Veterans for Common Sense

February 9, 2008 – After one spends 45 years in Washington , high farce does not normally throw one off balance.  I found the past few days, however, an acid test of my equilibrium.

I missed the National Prayer Breakfast—for the 45th time in a row.  But, as I drove to work I listened with rapt attention as President George W. Bush gave his insights on prayer:

“When we lift our hearts to God, we’re all equal in his sight.  We’re all equally precious…In prayer we grow in mercy and compassion…. When we answer God’s call to love a neighbor as ourselves, we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man — and a deeper relationship with our eternal Father.”

Vice President Dick Cheney skipped Thursday’s prayer breakfast in order to put the final touches on the speech he gave later that morning to the Conservative Political Action Conference.  Perhaps he felt he needed some extra time to devise careful words to extol “the interrogation program run by the CIA…a tougher program for tougher customers, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11,” without conceding that the program has involved torture.

But there was a touch of defensiveness in Cheney’s remarks, as he saw fit repeatedly to reassure his audience yesterday that America is a “decent” country.

After all, CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed publicly on Tuesday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other “high-value” detainees had been waterboarded in 2002-2003, though Hayden added that the technique has since been discontinued.

An extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding has been condemned as torture by just about everyone—except the hired legal hands of the Bush administration.

On Wednesday President Bush’s spokesman Tony Fratto revealed that the White House reserves the right to approve waterboarding again, “depending on the circumstances.”  Fratto matter-of-factly described the process still followed by the Bush administration to approve torture—er; I mean, “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding:

“The process includes the director of the Central Intelligence Agency bringing the proposal to the attorney general, where the review would be conducted to determine if the plan would be legal and effective.  At that point, the proposal would go to the president.  The president would listen to the determination of his advisers and make a decision.”

Dissing Congress

Cheney’s task of reassuring us about our “decency” was made no easier Thursday, when Attorney General Michael Mukasey stonewalled questions from the hapless John Conyers, titular chair of the House Judiciary Committee.  Conyers tried, and failed, to get straight answers from Mukasey on torture.

Conyers referred to Hayden’s admission about waterboarding and branded the practice “odious.”  But Mukasey seemed to take perverse delight in “dissing” Conyers, as the expression goes in inner city Washington .  Sadly, the tired chairman took the disrespect stoically.

He did summon the courage to ask Attorney General Mukasey directly, “Are you ready to start a criminal investigation into whether this confirmed use of waterboarding by U.S. agents was illegal?”

“No, I am not,” Mukasey answered.

Mukasey claimed “waterboarding was found to be permissible under the law as it existed” in the years immediately after 9/11; thus, the Justice Department could not investigate someone for doing something the department had declared legal.  Got that?

Mukasey explained:

“That would mean the same department that authorized the program would now consider prosecuting somebody who followed that advice.”

Oddly, Mukasey himself is on record saying waterboarding would be torture if applied to him.  And Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was even more explicit in taking the same line in an interview with Lawrence Wright of New Yorker magazine.  McConnell told Wright that, for him:

“Waterboarding would be excruciating.  If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful!  Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”

Okay, it would be torture if done to you, Mike; how about if done to others?  Sadly, McConnell, too, missed the prayer breakfast and the president’s moving reminder that we are called “to love a neighbor as ourselves.”   Is there an exception, perhaps, for detainees?

Cat Out of Bag

When torture first came up during his interview with the New Yorker, McConnell was more circumspect, repeating the obligatory bromide “We don’t torture,” as former CIA Director George Tenet did in five consecutive sentences while hawking his memoir on 60 Minutes on April 29, 2007.  As McConnell grew more relaxed, however, he let slip the rationale for Mukasey’s effrontery and the administration’s refusal to admit that waterboarding is torture.  For anyone paying attention, that rationale has long been a no-brainer.  But here is McConnell inadvertently articulating it:

“If it is ever determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it.”

Like death.  Even Alberto Gonzales could grasp this at the outset.  That explains the overly clever, lawyerly wording in the Jan. 25, 2002 memorandum for the president drafted by the vice president’s lawyer, David Addington, but signed by Gonzales.  Addington/Gonzales argued that the president’s determination that the Geneva agreements on prisoners of war do not apply to al-Qaeda and the Taliban:

“Substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441)…enacted in 1996…

“Punishments for violations of Section 2441include the death penalty…

“[I]t is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441.  Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT, January 25, 2002, p. 2

Mike McConnell needs to get his own lawyers to bring him up to date on all this.  For that memorandum was quickly followed by an action memorandum signed by George W. Bush on Feb. 7, 2002.  The president’s memo incorporated the exact wording of Addington/Gonzales’ bottom line; to wit, the U.S. would “treat the detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of [ Geneva ].  (emphasis added)

That provided the loophole through which then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-CIA director George Tenet and their subordinates drove the Mack truck of torture.  Even the Bush-administration-friendly editorial page of the Washington Post saw fit on Friday to declare torture “illegal in all instances,” adding that “waterboarding is, and always has been, torture.”

Waterboarding has been condemned as torture for a very long time.  After WW-II Japanese soldiers were hanged for the “war crime” of waterboarding American soldiers.

Patriots and Prophets

Patriots and prophets have made it clear from our earliest days that such abuse has no place in America .

Virginia ’s Patrick Henry insisted passionately that “the rack and the screw,” as he put it, were barbaric practices that had to be left behind in the Old World , or we are “lost and undone.”  Attorney General Mukasey, for his part, recently refused to say whether he considers the rack and the screw forms of torture, dismissing the question as hypothetical.

As for prophets, George Hunzinger of Princeton Theological Seminary has awakened enough religious folks to form the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a coalition of 130 religious organizations from left to right on the political spectrum.  Hunzinger puts it succinctly: “To acknowledge that waterboarding is torture is like conceding that the sun rises in the east,” adding:

“All the dissembling in high places that makes these shocking abuses possible must be brought to an end. But they will undoubtedly continue unless those responsible for them are held accountable…. A special counsel is an essential first step.”

Sadly, Hunzinger and his associates have been unable to overcome the pious complacency of the vast majority of institutional churches, synagogues, and mosques in this country and their reluctance to exercise moral leadership.

How It Looks From Outside

Sometimes it takes a truth-telling outsider to throw light on our moral failures.

South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey, erstwhile chaplain to Nelson Madela in prison and longtime outspoken opponent of apartheid, has this to say to those clergy who might be moved to preach more than platitudes:

“We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth.  You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly or indirectly, by the poor of the earth.  You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.

“All around the world there are those who long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet.”

Mukasey’s thumbing his nose at Conyers’ committee yesterday was simply the most recent display of contempt for Congress on the part of the Bush administration.  The Founders expected our representatives in Congress to be taken seriously by the executive branch, and expected that Members of Congress would hold senior executives accountable—to the point of impeaching them, when necessary, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

That used to worry those officials and put a brake on more outlandish behavior.  Not any more.

No Worries, George

One reads George Tenet’s memoirs with some nostalgia for the days of a modicum of congressional oversight, and with a strong sense of irony—as he confesses concern that Congress might one day hold him and others accountable for taking liberties with national and international law.

It seems likely that then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington counseled Tenet that his concerns were quaint and obsolete and, alas, they may have been right, the way things have been going.  But Tenet apparently entertained lingering misgivings—perhaps even qualms of conscience.

In the immediate post-9/11 period, Tenet says he told the president “our only real ally” on the Afghan border was Uzbekistan , “where we had established important intelligence-collection capabilities.”  We now know from UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray that those “collection capabilities” included the most primitive methods of torture, including boiling alleged “terrorists” alive.

Tenet adds that he stressed the importance of being able to detain unilaterally al-Qaeda operatives around the world.  His worries shine through the rather telling sentences that follow:

“We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA ever had.  Things could blow up.  People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act.”  At the Center of the Storm, p. 177-178

Tenet need not have worried.  He would be shielded from accountability by a timid Congress as well as an arrogant White House able to arrogate unprecedented power to itself and to shield those it wished to protect.

Setting the Tone

It was President George W. Bush who set the tone from the outset.  After his address to the nation on the evening of 9/11, he assembled his top national security aides in the White House bunker—the easier, perhaps, to foster a bunker mentality.  Among them was counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who quoted the president in his memoir:

“I want you to understand that we are at war and we will stay at war until this is done.  Nothing else matters.  Everything is available for the pursuit of this war.  Any barriers in your way, they’re gone.  Any money you need, you have it. This is our only agenda…

“I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”   Against All Enemies, Free Press, 2004

Clarke, of course, took his book’s title from the oath of office we all swore as military officers and/or senior government officials: “To defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

John Ashcroft, head of the Department of Justice at the time, fell in lockstep with the thrust of the president’s comment dismissing any concern with international law—or, as would quickly be seen, domestic law, as well.  With the enthusiastic assistance of David Addington, the affable Ashcroft assembled a cabal of Mafia-like lawyers whose imaginative legal opinions on torture, warrantless eavesdropping, and other abuses mark them forever as “domestic enemies” of the Constitution.

Add Mukasey to this distinguished roster.

Torture: the Hallmark

What is not widely known is that Justice Department-approved torture was first applied on an American citizen, John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan in late November 2001.  The White House and corporate press immediately sensationalized Lindh as “the American Taliban.”

Jesselyn Radack, a conscientious legal advisor in the Justice Department’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, which gives ethics advice to Department attorneys, insisted that Lindh be advised of his rights before any interrogation.  Instead, he was tortured mercilessly during the first few days of his internment and denied medical care.

Lindh had had the foolishness and bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; i. e., in a large group of prisoners rounded up by CIA and Army paramilitary forces—too large a group, it turned out.

A spontaneous uprising took place, and CIA paramilitary officer Johnny “Mike” Spann, who had questioned Lindh just minutes before, was shot dead.  Outraged, Spann’s colleagues applied “frontier justice,” totally ignoring the Constitutional cautions of Ms. Radack.

The Department of Justice moved quickly to fire Radack for her principled stand.  But she had the presence of mind to save emails providing chapter and verse of the difficult exchanges in which she had insisted on respect for Lindh’s rights as an American citizen.  Newsweek carried the story briefly, but neither Congress nor anyone else in the media showed much interest.

Radack’s book recounting this experience, The Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, is available on line at: http://www.patriotictruthteller.net/.

Against this backdrop, together with Guantanamo , Abu Ghraib, and prisons in Afghanistan , Iraq , and elsewhere, Patrick Henry’s warning remains a challenge for our time: Are we “lost and undone?”  I think not; but we had better get it together soon, for, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., cautioned, “There is such a thing as too late.”

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC.  He was an Army intelligence officer before joining the CIA where he had a 27-year career as an analyst.  He is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

February 9, 2008 – 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.

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       
Siesta Key Beach Walkathon Chairman   
Florida Veterans for Common Sense    
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

Web Sites:

James A. Haley VA Medical Center: http://www1.va.gov/visn8/tampa/

Haley House Fund, Inc: http://www.haleyhousefund.com/

February 10, 2008 – BAGHDAD – A U.S. Army sniper convicted of killing an unarmed Iraqi civilian and planting evidence on his body was sentenced Sunday to 10 years in prison.

Sgt. Evan Vela had faced a possible life sentence. Earlier Sunday, jurors found him guilty of murder without premeditation in the May 11 killing of an Iraqi man south of Baghdad.

Vela was also sentenced to forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and will receive a dishonorable discharge. His case is automatically referred to a military appeals court.

He will be transferred to a U.S. military base in Kuwait, where he will remain until the military decides on a permanent incarceration site in the United States.

Vela had previously been charged with premeditated murder, but that charge was changed during his court-martial in Baghdad. He was also found guilty of making a false official statement and of conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.

The defendant showed no emotion as the verdict was read. Two of his lawyers leaned over and gave him a light hug over the shoulders before leading him out of the courtroom on a U.S. military base in Baghdad.

Defense lawyers had claimed the killing of Genei Nasir al-Janabi was an accident, brought on by extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation. But military prosecutors called it a simple case of murder.

“It’s a simple case,” said Capt. Jason Nef, one of two military prosecutors. “The reason is because Vela confessed on the stand that he lied. He confessed he killed an unarmed Iraqi.”

Vela, who is from St. Anthony, Idaho, wept on the witness stand Saturday as he described shooting al-Janabi after the Iraqi civilian stumbled upon a hiding place where Vela and five other Army snipers were sleeping near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad.

‘I don’t remember pulling the trigger’

“I don’t remember pulling the trigger. I don’t remember the sound of the shot,” Vela said in a near whisper, thumbing the hem of his camouflage jacket and looking straight ahead. “It took me a few seconds to realize that the shot came from my pistol.”

He testified that after he shot al-Janabi, he tried to shoot him again because “he was convulsing on the ground and I thought he might be suffering.”

“I just didn’t want him to suffer. It was something I’ve never seen and I got a bit scared,” Vela said. The second shot missed the man.

James Culp, Vela’s attorney, had unsuccessfully argued that Vela was too sleep deprived to know what he was doing.

“This was an accident waiting to happen,” Culp told the jury of seven men and one woman in his closing argument Sunday. “What happened on May 11 is clear: These men were extremely, extremely sleep deprived and nobody was thinking clearly.”

Vela and his sniper team had hiked through rough terrain and slept less than five hours in the 72-hours leading up to the killing, the defense said.

Culp also called two medical experts who testified that Vela was suffering from acute sleep deprivation and exhaustion. They said he later lied about the events in part because he suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome.

Ordered to kill

On Friday, Vela’s commanding officer testified that he ordered Vela to kill al-Janabi, saying that was the only way to ensure the safety of his men in hostile territory.

Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, who was a staff sergeant at the time of the killing but was later demoted, testified that he and the other members of the sniper team had all fallen asleep, then awoke to find al-Janabi squatting about three feet from them.

Hensley said he ordered the man to lie on the ground and was searching him when he saw “military-aged men” who he thought were carrying weapons about 100 yards away.

He said al-Janabi began yelling, and he decided that killing the man was the only way to keep the sniper hide-out from being discovered by what he believed was a group of approaching insurgents.

Hensley, of Candler, N.C., and Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., of Laredo, Texas have faced similar charges in al-Janabi’s killing as well as two other slayings. They were acquitted of murder but convicted of planting evidence on the dead Iraqis.

Sandoval was sentenced to five months in prison, his rank was reduced to private and his pay was withheld. Hensley was sentenced to 135 days confinement, reduced in rank to sergeant and received a letter of reprimand.

The soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Vela testified at Hensley’s court-martial in late September, under a deal that bars his account of events from being used against him at his own court-martial.

February 8, 2008 – EUREKA, CA (KGO) — A Vietnam veteran escaped the war unharmed, but the financial scars left by his battle with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) over medical bills posed a more serious threat. So, he called for reinforcements and 7 On Your Side’s Michael Finney answered the call for help.

When a surgeon removed a tumor from James Hendryx colon, his fight was just beginning. The VA refused to pay his near $50,000 dollar medical claim. It’s an experience veteran advocates say is not uncommon.

Dr. Luther Cobb removed the tumor from Hendryx’ colon and says “it seemed to be an open and shut case. He clearly needed to have it done.”

20 months after the successful surgery, Hendrix is healthy but battle tested. He was rushed into surgery in March of 2006 at Mad River Community Hospital after becoming anemic and losing two thirds of his blood volume.

The bills from the surgery and the treatment quickly added up. He owed $5,900 dollars for the surgery itself, more than $1,000 a day for his hospital stay, along with various other hospital bills. For that, his total bill came out to around $40,000 dollars. Hendryx submitted his bills to his VA Medical Insurance.

“We sent them the bills and the letters and the doctors and social workers and stuff sent me letters back saying no, this is denied. This is not acceptable by our standards at the VA,” says Hendryx.

To understand why his claim was denied, you have to go back to October of 2005. That’s when his VA doctor sent him to the San Francisco for a colonoscopy. He says the technician suggested he get a sigmoidoscopy instead, because the examination of just the lower part of his colon would be less invasive.

Hendryx’ decision to get a sigmoidoscopy was a costly one. The procedure failed to detect the tumor and it’s also the reason the VA denied his insurance claim.

In its denial letter, the VA wrote: “Patient refused full colonoscopy against the recommendation of our staff, the request for payment is denied.”

Hendryx’ surgeon sits on the Executive Board of the California Medical Association. He says the VA misdiagnosed the case.

“He showed up at their facility and got a test that didn’t make the diagnosis. They didn’t follow it up. They missed the call,” says Cobb.

Hendryx spent the next 20 months after surgery fighting his claim denial.

“We try to pay our bills, and I didn’t have any way of knowing how I was going to pay up to $50,000 thousand dollars in medical bills. I was a little worried. I was afraid of losing everything we had over this,” says Hendryx.

Dr. Cobb says “it’s one of those outrageous insurance stories you just have to see to believe.” He says the denial was all about a budget strapped agency saving money.

Ken Swasey is the Outreach Coordinator at the VA. He says “I would categorically say that’s not how we look at it. First and foremost we have to get the services that veterans need.”

However, others say the influx of new veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has put a strain on the VA.

“Sometimes VA is using cheaper tests and waiting longer to give those tests. In that waiting period, the veterans condition gets worse,” says Paul Sullivan, Veterans for Common Sense.

“I would think there’s some confusion, misunderstanding about the VA’s ability to accommodate, not just returning veterans, but veterans in general. The VA has done incredible efforts to accommodate returning veterans,” says Ken Swasey, Veterans Administration.

Over the next year, Hendryx unsuccessfully tried to get the VA to reverse its decision and pay his claim. 16 months after his successful surgery, his wife contacted 7 On Your Side.

“He’s all I have. He’s my whole life. I live in a wheel chair and I have to depend on him,” says Juanita Hendryx.

We contacted the VA, and within a day, it promised to pay the claim. The bill was covered in full by the VA four months later.

“We got the phone call from 7 On Your Side at which point the case was reviewed,” says Ken Swasey, Veterans Administration.

“I just thank you for everything you guys have done. I couldn’t have done it on my own,” says Hendrx.

The VA says it’s working hard to better educate the private sector how to better guide VA patients through the appeal process. We should also point out that everyone we talked to agreed that medical care of veterans at the VA is generally good. We have a list of places veterans can turn to when they have a problem with the VA below.

February 9, 2008 – President Bush drew great applause during his State of the Union address last month when he called on Congress to allow U.S. troops to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. “Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them,” he said.

A week later, however, when Bush submitted his $3.1 trillion federal budget to Congress, he included no funding for such an initiative, which government analysts calculate could cost $1 billion to $2 billion annually.

Bush’s proposal was added to the speech late in the process, administration officials said, after the president decided that he wanted to announce a program that would favor military families. That left little time to vet the idea, develop formal cost estimates or gauge how many people might take advantage of such a program. Some administration officials said the proposal surprised them, and they voiced concerns about how to fund it.

Some critics in Congress cite the episode as a case study of what they consider the slapdash way Bush has put together the legislative program for his final year in office. Still, the idea is generating bipartisan interest from members of Congress who are eager to assist military families coping with long-term absences of loved ones deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have drawn up legislation that would remove restrictions that currently prevent most troops from transferring education benefits to family members.

“It has some merit to it. I don’t have any idea what it costs — that’s been one of the problems in the past,” said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), chairman of the House Budget Committee. “That’s not the only inconsistency or contradiction in his budget by any means. The budget overstates revenues and understates expenditures in a big way.”

A senior White House official said the proposal was suggested to the president by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who got the idea from a military spouse who told him that the Army has a limited program to transfer education benefits. The spouse told Gates, ” ‘Army spouses get this benefit, other branches should, too.’ He brought it to the president and said, ‘I think this is a valid point,’ ” the official said.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bush liked Gates’s suggestion, which eventually became one sentence in the president’s 53-minute State of the Union speech. “It is a good idea, and we are trying to determine the cost and put together a proposal,” the official said.

Under the current GI Bill, service members are eligible for nearly $40,000 in education benefits, such as college tuition or employment training, after they complete three years of active duty. Nearly 70 percent of active-duty U.S. troops and veterans use at least part of these benefits, which cover three-quarters of the cost of tuition, room, board and fees in a four-year state university, according to Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a Pentagon spokesman. U.S. officials concede that the cost would probably soar, with most families making full use of the benefits.

The GI Bill education benefits cost nearly $2 billion in fiscal 2006. Pentagon officials said they are unable to provide a figure for the potential cost of the new proposal, or for other initiatives for military families that Bush proposed in his State of the Union speech.

The president also called for expanded access to child — care for military families and for new preferences for military spouses competing for positions in the federal government. Pentagon officials are working on those proposals as well. They said Bush envisions expanding child care for at least 58,000 military children ages 1 to 12 year-round. The Pentagon already provides care facilities for about 200,000 children.

A third component of the Bush initiative involves opening up more government employment opportunities for military spouses and providing money for training or professional certification so they can more easily find jobs when they move from state to state. A pilot program now provides up to $6,000 over two years to help spouses create such “portable” careers.

The Pentagon is still working out the potential costs, but it reports that about 77 percent of the 675,000 spouses of active-duty troops say they want or need to work and that they might take advantage of such a program.

The Army has a limited program that allows soldiers to transfer some of their education benefits to spouses or children, but it has several restrictions. For instance, only soldiers reenlisting in certain critical skill areas are eligible, and they are allowed to transfer only about half their benefits.

Retired Col. Robert Norton, deputy director for government relations at the Military Officers Association of America, said military families have been “clamoring” for an expansion of the GI Bill in recent years as a critical incentive for troops to stay in the service. He noted that the families endure much hardship and stress while following their spouses around the world or being separated for great lengths of time.

Most U.S. troops who use the GI program use only about half the education benefits, Norton said, and only a tiny percentage use all of their money, so the cost of allowing family members to participate in the program would probably be high. “There is likely to be a pretty hefty price tag,” Norton said. “We think it’s a good thing for military families. We would like to see the details.”

The idea of allowing more troops to extend education benefits to family members has been percolating on Capitol Hill for some time. Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.) has been pushing it for years and introduced a bill after Bush’s surprise endorsement. His measure would drop the restrictions on how many benefits can be transferred and would allow members of the reserves and National Guard to participate.

In the Senate, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) has introduced similar legislation. In an interview, she said that she hopes the White House will back her plan. “We ought to be able to get it pretty quickly through,” she said. “It was their idea, and they ought to get credit for it.”

The idea has bipartisan support. “It was a very pleasant surprise coming from an administration that has tried to balance its budgets on the backs of military families,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who is co-sponsoring Bartlett’s bill. “I don’t know where they got the idea, but I am not going to quibble.”

February 9, 2008 – WASHINGTON — A classified Pentagon assessment concludes that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis, The Associated Press has learned.

Despite security gains in Iraq, there is still a “significant” risk that the strained U.S. military cannot quickly and fully respond to another outbreak elsewhere in the world, according to the report.

Last year the Pentagon raised that threat risk from “moderate” to “significant.” This year, the report will maintain that “significant” risk level _ pointing to the U.S. military’s ongoing struggle against a stubborn insurgency in Iraq and its lead role in the NATO-led war in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon, however, will say that efforts to increase the size of the military, replace equipment and bolster partnerships overseas will help lower the risk over time, defense officials said Friday. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified report.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has completed the risk assessment, and it is expected to be delivered to Capitol Hill this month. Because he has concluded the risk is significant, his report will include a letter from Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlining steps the Pentagon is taking to reduce it.

The risk level was raised to significant last year by Mullen’s predecessor, Marine Gen. Peter Pace.

On Capitol Hill this week, Mullen provided a glimpse into his thinking on the review. And Pentagon officials Friday confirmed that the assessment is finished and acknowledged some of the factors Gates will cite in his letter.

“The risk has basically stayed consistent, stayed steady,” Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee. “It is significant.”

He said the 15-month tours in Iraq and Afghanistan are too long and must be reduced to 12 months, with longer rest periods at home. “We continue to build risk with respect to that,” he said.

Other key national security challenges include threats from countries that possess weapons of mass destruction, as well as the need to replace equipment worn out and destroyed during more than six years of war.

On a positive note, Mullen pointed to security gains in Iraq, brought on in part by the increase in U.S. forces ordered there by President Bush last year. There, “the threat has receded and al-Qaida … is on the run,” he said. “We’ve reduced risk there. We’ve got more stability there as an example.”

The annual review grades the military’s ability to meet the demands of the nation’s military strategy _ which would include fighting the wars as well as being able to respond to any potential outbreaks in places such as North Korea, Iran, Lebanon or China.

The latest review by Mullen covers the military’s status during 2007, but the readiness level has seesawed during the Iraq war. For example, the risk for 2004 was assessed as significant, but it improved to moderate in 2005 and 2006.

Last year, when Pace increased the risk level, a report from Gates accompanying the assessment warned that while the military is working to improve its warfighting capabilities, it “may take several years to reduce risk to acceptable levels.”

Gates is expected to tell Congress that while the primary goal is to continue to increase the size of the military, it is also critical to step up efforts to work with other nations _ as well as other U.S. agencies _ to bolster fragile governments through economic development and other support.

And it will reflect his drumbeat for the use of more “soft power” to defeat terrorism, which includes the greater use of civilians in areas such as political development, communications and training.

Pentagon leaders argue that nontraditional conflicts _ such as the insurgents and terrorists facing coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan _ will be the main military battlefields for years to come. And defeating them, they say, will require more than military hardware _ or “hard power.”

February 7, 2008 – St. Paul, Minn. — Democrat Steve Sarvi has officially announced his campaign for Congress in Minnesota’s Second District.

Sarvi, a former Watertown, Minn., mayor, made the announcement at the State Capitol Thursday.

He said he wants to make college tuition more affordable and provide middle class tax breaks by rolling back the Bush tax cuts on top earners.

Sarvi, who is a veteran of Kosovo and Iraq, criticized Republican Congressman John Kline for being an ally of President Bush.

“I learned in the Army that when you think you’re off course, you should stop, check your compass and change direction as needed. And after five years without the kind of service and representation that south suburban voters deserve, it’s time to change course,” Sarvi said.

Sarvi said he did not support an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, but he would like to see the Pentagon start working on scenarios that could “start ending America’s involvement in it.”

Minnesota’s Second Congressional District includes the southern metro area and several rural communities south of the Twin Cities.

February 7, 2008 – North Dakota manufacturer has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a suit alleging that it had repeatedly shortchanged the armor in up to 2.2 million helmets for the military, including helmets for the first troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twelve days before the settlement with the Justice Department was announced, the company, Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, was given a new contract of up to $74 million to make more armor for helmets to replace the old ones, which were made from the late 1980s to last year.

Sioux upgraded its looms in 2006, company executives say, and the government says it has started inspections at the plant.

The U.S. attorney for North Dakota, Drew Wrigley, called the accord “an appropriate resolution” because the Defense Department had said that 200 sample helmets passed ballistic tests and that it “has no information of injuries or deaths due to inadequate PASGT helmet protection.”

PASGT stands for the Personal Armor System for Ground Troops, which includes the helmet model being replaced.

At the core of the investigation was the contention by two former plant managers that Kevlar woven at Sioux failed to meet the government’s “critical” minimum standard of 35 by 35 threads a square inch, or 6.5 square centimeters.

When properly woven, Kevlar, a polymer thread made by DuPont, is stronger than steel, able to deflect shrapnel and some bullets.

Government regulations call for rejecting Kevlar below the 35-by- 35 standard.

The company “was underweaving,” Wrigley said. “That is undebatable.”

The factory’s own inspection records often showed weaves of 34 by 34 threads or as low as 32 by 34 and 33 by 34. Looms were “always set for 34 by 34, always,” said Jeff Kenner, who operated and repaired the looms and oversaw crews on all three shifts.

In a statement, the company president, Carl McKay, denied “any and all of the allegations originally brought to the attention of the Department of Justice by disgruntled ex-employees.”

Settling the case, United States v. Spirit Lake Tribe, filed in U.S. District Court in Fargo, McKay said, was “a prudent business decision” to avoid legal costs and “should not be construed as an admission of wrongdoing.”

The potential harm is difficult to judge. Helmet damage depends on the projectile. Whether a damaged helmet would hold up better with a tighter weave is hard to calculate, experts said.

“You must have a certain amount of protection, and you can’t go below that,” said Gwynedd Thomas, associate professor of ballistics and protective fabrics at Auburn University.

Although the difference between 34 and 35 threads a square inch seems modest, the cumulative loss in layers of fabric is significant, Thomas said. “Every time that you’re losing some mass, you’re losing some integrity,” she said.

The strength comes from crossed yarns, the points that disperse projectile impact. “The fewer crossovers, the less energy dissipation you’re going to have,” she added.

A 34-by-34 weave results in 5 percent fewer crossovers than 35- by-35, a difference Thomas called “quite a lot.”

“I’m surprised somebody is not pursuing that more vigorously from the government,” she added. Were she a soldier’s parent, she said, “I would want to give my son a better helmet.”

The $2 million settlement is far short of what the two former managers, Kenner and Tamra Elshaug, hoped for in 2006 when they filed a whistle-blower suit. The suit, for $159 million in damages, accused the company of defrauding the government and violating safety standards.

“I think they got away with it,” said Kenner, who worked at Sioux for 20 years and was the weaving supervisor.

“Sioux Manufacturing basically got a slap on the wrist,” he said.

“The Justice Department did a really good job, but the Department of Defense is really just downplaying this. They’re embarrassed and want it to go away and would not admit to anybody’s getting hurt or even killed.”

Kenner and Elshaug’s lawyer, Andrew Campanelli, challenged Defense Department contentions that it was unaware of injuries from defective helmets. “There are tons of injuries with shrapnel and bullets going through helmets,” he said. “My clients documented that American soldiers did not get the protection that the government paid for, that the taxpayers paid for.”

February 7, 2008 – Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, the House Committee on Veterans’  Affairs, led by Chairman Bob Filner (D-CA), held a hearing to address the  Administration’s budget request for the Department of Veterans Affairs  (VA) for fiscal year 2009.

“The request for veterans’ funding for 2009 is simply not adequate,”  said Chairman Filner.  “Although the request includes a 5.5 percent increase for health care, this increase barely covers the cost of medical inflation and does not keep up with the ever-increasing demand for VA health care.  I believe that no veteran should have to wait for a health care appointment simply because the VA does not have the resources to care for that veteran. 

“The VA must make sure that resources are in place to meet the needs of our servicemembers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, especially in the areas of mental health care services and traumatic brain injury care, and that we provide the benefits and services promised to previous generations of veterans.  The service and sacrifice of our veterans is real, and the budget for the VA must provide realistic funding levels to meet these needs – and I’m afraid that the Bush budget for veterans does not make the grade.”  

The Administration request calls for a $2 billion increase for VA medical care, and an overall increase of $1.7 billion for VA discretionary funding.  The budget, released on Monday, increases veterans’ spending in FY 2009 but afterwards calls for slashing veterans’ programs from 2009-2013 by $20 billion below the levels needed to maintain what the VA is doing today.  “I am concerned that this budget proposal contains only modest increases for veterans’ health care while paying for this slight increase with cuts in other veterans’ programs below the historic levels this Congress provided for in this fiscal year,” said the Chairman.  “It is hard for me to believe that the VA is serious about providing the finest health care possible to our veterans when the Bush Administration slashes funding for building new health care facilities and reduces our investment in VA medical and prosthetic research – we need to keep our promises
 to veterans and invest in their futures.” 

For the sixth year in a row, the budget proposal raises health care costs on 1.4 million veterans by proposing an enrollment fee and calling for nearly doubling the amount paid by some veterans for prescription drugs.   “This is simply the Bush Administration’s attempt to raise taxes on veterans and discourage them from seeking the health care they need, and have earned,” said Chairman Filner. 

Filner added, “There are too many uninsured veterans who need medical care and cannot afford it.  I am extremely disappointed that the VA has once again submitted a budget that assumes the continuation of the enrollment ban on Priority 8 veterans – this continued ban on an entire class of veterans is especially egregious when we look at our faltering economy.  We face the very real prospect of more and more of our veterans facing economic hardships and losing access to medical care.”

Panel 1
– Honorable James B. Peake, M.D., Secretary, U.S. Department of
 Veterans Affairs
Accompanied by: The Honorable Michael J. Kussman, MD, MS, MACP, Under
 Secretary for Health, The Honorable Daniel L. Cooper, VADM (Ret.) ,
 Under Secretary for Benefits, The Honorable William F. Tuerk, Under
 Secretary for Memorial Affairs, The Honorable Robert T. Howard, Assistant
 Secretary for Information and Technology, The Honorable Robert J. Henke,
 Assistant Secretary for Management, The Honorable Paul J. Hutter,
 General Counsel

Panel 2
– Carl Blake, National Legislative Director, Paralyzed Veterans of
 America
– Kerry Baker, Associate National Legislative Director, Disabled
 American Veterans
– Dennis M. Cullinan, Director, National Legislative Service, Veterans
 of Foreign Wars of the United States
– Raymond C. Kelley, National Legislative Director, AMVETS
– Steve Robertson, Director, National Legislative Commission, The
 American Legion
– Rick Weidman, Executive Director of Government Affairs, Vietnam
 Veterans of America

Panel 3
– Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director and Founder, Iraq and Afghanistan
 Veterans of America
– Paul Sullivan, Executive Director, Veterans for Common Sense
– Cheryl Beversdorf, RN MHS MA, President/CEO, National Coalition for
 Homeless Veterans
– Rick Jones, Legislative Director, National Association for Uniformed
 Services

February 7, 2008 – WASHINGTON (AP) — New Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake pledged Thursday to trim more than five weeks off the time it now takes to get the first check to a war veteran who files a disability claim.

In his first appearance before Congress since becoming secretary, Peake also sought to assure lawmakers that President Bush’s proposed 2009 VA budget of $91 billion would be sufficient to meet the growing demands of veterans of a protracted Iraq war. The proposal is a 3.7 percent increase from the previous year, but several lawmakers have criticized it as inadequate after factoring in inflation.

Peake wants to reduce wait times from roughly 180 days to 145 days by the start of next year. He cited aggressive efforts to hire staff, noting the VA will have 3,100 new staff by 2009. The VA also is working to get greater online access to Pentagon medical information that he says will allow staff to process claims faster and move toward a system of electronic filing of claims.

Peake promised to “virtually eliminate” the current list of 69,000 veterans who have waited more than 30 days for an appointment to get VA medical care. Such long waits runs counter to department policy, and a group of Iraq war veterans have filed a lawsuit alleging undue delays. He said the VA plans to open 64 new community-based outpatient clinics this year and 51 next year to improve access to health care in rural areas.

“We will take all measures necessary to provide them with timely benefits and services, to give them complete information about the benefits they have earned through their courageous service, and to implement streamlined processes free of bureaucratic red tape,” Peake said in testimony prepared for a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Thursday.

Peake took over the agency amid criticism the VA was not doing enough to meet the growing needs of war veterans, particularly the thousands returning home injured from Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent months, Bush has released, at the request of Congress, $3.7 billion in emergency money for additional services for injured veterans.

“I am concerned that this budget proposal contains cuts to veterans’ programs,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., who chairs the House panel. “Although the request includes an increase for health care, it does not fully fund the needs of America’s veterans.”