricken in the face of injury and death. And in quiet prayers we’ve asked the Lord of Mercy to embrace the fallen in a kingdom where, as we read, every tear is wiped away.

Sixty-nine Kentuckians have given their lives in this fight. Their stories have a common theme. They loved their families and they believed their service would keep their families safe. The widow of one Kentucky soldier was asked how her husband wished to be remembered. She did not hesitate. “He loved his country,” she said. “He really believed in what he was doing in Iraq.” We have felt a solemn pride in men and women like these, in the great feats of bravery and in the small acts of kindness of our troops that we’ve heard from the front.

We’ve been humbled by the sacrifice of so many Americans. And today we recommit ourselves to their service, to the care of those who have returned and to the full support of those who fight.

We pray for those who are in the field to be strong and confident and safe from all harm, and we pray this morning also for the strength to bear new burdens that will come.

In the summer of 1861, Abraham Lincoln came to this building to speak about another war. The dome above us was half-finished, and Confederate soldiers were in striking distance of the capital city. Lincoln said that Americans had already shown they could establish and administer a government of the people. Now they had to prove that this government could be maintained in the face of an internal revolt. In the crucible of a bloody civil war, America proved it could withstand that threat.

In the century that followed, millions of Americans would rise up to beat back the threat of despots who mocked the rights of men. And in this third American century, we will prove that America is stronger than the fanatics who want to destroy it.

These years have not been easy, but we are reminded, in the words of an ancient writer, that the purpose of war is peace. And on this day of remembrance, we can be sure that as long as good and generous souls rise up to defend America, the world can hope for days of peace to come.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, Republican leader of the United States House of Representatives, the Honorable John Boehner.

REP. BOEHNER: America is a nation defined by its unfailing commitment to freedom and liberty. Throughout our nation’s history, freedom and liberty have been repeatedly challenged. And throughout our nation’s history, the men and women of our military have always answered the call. And we gather today beneath the Rotunda of our Capitol to say thank you. We gather to honor the five years of service and sacrifice our troops and their families — that have made for the war in Iraq, and we gather to remember those who are serving our nation in Afghanistan and throughout the world.

Under this Rotunda, we honor our nation’s greatest heroes and we celebrate their accomplishments. The men and women of our military and their families are our nation’s greatest heroes, and their incredible accomplishments are indeed a cause for celebration. Across the globe, bolstered by their faith in God and the love of their families, American soldiers have performed heroic deeds — in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world. They’ve built schools, they’ve — protected communities, they’ve built bridges and infrastructure, they’ve liberated the women of Kabul, they’ve liberated nations.

Their achievements are too numerous to count and too widespread to fully catalogue. The least we can do is to take time from our daily routine to stop, to think, and to express our thanks and gratitude for the sacrifices of our military families and continue — the sacrifices they continue to make.

The life of every American soldier is a precious gift. You are the pride of America. A grateful nation says thanks. And we will never, ever forget.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for a moment of silence and the benediction.

(A moment of silence is observed, followed by the benediction.)

March 13, 2008 – Any way you cut it, Kyle Williams is a success story. He did two tours in Iraq and came back in one piece.

Well, sort of. A mortar attack that threw him into a wall ended his second tour a little early. He had to have surgery to his shoulder and the bottom half of his face. All in all, he looks pretty good.

And now he’s taking advantage of his veteran’s benefits to get an education.

Well, sort of. Last fall, Williams was finishing up at Sierra College and preparing to transfer to UC Davis when SN&R spoke to him about his activities as president of the Sierra College Veterans Club. He’d helped to organize The Road Home: From Combat to College and Beyond, an event to provide information and assistance for veterans who wanted to make use of their educational benefits (see “The war at home,” SN&R News, October 18, 2007).

But Williams’ transition from the two-year program at Sierra College to UC Davis’ bachelor’s program wasn’t all that seamless.

“The problem is at that at UC Davis, they count your G.I. Bill benefits as income on the FAFSA [Free Application for Federal Student Aid], and that kind of messes with your financial aid,” Williams told SN&R this week. Because Sierra College is on the semester system and UC Davis is on the quarter system, the money that the UC system counted as income had already been used to finish his work at the community college.

“It really worried me, and I had to take out a loan to get through the first quarter,” he said. “That’s got to cover all the living expenses and tuition, too, because my veteran’s benefits were already used for the last semester.”

Unlike most Americans, Williams hates to be in debt, so he’s trying to keep up with the interest payments. But then, unlike most Americans, he volunteered to serve in the military after the 9/11 attacks.

As the Iraq war marks its fifth anniversary this week, the ongoing problem with paying for veteran’s education has led Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia and a number of co-sponsors to introduce the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act. It’s also being called the “G.I. Bill for the 21st century,” because it brings benefits for all service members (including National Guard soldiers) up to the level of those enjoyed by veterans returning from World War II.

While it may seem only fair that education benefits for veterans actually cover tuition, Webb’s bill has come under unexpected fire from the Department of Defense. News reports last week quoted unnamed DOD sources as claiming that the bill might increase recruitment, but it would also devastate retention of trained troops.

Apparently, veterans can’t wait to get an education. Last fall’s Road Home, a combination of keynote speakers on veterans’ issues and a chance to meet with other vet-services providers, was hugely successful. But the real test of any outreach is how well it works down the road.

After all, we’re still busy making veterans. There are currently more than 150,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq, with another 27,000 in Afghanistan, according to reports from news sources and the Department of Defense.

When they get home, those vets have to navigate an often confusing system in order to use the benefits they’ve earned for college. What’s more, veterans are often dealing with other readjustment issues: disability from injuries, including traumatic brain injury, a form of closed head trauma associated with the large number of concussions that soldiers in these wars have received from IED explosions; mental-health issues ranging from combat stress to post-traumatic stress disorder; the difficulty of attempting to get on their feet financially after a long absence from the workforce; family difficulties, beginning with the long absence and exacerbated by the stress of war.

As the experience of Vietnam veterans amply demonstrates, these folks don’t get as much assistance as we might expect a grateful nation would provide. Oh, the services are there—mostly—but vets have to find them. Then they have to jump through the right hoops to make sure that they get all the help they qualify for—and that they don’t get slapped with a bill for it.

Enter the best source of help for a veteran: other veterans. That was the whole theory behind The Road Home last October, and it’s one that works.

Catherine Morris, a veterans counselor with student services at Sierra College, worked with Williams when he was enrolled there. Veterans may start school with difficulties that need to be addressed, Morris told SN&R, but the worst thing possible is to leave them alone to figure it out themselves. A veteran of three branches of service—she stayed out of the Navy because she hates to wear white—Morris said that the “worst thing you can do to a vet is to isolate them.”

“The camaraderie is so critical in the military,” she said. “It’s what keeps you sane. And when you get discharged, it’s just instantly gone.” The goal in serving returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, she said, is to find ways “to provide that sense of camaraderie again, and a place to process and to get professional support if they need it.”

Morris meets with every one of her veteran students at Sierra College for a minimum of an hour, assessing their individual needs. Then she follows up, tracking the support necessary to give them a fighting chance at collegiate success.

What’s more, she works with faculty members to educate them about “what’s going on with veterans.” Morris and her colleagues have held workshops on veterans’ issues for interested faculty members, and it’s already paying off. A professor who’d been through one workshop noticed that a student who was an Iraq vet was doing everything he was supposed to do in class, but seemed to be having problems concentrating. She referred him to Morris, who discovered he’d had three concussions in Iraq.

“So immediately, with the three concussions, I suspect TBI,” Morris said. “I called the VA’s [Veterans Affairs] local OIF/OEF [Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom] coordinator, and he was able to get this young man into the right program right away.”

That’s the sort of assistance veterans need—speedy, but not intrusive. Veterans are sensitive—and rightly so—about the way they’re perceived. The last thing a guy like Williams, or any other veteran, wants is to be thought of as “the psycho vet.”

“The term is ‘broken’ in the military,” said Williams. “And that can mean anything from your leg doesn’t work right to you’re not sleeping at night.” Rather than be identified as broken, a lot of veterans ignore problems or push them away as minor.

“We don’t have to do everything for these vets,” Morris said, pointing out that the men and women who’ve served in the armed forces are among the most competent and resourceful around. “We don’t have to fix them. But if we know how to get them to the right place, they can get what they need.”

Sierra College is only reaching the 225 veterans enrolled there, however. What about the rest? VA statistics show there are more than 22,000 veterans under the age of 40 in the greater Sacramento area.

The good news is that last fall’s Road Home program started the ball rolling for local veterans groups and other service providers. Since then, representatives of these groups have been meeting under the auspices of an umbrella group, the Sacramento Veterans Community Support Network, to communicate with each other and work together to reach out to area veterans. The hope was that, if the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were addressed immediately, crisis situations such as homelessness and severe mental-health problems could be avoided.

Among other things, SVCSN will be making a series out of The Road Home. The next is planned for September 19, at American River College, which has had its enrollment of veterans increase by nearly 17 percent since 2004, according to information obtained from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

The local support network hopes to generate the sort of quick referrals that Sierra College is able to make for its students, and the service won’t be limited to recent vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. The group is working on a Web site that they hope will help all vets find the right resources just by filling out a questionnaire.

And, of course, as knowledge expands within the veteran community of the services that are available, its ability to help individuals increases as well.

Robert Bradley, the site director for the Sacramento Veterans Resource Center, told SN&R that SVCSN, which was already forming at the time of Sierra College’s Road Home program, saw it as exactly the sort of program that needed to happen regularly. “Instead of having one a year, we need to have one every quarter,” he said. “As this flood of veterans returns from overseas, we need to be ready to meet them with the information and assistance they need.”

The network has involved the Los Rios Community College system, Sac State, the University of Phoenix and several occupational schools in planning. The event in September will be “an opportunity to present administrators and faculty with the particular challenges that this new wave of vets is facing, and really beginning to discuss how we can shape what we’re doing in education to meet these needs,” said Bradley. Future events will focus on strengthening veterans’ clubs on campuses and making sure that each school has a counselor who is a veteran.

Back at UC Davis, Williams is adjusting both to a new, bigger campus and to a higher level of academic demands. He’s pleased that the work he did on The Road Home has borne such fruit, and he intends to become involved with the veterans group at UCD. But for now, he is directing his attention to adjusting to the changes.

And he’s having a little trouble concentrating. “I’m having some problems with attention,” he said. “It was never a problem before I went in the service, but I don’t want to assume it’s related to the head injury.” He lost consciousness in the explosion that disabled him. His face is fine, he says, but he still has problems with his shoulder and “sometimes, I’ll be sitting in class and find I’m not able to concentrate on what’s going on.” He’s quick to assure that “it’s not like flashbacks or all the bad stuff, it’s just a change that concerns me.”

Last fall at the conference, several other vets urged Williams to get checked for TBI. He had too much going on to get in for a CT scan. He’s making appointments with a VA hospital for spring break, when he’ll have time.

Right now, though, he’s got a paper due.

March 12, 2008 – With March 20 marking the fifth anniversary of the United States-led invasion of Iraq, it’s time to take stock of what has happened.

In our new book The Three Trillion Dollar War, Harvard’s Linda Bilmes and I conservatively estimate the economic cost of the war to the U.S. to be $3 trillion, and the costs to the rest of the world to be another $3 trillion – far higher than the Bush administration’s estimates before the war.

The Bush team not only misled the world about the war’s possible costs, but has also sought to obscure the costs as the war has gone on.

This is not surprising. After all, the Bush administration lied about everything else, from Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to his supposed link with Al Qaeda. Indeed, only after the U.S.-led invasion did Iraq become a breeding ground for terrorists.

The Bush administration said the war would cost $50 billion. The U.S. now spends that amount in Iraq every three months.

To put that number in context: For one-sixth of the cost of the war, the U.S. could put its social security system on a sound footing for more than a half-century, without cutting benefits or raising contributions.

Moreover, the Bush administration cut taxes for the rich as it went to war, despite running a budget deficit. As a result, it has had to use deficit spending – much of it financed from abroad – to pay for the war.

This is the first war in American history that has not demanded some sacrifice from citizens through higher taxes; instead, the entire cost is being passed onto future generations.

Unless things change, the U.S. national debt – which was $5.7 trillion when Bush became president – will be $2 trillion higher because of the war (in addition to the $800 billion increase under Bush before the war).

Was this incompetence or dishonesty?

Almost surely both.

Cash accounting meant that the Bush administration focused on today’s costs, not future costs, including disability and health care for returning veterans.

Only years after the war began did the administration order the specially armoured vehicles that would have saved the lives of many killed by roadside bombs.

Not wanting to reintroduce a draft, and finding it difficult to recruit for an unpopular war, troops have been forced into two, three or four stress-filled deployments.

The administration has tried to keep the war’s costs from the American public. Veterans groups have used the Freedom of Information Act to discover the total number of injured – 15 times the number of fatalities.

Already, 52,000 returning veterans have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The U.S. government will need to provide disability compensation to an estimated 40 per cent of the 1.65 million troops that have already been deployed.

And, of course, the bleeding will continue as long as the war continues, with the health-care and disability bill amounting to more than $600 billion (in present-value terms).

Ideology and profiteering have also played a role in driving up the war’s costs. America has relied on private contractors, which have not come cheap.

A Blackwater Security guard can cost more than $1,000 per day, not including disability and life insurance, which is paid for by the government.

When unemployment rates in Iraq soared to 60 per cent, hiring Iraqis would have made sense; but the contractors preferred to import cheap labour from Nepal, the Philippines and other countries.

The war has had only two winners: oil companies and defence contractors. The stock price of Halliburton, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s old company, has soared. But even as the government turned increasingly to contractors, it reduced its oversight.

The largest cost of this mismanaged war has been borne by Iraq. Half of Iraq’s doctors have been killed or have left the country, unemployment stands at 25 per cent and, five years after the war’s start, Baghdad still has less than eight hours of electricity a day.

Out of Iraq’s total population of around 28 million, 4 million are displaced and 2 million have fled the country.

The thousands of violent deaths have inured most Westerners to what is going on: A bomb blast that kills 25 hardly seems newsworthy anymore.

But statistical studies of death rates before and after the invasion tell some of the grim reality. They suggest additional deaths from a low of around 450,000 in the first 40 months of the war (150,000 of them violent deaths) to 600,000.

With so many people in Iraq suffering so much in so many ways, it may seem callous to discuss the economic costs.

And it may seem particularly self-absorbed to focus on the economic costs to America, which embarked on this war in violation of international law. But the economic costs are enormous, and they go well beyond budgetary outlays.

Americans like to say that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Nor is there such a thing as a free war. The U.S. – and the world – will be paying the price for decades to come.

Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, is professor of economics at Columbia University and co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.