Veterans for Common Sense

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.”

January 8, 2008 – Stress and fear about terrorism after 9/11 are giving Americans heart problems, even if they had no personal connection to the attacks, according to a UC Irvine study released Monday.

UCI researchers linked psychological stress responses to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to a 53{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} increase in heart problems — including high blood pressure and stroke — in the three years after Sept. 11, 2001.

It is the first study to show the effect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on cardiac health.

Most of those surveyed had watched the attacks on live television, and one-third had no personal connection to them.

Most of them had no preexisting heart problems, and the results persisted even when risk factors such as high cholesterol, smoking and obesity were taken into account.

“It seems that the 9/11 attacks were so potent that media exposure helped to convey enough stress that people responded in a way that contributed to their cardiovascular problems,” said Alison Holman, an assistant professor of nursing science at UCI and the study’s lead researcher.

The three-year study took a random, nationwide survey of more than 1,500 adults whose health information had been recorded before the terror at- tacks.

Researchers then asked participants about their stress responses in the weeks after the attacks and issued yearly follow-up questions ending in late 2004.

Participants were asked in the online surveys to report doctor-diagnosed ailments and assess their fear of terrorism by rating on a scale how much they agreed with such statements as “I worry that an act of terrorism will personally affect me or someone in my family in the future.”

The study was written by six researchers and published in the January edition of Archives of General Psychiatry.

Chronic worriers — those who continued to fear terrorism for several years after the attacks — were the most at risk of heart problems.

They were three to four times more likely to report a doctor-diagnosed heart problem two to three years after the terror attacks.

Those who reported high levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms nine to 14 days after the attacks were more than twice as likely to report heart problems up to three years later.

Previous research has found that rescue and recovery workers who helped with the months-long cleanup at the World Trade Center had a higher incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder than the national population.

But this study shows that even people with no direct experience with the attacks may be psychologically and physically affected by potentially serious health problems, Holman said.

In a study released in 2002, the same UCI researchers found that 17{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the U.S. population outside New York City reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder two months after the 2001 attacks.

Some of the most common triggers of terrorism-related stress have been images and videos of the Sept. 11 attacks, the rise and fall of the terrorism alert levels issued by the Department of Homeland Security, and reports of terrorism in other countries, researchers said.

“There have been a variety of events since 9/11 that have continued to reactivate concerns about terrorism, and people that worry are at the greatest risk” of developing a heart condition, said Roxane Cohen Silver, one of the study’s authors and a professor of psychology and social behavior and medicine at UCI.

Researchers say the findings may help medical and mental health workers predict within several weeks of a terrorist attack when a patient’s psychological response is likely to translate to a physical ailment.

“Now you don’t have to wait months to find out if a person has post-traumatic stress disorder to find out if they’re vulnerable to later heart conditions,” Holman said.

“If I know I have a patient who is having an acute stress reaction, I may want to intervene.”

January 4, 2008 – Soldiers returning from war don’t need to exhibit any scars on their bodies to be injured. Many — as many as 65 percent — have witnessed and survived the trauma of explosions and detonations. Those jolts and their aftermath can do a number on them, be it through brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. The two afflictions are often linked.

The long-term effects of a brain injury can be brutal and debilitating, while PTSD, left undiagnosed and untreated, can rob a person of peace of mind, sleep, the ability to maintain relationships, etc. And this is what our troops are up against after returning from their tour in hell.

We can only imagine the shape they must be in when they’re redeployed. Reading in the P-I of National Guardsman Garry Naipo’s ordeal, of the suicidal thoughts while in Iraq, of the “monster” he felt within him when he came back moody, depressed and paranoid, was brutal, but, sadly, not shocking. Our troops — veterans and those on active duty — have been fighting a war within themselves after returning home. According to the Pentagon, even six months after returning home, one in three soldiers has psychological problems.

Equally brutal was the story of Damian Fernandez, a 25-year-old soldier from Waterbury, Conn., who came back from Iraq with disabling PTSD. The Hartford Courant reported that despite saying he’d sooner kill himself than go back, Fernandez was issued a redeployment notice. There are many like him — troubled soldiers who are no longer on active duty but have been called upon to return.

The government finally has come around to realizing what our soldiers are facing, and Sen. Patty Murray continues to rattle cages in Washington, D.C., to get more resources allocated to the Department of Veterans Affairs — $43 billion in the latest spending bill. She also got the Wounded Warriors Act passed, which, among other things, requires the VA and the Department of Defense to come up with a plan to treat, diagnose and prevent traumatic brain injuries and PTSD. But given the high suicide rate among troops returning from Iraq, clearly, more needs to be done.

In addition to pulling out of Iraq, whatever it takes, we must do to make these men and women whole again — be it building a sanctuary/support system for returning National Guardsmen and their families, or continuing to focus on the treatment — and time off — our injured soldiers need.

January 7, 2008 – The CIA destroyed videotapes showing its agents subjecting high-level al-Qaeda detainees to waterboarding after the agency’s inspector general issued a classified report in the spring of 2004 that concluded the interrogation methods used on the prisoners “appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture.”

    Details about when the videotapes were expected to be destroyed were revealed in a February 2003 letter released last week by Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-California). Harman was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee at the time she wrote the letter to the CIA advising the agency against destroying the videotapes. Prior to writing the letter to then CIA General Counsel Scott Muller, Harman had been briefed about the CIA’s interrogation methods against so-called high-level detainees. The CIA declassified Harman’s letter at the congresswoman’s request.

    Harman’s letter provides a more thorough account of the possible reasons CIA officials destroyed the videotaped interrogations, which, according to public accounts, took place in November 2005, more than two years after Harman sent a letter to Muller voicing disapproval about purging the videotapes. It also suggests intelligence officials heeded prior warnings to preserve the videotapes and destroyed the videotapes only after evidence of the agency’s covert interrogation practices were revealed publicly in news reports.

    Harman’s letter did not raise concerns or express disapproval about the CIA’s use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Moreover, her letter advising the agency against destroying the videotapes were made out of concern the footage CIA agents captured “would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future.” It is believed Harman was referring to information about the 9/11 attacks and other purported plots against the United States.

    At the time Harman wrote to Muller, CIA Inspector General John Helgerson was in the midst of an internal investigation into the agency’s interrogation methods, which Truthout reported last week. Helgerson personally viewed the videotapes that showed two detainees being subjected to waterboarding by CIA officers, which formed the foundation for his still classified report on the CIA’s methods of interrogation.

    “In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability,” according to a November 9, 2005, story in The New York Times was published around the same month the tapes were destroyed. “They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.”

    “The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world,” The New York Times reported.” They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe he is drowning.

    Last week, the Justice Department announced it had opened a formal criminal investigation into the destruction of the videotapes headed by John Durham, an assistant attorney general from Connecticut. Helgerson, who had been investigating the circumstances behind the tapes’ destruction before the launch of the criminal probe, said he would recuse himself from the matter.

    Inspector General Probe Launched Shortly After Issuance of “Torture Memo”

    Helgerson launched a review of the CIA’s interrogation techniques less than a year after a meeting was convened at the White House in July 2002. It was at this meeting former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Justice Department attorney John Yoo, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s attorney David Addington, and unknown CIA officials discussed whether the CIA could interrogate Abu Zubaydah, a high-level al-Qaeda detainee captured in Pakistan in March 2002, more aggressively in order to get him to respond to questions about plots against the United States and its interests abroad.

    Yoo, Gonzales and Addington gave the CIA the green light to use a wide variety of techniques, including waterboarding, on Zubaydah and other detainees at several secret prisons overseas to “break” them and force them to cooperate with interrogators, according to an account published in Newsweek in late December 2003. Less than a month after the meeting, on August 1, 2002, Yoo drafted a memo to Gonzales that was signed by Jay Bybee, the assistant attorney general at the time. That memo declared President Bush had the legal authority to allow CIA interrogators to employ harsh tactics to extract information from detainees. Human rights organizations and Democratic and Republican lawmakers have characterized the methods outlined in the Yoo memo as torture.

    Chertoff Provides Legal Guidance to CIA on Interrogation Methods

    During this time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff advised the CIA that its agents had the legal authority to use what was referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Abu Zubaydah, according to a little-known report published in The New York Times in January 2005.

    Chertoff was head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division when CIA officials inquired whether its agents could be charged with violating the federal anti-torture statute for employing interrogation methods such as waterboarding. The tactic causes detainees to slowly drown, and is generally terminated before the detainees die.

    “The CIA was seeking to determine the legal limits of interrogation practices for use in cases like that of Abu Zubaydah, the Qaeda lieutenant who was captured in March 2002,” says a January 29, 2005, New York Times story. That story quoted unnamed sources who told the newspaper “Chertoff was directly involved in these discussions, in effect evaluating the legality of techniques proposed by the CIA by advising the agency whether its employees could go ahead with proposed interrogation methods without fear of prosecution.”

    During his Senate confirmation hearing in February 2005, Chertoff maintained he provided the CIA broad guidance in response to its questions about interrogation methods and never specifically addressed the legality regarding waterboarding or other techniques.

    Chertoff told former CIA General Counsel Scott Muller and his deputy, John Rizzo, that an August 1, 2002, memo widely referred to as the “Torture Memo” put the CIA on solid legal ground and that its agents could waterboard a prisoner without fear of prosecution. The memo was written by former Justice Department attorney John Yoo.

    Yoo’s memo said Congress “may no more regulate the president’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.”

    New Legal Guidelines Defining Torture

    In the summer of 2004, Yoo’s memo was publicly disclosed which led the administration to reject the former Justice Department official’s legal opinion on interrogation methods. A new opinion made public in December 2004, signed by former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, rejected Yoo’s interpretation of the law defining torture and more restrictive standards defining it were adopted.

    “But a cryptic footnote to the new document about the ‘treatment of detainees’ referred to what the officials said were other still-classified opinions. Officials have said the footnote meant coercive techniques approved by the Justice Department under the looser interpretation of the torture statutes were still lawful even under the new, more restrictive standards,” according to a November 9, 2005, report in The New York Times.

    The new legal opinion meant agents involved in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah could have found themselves in legal jeopardy if their conduct had been exposed publicly. And it was just a matter of time before details of the CIA’s covert operations surfaced.

    Deputy Inspector General Believed “CIA People” Lied to Congress

    Shortly before Helgerson completed his internal investigation in the spring of 2004, he tapped Mary O. McCarthy, a career CIA official, as deputy inspector general to assist him with a number of investigations including his probe of the CIA’s interrogation methods.

    McCarthy was also personally briefed on the existence and content of the videotapes, according to several CIA officials who worked closely with her, however it’s unknown whether she viewed the material. McCarthy also oversaw the inspector general’s investigation into the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. But something related to the CIA’s treatment of detainees had disturbed McCarthy enough to confide in her friends that the CIA covered-up the methods officers used when interrogating certain detainees.

    According to a May 2006, Washington Post story, McCarthy “worried that neither Helgerson nor the agency’s Congressional overseers would fully examine what happened or why.” Another friend said, “She had the impression that this stuff has been pretty well buried.” The Post story reported, “In McCarthy’s view and that of many colleagues, friends say, torture was not only wrong but also misguided, because it rarely produced useful results.”

    McCarthy was among a group of former intelligence officials who late last year signed a letter opposing the nomination of Attorney General Michael Mukasey on grounds he would not denounce waterboarding. She alleged – two years or so after she and Helgerson completed their report into the agency’s interrogation practices – CIA officials lied to members of Congress during an intelligence briefing when they said the agency did not violate treaties that bar, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees during interrogations, according to a May 14, 2006, front-page story in The Washington Post.

    “A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that ‘CIA people had lied’ in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading,” The Washington Post reported.

    In April 2006, ten days before she was due to retire, McCarthy was fired from the CIA for allegedly leaking classified information to the media, a CIA spokeswoman told reporters at the time.

    The CIA said McCarthy had spoken with numerous journalists, including The Washington Post’s Dana Priest, who in November 2005 exposed the CIA’s secret prison sites, where in 2002 the CIA videotaped its agents interrogating a so-called high-level detainee, Abu Zubaydah. The videotaped interrogation of Zubaydah, which is said to have shown the prisoner being subjected to waterboarding, was destroyed after Priest’s story was published, and is now at the center of a wide-ranging Congressional and Justice Department investigation. Priest won a Pulitzer Prize for her expose. The CIA did not say whether McCarthy was a source for Priest’s story.

    Following news reports of her dismissal from the CIA, McCarthy, through her attorney Ty Cobb, vehemently denied leaking classified information to the media. However, the CIA said she failed a polygraph test after the agency launched an internal investigation in late 2005. The agency said the investigation was an attempt to find out who provided The Washington Post and The New York Times with information about its covert activities, including domestic surveillance, and it promptly fired her.

    The Washington Post reported, “McCarthy was not an ideologue, her friends say, but at some point fell into a camp of CIA officers who felt that the Bush administration’s venture into Iraq had dangerously diverted US counterterrorism policy. After seeing – in e-mails, cable traffic, interview transcripts and field reports – some of the secret fruits of the Iraq intervention, McCarthy became disenchanted, three of her friends say.”

    “In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the CIA’s detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (California), the senior Democrat,” The Washington Post says. “McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA’s general counsel had worked to secure a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the agency’s creation of “ghost detainees” – prisoners removed from Iraq for secret interrogations without notice to the International Committee of the Red Cross – because the Geneva Conventions prohibit such practices.”

    The fact the videotapes were allegedly destroyed during the same month The New York Times published a story about Helgerson’s classified report on CIA interrogation methods, and The Washington Post published a story exposing the CIA’s covert interrogation activities at overseas prisons, suggests the CIA may have decided to destroy the videotaped interrogations because it feared that if the tapes became part of the public record it could expose its agents to a federal criminal investigation.

January 7, 2008 – They are the other casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: spouses – mostly wives – of military personnel as well as their children, parents and even siblings struggling with the fear that accompanies combat separations or the wrenching readjustment that often marks the return home. Some are troops themselves, home for good or for a while between deployments, trying to cope with depression, anxiety, alcoholism or re-entry.

Stressed by financial concerns and worries that seeking psychological counseling, especially through official channels, could jeopardize a loved one’s military career, many relatives are reluctant to seek help. Others don’t know where to find it.

Now a nonprofit group called Give an Hour, launched by Washington area clinical psychologist Barbara V. Romberg, is providing free counseling for soldiers and their families, as well as their unmarried partners. More than 720 licensed psychologists, social workers and other counselors from 40 states and the District of Columbia have volunteered to donate an hour a week of therapy time for a minimum of one year to those affected by the twin conflicts.

In the program’s first two months, about 50 clients – including one soldier on active duty in Iraq – have contacted the program to find a therapist. Romberg hopes this trickle will turn into a steady stream as word of the program spreads.

The pro bono effort is underwritten by several grants, including one from the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes, a nonprofit group based in Ossining, N.Y., that assists severely wounded soldiers. Romberg’s group also has forged partnerships with several military family organizations, including the Silver Star Families of America and the Washington-based Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, which aids relatives of those who die while on duty.

The goal, Romberg said, is not to supplant the psychological services the military offers but to supplement them.

“We provide help to people they don’t,” among them parents and siblings of troops, she said. Because it operates independently of the Department of Defense and VA health systems, the program hopes to remove what some consider a key obstacle confronting those who need help.

Sometimes troops return home utterly changed or obviously damaged by what they have experienced but resist seeking help, leaving it to their families to cope with the aftermath.

A 2004 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine of 6,000 soldiers and Marines involved in ground combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan found that of those whose responses indicated a mental disorder, only 23 to 40 percent sought psychiatric help. Many who did not cited fear of being stigmatized as a reason.

“In the military, there are unique factors that contribute to resistance to seeking such help, particularly concern about how a soldier will be perceived by peers and by the leadership,” concluded the research team, headed by psychiatrist Charles W. Hoge of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md.

In June, top Bush administration and military officials, acknowledging “shortfalls” in mental health treatment, pledged to improve psychiatric care for military personnel. Among the improvements mentioned is a program to reduce stigma.

“It was just very clear to me that there was going to be a tidal wave of (psychologically) damaged folks coming back,” said Romberg, who founded Give an Hour and is its president. The military is trying to cope, “but it was clear to me they weren’t going to be able to stay ahead” of the accelerating demand for psychological services.

Last year, a study co-written by Hoge of 300,000 returning troops found that one in three of those who served in Iraq later sought help for mental health problems. The Iraq veterans consistently reported more psychological distress than those returning from Afghanistan, Bosnia or Kosovo.

The repercussions of that suffering can hit families hard.

Bonnie Carroll, executive director of TAPS, said her group has referred relatives struggling with the death of a service member to Give an Hour.

“It’s a wonderful resource,” said Carroll, who adds that counseling services available through the military to eligible spouses and children are typically limited to a few sessions and not offered to other relatives.

Although the Department of Veterans Affairs operates 207 specialized Vet Centers around the country that offer counseling, not everyone who needs help lives near one, Carroll said.

Researchers affiliated with Harvard reported recently that 1.8 million veterans and 3.8 million people who live in their households lacked health insurance in 2004.

The match between therapist and client is made online through the group’s Web site, www.giveanhour.org. Potential clients search for practitioners on the basis of their location. Listings include information about specialty or expertise, such as grief counseling, marital therapy or substance abuse, as well as a willingness to participate in telephone sessions in the event that in-person meetings are not feasible.

Give an Hour does not screen therapists, Romberg said, but it does verify they have a license in good standing.

To protect confidentiality, the Web site contains no “cookies” that could identify people seeking help, Romberg said. The site also includes information for patients about what to expect during therapy sessions and how to choose a counselor. For therapists, there is information about the unique culture of the military.

Demand for counselors, many of whom are social workers, has been slow in the Washington area where more than 100 therapists have signed on, but brisk in other parts of the country that have large military populations, including the Southwest, Romberg said.

Dawn Beatty, a licensed professional counselor in Mesa, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix, said she has treated two clients this year through Give an Hour and talked by phone to a third. For the past two months she has been meeting with the wife of a National Guard member who recently returned from Iraq and may face a second deployment.

The couple had been married only a few weeks when the husband shipped out. Recently returned after 18 months, his wife describes him as “a different person.” He has refused to discuss his experiences overseas and is having trouble coping with being married and with her two children from a previous marriage who live with them.

Beatty said the woman has said her husband is “upset with her for coming in. He thinks they should be able to work it out. There’s a lot of anger and frustration.”

One young soldier, recently returned from multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, kept his first appointment with Beatty but did not return for a second, she said. “He had a lot of PTSD” and was drinking heavily, she said.

Beatty, who said her usual fee is $115 per hour, said that she volunteered for Give an Hour and plans to provide free treatment beyond the one-year minimum for as long as it takes for those who seek her help. “No matter what a financial struggle it is for me I’ll do it,” she said.

Among military clients, she said, “there is a real pride issue. They feel very guilty about coming in and accepting free counseling,” but often their insurance won’t cover it.

Clients seeking to give back are encouraged to volunteer at local organizations listed on the program’s Web site.

Romberg said the group reflects her experience as the daughter of a World War II veteran who grew up in a small town in California and watched as her neighbors went off to fight in Vietnam.

Several years ago she was mulling over what she could do after hearing a radio report about the number of Americans who have not been personally touched by the war.

Her resolve to do something, she said, was strengthened when her then-9-year-old daughter asked her about a homeless veteran dressed in camouflage fatigues.

“I could not look at her and say we knew but didn’t do anything,” Romberg said. “It seemed to me if the mental health community had an easy way to participate, they would.”

January 3, 2008 – Tomah, Wisconsin – Ah, the wonders of privatization.

On Dec. 10, locked doors greeted veterans seeking treatment at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) clinics in Rice Lake and Hayward. Corporate Wellness & Fitness, the Kentucky company contracted to operate the clinics, cut and ran after just six months in Hayward and three months in Rice Lake. The company said it was losing $26,000 a month and that the VA reneged on promises to guarantee the venture’s profitability. The Rice Lake clinic reopened Dec. 26 with VA personnel, but the Hayward clinic remains closed.

The fiasco raises numerous issues. Business Week magazine reported Corporate Wellness & Fitness “agreed to accept a fixed sum per month instead of having the VA reimburse it dollar for dollar … It quickly felt pressure from the government to spend more on supplies and equipment than it had budgeted and could pay.” Aren’t businesses supposed to consider these factors before they submit a contract bid? It seems that government contracts, at least under the Bush Administration, follow the rules of crony capitalism: profit is privatized, risk is socialized.

Even more fundamental is whether privatization, and the inevitable profit/loss calculations that come with it, is in the best interests of veterans or taxpayers. Treating veterans is an inherently unprofitable enterprise. Nearly all wounded veterans have complex medical traumas that far exceed their ability to pay. VA hospitals and clinics don’t exist to turn a profit; they exist to provide the best medical care possible for those who risked their lives in defense of their country. Their treatment is a public, not a private, function.

If the government were serious about privatization, it would abolish every VA hospital and clinic and simply give veterans vouchers for their medical care. So-called public/private partnerships, like the ones in Rice Lake and Hayward, blur the line between public and private, encourage private vendors to believe government owes them a guaranteed profit (see, “cost-plus” contracts) and often lures private contractors into the pay-to-play world of campaign contributions (see Halliburton, Blackwater, etc.).

The VA system exists because the free market is an awkward and inefficient delivery mechanism for veterans health care. When it’s absolutely, positively necessary for a group of people to receive medical care, there is no substitute for socialized medicine. That’s why VA employees, not Corporate Wellness and Fitness, are delivering health care to veterans in Rice Lake.

January 5, 2008 – Too many severely injured troops and their families haven’t been getting the bedside help they need in preparing applications to qualify for up to $100,000 in traumatic injury insurance. But that is going to change, says Army Col. John Sackett.

Sackett heads the Traumatic Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (TSGLI) branch within the U.S. Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Va. More than 6,600 claims for TSGLI have been filed by wounded or injured soldiers since the program began Dec. 1, 2005.

But only 2,700 Army claims, about 40 percent of the total, have been approved.

Many more wounded members from all services would be found eligible for TSGLI if servicemembers, family caregivers and especially medical staff were better informed on the kind of detailed documentation TSGLI requires, Sackett said.

To increase their knowledge, and boost the number of claims approved, the Army is assigning Soldier Family Support Specialists to 10 military treatment facilities critical in the treatment of trauma patients.

These specialists already are deployed and holding TSGLI training sessions at a number of military medical facilities, and more of these counselors are being trained to deploy soon.

Every member covered by Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance also pays an extra $1 a month for traumatic injury protection. TSGLI pays $25,000 increments, up to $100,000, to help severely injured members and families handle the extra expense and the strain of adjusting to life-altering injuries.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, which administers TSGLI, lists 44 types of losses that can qualify a member for payment. Conditions not difficult to document involve the loss of body parts or bodily functions, severe burns, or severe brain and spinal chord injuries.

A far bigger and more complex problem in preparing TSGLI claims, however, involves members who suffer severe wounds to limbs that are saved or have mild traumatic brain injury. The trauma can leave them dependent on others to perform “activities of daily living” for extended periods.

If unable to independently perform two or more of these activities for 30 days, the member will qualify for $25,000 in TSGLI. If debilitated in this way for 120 days would qualify for the maximum award of $100,000.

Of nearly 3,700 Army TSGLI claims rejected by the VA, about 90 percent involve claims of members’ lost ability to perform activities of daily living. Sackett said they are being rejected because caregivers aren’t documenting what VA needs to see to prove loss of ability to perform activities.

“The way to resolve this is to put boots on the ground, so to speak, to help the individuals get the necessary documentation they need at the military treatment facility,” Sackett said.

In recent months the VA has relaxed the degree of debilitation that needs to be documented. It used to require evidence that members were “completely dependent” on others for two or more activities of daily living for 30 to 120 days. Now caregivers need only show that members were unable to “independently perform” these activities for the required periods of time.

From this change alone, said Christian Harris, program managers for the Army TSGLI outreach program, claim approval rates are starting to rise.

“We [also] are working with VA to try to adjust program guidance to include a wider array of debilitating injuries,” Harris said.

Wounded servicemembers and their families also need to understand how early application for TSGLI can cut off their eligibility for Combat Injury Pay and thus lower a member’s total compensation over time, Sackett said.

A year ago Congress decided it was unfair that servicemembers wounded in a war saw hostile fire pay, imminent danger pay and hazardous duty pay end within a month of being evacuated.

So since March 23, 2006, medical evacuees have been able to draw Combat Injury Pay which replaces war zone pays that stop during hospitalization or rehabilitation. CIP can total $430 a month.

But wounded servicemembers should be aware that CIP ends when a member is awarded TSGLI. Those facing long periods of convalescence could be denying themselves almost $5,200 a year if they apply too early for TSGLI, Sackett said. TSGLI specialists will include this in their briefings.

January 5, 2008 – The U.S. military said Saturday that an Iraqi soldier apparently shot dead two American service members for “reasons that are as yet unknown” while they were on a joint patrol north of the capital.

Three other U.S. soldiers and one civilian interpreter were wounded in the Dec. 26 attack, the military said in a statement. The shooting occurred as American and Iraqi soldiers were conducting operations to establish a combat outpost in Ninevah province in northern Iraq.

The Iraqi soldier who allegedly opened fire fled the scene but was identified by other Iraqi army personnel and was then captured, the military said. Two Iraqi soldiers are being held in connection with the incident.

The U.S. military identified the two Americans killed as Capt. Rowdy Inman and Sgt. Benjamin Portell, both of whom were assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Portell, 27, was from Bakersfield, Calif., and Inman, 38, was from Panorama Village, Texas. Both were stationed at Fort Hood.

U.S. and Iraqi investigations into the incident are under way, the military said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki returned to Iraq after spending a week in London for what his office had described as a routine medical checkup.

No official information has been released as to what kind of medical checks he underwent in London. But one of his advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had traveled to Britain after falling ill, but that the checkup did not reveal any problems.

“I am in good health. I will resume work directly,” al-Maliki told reporters at the airport. “We will proceed with our process of rebuilding.”

At the time of his departure on Dec. 29, an adviser to al-Maliki, Yassin Majeed, had said the prime minister had delayed a previous trip because the “security situation did not allow it.”

Security has improved significantly across Iraq in the past six months, although violent attacks still claim dozens of lives each week, and U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to fight insurgents and al-Qaida in Iraq.

On Saturday, a roadside bomb explosion struck a passing minibus north of the town of Muqdadiyah, which lies about 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing six people, local authorities said.

The bomb also wounded another three people, said an official in the joint coordination center of Diyala province – which remains one of Iraq’s most violent areas. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In the province’s capital, Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, another roadside bomb wounded three civilians, police said. It was unclear what the target was.

The city has seen several attacks recently, and on Friday a one-day vehicle ban was imposed on the city because of “increased violent events during last week,” said Baqouba police chief Brigadier Hasan al-Obaidi. The ban also was aimed at protecting worshippers going to mosques for Friday prayers.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a passing Iraqi Army patrol in the Azamiyah neighborhood in the northern part of the capital Saturday, wounding four civilians, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Despite continuing daily attacks across the country, violence has fallen significantly in the country – by 60 percent since June, the U.S. military says.

One indication of the improvement in security was the reopening of the Samarra dam bridge, one of the entrances into the city 60 miles north of Baghdad, on Thursday, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Entrances into the city had been closed for about eight months due to the violence. “Commerce into and within the city stopped. The reopening of the bridge and other entry points is a direct result of improving security,” the statement said.

January 4, 2008 – While serving in Iraq, Noah Pierce survived the bombs, the snipers, and countless encounters with the enemy.

But his family and friends say it was the guilt that finally overcame him.

“The demons and the pain…he’s too sensitive,” said his mother, Cheryl Softich. “He couldn’t handle the innocents that were killed, the kids he got attached to. He was a good boy, he had a heart.”

When Noah came home from Iraq in April of 2006, he was 22. He had served two tours of duty there; two years of his young life. He tried to readjust to life back in Eveleth. He went hunting with his step-dad equipped with creedmore scopes, and partied with friends.

But it was difficult. Noah was depressed, he suffered from nightmares, and drank to get through the days. Doctors diagnosed him with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. They recommended he get counseling. But he didn’t go, instead spending much of his time convincing himself and others that he was getting better.

“He says, ‘Ma, you worry too much, I’m fine, I’m happy.’ A week later he shot himself.”

Cheryl says her son struggled for 14 months before taking his life last July. Though he was thousands of miles from combat, Noah could not forgive himself for a life-altering moment in Iraq. While on a road in Fallujah, an Iraqi man was approaching the soldiers. They ordered him to stop, but the man kept getting closer. Noah was ordered to shoot the man. He later found out the man was an innocent Iraqi doctor.

“There was something about that incident that ate up my son every single day,” said Cheryl. “I found a note that he wrote to the doctor and it says, ‘I am so sorry.'”

It’s been six months since Noah died. Cheryl visits the place where her son took his life, in a secluded area, tucked back in the woods not more than a mile from his childhood home. Even though its where he died, Cheryl says she feels close to him here. She is able to remember the happy Noah, the boy who loved life.

“He loved to hunt with Dad, loved to fish with his friends, all he ever wanted to do was serve his country,” she said.

And after 9/11, Noah was even more determined to enlist. He joined the Army right before his 18th birthday. His best friend Tyler says before he enlisted, Noah was easy-going. He smiled all the time, and made jokes. Together they spent their time outdoors. Tyler says Noah was excited to serve, but when he came back from his second tour, he noticed something had changed.

“You could see obvious changes,” said Tyler Newberg. “He had something else on his mind affecting his daily life, you know?”

But it wasn’t just Tyler who noticed the difference; his family became extremely worried. They encouraged Noah to go to counseling, but Noah said asking for help was a sign of weakness.

Cheryl has now made it her mission to teach others about PTSD. On December 15th, the local AMVETS Post 33 in Virginia was named in honor of Noah. She hopes that everyone who walks through the door will learn about the disorder, and how they can get help.

Two military medical studies found that almost 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of soldiers and marines home from Iraq suffered from a mental illness. Between 12{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}-20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of them met the criteria for PTSD. Now, in honor of her son, Cheryl is determined to get other veterans the help they need.

“Noah died so others could learn about PTSD,” she said.

When soldiers sign up, Cheryl wants a clause saying they must go to counseling when they return from combat. She wants to call it, “Noah’s Clause”. She plans to contact members of Congress, and go to Washington, D.C. if necessary.

It’s not mandatory,” said Cheryl. “It needs to be mandatory so they go, otherwise they’re not going to go. They just wont.”

And if she can save just one other life by getting the word out about Noah and PTSD, Cheryl says her mission will be a success.

“It is my goal in life to make my son so much more and I will do that,” she said.

Huckabee Steps Back Into the Pulpit at Evangelical Church While Campaigning

WINDHAM, New Hampshire, January 6, 2008 – A pastor from Texas was scheduled to deliver the sermon Sunday at a church here called the Crossing.

But instead this small evangelical congregation heard from a different special guest: Baptist minister and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who delivered a sermon of more than 20 minutes on how to be part of “God’s Army” in the middle school cafeteria where the congregation meets.

“When we become believers, it’s as if we have signed up to be part of God’s Army, to be soldiers for Christ,” Huckabee told the enthusiastic audience.

Days after winning the Iowa Republican caucus, where Christian conservatives powered him to victory, Huckabee now finds himself in a state without an extensive religious base. While more than 60 percent of GOP voters were estimated to be evangelicals in the Iowa caucuses, they accounted for only about one in five New Hampshire Republican voters in 2000, the last time the state held a competitive GOP primary.

Huckabee’s campaign did not allow cameras into the church, and the candidate did not make an appeal for votes as part of his sermon. But a church official invited members to attend an event a mile away, where Huckabee held a rally with actor Chuck Norris and where free clam chowder was served.

Huckabee mixed homespun jokes into his sermon and added a more religious tone than in his political speeches, not just quoting from the Bible but citing specific verses and talking about the serious side of faith.

“When you give yourself to Christ, some relationships have to go,” he said. “It’s no longer your life; you’ve signed it over.”

Likening service to God to service in the military, Huckabee said “there is suffering in the conditioning for battle” and “you obey the orders.”

In his campaign stops in New Hampshire, Huckabee has generally focused on appealing to nonreligious voters, playing the bass guitar and emphasizing his support of small government, local control of schools and gun rights — popular causes among Granite State Republicans. Norris, who has endorsed him, has been at his side at nearly every event. His campaign has not run an ad, popular in Iowa, that dubbed him a “Christian leader.”

The former Arkansas governor said he was comfortable at the Crossing because it is similar to the Church at Rock Creek in Little Rock, which he attends regularly. The former head of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention prefers “contemporary” services, an aide said, and often attends services that are not explicitly Baptist.

At the Crossing, like at Huckabee’s Arkansas church, a band with guitar players leads the singing, and the words of the songs appeared on a projector rather than in hymnals. In contrast, however, this relatively new congregation does not own a building — there is a large sanctuary at his Arkansas church — so more than 200 people sat in folding chairs in the large cafeteria, with the lunch tables used during the school week stacked against the wall.

Huckabee, sitting in the front row beside his wife, Janet, seemed to know most of the songs without reading the words and praised the guitar player as being better than he is. And he said he enjoyed the upbeat service, which included tambourine and drums and children running under flags that were waved during the songs.

“If we know the Lord, there ought to be joy,” Huckabee said.