Veterans for Common Sense

Of 750,000 veterans of the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, the suit says, at least 15{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} suffer from PTSD, an emotional illness characterized by nightmares, memory loss and irritability. The VA’s failure to provide treatment — only 27 of the nation’s 1,400 VA hospitals have programs dedicated to PTSD — has led to an “epidemic of suicides” by returning troops, said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense, the lead plaintiff group. 

January 12, 208 – When veterans of America’s two current wars — Iraq and Afghanistan — tried to sue the Department of Veterans Affairs for failing to process thousands of claims for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the Department waved them off saying they had no right to do so. The VA said that Congress had set up an administrative — not judicial — process for evaluating individual disability claims. The veterans, it declared, just had to wait for bureaucracy to take its course — no matter that it has a backlog of 600,000 unresolved claims, each of which can take up to six months or more to process.

Now, however, a federal judge in San Francisco has cleared the way for a dramatic challenge to the constitutionality of the VA’s claims system. Judge Samuel Conti of the Northern District of California ruled that the administrative system is not “adequate” for reviewing claims of organizations suing on behalf of a broad class of veterans (the class-action lawsuit was filed in July by two veterans organizations). Nor is that bureaucratic process empowered to grant the kind of relief sought by the veterans groups: systemic changes in the VA’s processing of disability claims, strengthened rights of individual veterans to press their claims and immediate medical and psychological help for returning troops complaining of PTSD symptoms.

The suit claims that the VA violates the constitutional rights of PTSD victims by denying them medical care and benefits as well as the power to hire outside attorneys and obtain records in their disability petitions. Proponents of the suit point out that the VA’s immense backlog of claims leads to delays in treatment, often compounding PTSD symptoms, contributing to substance abuse and suicide.

“VA first mistreated hundreds of thousands of veterans, then took the position that the vets could not bring their grievances to court to be heard,” said Melissa Kasnitz, whose non-profit law firm, Disability Rights Advocates, represents the veterans groups. “Today, VA’s shameful effort to keep these deserving veterans from their day in court was rejected.”

Of 750,000 veterans of the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, the suit says, at least 15{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} suffer from PTSD, an emotional illness characterized by nightmares, memory loss and irritability. The VA’s failure to provide treatment — only 27 of the nation’s 1,400 VA hospitals have programs dedicated to PTSD — has led to an “epidemic of suicides” by returning troops, said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense, the lead plaintiff group.

The VA declined comment on the Conti decision, but issued a statement saying it is “dedicated to meeting the mental health care needs of all veterans.” It noted an increase in its mental health care staff and creation of new programs to treat returning soldiers. Judge Conti scheduled a Feb. 22 hearing to consider arguments by plaintiffs to stop the VA from turning away suicidal vets and from withholding funds appropriated by Congress for mental health treatment of veterans.

January 12, 2008 – The recent killing of two U.S. soldiers by their Iraqi colleague has raised disturbing questions about U.S. military relations with the Iraqis they work with.

On Dec. 26, an Iraqi soldier opened fire on U.S. soldiers accompanying him during a joint military patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. He killed the U.S. captain and another sergeant, and wounded three others, including an Iraqi interpreter.

Conflicting versions of the killing have arisen. Col. Hazim al-Juboory, uncle of the attacker Kaissar Saady al-Juboory, told IPS that his nephew at first watched the U.S. soldiers beat up an Iraqi woman. When he asked them to stop, they refused, so he opened fire.

“Kaissar is a professional soldier who revolted against the Americans when they dragged a woman by her hair in a brutal way,” Col. Juboory said. “He is a tribal man, and an Arab with honor who would not accept such behavior. He killed his captain and sergeant knowing that he would be executed.”

Others gave IPS a similar account. “I was there when the American captain and his soldiers raided a neighborhood and started shouting at women to tell them where some men they wanted were,” a resident of Mosul, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS on phone. “The women told them they did not know, and their men did not do anything wrong, and started crying in fear.”

The witness said the U.S. captain began to shout at his soldiers and the women, and his men then started to grab the women and pull them by their hair.

“The soldier we knew later to be Kaissar shouted at the Americans, ‘No, no,’ but the captain shouted back at the Iraqi soldier,” the witness told IPS. “Then the Iraqi soldier shouted, ‘Let go of the women, you sons of bitches,’ and started shooting at them.” The soldier, he said, then ran off.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni organization, issued a statement saying the Iraqi soldier had shot the U.S. soldiers after he saw them beat up a pregnant woman.

“His blood rose and he asked the occupying soldiers to stop beating the woman,” they said in the statement. “Their answer through the translator was: ‘We will do what we want.’ So he opened fire on them.”

The story was first reported on al-Rafidain satellite channel. That started Iraqis from all over the country talking about “the hero” who sacrificed his life for Iraqi honor.

The U.S. and Iraqi military told a different version of the story.

An Iraqi general told reporters that Kaissar carried out the attack because he had links to “Sunni Arab insurgent groups.”

“Soldier Kaissar Saady worked for insurgent groups who pushed him to learn army movements and warn his comrades about them,” a captain of the second Iraqi army division told IPS. “There are so many like him in the army and now within the so-called Awakening forces (militias funded by the U.S. military).”

One army officer speaking on condition of anonymity described Kaissar’s act as heroic. “Those Americans learned their lesson once more.”

Sheikh Juma’ al-Dawar, chief of the major al-Baggara tribe in Iraq, told IPS in Baghdad that “Kaissar is from the al-Juboor tribes in Gayara — tribes with morals that Americans do not understand.”

The tribal chief added, “Juboor tribes and all other tribes are proud of Kaissar and what he did by killing the American soldiers. Now he is a hero, with a name that will never be forgotten.”

Many Iraqis speak in similar vein. “It is another example of Iraqi people’s unity despite political conspiracies by the Americans and their tails (collaborators),” Mohammad Nassir, an independent politician in Baghdad told IPS. “Kaissar is loved by all Iraqis who pray for his safety and who are ready to donate anything for his welfare.”

Col. Juboory said Kaissar who had at first accepted collaboration with the U.S. forces “found the truth too bitter to put up with.” The colonel said: “I worked with the Americans because being an army officer is my job, and also because I was convinced they would help Iraqis. But 11 months was enough for me to realize that starving to death is more honorable than serving the occupiers. They were mean in every way.”

Independent sources have since told IPS that Kaissar was captured by a special joint Iraqi-U.S. force, and he is now being held and tortured at the al-Ghizlany military camp in Mosul.

Despite a recent decline in the number of occupation forces being killed, 2007 was the deadliest year of the occupation for U.S. troops, with 901 killed, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

January 11, 2008 – Veterans’ advocates can proceed with a lawsuit claiming that the federal government’s health care system for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan illegally denies care and benefits, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti, a conservative jurist and a World War II veteran, rejected Bush administration arguments that civil courts have no authority over the Department of Veterans Affairs’ medical decisions or how it handles grievances and claims.

If the plaintiffs can prove their allegations, Conti said, they would show that “thousands of veterans, if not more, are suffering grievous injuries as the result of their inability to procure desperately needed and obviously deserved health care.”

He said federal courts are competent to decide whether those injuries were caused by flaws in the health care system and the VA’s grievance procedures.

Conti did not rule on the adequacy of the treatment system, which will be addressed in future proceedings. But he decided one disputed issue, finding that veterans are legally entitled to two years of health care after leaving the service. The government had argued that it was required to provide only as much care as the VA’s budget allowed in a given year.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Melissa Kasnitz of Disability Rights Advocates, said the judge had rejected the VA’s “shameful effort to keep these deserving veterans from their day in court.”

The next step is a hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction that would require the federal agency to provide immediate mental health treatment for veterans who suffer from stress disorders and are at risk of suicide, said Sidney Wolinsky, another Disability Rights Advocates lawyer. That hearing is scheduled for Feb. 22.

The suit claims that the federal government’s failure to provide timely treatment is contributing to an epidemic of suicides among returning soldiers.

The suit was filed in July by two organizations, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, as a proposed class action on behalf of 320,000 to 800,000 veterans or their survivors.

The groups said the VA arbitrarily denies care and benefits to wounded veterans, forces them to wait months for treatment and years for benefits, and gives them little recourse when it rejects their medical claims. The department has a backlog of more than 600,000 disability claims, the suit said.

A Pentagon study group reported in June that the system was understaffed, prompting the VA to announce staffing increases in July. The study group also found that 84,000 veterans, more than one-third of those who sought care from the department from 2002 through 2006, had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress or another mental disorder.

In seeking dismissal of the suit, the Justice Department argued that Congress had barred federal courts from hearing complaints about the VA system when it established a special Court of Appeals for Veteran Claims in 1988 to review grievances over treatment and benefits. But Conti said the special court can examine only individual cases and has no power to consider “systematic, constitutional challenges.” He said those belong in regular courts.

Conti also said the VA system, originally intended as an informal procedure to help veterans resolve their claims, has morphed into an adversarial process in which claimants have to comply with formal legal rules, often without a lawyer.

“It is within the court’s power to insist that veterans be granted a level of due process that is commensurate with the adjudication procedures with which they are confronted,” Conti said.

Efforts to reach the Justice Department were unsuccessful.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

January 7, 2008 – About six months before the United States invaded Iraq, then-White House economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey famously estimated that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion. The prediction ended up being way too low: As of Sept. 30, congressional analysts recently estimated, the war had cost $449 billion, and the number is still rising.

The episode helped get Lindsey ousted from a White House intent on imposing message discipline and furious about an estimate that, even while low, was the first to hint at the larger budgetary consequences of the invasion.

In the years since, Lindsey has studiously avoided comment about the circumstances surrounding that estimate.

But in a book being published this week — “What a President Should Know . . . But Most Learn Too Late” — Lindsey offers for the first time what he terms “the true story” behind his estimate, including what he sees as a mistaken White House strategy to play down the costs of war to maintain public support for an invasion.

Putting “out only a best-case scenario without preparing the public for some worse eventuality was the wrong strategy to follow,” Lindsey writes. “It may have helped at the margin in the very short run by making the war sound attractive.

“But this came at the expense of undermining the president’s political capital in the long run.”

As Lindsey tells it, the estimate grew out of a conversation in his office with Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Davis in September 2002 about the economic consequences of the “war on terror.” During the conversation, Lindsey projected the “upper bound” of spending on a then-hypothetical Iraq war at 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product, or between $100 billion and $200 billion.

In his book, Lindsey suggests that he came up with that range by looking at some historical comparisons and contemporary rules of thumb regarding force commitments. Based on those calculations, he says, the “most plausible number” for the cost of the war was going to be between 0.5 and 1 percent of GDP for each year of the conflict. A year at the high end of that estimate and up to two years of follow-up at a lower end produce Lindsey’s estimate of between 1 and 2 percent of GDP. (Lindsey says the war is actually running at about 0.7 percent of GDP annually.)

Where he went wrong, of course, is his estimate of how long the war would last. “When I look back, did I do an honest job in coming up with this estimate? I think the answer is yes,” Lindsey said in an interview last week. “You have to make assumptions at a certain point, and that assumption turned out to be wrong.”

Lindsey writes that, even in hindsight, he does not believe that his basic message to Davis was inappropriate or contrary to administration thinking: Even if the United States went to war in Iraq, it would not derail the economy. But it was simply the fact of the interview that appears to have angered his (unnamed) White House colleagues.

At the time, Lindsey writes, “the entire country was talking about everything related to the Iraq War except the White House. If there was a break in message discipline, it was not that the actual words of the message were wrong: rather, it was that there was a message at all. At that time, message discipline on Iraq was the functional equivalent of radio silence.”

Lindsey’s comments came in a book written with the help of former White House colleague Marc Sumerlin, a partner with him in a consulting group that offers advice on economic trends to big corporations. The book provides an “insider’s view” on how to succeed in the White House, in the form of memos to the next president on how to organize his or her administration, consider big questions such as going to war and handle complex issues.

Among Lindsey’s more provocative recommendations is that the next president take office planning to serve only one term, to ensure a focus “solely on the things that motivated you to run in the first place.” Lindsey, who is advising GOP presidential hopeful Fred D. Thompson, came to this conclusion after appraising the problematic second terms of many recent presidents, including the one he served most recently.

Lindsey said in the interview that he believes the first term went reasonably well for President Bush, especially on domestic policy, because he had a clear agenda — tax cuts, education reform, rebuilding the military, a prescription drug plan and Social Security — and achieved much of it. “The first term pretty much ran according to book,” he said. “The second term–they didn’t do that. If you don’t have a script, you don’t have something to stick to.”

January 9, 2008 – A federal magistrate has ordered the White House to reveal whether copies of missing e-mail messages written from 2003 to 2005 during an investigation into the disclosure of the name of a C.I.A. operative are stored in computer backup files.

The order was issued Tuesday as the White House tried to win dismissal of lawsuits by two private groups that are seeking the missing messages.

Two federal laws require the White House to preserve all records, including e-mail; but, in asking that the two lawsuits be dismissed, the White House asserts that the president’s record-keeping practices under the Presidential Records Act are not subject to review by the courts.

The administration also asserts that the Federal Records Act does not allow such far-reaching action as demanded in the suits by the two private groups, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The federal magistrate, John Facciola, gave the White House five business days to say whether computer backup files contained the missing e-mail.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, declined to comment on the judge’s order.

The White House had previously said some e-mail might not have been archived.

January 7, 2008

Note: The following story is a verbatim transcript of an Investigators story that aired on Monday, Jan. 7, 2008, on KPRC Local 2 at 10 p.m.

Local 2 Investigates looks into veterans waiting for needed help. Last year, we exposed the problem — a massive backlog of wounded veterans waiting for assistance from the one agency supposed to help them as they try to move on.

Tonight, we’ve learned the problem has gotten worse, and we have the numbers to show it.

Investigative reporter Amy Davis uncovers why more veterans are forced to face a new sacrifice here at home.

Army private Patrick Feges can’t forget the mortar blast in Iraq. His severe injuries won’t let him. The soldier from Sugar Land barely survived the attack, but was treated like a hero during his recovery.

President George W. Bush made a bedside visit in Washington, D.C, and Gov. Rick Perry awarded him the Purple Heart during a ceremony back in Texas.

Feges says the thanks seemed to stop there, especially when it came to the benefits he earned from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I guess I was sort of ticked off,” Feges told us in February 2007. “I lost a lot of faith in the VA system.”

Last year, Local 2 Investigates exposed that Feges was forced to wait more than 18 months to get the any of VA disability benefits he earned with his service and sacrifice.

“It wasn’t fair to see him struggle after what he went through,” said Mary Jowell, Feges’ mother.

Almost a year later, we’ve discovered more veterans are waiting even longer to get those benefits. A new VA report shows the average veteran’s wait for disability benefits is around six months — 183 days.

It is the third year in a row the wait time has increased.

In Houston, we discovered veterans are waiting even longer. On average, a veteran using the VA Houston Regional Office is waiting almost seven months — 209 days — to receive earned benefits.

At the end of September, 19,200 Houston-area veterans were still waiting for their benefits.

“Why hasn’t anyone done anything more?” said Allen Grundy, program coordinator at the Veterans’ Services Office at the University of Houston. “Maybe they’re doing the best they can, but whatever it is, we know it needs to be fixed.”

The new numbers are no surprise to Grundy. He sees many veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan who are forced to wait for their benefits.

“Whether they enough veterans staff to fix the situation, I don’t know,” said Grundy. “Whether they don’t have enough financial backing, I don’t know. But we do know there is a problem.”

The problem is not just with the overflow of veterans coming back from the Middle East. Many veterans from wars long ago — Vietnam, Korea, even World War II — are now waiting longer to get changes to their disability benefits. The numbers are adding up.

“Absolutely, it should be working better than what it is,” said Buddy Grantham, director of the Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs. “Soldiers deserve better than that.”

Grantham says his office is hearing more complaints from those older veterans than any other group.

After our initial investigation last year, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison sent a management team to Houston’s VA Regional Office to help fix the backlog of veterans waiting.

We talked with her office about these new numbers. Hutchison calls the situation “completely unacceptable.”

Houston’s VA office says it hired 38 new employees last year, but says it takes up to two years to get them fully trained to process benefits.

January 9, 2008

Editor’s Note: Tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq return home to find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers.

When reservist U.S. Army Maj. Phillip Davis left his job as a dispatcher for a national trucking company a year ago because he was called up to fight the war in Iraq he received an unexpected going away present. His employer promptly hired someone to replace him within days of his deployment.

Davis of Victorville is not alone. For tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq, returning home safely may be just the beginning – not the end – of a long road back. Reservists lucky enough to return home often find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers and recruiters fixated on offering incentives and huge bonuses to keep them fighting.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 9,376 veterans have lost their jobs in both the private and public sectors while serving a tour of duty, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Those numbers are expected to skyrocket as more and more soldiers are returning home as multiple deployments to war takes its toll on them and their families.

While Davis received his pink slip days before he was deployed, veterans advocacy groups charge thousands of veterans have lost their full-time jobs since the war began and say the Labor Department is not doing enough to stem the flow of “pink”.

“We did our job,” says Davis who says he had to live with the uncertainty about his family’s welfare all the time he was risking his life in Iraq. A week before Christmas Davis and his wife Denise sat in their Riverside home pondering a new stack of coming home presents: job rejection letters.

“How do you explain to a potential employer you spent the last year detonating roadside bombs?” said Davis.

The Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects members of the guard and reserves from job loss, demotion, loss of seniority and loss of benefits when they are called to duty.

The act is supposed to protect reservists’ civilian jobs for up to five years of military service. But according to Davis wading through government bureaucracy to enforce his legal right is emotionally and physically draining and is discouraging many vets from filing formal complaints.

More than 16,000 reservist complaints were filed between 2004 and 2006, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Fewer than 30 percent of the reservists who experience USERRA violations file complaints.

Reservist Leslie Anderson returned to Moreno Valley from a second tour in Iraq in October only to find her job as a buyer for a retail chain “phased out”.

Anderson, who is completing an MBA, is understandably frustrated. Status of Forces Surveys and reemployment records once available to the public, have been designated “for officials use only”. Critics charge the Defense Department policy keeps reservists’ reemployment problems secret.

Anderson was responsible for getting supplies to troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Her job meant negotiating contracts with suppliers and contractors for food, clothing, weapons, and anything else troops needed in the field.

Filing a complaint with the Veteran Employment and Training Service Department (VETS), by the military’s own admission, can take months, if not years.

After weeks of sending out applications and interviews, Anderson who is African-American took a job cataloging manuscripts at a local library. “I took the job out of desperation. I have a five year old, we have to eat.”

The ‘war on terror’ generation has become the forgotten generation,” says Paul Epps, a Victorville-based executive job search counselor who specializes in placing returning vets.

“The military spends over 800 million in advertising on the recruitment of volunteers into the services. Congress just approved $70 billion to fund the war yet, little or no dollars are spent to create full time jobs and resources for returning vets,” he says.

Veterans have to overcome perceptions from employers who see a former artillery or infantry officer trained to kill or blow things up, but don’t see that they have “enhanced skills in motivating others, managing personnel, negotiating and leadership skills,” says Weems.

It’s pathetic when you have a highly skilled college graduate reduced to doing menial labor. Soldiers don’t stop learning once they are deployed. He says job prospects for many African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities without college or funds to hire headhunters is bleak thanks to a growing pool of unsympathetic ‘post affirmative action’ employers.

Before California voters outlawed affirmative action and before the era of online job searching, Weems says he could count on big and small employers to hire returning vets.

“I’d get on the phone and say Joe is a skilled artillery officer with a wife and three kids he needs a job. Employers would regularly assess their workforce. Some would create new positions. Minority vets were often given priority, these days the jobs battleground is located on the Internet at sites like Monster.com. It’s an e-mail world out there I’m lucky to get a personal return phone call,” he says.

Veterans may apply for unemployment benefits the same way a worker at a civilian job may if they lose their job, depending on each state’s rules. But those benefits last only so long, meaning veterans often are taking jobs for which they are overqualified because of difficulty getting their foot in the door.

“I’m smart, hardworking and disciplined,” says Anderson “Everyone talks about supporting the troops – yet thousands of us are jobless and desperate – it’s a bit hypocritical.”

“It’s not an issue of giving vets a job but giving them a chance to compete,” says Davis “It’s hard to swallow the thought that the government which sends us to war may have little use for us when we return home.”

The DoD is flirting with the idea of medicating soldiers to desensitize them to combat trauma — will an army of unfeeling monsters result? 

January 10, 2008 – In June, the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health acknowledged “daunting and growing” psychological problems among our troops: Nearly 40 percent of soldiers, a third of Marines and half of National Guard members are presenting with serious mental health issues. They also reported “fundamental weaknesses” in the U.S. military’s approach to psychological health. That report was followed in August by the Army Suicide Event Report (ASER), which reported that 2006 saw the highest rate of military suicides in 26 years. And last month, CBS News reported that, based on its own extensive research, over 6,250 American veterans took their own lives in 2005 alone — that works out to a little more than 17 suicides every day.

That’s all pretty bleak, but there is reason for optimism in the long-overdue attention being paid to the emotional and psychic cost of these new wars. The shrill hypocrisy of an administration that has decked itself in yellow ribbons and mandatory lapel pins while ignoring a human crisis of monumental proportion is finally being exposed.

On Dec. 12, Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, called a hearing on “Stopping Suicides: Mental Health Challenges Within the Department of Veterans Affairs.” At that hearing suggestions were raised and conversations begun that hopefully will bear fruit.

But I find myself extremely anxious in the face of some of these new suggestions, specifically what is being called the Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007 and use of the drug propranalol to treat the symptoms of posttraumatic stress injuries. Though both, at least in theory, sound entirely reasonable, even desirable, in the wrong hands, under the wrong leadership, they could make the sci-fi fantasies of Blade Runner seem prescient.

The Psychological Kevlar Act “directs the secretary of defense to develop and implement a plan to incorporate preventive and early-intervention measures, practices or procedures that reduce the likelihood that personnel in combat will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other stress-related psychopathologies, including substance use conditions. (Kevlar, a DuPont fiber, is an essential component of U.S. military helmets and bullet-proof vests advertised to be “five times stronger than steel.”) The stated purpose of this legislation is to make American soldiers less vulnerable to the combat stressors that so often result in psychic injuries.

On the face of it, the bill sounds logical and even compassionate. After all, our soldiers are supplied with physical armor — at least in theory. So why not mental? My guess is that the representatives who have signed on to this bill are genuinely concerned about the welfare of troops and their families. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., is the bill’s sponsor, and I have no reason to question his genuine commitment to mental health issues, both within and outside of the military. Still, I find myself chilled at the prospects. To explain my discomfort, I need to go briefly into the history of military training.

Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings have to killing others of their own species. “Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli,” says Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, “and this maximizes soldiers’ lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will likely — and understandably — suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat.”

By military standards, operant conditioning has been highly effective. It’s enabled American soldiers to kill more often and more efficiently, and that ability continues to exact a terrible toll on those we have designated as the “enemy.” But the toll on the troops themselves is also tragic. Even when troops struggle honorably with the difference between a protected person and a permissible target (and I believe that the vast majority do so struggle, though the distinction is one I find both ethically and humanely problematic) in war “shit happens.” When soldiers are witness to overwhelming horror, or because of a reflexive accident, an illegitimate order, or because multiple deployments have thoroughly distorted their perceptions, or simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time — those are the moments that will continue to haunt them, the memories they will not be able to forgive or forget, and the stuff of posttraumatic stress injuries.

And it’s not just the inherent conscientious objector our military finds inconvenient: current U.S. military training also includes a component to desensitize male soldiers to the sounds of women being raped, so the enemy cannot use the cries of their fellow soldiers to leverage information. I think it not unreasonable to connect such desensitization techniques to the rates of domestic violence in the military, which are, according to the DoD, five times those in the civilian population. Is anyone really surprised that men who have been specifically trained to ignore the pain and fear of women have a difficult time coming home to their wives and families? And clearly they do. There were 2,374 reported cases of sexual assault in the military in 2005, a 40 percent increase over 2004. But that figure represents only reported cases, and, as Air Force Brig. Gen. K.C. McClain, commander of DoD’s Joint Task Force for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response pointed out, “Studies indicate that only 5 percent of sexual assaults are reported.”

I have thought a lot about the implications of “psychological Kevlar” — what kind of “preventive and early-intervention measures, practices or procedures” might be developed that would “reduce the likelihood that personnel in combat will develop post-traumatic stress disorder.” How would a soldier with a shield against moral response “five times stronger than steel” behave?

I cannot convince myself that what is really being promoted isn’t a form of moral lobotomy.

I cannot imagine what aspects of selfhood will have to be excised or paralyzed so soldiers will no longer be troubled by what they, not to mention we, would otherwise consider morally repugnant. A soldier who has lost an arm can be welcomed home because he or she still shares fundamental societal values. But the soldier who sees her friend emulsified by a bomb, or who is ordered to run over children in the road rather than slow down the convoy, or who realizes too late that the woman was carrying a baby, not a bomb — if that soldier’s ability to feel terror and horror has been amputated, if he or she can no longer be appalled or haunted, something far more precious has been lost. I am afraid that the training or conditioning or drug that will be developed to protect soldiers from such injuries will leave an indifference to violence that will make them unrecognizable to themselves and to those who love them. They will be alienated and isolated, and finally unable to come home.

Posttraumatic stress injuries can devastate the lives of soldiers and their families. The suicides that are so often the result of such injuries make it clear that they can be every bit as lethal as bullets or bombs, and to date no cure has been found. Treatment and disability payments, both for injured troops and their families, are a huge budgetary concern that becomes ever more daunting as these wars drag on. The Psychological Kevlar Act perhaps holds out the promise of a prophylactic remedy, but it should come as no surprise that Big Pharma has been looking for a chemical intervention.

What they have come up with has already been dubbed “the mourning after pill.” Propranalol, if taken immediately following a traumatic event, can subdue a victim’s stress response and so soften his or her perception of the memory. That does not mean the memory has been erased, but proponents claim that the drug can render it emotionally toothless.

If your daughter were raped, the argument goes, wouldn’t you want to spare her a traumatic memory that might well ruin her life? As the mother of a 23-year old daughter, I can certainly understand the appeal of that argument. And a drug that could prevent the terrible effects of traumatic injuries in soldiers? If I were the parent of a soldier suffering from such a life-altering injury, I can imagine being similarly persuaded.

Not surprisingly, the Army is already on board. Propranolol is a well-tolerated medication that has been used for years for other purposes.

And it is inexpensive.

But is it moral to weaken memories of horrendous acts a person has committed? Some would say that there is no difference between offering injured soldiers penicillin to prevent an infection and giving a drug that prevents them from suffering from a posttraumatic stress injury for the rest of their lives. Others, like Leon Kass, chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, object to propranolol’s use on the grounds that it medicates away one’s conscience. “It’s the morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret, remorse, pain or guilt,” he says. Barry Romo, a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, is even more blunt. “That’s the devil pill,” he says. “That’s the monster pill, the anti-morality pill. That’s the pill that can make men and women do anything and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn’t work, what’s scary is that a young soldier could believe it will.”

It doesn’t take a neuroscientist to see the problem with both of these solutions. Though both hold the promise of relief from the effects of an injury that causes unspeakable pain, they do so at what appears to be great cost. Whatever research projects might be funded by the Psychological Kevlar Act and whatever use is made of propranolol, they will almost certainly involve a diminished range of feelings and memory, without which soldiers and veterans will be different. But in what ways?

I wish I could trust the leadership of our country to prioritize the lives and well-being of our citizens. I don’t. The last six years have clearly shown the extent to which this administration is willing to go to use soldiers for its own ends, discarding them when they are damaged. Will efforts be made to fix what has been broken? Return what has been taken? Bring them home? Will citizens be enlightened about what we are condoning in our ignorance, dispassion or indifference? Or will these two solutions simply bring us closer to realizing the bullet-proof mind, devoid of the inconvenient vulnerability of decent human beings to atrocity and horror? And finally, these are all questions about the morality of proposals that are trying to prevent injuries without changing the social circumstances that bring them about, which sidestep the most fundamental moral dilemma: that of sending people to war in the first place.

Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her blog is Flashback.

We’ll nuke Iran – Bush promises Israel

Thu, 01/10/2008 – 16:08 – Wire Services – US President George W. Bush promised Israel’s opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu that the United States will join the Jewish state in a nuclear strike against Iran, Israel Radio reported today.

Former Prime Minister Netanyahu, opposition Likud party’s hardline chairman who opposes the US-backed Annapolis peace process, reiterated to President Bush his stance, that a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran’s nuclear installations was the only way to stop the Islamic nation’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

“I told him my position and Bush agreed,” Netanyahu told Israel Radio.

During their 45-minute meeting at King David hotel in Jerusalem Netanyahu also told Bush that “Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people and will remain under Israeli sovereignty for eternity.”

President Bush issued a stark warning to Iran over Strait of Hormuz incident, saying that “all options are on the table to protect our assets.”

“There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple,” Bush said during the joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. “And my advice to them is, don’t do it.”

Bush criticized those who interpret the National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, as a sign that Iran was no longer a threat.

“Let me remind you what the NIE actually said,” Bush stold reporters. “It said that as far as the intelligence community could tell, at one time the Iranians had a military — covert military program that was suspended in 2003 because of international pressure. My attitude is that a non-transparent country, a country which has yet to disclose what it was up to, can easily restart a program.”

January 8, 2008 – An Army Reserve Colonel and decorated Iraq war veteran joined a growing pack of Democrats vying for the chance to take on U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) in November.

Col. R. Wayne Dudding, who was awarded the Bronze Star for closing valves on a burning oil well near Haditha, said Monday he plans to focus his campaign on the Iraq war, energy independence and health care. He joins five other Democrats looking to unseat Murphy, the three-term Republican incumbent from Upper St. Clair.

Other Democrats who said they are seeking the 18th Congressional District seat are Beth Hafer of Mt. Lebanon; Steve O’Donnell, a Monroeville businessman; Erin Vecchio, a Penn Hills school board member; Brien Wall, an Upper St. Clair insurance company employee; and Dan Wholey, also of Upper St. Clair and an owner of Wholey’s Fish Market in the Strip District. O’Donnell and Wall served at military installations during the Vietnam War.

“I just feel that, with the experience I have, it’s important to try to add my voice to the debate,” said Dudding, 46, of Robinson.

Dudding wants to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, but said he thinks the debate needs to focus less on the number of troops in the country and more on how to achieve the conditions that would allow troops to leave. He said lawmakers should worry about how to train more Iraqi security forces, improve economic conditions and foster political reconciliation in Iraq.

Dudding’s campaign also will seek to tie energy independence to national security.

“If we don’t do something, some day we will send our soldiers into harm’s way over oil. I really don’t want to see that,” he said.

Hafer, by contrast, plans to campaign primarily on domestic issues, said Joe Naunchik, a campaign staffer. Hafer is the daughter of former state treasurer and auditor general Barbara Hafer.

“All politics is local. The district’s been hard hit. The region is losing population,” Naunchik said.

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by about 62,000, but Murphy still was able to defeat his last challenger, Chad Kluko, 58 percent to 42 percent.

“I think his record has been great,” said Bob Gleason, chairman of the state Republican Party. “It’s very difficult to beat an incumbent who’s doing a good job.”

The registration advantage likely is an illusion, caused by so-called Reagan and Casey Democrats who vote Republican but have maintained their party affiliation out of habit, said Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute of Public Policy at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. Current political attitudes, however, might give the Democratic candidate a chance to win those voters back, he said.

“This is a completely different ballgame. You’re talking about another electoral environment than there was in 2006” when Democrats captured the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Yost said. “It may be even worse for Republicans this year.”

Gleason disagreed.

“It’s a daunting task. They’re going to have to raise over $1 million, and … that’s hard to do,” he said. “I’m not a bit worried.”