Veterans for Common Sense

Here is an event I have no intention of honoring: American Religious History Week. OK, it’s not official yet. But it is spelled out as Resolution 888 in the bowels of a House committee, sponsored by Republican Congressman Randy Forbes and backed by thirty-one other Representatives. This is an insidious attempt by the radical Christian right to rewrite American history, to turn the founding fathers from deists into Christian fundamentalists, to proclaim us officially to be a Christian nation. If you want to know why Mike Huckabee is dangerous, why his brand of right-wing Christian populism is so frightening, you should read this resolution.

Sent to me by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the resolution has passages like this: “Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible” and “Whereas the United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our Nation’s history that the United States is ‘a Christian country’, ‘a Christian nation’, ‘a Christian people’, ‘a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being’ and that ‘we cannot read into the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion….'”

Here is the complete text of House Resolution 888, Introduced December 18, 2007.

Introduced by Mr. FORBES (for himself, Mr. MCINTYRE, Mr. AKIN, Mr. BARRETT of South Carolina, Mr. CULBERSON, Mr. DOOLITTLE, Mr. FEENEY, Mr. GINGREY, Mr. GOHMERT, Mr. HAYES, Mr. HENSARLING, Mr. HERGER, Mr. JONES of North Carolina, Mr. MCHENRY, Mrs. MUSGRAVE, Mr. PEARCE, Mr. PENCE, Mr. PITTS, Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin, Mrs. SCHMIDT, Mr. WALBERG, Mr. WILSON of South Carolina, Mr. WOLF, and Mr. YOUNG of Florida) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as `American Religious History Week’ for the appreciation of and education on America ‘s history of religious faith.

Whereas religious faith was not only important in official American life during the periods of discovery, exploration, colonization, and growth but has also been acknowledged and incorporated into all 3 branches of American Federal government from their very beginning;

Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed this self-evident fact in a unanimous ruling declaring `This is a religious people … From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation’;

Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible;

Whereas the first act of America ‘s first Congress in 1774 was to ask a minister to open with prayer and to lead Congress in the reading of 4 chapters of the Bible;

Whereas Congress regularly attended church and Divine service together en masse;

Whereas throughout the American Founding, Congress frequently appropriated money for missionaries and for religious instruction, a practice that Congress repeated for decades after the passage of the Constitution and the First Amendment;

Whereas in 1776, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence with its 4 direct religious acknowledgments referring to God as the Creator (`All people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’), the Lawgiver (`the laws of nature and nature’s God’), the Judge (`appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world’), and the Protector (`with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence’);

Whereas upon approving the Declaration of Independence, John Adams declared that the Fourth of July `ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty’;

Whereas 4 days after approving the Declaration, the Liberty Bell was rung;

Whereas the Liberty Bell was named for the Biblical inscription from Leviticus 25:10 emblazoned around it: `Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof’;

Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a National shortage of `Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public worship of God in our churches,’ announced that they `desired to have a Bible printed under their care & by their encouragement’ and therefore ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported `into the different ports of the States of the Union’;

Whereas in 1782, Congress pursued a plan to print a Bible that would be `a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools’ and therefore approved the production of the first English language Bible printed in America that contained the congressional endorsement that `the United States in Congress assembled … recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States’;

Whereas in 1782, Congress adopted (and has reaffirmed on numerous subsequent occasions) the National Seal with its Latin motto `Annuit Coeptis,’ meaning `God has favored our undertakings,’ along with the eye of Providence in a triangle over a pyramid, the eye and the motto `allude to the many signal interpositions of Providence in favor of the American cause’;

Whereas the 1783 Treaty of Paris that officially endied the Revolution and established America as an independent begins with the appellation `In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity’;

Whereas in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia , Benjamin Franklin declared, `God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? … Without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel ‘;

Whereas the delegates to the Constitutional Convention concluded their work by in effect placing a religious punctuation mark at the end of the Constitution in the Attestation Clause, noting not only that they had completed the work with `the unanimous consent of the States present’ but they had done so `in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven’;

Whereas James Madison declared that he saw the finished Constitution as a product of `the finger of that Almighty Hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the Revolution,’ and George Washington viewed it as `little short of a miracle,’ and Benjamin Franklin believed that its writing had been `influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent Ruler, in Whom all inferior spirits live, and move, and have their being’;

Whereas from 1787 to 1788, State conventions to ratify the United States Constitution not only began with prayer but even met in church buildings;

Whereas in 1795 during construction of the Capitol, a practice was instituted whereby `public worship is now regularly administered at the Capitol, every Sunday morning, at 11 o’clock’;

Whereas in 1789, the first Federal Congress, the Congress that framed the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, appropriated Federal funds to pay chaplains to pray at the opening of all sessions, a practice that has continued to this day, with Congress not only funding its congressional chaplains but also the salaries and operations of more than 4,500 military chaplains;

Whereas in 1789, Congress, in the midst of framing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, passed the first Federal law touching education, declaring that `Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged’;

Whereas in 1789, on the same day that Congress finished drafting the First Amendment, it requested President Washington to declare a National day of prayer and thanksgiving, resulting in the first Federal official Thanksgiving proclamation that declared `it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor’;

Whereas in 1800, Congress enacted naval regulations requiring that Divine service be performed twice every day aboard `all ships and vessels in the navy,’ with a sermon preached each Sunday;

Whereas in 1800, Congress approved the use of the just-completed Capitol structure as a church building, with Divine services to be held each Sunday in the Hall of the House, alternately administered by the House and Senate chaplains;

Whereas in 1853 Congress declared that congressional chaplains have a `duty … to conduct religious services weekly in the Hall of the House of Representatives’;

Whereas by 1867, the church at the Capitol was the largest church in Washington , DC , with up to 2,000 people a week attending Sunday service in the Hall of the House;

Whereas by 1815, over 2,000 official governmental calls to prayer had been issued at both the State and the Federal levels, with thousands more issued since 1815;

Whereas in 1853 the United States Senate declared that the Founding Fathers `had no fear or jealousy of religion itself, nor did they wish to see us an irreligious people … they did not intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy’;

Whereas in 1854 the United States House of Representatives declared `It [religion] must be considered as the foundation on which the whole structure rests … Christianity; in its general principles, is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the purity and permanence of free institutions’;

Whereas, in 1864, by law Congress added `In God We Trust’ to American coinage;

Whereas in 1864, Congress passed an act authorizing each State to display statues of 2 of its heroes in the United States Capitol, resulting in numerous statues of noted Christian clergymen and leaders at the Capitol, including Gospel ministers such as the Revs. James A. Garfield, John Peter Muhlenberg, Jonathan Trumbull, Roger Williams, Jason Lee, Marcus Whitman, and Martin Luther King Jr.; Gospel theologians such as Roger Sherman; Catholic priests such as Father Damien, Jacques Marquette, Eusebio Kino, and Junipero Serra; Catholic nuns such as Mother Joseph; and numerous other religious leaders;

Whereas in 1870, the Federal government made Christmas (a recognition of the birth of Christ, an event described by the U.S. Supreme Court as `acknowledged in the Western World for 20 centuries, and in this country by the people, the Executive Branch, Congress, and the courts for 2 centuries’) and Thanksgiving as official holidays;

Whereas beginning in 1904 and continuing for the next half-century, the Federal government printed and distributed The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth for the use of Members of Congress because of the important teachings it contained;

Whereas in 1931, Congress by law adopted the Star-Spangled Banner as the official National Anthem, with its phrases such as `may the Heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation,’ and `this be our motto, `In God is our trust!’;

Whereas in 1954, Congress by law added the phrase `one nation under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance;

Whereas in 1954 a special Congressional Prayer Room was added to the Capitol with a kneeling bench, an altar, an open Bible, an inspiring stained-glass window with George Washington kneeling in prayer, the declaration of Psalm 16:1: `Preserve me, O God, for in Thee do I put my trust,’ and the phrase `This Nation Under God’ displayed above the kneeling, prayerful Washington;

Whereas in 1956, Congress by law made `In God We Trust’ the National Motto, and added the phrase to American currency;

Whereas the constitutions of each of the 50 states, either in the preamble or body, explicitly recognize or express gratitude to God;

Whereas America ‘s first Presidential Inauguration incorporated 7 specific religious activities, including–

(1) the use of the Bible to administer the oath;

(2) affirming the religious nature of the oath by the adding the prayer `So help me God!’ to the oath;

(3) inaugural prayers offered by the President;

(4) religious content in the inaugural address;

(5) civil leaders calling the people to prayer or acknowledgement of God;

(6) inaugural worship services attended en masse by Congress as an official part of congressional activities; and

(7) clergy-led inaugural prayers, activities which have been replicated in whole or part by every subsequent President;

Whereas President George Washington declared `Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports’;

Whereas President John Adams, one of only 2 signers of the Bill of Rights and First Amendment, declared `As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him’;

Whereas President Jefferson not only attended Divine services at the Capitol throughout his presidency and had the Marine Band play at the services, but during his administration church services were also begun in the War Department and the Treasury Department, thus allowing worshippers on any given Sunday the choice to attend church at either the United States Capitol, the War Department, or the Treasury Department if they so desired;

Whereas Thomas Jefferson urged local governments to make land available specifically for Christian purposes, provided Federal funding for missionary work among Indian tribes, and declared that religious schools would receive `the patronage of the government’;

Whereas President Andrew Jackson declared that the Bible `is the rock on which our Republic rests’;

Whereas President Abraham Lincoln declared that the Bible `is the best gift God has given to men … But for it, we could not know right from wrong’

Whereas President William McKinley declared that `Our faith teaches us that there is no safer reliance than upon the God of our fathers, Who has so singularly favored the American people in every national trial and Who will not forsake us so long as we obey His commandments and walk humbly in His footsteps’;

Whereas President Teddy Roosevelt declared `The Decalogue and the Golden Rule must stand as the foundation of every successful effort to better either our social or our political life’;

Whereas President Woodrow Wilson declared that ` America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture’;

Whereas President Herbert Hoover declared that `American life is builded, and can alone survive, upon … [the] fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago’;

Whereas President Franklin D. Roosevelt not only led the Nation in a 6 minute prayer during D-Day on June 6, 1944, but he also declared that `If we will not prepare to give all that we have and all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to destruction’;

Whereas President Harry S. Truman declared that `The fundamental basis of this Nation’s law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul ‘;

Whereas President Harry S. Truman told a group touring Washington , DC , that `You will see, as you make your rounds, that this Nation was established by men who believed in God. … You will see the evidence of this deep religious faith on every hand’;

Whereas President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared that `Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first,the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God’s help, it will continue to be’ in a declaration later repeated with approval by President Gerald Ford;

Whereas President John F. Kennedy declared that `The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God’;

Whereas President Ronald Reagan, after noting `The Congress of the United States, in recognition of the unique contribution of the Bible in shaping the history and character of this Nation and so many of its citizens, has … requested the President to designate the year 1983 as the `Year of the Bible’,’ officially declared 1983 as `The Year of the Bible’;

Whereas every other President has similarly recognized the role of God and religious faith in the public life of America ;

Whereas all sessions of the United States Supreme Court begin with the Court’s Marshal announcing, `God save the United States and this honorable court’;

Whereas a regular and integral part of official activities in the Federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court, was the inclusion of prayer by a minister of the Gospel;

Whereas the United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our Nation’s history that the United States is `a Christian country’, `a Christian nation’, `a Christian people’, `a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being’, and that `we cannot read into the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion’;

Whereas Justice John Jay, an author of the Federalist Papers and original Justice of the United States Supreme Court, urged `The most effectual means of securing the continuance of our civil and religious liberties is always to remember with reverence and gratitude the Source from which they flow’;

Whereas Justice James Wilson, a signer of the Constitution, declared that `Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine … Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants’;

Whereas Justice William Paterson, a signer of the Constitution, declared that `Religion and morality … [are] necessary to good government, good order, and good laws’;

Whereas President George Washington, who passed into law the first legal acts organizing the Federal judiciary, asked, `where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths in the courts of justice?’;

Whereas some of the most important monuments, buildings, and landmarks in Washington , DC , include religious words, symbols, and imagery;

Whereas in the United States Capitol the declaration `In God We Trust’ is prominently displayed in both the United States House and Senate Chambers;

Whereas around the top of the walls in the House Chamber appear images of 23 great lawgivers from across the centuries, but Moses (the lawgiver, who–according to the Bible–originally received the law from God,) is the only lawgiver honored with a full face view, looking down on the proceedings of the House;

Whereas religious artwork is found throughout the United States Capitol, including in the Rotunda where the prayer service of Christopher Columbus, the Baptism of Pocahontas, and the prayer and Bible study of the Pilgrims are all prominently displayed; in the Cox Corridor of the Capitol where the words `America! God shed His grace on thee’ are inscribed; at the east Senate entrance with the words `Annuit Coeptis’ which is Latin for `God has favored our undertakings’; and in numerous other locations;

Whereas images of the Ten Commandments are found in many Federal buildings across Washington, DC, including in bronze in the floor of the National Archives; in a bronze statue of Moses in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress; in numerous locations at the U.S. Supreme Court, including in the frieze above the Justices, the oak door at the rear of the Chamber, the gable apex, and in dozens of locations on the bronze latticework surrounding the Supreme Court Bar seating;

Whereas in the Washington Monument not only are numerous Bible verses and religious acknowledgements carved on memorial blocks in the walls, including the phrases: `Holiness to the Lord’ (Exodus 28:26, 30:30, Isaiah 23:18, Zechariah 14:20), `Search the Scriptures’ (John 5:39), `The memory of the just is blessed’ (Proverbs 10:7), `May Heaven to this Union continue its beneficence’, and `In God We Trust’, but the Latin inscription Laus Deo meaning `Praise be to God’ is engraved on the monument’s capstone;

Whereas of the 5 areas inside the Jefferson Memorial into which Jefferson’s words have been carved, 4 are God-centered, including Jefferson ‘s declaration that `God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever’;

Whereas the Lincoln Memorial contains numerous acknowledgments of God and citations of Bible verses, including the declarations that `we here highly resolve that … this nation under God … shall not perish from the earth’; `The Almighty has His own purposes. `Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh’ (Matthew 18:7); `as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said `the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’ (Psalms 19:9); `one day every valley shall be exalted and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh see it together’ (Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech, based on Isaiah 40:4-5);

Whereas in the Library of Congress, The Giant Bible of Mainz, and The Gutenberg Bible are on prominent permanent display and etched on the walls are Bible verses, including: `The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not’ (John 1:5); `Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom and with all thy getting, get understanding’ (Proverbs 4:7); `What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God’ (Micah 6:8); and `The heavens declare the Glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork’ (Psalm 19:1);

Whereas numerous other of the most important American government leaders, institutions, monuments, buildings, and landmarks both openly acknowledge and incorporate religious words, symbols, and imagery into official venues;

Whereas such acknowledgments are even more frequent at the State and local level than at the Federal level, where thousands of such acknowledgments exist; and

Whereas the first week in May each year would be an appropriate week to designate as `American Religious History Week’: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the United States House of Representatives—-

(1) affirms the rich spiritual and diverse religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history, including up to the current day;

(2) recognizes that the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation’s most valuable institutions and form the inseparable foundation for America’s representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures;

(3) rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation’s public buildings and educational resources; and

(4) expresses support for designation of a `American Religious History Week’ every year for the appreciation of and education on America ‘s history of religious faith.

January 10, 2008 – Denton County [Texas] veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will benefit from a half-million dollars granted to two agencies to provide mental health assistance for the them and their families in “Operation Healthy Reunion.”

Mental Health America of Greater Dallas and the American Red Cross have re­ceived $553,260 to be disbursed through the Texas Resources for Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment fund of the Dallas foundation, said Keith Nix, a spokesman for Mental Health of America.

Many veterans who need help adjusting back to their lives and their families or who experience mental anguish because of the stress of battle hesitate to seek help through the Department of Veterans Affairs because they don’t want that information on their military records, Nix said.

And, unlike Veterans Affairs, this program offers help to family members as well, he said.

“The VA has no program for medical treat­ment, psychiatric treatment or otherwise, other than the vet,” he said. “There is a huge field of problems that needs to be addressed — problems that lead to divorce or alienation of kids.

 “You hear conversations that make your hair stand up because of the family trauma that is often created by the rejoinder of military personnel to their family,” Nix said.

“We’re hearing that, almost without exception, a woman in the military has experienced gender problems — some sort of emotional or sexual assault. The same is true of gays.

“You can’t complain about those things because the officers aren’t necessarily sympathetic and they can be harassed that much more.”

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy precludes complaints, he said.

This program sidesteps the VA.

“The whole point of the program is to bypass the VA,” he said. “There is a huge resistance to seek help that would go on their record. It goes against the grain.”

He estimated that 700 veterans and family members from Denton, Collin, Dallas, Delta, Ellis, Hopkins, Hunt, Kaufman, Navarro, Rains, Rockwall and Van Zandt counties will receive help in the two-year program.

Initial interviews can be done on a personal basis in the veteran’s community. The agencies hired employees with military experience and mental-health expertise, he said, to better understand the military mindset.

“The initial interview could be done in a minister’s or doctor’s office or the local Starbucks,” Nix said. “It’s meant to be as private as possible.”

The program is available now. Call 214-871-2420 and ask to speak with Walter Norris at extension 110.

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com .

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.”

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.”