Veterans for Common Sense

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.

January 3, 2008 – CIBOLO, Texas – In near-freezing temperatures Thursday, Spc. Austin Johnson and his wife, Lisa, cut through a yellow ribbon stretched across the porch of their new home and walked in to a house full of furniture.

The move into the new home – their first house since the couple married right out of high school – is bittersweet for the Johnsons.

Last August, Spc. Johnson, 27, received a traumatic brain injury from an improvised explosive device blast in Iraq, his fifth explosion in two tours.

Tragedy struck again in October, not long after he began rehabilitation at Brooke Army Medical Center. Their three children were killed after Mrs. Johnson’s car was overturned by heavy winds in West Texas as she drove from El Paso to be with her husband.

“There are a lot of Johnsons out there,” said Amy Palmer, co-founder of Operation Homefront, the nonprofit group that called on local businesses and dozens of donors to help the Johnsons.

More than 30,000 troops have been wounded in six years of war; and as many as 100,000 may experience post-traumatic stress disorder.  Officials with Operation Homefront hope Thursday’s event serves as a model to help other wounded service members whose lives have been disrupted by war.

“This house represents a new beginning for this family,” said Mrs. Palmer. “But it’s also a call for mortgage lenders and homebuilders to sell excess housing at discounted rates to provide a new start for other wounded warriors and their families.”

The nonprofit group provides emergency assistance to families of deployed military and wounded soldiers. It’s helped more than 45,000 military families in need since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and given more than $5 million in financial aid.

Once inside, the Johnsons found a house full of furniture provided by KB Home.

“Oh, wow,” Spc. Johnson said, plopping down on a sectional couch. “Who would think so many people would pull together for us?”

Mrs. Johnson, 26, smiled.

“This is more than we expected,” she said.

“The Johnsons are part of a new generation of wounded warriors and their families who are slipping into destitution and homelessness,” Mrs. Palmer said. “As they transition from the military to VA, they don’t know for up to two years how much income they’ll have. And all of them will need housing in affordable suburban communities near VA medical facilities.”

Operation Homefront heard about Spc. Johnson and his family as he began a long, tedious therapy for a traumatic brain injury at Brooke Army that left him with speech problems, migraines and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The main need, Mrs. Palmer said, was emergency financial assistance. Financial difficulties caused by the strain of two deployments, a payroll mix-up and his injuries forced the couple to file for bankruptcy.

Then, in October, as Mrs. Johnson drove with their three children from their home in El Paso, a strong wind flipped her Chevrolet Trailblazer near Ozona. Two of the children – Ashley, 5, and Logan, 2 – died instantly and Mrs. Johnson was injured. Tyler, 9, died a month later at a Dallas hospital.

Operation Homefront immediately put out a call for help, and businesses, civic groups and individual answered.

Officials with the PGA Tour, the professional golf organization, contacted local businesses and raised $80,000 in two days. The groups eventually raised $140,000 – enough to pay off the Johnsons’ debt, buy a replacement vehicle and make a down payment on the new home closer to where Spc. Johnson will continue rehabilitation.

The Johnsons fell in love with the two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath home near Cibolo, a suburb of San Antonio. The sellers dropped the price to $154,000 and paid the closing costs.

USAA, an insurance company that specializes in military officers, financed the 30-year mortgage at 5.87 percent when no other lenders would take a chance because of the Johnsons’ bankruptcy.

And KB Home provided an additional home-warming gift of linens and cleaning supplies.

Having the new home will allow the couple some “breathing room as they transition from one life to another,” Mrs. Palmer said.

As the Johnsons walked through their new home, it began to sink in that this was their place.

“We’re going to put pictures of the kids all over the place,” she said. “We have thousands. We won’t run out. This is our place, but it’s dedicated to them as much as us.”

January 3, 2008 – Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that the Justice Department had elevated its inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes to a formal criminal investigation headed by a career federal prosecutor.

The announcement is the first indication that investigators have concluded on a preliminary basis that C.I.A. officers, possibly along with other government officials, may have committed criminal acts in their handling of the tapes, which recorded the interrogations in 2002 of two operatives with Al Qaeda and were destroyed in 2005.

C.I.A. officials have for years feared becoming entangled in a criminal investigation involving alleged improprieties in secret counterterrorism programs. Now, the investigation and a probable grand jury inquiry will scrutinize the actions of some of the highest-ranking current and former officials at the agency.

The tapes were never provided to the courts or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had requested all C.I.A. documents related to Qaeda prisoners. The question of whether to destroy the tapes was for nearly three years the subject of deliberations among lawyers at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Justice Department officials declined to specify what crimes might be under investigation, but government lawyers have said the inquiry will probably focus on whether the destruction of the tapes involved criminal obstruction of justice and related false-statement offenses.

Mr. Mukasey assigned John H. Durham, a veteran federal prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the criminal inquiry in tandem with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The appointment of a prosecutor from outside Washington was an unusual move, and it suggested that Mr. Mukasey wanted to give the investigation the appearance of an extra measure of independence, after complaints from lawmakers in both parties that Mr. Mukasey’s predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales, had allowed politics to influence the Justice Department’s judgment.

Mr. Durham was not appointed as a special counsel in this case, a step sought by some Congressional Democrats. He will have less expansive authority than a special counsel and will report to the deputy attorney general rather than assume the powers of the attorney general, which he would have had as a special counsel.

Mr. Durham has spent years bringing cases against organized crime figures in Hartford and Boston. In legal circles he has the reputation of a tough, tight-lipped litigator who compiled a stellar track record against the mob.

A C.I.A. spokesman said that the agency would cooperate fully with the Justice Department investigation. Current and former officials have said that the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who at the time was the head of the agency’s clandestine branch.

The decision to start a full-scale criminal investigation into the matter came four weeks after the disclosure on Dec. 6 that the tapes had been created and then destroyed. The Justice Department and the C.I.A. opened a preliminary inquiry on Dec. 8, and Mr. Mukasey said Wednesday that he had concluded from that review “that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter.”

The chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, and the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, welcomed Mr. Mukasey’s announcement. But neither gave any indication he would defer to the criminal inquiry, and in separate statements they pledged to proceed with their committees’ investigations into the destruction of the tapes.

John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A. inspector general who took part in the preliminary inquiry, said Wednesday that he would step aside from the criminal investigation to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Mr. Helgerson’s office had reviewed the videotapes, documenting the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, as part of an investigation into the C.I.A’s secret detention and interrogation program. Mr. Helgerson completed his investigation into the program in early 2004.

Among White House lawyers who took part in discussions between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy the tapes were Mr. Gonzales, when he was White House counsel; Harriet E. Miers, Mr. Gonzales’s successor as counsel; David S. Addington, who was then counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney; and John B. Bellinger III, then the legal adviser to the National Security Council. It is unclear whether anyone outside the C.I.A. endorsed destroying the tapes.

The new Justice Department investigation is likely to last for months, possibly beyond the end of the Bush administration.

Mr. Durham is currently the top-ranking deputy in the United States attorney’s office in Connecticut, supervising all major felony cases brought in the state.

In the late 1990s he was assigned as a special attorney in Boston leading an inquiry into allegations that F.B.I. agents and police officers had been compromised by mobsters.

In taking over the inquiry, Mr. Durham is expected to be able to move ahead without a long delay because his team will include Justice Department prosecutors who have already been working on the case. But at least in the beginning, it is likely to proceed more slowly than parallel investigations on Capitol Hill that are already well under way. Investigators from the House Intelligence Committee last month reviewed C.I.A. documents related to the destruction of the tapes, and the committee has called government witnesses to testify at a hearing scheduled for Jan. 16.

Mr. Mukasey pointedly did not designate Mr. Durham as a special counsel, in effect refusing to bow to pressure from Congressional Democrats to appoint an independent prosecutor with the same broad legal powers that were given to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel who was appointed in 2003 to lead the investigation into the disclosure of a C.I.A. officer’s identity. That inquiry resulted in the perjury and obstruction prosecution of I. Lewis Libby Jr., formerly Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff. After Mr. Libby’s conviction, President Bush commuted his sentence.

Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed after the attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, determined that his own relationship with officials under possible scrutiny in the leak case forced him to recuse himself from the investigation. As special counsel, Mr. Fitzgerald had the authority of the attorney general for the matters under investigation.

Mr. Durham will report to the deputy attorney general, an office being held temporarily by Craig S. Morford. Mr. Durham will have the powers of the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction that includes C.I.A. headquarters. If a grand jury is convened as expected, it will meet in Alexandria, Va., where the prosecutor’s office is located.

Mr. Mukasey said “in an abundance of caution” the office of United States attorney for the district, Chuck Rosenberg, had been recused from the case and would not take part in the inquiry. Mr. Rosenberg’s office has investigated cases of detainee abuse by C.I.A. employees and contractors and has worked closely with the C.I.A. on counterterrorism and espionage cases.

Mr. Mukasey said the decision was made “to avoid any possible appearance of a conflict with other matters handled by that office.” Appointments like Mr. Durham’s are sometimes made in cases in which prosecutors like Mr. Rosenberg have recused themselves.

In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Wednesday, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, the chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, said they believed that C.I.A. officials had deliberately withheld the tapes from the commission. They suggested that since the commission received its authority from both Congress and President Bush, any deliberate withholding of evidence might have violated federal law.

“Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation,” they wrote.

January 3, 2008 – When Congress returns from its winter break in mid-January and continues its probe into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, the lawmakers may be interested in speaking to Mary O. McCarthy.

    McCarthy spent most of her career at the spy agency, most recently as deputy inspector general. In 2004, she was tapped by the CIA’s Inspector General John Helgerson to assist him with several internal investigations.

    One of those investigations included a closer look at the CIA’s interrogation methods. The report on this probe was completed in spring 2004. It concluded that some of the agency’s approved interrogation methods “appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture,” according to a New York Times story published in November 2005. That was the same month the CIA destroyed the videotapes.

    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 interrogations 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 assisted Helgerson in drafting the classified report on the CIA’s use of specific interrogation methods against high-level detainees.

    “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 story says. “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 that he is drowning.

    “In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability,” the officials said, according to the New York Times account. “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.”

    According to a May 2006 Washington Post story, a friend said 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 also oversaw the Inspector General’s investigation into the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Her “findings are secret,” The Washington Post reported in May 2006. “According to a brief CIA statement about the probe in a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, investigators set out to examine “the conduct of CIA components and personnel, including DO personnel” during interrogations. Tens of thousands of pages of material were collected, including White House and Justice Department documents, and multiple reports were issued. Some described cases of abuse, involving fewer than a dozen individuals, and were forwarded to the Justice Department, according to government officials.”

    The reports are seen by only a handful of people.

    “When IG inquiries involve covert actions such as foreign interrogations, for example, the agency briefs only the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, instead of the full panels,” the Washington Post reported. “So only a handful of people in Washington knew what McCarthy knew.”

    But the timing of the November 2005 New York Times story regarding the contents of the inspector general’s report on interrogation methods, and the publication of a separate, more explosive story in The Washington Post the same month exposing the CIA’s covert interrogation activities, suggests that the CIA may have decided to destroy the videotaped interrogations because it feared the tapes would become part of the public record and could expose its agents to a federal criminal investigation.

    The New York Times has reported that Jose Rodriguez, head of the CIA’s clandestine division, destroyed the videotapes after receiving written authorization from attorneys in the clandestine division. The reasons for purging the tapes, according to one of the The New York Times’ unnamed sources, is that in the event of a leak “there was concern for the careers of officers shown on the tapes. We didn’t want them to become political scapegoats.”

    If that’s true, then the publication of Priest’s CIA secret prison story, and the Times story on the IG investigation into the agency’s interrogation methods in November 2005 – the same month and year the videotapes were destroyed – would amount to a very strange coincidence.

    Neither McCarthy, now an attorney, nor an attorney who had represented her, Ty Cobb, returned emails or messages left at their offices for comment.

    Helgerson’s report into the CIA’s interrogation techniques rankled some officials at the agency, The New York Times reported, and his critique of agency operations is said to have played a role in the decision by CIA Director Michael V. Hayden to turn the tables on the watchdog and launch an internal probe into Helgerson’s work. Hayden alleged that Helgerson’s investigations into the agency’s detention and interrogation policies were not objective. Helgerson’s office is just one of various federal agencies investigating circumstances that led to the destruction of the videotapes and whether any federal laws were broken as a result.

    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 that – 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 his book, “At the Center of the Storm”, former CIA Director George Tenet wrote that McCarthy was present at a meeting with Condoleezza Rice in May 2001 where Tenet discussed Abu Zubaydah’s alleged plans to attack the US and Israel. Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan less than a year later and was whisked to a secret CIA prison site in Thailand, where he was interrogated and subjected to waterboarding. At the time, McCarthy had been working as senior director at the National Security Council, according to Tenet.

    “For my regularly scheduled meeting with Condi Rice on May 30, [2001], I brought along [deputy CIA director] John McLaughlin, [then director of the CIA’s counterterrorist center] Cofer Black, one of Cofer’s top assistants, Rich B. (Rich can’t be further identified here). Joining Condi were [former White House counterterrorism czar Richard] Clarke and Mary McCarthy,” Tenet wrote. “Rich ran through the mounting warning signs of a coming attack. They were truly frightening. Among other things, we told Condi that a notorious al-Qa’ida operative named Abu Zubaydah was working on attack plans.”

    Truthout previously reported that Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff advised the CIA between 2002 and 2003 that its agents had the legal authority to use interrogation tactics on Abu Zubaydah that included waterboarding.

    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 said unnamed sources told the newspaper that “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 that he provided the CIA broad guidance in response to its questions about interrogation methods and never specifically addressed legality regarding waterboarding or other techniques.

    Chertoff, according to intelligence sources who spoke to Truthout, was briefed about the videotaped interrogations. 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 that 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.”

    At his confirmation hearing in 2005, Chertoff claims he did not advise Rizzo or Muller on the legality of specific methods agents used during their interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. Rather, he said, he answered general questions the CIA had posed about interrogations.

    “You are dealing in an area where there is potential criminality,” Chertoff said he told the agency. “You better be very careful to make sure that whatever you decide to do falls well within what is required by law.”

    In his book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” author Ron Suskind said Zubaydah was not the “high value detainee” the CIA had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind says.

    Abu Zubaydah’s captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. Tenet, though, says claims that Abu Zubaydah was not a valuable prisoner are “hogwash.”

    McCarthy began working at the Inspector General’s office in 2004, according to The New York Times. She had taken a leave of absence from the CIA after 9/11 and spent some time at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. She testified before the 9/11 Commission in late 2003 about methods that could enhance intelligence-gathering activities, in the hope of avoiding another terrorist attack on US soil.

    In 1998, she wrote an article in the Defense Intelligence Journal under the headline “The Mission to Warn: Disaster Looms” about shortfalls in intelligence gathering and how they could lead to catastrophic events.

    McCarthy also spent some time with the Markle Foundation group, “the Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, working with academics as well as current and former government officials on recommendations for sharing classified information more widely within the government, according to a report issued by the group. The report identifies Ms. McCarthy as a ‘nongovernment’ expert,” The New York Times 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 (Calif.), 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.”

Dr. Evan Kanter, a staff physician for the Department of Veteran Affairs, who wrote in a November study by Physicians for Social Responsibility, titled “Shock and Awe Hits Home,” that “as many as 30 percent of injured soldiers have suffered some degree of traumatic brain injury.”  

January 2, 2007 – To many people, Army Sgt. Rob Wentworth wouldn’t be considered very lucky – he suffered multiple back, leg, knee and ankle wounds and a traumatic brain injury in the Iraq war.

But Wentworth, 28, of Farmington Hills, says he’s fortunate to have survived when a 2,000-pound bomb in a vehicle was detonated by a suicide bomber north of Tikrit on June 25, about 120 feet from where he was working on guard duty.

One in every nine American soldiers deployed to Iraq suffers a traumatic brain injury, according to Department of Defense figures, said Rick Briggs, a retired Air Force major who runs the veterans program at the Brain Injury Association of Michigan, based in Brighton.

This fact was echoed by Dr. Evan Kanter, a staff physician for the Department of Veteran Affairs, who wrote in a November study by Physicians for Social Responsibility, titled “Shock and Awe Hits Home,” that “as many as 30 percent of injured soldiers have suffered some degree of traumatic brain injury.”

‘Very difficult to diagnose’

Wentworth was standing behind a 12-foot-high cement wall, when the blast occurred. The force of the explosion picked up the 6-foot, 206-pound Wentworth and threw him 25 feet through a large metal sliding door.

Before Wentworth could check to see if he was injured, he came under attack near Bayji, Iraq. The attack killed dozens of Iraqis in the area.

Wentworth is just one of the estimated 28,451 American soldiers injured in the war, which began in March 2003, months after Wentworth joined the service Aug. 21, 2002.

Department of Defense figures show that since the war in Iraq began, 3,918 American soldiers have died there. So far, 18 soldiers from Oakland County have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

A traumatic brain injury can leave the victim in a lifelong coma or with milder symptoms such as short-term memory loss or headaches, said Dr. Robert Spitzer, a Beaumont Hospital neurologist.

“It’s very difficult to diagnose,” Spitzer said. “Treatment generally is providing medications to alleviate symptoms or trying to stop the progression of impairment.”

Wentworth’s brain injury left him with short-term memory loss, migraine headaches, dizziness, stuttering and insomnia. He is undergoing physical therapy.

In addition, Wentworth, who was deployed to Iraq in November 2006, advocates for proper treatment of soldiers who have suffered brain injuries in the war, Briggs said.

The cost of treating someone with a traumatic brain injury can range as high as $5 million during a lifetime, said Briggs, who was in Operation Desert Shield in 1990, when Coalition forces pushed the late Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait.

Wentworth recalled the moments after the blast blew him through the door.

“After I went through the garage door, I got up,” Wentworth said. “I was looking for my buddy. I took two steps and was hit in the head by a 2-foot-long piece of steel falling back down from the sky.

“It hit me flat on the head and threw me down,” Wentworth added. “I was looking for the other guy pulling guard duty and realized what was going on. The blast was followed by machine gun fire and RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) being shot at us.

“The bomb destroyed a massive amount of the building.”

Wentworth said that, a few hours after the explosion, “the adrenaline wore off and I told my squad leader I wasn’t feeling so well.” He was sent to a battalion medical aid station.

“I walked in and said my back hurts,” he said. “I collapsed on a stretcher and couldn’t get up after that. They pumped me full of morphine, did X-rays,” and he was sent to a contingency operating base, “a large American base in Iraq, for a CAT scan of my back.”

“(Doctors said) I had possible cracked vertebrae. I was in the hospital by the next day,” Wentworth said.

He was then flown to Speicher, a large U.S. base near Tikrit, for other tests. He then went back on missions after being released from Speicher.

Then, Wentworth started having symptoms and was sent to Balad, Iraq, where there was a U.S. base.

A few weeks later, as his symptoms intensified, Wentworth was shipped to Landstuhl, Germany, where there was a U.S. medical Army hospital and “I was diagnosed with TBI (traumatic brain injury).”

“I didn’t want to leave,” Wentworth said of being sent out of Iraq. “I promised my guys I’d keep them alive.”

Wentworth is assigned to the Community Based Health Care Organization. The military sends soldiers with brain injuries home to be rehabilitated.

Michael Harris, the executive director of the Michigan Paralyzed Veterans of America, based in Novi, said there’s an unusually high ratio of injured-to-killed in the Iraq war.

Harris worries the Department of Veterans Affairs won’t have the resources to take care of the injured soldiers from the Iraq war. The “Shock and Awe Hits Home” study estimated that health care for Iraq war veterans could top $650 billion during the lifetimes of the soldiers.

“This report should serve as a wake-up for Americans and the (Bush) administration,” Kanter said in the report.

“While we endlessly debate what we are gaining in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their families are falling victim to death, post-war trauma and lifelong struggles with mental and physical wounds as a legacy of this war,” Kanter, a psychiatrist who is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington, wrote in the study.

The Brain Injury Association of Michigan is trying to inform the public of the scope and seriousness of traumatic brain injuries.

Briggs said part of the role of the association is to hold seminars and conduct “pre-homecoming” and post-deployment” briefings.

A post-deployment briefing occurs 60 to 90 days after a soldier returns home.

Traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorders are similar and often are misdiagnosed, he added.

The determination can be made by special screening tests such as a CAT scan, in which doctors look for physiological damage to a soldier’s brain.

However, Spitzer said there often is no physical evidence of a traumatic brain injury.

Some 63 percent to 80 percent of combat-injured veterans who were hospitalized also have suffered brain injuries, Briggs said.

“So, that means at least two out of three injuries have a TBI component with them. Wounded warriors don’t get better overnight.”

Wentworth is working on getting healthy.

“I do physical therapy and exercise,” he said. “Lately, I’ve developed migraine headaches.”

He also has support from his family, something essential for wounded warriors.

“We’re a pretty close family,” Wentworth’s mother, Michelle, said of Rob and his brothers, Andrew, 26, and Richard, 22, and her husband, Bob. “One thing I find frustrating is that it takes so long to rehab,” she said. “We hope he will make a 100 percent recovery. We’re worried about all the guys not getting diagnosed (with TBI).”

Michell Wentworth said parents of soldiers with brain injuries should help their children take advantage of all the help available to them. “Tell the parents to be advocates,” she added. “Don’t stop until you get all the help you can get. The help is there. It’s just hard sometimes to put your finger on it.”

Part of Wentworth’s current mission is to help other injured soldiers. “If they’re home after deploying and having problems, then I tell them to get some help,” Wentworth said. “Go to the Brain Injury Association of Michigan, the VA. Don’t stop until you find someone that understands your issue.

“I don’t have any plans to be 99.9 percent recovered,” Wentworth said. “I hope to get to 100 percent. I plan to be 110 percent after I’m finished (with) therapy. I’m planning to be better than I was.”

Michigan is fortunate to have 55 accredited rehabilitation facilities that can help injured soldiers such as Wentworth recover, Briggs said. By comparison, Missouri has two, and California, usually at the forefront of rehabilitation services, has five

“We’re working diligently to get our massive health care provider network to augment the VA and Department of Defense TBI health care system,” said Briggs.

“A lot of the people get better,” Spitzer said. “I think there’s the feeling that nothing can be done, but that’s wrong.

“If I go in with a positive attitude and have a positive patient, I have a good fighting chance I can help that patient recover.”

Few have a more positive attitude than Wentworth. “My No. 1 mission is to get better,” he says. “I love the Army. I would do anything to help others. I would give my life to help soldiers.”

January 1, 2008 – A Marine infantryman accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians during a combat maneuver in Haditha in late 2005 will be tried by court-martial on charges of voluntary manslaughter but will avoid more serious murder charges originally pressed against him, the Marine Corps announced Monday.

The infantryman, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, a squad leader whose men killed 24 Iraqis during a house-to-house raid after insurgents attacked their convoy, will also be tried on charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice, the Marines said in a news release.

In a separate decision on Monday, a Marine first lieutenant was ordered to face court-martial for what Marine prosecutors said was the officer’s role in covering up photographs of the aftermath of the killings, the Marines said.

The two court-martial referrals conclude the preliminary investigations into all eight marines originally charged with crimes in the Haditha matter. Four of those eight — two enlisted men and two officers — will be tried by court-martial, in front of either a military judge alone or a jury of fellow marines.

Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, the commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command, the officer who made the two decisions that were announced Monday, decided against pursuing unpremeditated murder charges against Sergeant Wuterich, a graver charge than voluntary manslaughter. General Helland also dismissed two other charges: soliciting another to commit an offense, and making a false official statement.

The lieutenant, Andrew A. Grayson, whose evidentiary hearing was delayed for months while he argued that he was beyond military prosecution because the Marines had discharged him from active duty, will stand trial on charges of making false official statements, obstruction of justice and trying to separate fraudulently from the Marine Corps.

Initially, the Marine Corps charged eight men from the Third Battalion, First Marines with crimes related to the Haditha killings on Nov. 19, 2005. Four infantrymen were accused of murder, and four officers, including the battalion commander, of dereliction of duty and other crimes related to failing to investigate the episode thoroughly.

Sergeant Wuterich, of Meriden, Conn., and Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, of Edmond, Okla., will be tried in separate courts-martial on charges of wrongful killings of Iraqis. Of the four officers originally charged in the case, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, and Lieutenant Grayson will also face courts-martial.

General Helland’s predecessor, Lt. Gen. Jim Mattis, dismissed charges against the four other marines — two enlisted men in Sergeant Wuterich’s squad, and two captains, including a battalion lawyer and a company commander.

January 3, 2008 – About two minutes into the video, I could take no more.

I was going to break decorum. I mumbled, “It’s a lie. It’s the worst kind of lie.”

Realizing that not even the two people sitting directly in front of me had heard my utterance, I raised the volume and repeated it. I stood up from my cushioned chair and in a stronger voice said, “This ad is a lie!”

I didn’t dare glance at my family. I needed to remain in denial as to how my wife and kids were reacting to my outburst. My heart racing, and in my angriest voice, I shouted, “It’s a lie, just like this war!”

That was the scene at my local movie theater prior to a showing of “The Golden Compass.” The pre-show ad that was playing was a music video titled “Citizen Soldier,” a slickly produced and, I suspect, highly effective recruitment ad for the National Guard.

The 3 1/2-minute music video incorporated an original song by the successful rock band 3 Doors Down with images of the National Guard’s responses to past, present and imagined wars and disasters.

The scenes of the band playing were magnificently filmed with a shakiness that evokes a sense of being in the midst of battle explosions. I hated it in part because it was so well-made. It’s a great advertisement because it sells the dream of the product, not its reality or its true price.

Its lie is obscured under the veneer of misguided patriotism and false realism. Its sterilized depictions of death and destruction pale in comparison with what actually happens when people and war collide. In the video, there are no dismembered bodies, no blood raining from the skies, no charred remains of babies caught in bomb blasts. And always out of our view are the horrified, terrified faces of the survivors.

No successful ad campaign about national service under our current civilian leadership could possibly tell the truth. If Americans saw the ugly truth about the war and occupation of Iraq, they would turn in disgust. The war would be ended and the perpetrators prosecuted for the lies that created it and the utter incompetence with which it was waged. Still many, perhaps even most, Americans despair over this endless occupation and the needless suffering of those who serve.

The truth about today’s military service is that almost 40,000 of our armed forces are dead and wounded in Iraq, with the Army National Guard constituting about 20 percent of those. Suicide and divorce rates are escalating for combat veterans. According to recent U.S. Senate testimony, almost half of our returning troops are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Cases of traumatic brain injuries are at high levels. The quality and quantity of medical care provided to veterans is frequently inadequate.

Even with the repeated warnings of military experts that our military is at the breaking point, the policies of repeated and extended deployments remain. They remain for the simple reason that our military does not have enough people to properly carry out its missions. No wonder the National Guard spared no expense with its latest ad.

I do not advocate yelling protests in crowded theaters like I did. My angry rant was boorish. It left me embarrassed and so frazzled that I could barely focus on the movie. Instead, I urge you to call your congressmen weekly (or daily) and inform them that you are aware of the real price of this war — and it’s way too high.

Veterans for Common Sense released the following statement after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid officially stated that President George W. Bush vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, HR 1585, which contained the “Dignity for Wounded Warriors” provisions. 

Veterans for Common Sense believes President George W. Bush’s actions to veto the Defense bill are unconscionable because he needlessly delayed the implementation of several new key provions designed to assist our Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans that were crafted after the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal became national news in February 2007. 

VCS supports an immediate override of President Bush’s veto by both the House and Senate.  VCS thanks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for passing the “Dignity for Wounded Warriors” bill, S 1606, last year and adding it to the Defense bill that President Bush unfortunately vetoed. 

This vital legislation would have provided up to five years of free medical care for our Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics.  Currently, our veterans receive only two years of free VA healthcare, starting from the date they are discharged.

If the bi-partisan bill had become law, then our wounded, injured, and ill veterans would have had streamlined policies so they would not fall through the cracks while waiting months for VA healthcare and benefits.  The President’s offer to make the benefits retroactive by signing a new bill at an uncertain future date does nothing for our veterans and their families who are waiting now – VA reports a total of 600,000 veterans from all wars are waiting more than six months to receive VA benefits.

VCS remains highly disappointed that President Bush failed to work with Congress and veterans groups on this important legislation assisting our service members and veterans.  The President should not have waited until the 11th hour to veto this important bill that cleans up the terrible mess he created by failing to have a plan to care for the 264,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war casualties already treated at VA hospitals and clinics.  A Harvard University report issues last year estimates up to 700,000 new VA patients among the 1.6 million already deployed to the two war zones.

President Bush said he vetoed the Defense bill so that no one could sue the new Iraqi government.  VCS disagrees with the President’s flawed reasoning.  VCS strongly supports Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s provision that allows our former prisoners of war who were brutally tortured by the Iraqi government for months during the 1991 Gulf War to sue Iraq.

Iowa veterans have some advice for the presidential contenders: The Republicans should no longer take the military vote for granted, and candidates from both parties should be wary of politicizing the war in Iraq.

Over the past three days, citizen journalists from OffTheBus checked in with more than 30 VFW and American Legion posts around Iowa. They interviewed some of America’s most vigilant members of the military about the role foreign policy credentials might play in Thursday’s caucuses. The assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto propelled foreign and military policy to the forefront of campaign issues.

While many of the veterans interviewed were reluctant to say who they support, overall themes emerged: disenchantment with the status quo and the American political system with a fervor that could be good for the Democrats.

An uneasiness seems to permeate VFW Post 5256 in Keokuk, Iowa. Harold Price, a disabled Vietnam veteran, said he believes the candidates are “taking it seriously” this election cycle, but that he and many of the veterans at his post are concerned – mostly over the war in Iraq and the healthcare system.

“We don’t believe in being in Iraq,” said Price. “It’s another Vietnam.” Although respectful of the fragility of the situation he said “There’s just no end to it. I would like to see, and I think the other officers would, a gradual pullout. “Don’t keep sending them back to Iraq when it’s a lost cause.”

Price declined to comment on specific candidates, although his discontent with the current leadership was unmistakable.

Cory McKevitt of Okaboji, Iowa just finished basic training with the Iowa National Guard. He is 18. Not even alive at the time Price was fighting in Vietnam, McKevitt is frustrated – so much so that he’s unsure whether or not he’ll even vote.

“I want to get this war over – that’s my main thing,” he said. “We went over there, and did what we had to do, and now we just need to get out.”

As a soldier in the Guard, McKevitt was similarly uncomfortable naming candidates that appealed to him. But he was clear in his assertion that the next president of the United States must bring the troops home.

Pat Brimeyer, who served in Army Special Services in Vietnam, wants the troops home. Her husband Charlie served with the 4th Army Engineers in the same conflict and is now the executive director of the Dubuque County Veterans Commission Office.

“Individuals, families, employers and the state of Iowa are suffering,” said Brimeyer. “We’ve had a high proportion of misuse of our [National Guard and Reserve] units here in Iowa. This bogus war is not what these units were set up to do, nor what the members volunteered for.”

Like Price in Keokuk, Brimeyer too speaks with contempt for the manner in which veterans’ benefits are being handled.

“The biggest complaint is about the length of time veterans have to wait for results regarding their veterans’ benefits,” she said. “The high rate of Iowa military personnel serving in the Middle East has meant a higher rate of benefits claims. Des Moines,” she said, “can no longer handle the load so it has been ‘farmed out’ to other states, who don’t really want to do it.

“What is really sad,” said Brimeyer, “is when people die while waiting for their claims to be completed and the families are left with nothing.”

Brimeyer said she is unsure what the outcome of the Iowa caucuses will be. “We Iowans don’t think much of politicians or the media,” she said. “Some of us have personally denied answering polls just to keep the pols guessing.” Brimeyer started out supporting Obama, but said she “switched to Hillary when Michelle gave out the ‘my kids say my husband stinks in bed in the morning’ statement.”

“I wouldn’t be dreadfully upset with any of the Democratic candidates,” Brimeyer said. “I hope they all get good positions in Hillary’s administration or stay in Congress.”

Not everyone we interviewed shared the anti-war sentiments of people like Price, McKevitt and Brimeyer. A few – like retired Marine Monte Alan Iverson – voiced frustration with the Democrats’ anti-war agenda. Iverson, who served two tours in Iraq, said he’s leaning toward the Republicans this campaign season “because they seem to support the military a lot more.”

“All the Dems talk about is pulling out of Iraq,” he said. “I am so sick of hearing them say this just so they can get a few votes. In this day and age we need a strong president.”

Al Cannistraro, Jacqueline Cotrell, Christine Escobar, Kim Farris, Mike Germain, Kerri Glover, Matthew Moll, Gale Walden, Ellen Emerson White, and Randy Wilkinson contributed to this story.

Though Iverson also declined to name specific candidates, the majority of Republican-leaning veterans we interviewed seemed most interested in John McCain, a veteran and former POW of the conflict in Vietnam.

“McCain is realistic,” said a retired Army Lt. Col. who declined to be named during an interview from VFW Post 130 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. “A lot of people realize he’s paid his dues. He’s paid his dues and knows what it’s like to serve your country.”

Commander Bill Gartner of VFW Post 2099 in Carlisle, Iowa says that while he thinks “McCain is one of them,” he hasn’t “heard a lot from veterans, really. Not like when John Kerry ran.”

Among the Democrats, the Fort Dodge veteran – who served in both Vietnam and Iraq – said that “Obama is in some ways on the right track” as well.

“I don’t see a strong candidate of choice.” But, he said, “I do think there’s more interest this time. We’ve got more candidates here…and a lot of veterans are paying closer attention. We have people fighting in Iraq and Congress is fighting, too, so there’s more involvement and more awareness.”

The man’s comment highlights a common theme among the veterans we interviewed: disgust with the American political system in general – a sentiment that seems to be working in the Democrats’ favor.

“Nothing makes us more angry than politicians using military members and veterans as political pawns,” said Brimeyer. “Vietnam vets were used as government ‘whipping boys’ and Iraq vets are used as ‘weapons’ to support patriotic fervor for whatever reason…Worse yet is the utterly detestable political use of vets against vets.

“Charlie and I will never forgive the Republican Party for allowing and supporting the ‘Swift Boat’ debacle,” she said. “Shame, shame.”

“Our Congress has been terrible,” said the veteran from Fort Dodge. “We have people fighting [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and Congress is fighting and can’t agree on anything.” A lot of veterans, he said “are against candidates that say we’re going to stop the war tomorrow, because we know that’s not how it’s done.”

A solid majority of the veterans we interviewed are additionally troubled by United States foreign policy, especially in regards to the Middle East.

“I think most veterans understand – especially war veterans – that war should be the last resort,” said Commander Gartner. “Diplomacy is probably first. Communicate. Make it work and be truthful about what you do.”

“It’s like a powder keg over there,” said the veteran from VFW Post 130 about the Middle East. Several of those we interviewed expressed concern over the unrest in Pakistan. Some mentioned Iran. Many – like Cory McKevitt – seem anxious and unsure over the prospect of change in American policy. “Probably,” he said, “We’ll just have to let it happen.”

Al Cannistraro, Jacqueline Cotrell, Christine Escobar, Kim Farris, Mike Germain, Kerri Glover, Matthew Moll, Gale Walden, Ellen Emerson White, and Randy Wilkinson contributed to this story.

January 2, 2008 – On Dec. 12, at 10 in the morning, I was sitting in room 345 of the Cannon House Office Building, as Rep. Bob Filner called to order the Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on “Stopping Suicides: Mental Health Challenges Within the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

The hearings were in response to increasingly ominous rumors of soldier and veteran suicides (which the DoD and the VA have continued to deny), culminating in the dramatic CBS News report about veteran suicides released in late November. Finally, an entity with some insider clout had produced some hard numbers that attest to an epidemic of monstrous proportions. Even so, the bad guys, like Dr. Ira Katz, who is head of mental health at the VA, quibble about whether or not this is “an epidemic” or a “major problem.” “Why hasn’t the VA done a national study seeking national data on how many veterans have committed suicide in this country?” Katz was asked by the CBS reporter. “That research is ongoing,” Katz replied, looking a lot like Lucy promising not to snatch the football away again.

So, on Dec. 12, I and three other citizens found ourselves scheduled for the morning panel: Mike and Kim Bowman, whose son Tim, a veteran of the Iraq war, took his own life a year ago; Ilona Meagher, author of Moving a Nation to Care; and me — all of us, by the way, suicide survivors. We were to be followed by a second panel consisting of Katz and fellow apologists, who were supposed to eviscerate the CBS report and skewer us with their conflicting numbers. Without, of course, appearing callous, slimy or cruel.

Mike Bowmen spoke first, his wife Kim sitting beside him. Kim didn’t speak, but kept her hand on Mike’s back. It was such a simple gesture, but one that spoke volumes: Mike is capable of doing the talking, because Kim makes it possible. They are absolutely there for each other. And for their son’s memory. And for all the other parents who have already — or will someday — have to find ways to survive a death like Tim’s.

The Bowmans are devastated. Their grief is huge and terrible, and together they have found ways to give public meaning to their personal tragedy. Aside from giving such an inspiring human face to statistics so awful anyone would want to become numb and turn away from them, Mike mined his own experience and his son’s for those moments that had seemed most senselessly counterproductive if not just plain stupid. You can read the whole of his testimony on the Veterans Affairs Committee website, but two points, at least, I think are worth sharing. This first reminds me of those rebate offers that make things sound like such a deal, but are really so complicated and time-consuming to fill out that they know you’ll never do it: The VA currently protests that it can’t possibly be asked to take responsibility for veterans who have not registered with the system. They don’t know where to find them. Well then, Mike asked, “Why isn’t the VA sitting there when they get off the bus?” Why don’t they have somebody … with a computer and a desk, registering them before they can go home? They’re coming out of combat. You know that they’re going to need help. Sign them up right there. That way, you know where they are, you know who they are, and they’re in the VA system right away. Don’t make it so that the soldier has to go to the VA. Make the VA go to the soldier.” So simple. So obvious.

Mike’s other point was a simple intervention into military culture, and one that would go a long way towards undermining the age-old stigma that is the main reason soldiers don’t ask for the help they need: Instead of shunning or punishing a soldier who admits to a combat stress injury and asks for help, hold him or her up as a model. “Grab that soldier and thank him for saying, ‘I’m not OK’ and promote him,” he said. “A soldier that admits a mental injury should be the first guy you want to have in your unit because he may be the only one that really has a grasp on reality.”

When Mike and Kim Bowman finished, the entire hearing room came to its feet, and one after another, the committee members fell all over themselves thanking them for their courage and identifying with their pain. Even the Republicans, though they couldn’t quite hide their compulsion to hold soldiers responsible for their own pain. One of my favorites, Rep. Cliff Stearns from Florida, “in all candidness,” told Mike Bowman, “You coming here is good for us, but it’s probably good for you to talk about it.” And then did himself even one better when he suggested that perhaps Mike and Kim hadn’t quite lived up to their responsibility as parents. “The building up of the self-esteem is the key,” he said, “and the parents somehow have to convince him or her that everything is going to be all right, we’re going to work through it. And in this case it didn’t happen, and so, tragic and sad.” Gag me, Cliff.

Steve Buyer, the ranking Republican on the committee, shared a story about losing a childhood friend to suicide. “And there were no signs. There were no risk factors, he said. “It was just one of these bizarre strikes of the mind to just — I don’t have the answers.” Knock, knock, Steve. It does seem that spending time in a combat zone is, in and of itself, a risk factor that screams to be taken seriously. But Steve isn’t in an entirely conciliatory frame of mind. “As we delve into this issue, we have to also be very sensitive,” he said, “because I recognize there are anti-war advocates that also want to say that these individuals that then therefore commit suicide, who have worn the uniform, are somehow victims. And that’s not right either.”

As one of the anti-war advocates he is referring to, I would like to point out that he is conflating two entirely different positions: anti-war and anti-this-war. The two are not mutually exclusive (and I am a proud example of that), but they are different, and pretending they are not is simply disingenuous. As disingenuous as it would be for me to call him pro-war, if I could be persuaded to sink so low.

In fact, aside from anti-war activists, the other thing that seems to terrify this crew is socialized medicine. The VA, properly funded, could actually serve as an example of how universal health care might work. In practice, it has been bearded to look like just any old hospital, replete with exclusionary practices that are a caricature of the most extreme behavior of a private insurance company gone mad.

When after two hours, congressman Bob turned the mike over to me and then to Ilona, we did our best. We did not shame ourselves. In fact, we both had important things to say and (very much to our relief) we said them well. But the Bowmans were a hard act to follow.

The second panel, however, didn’t seem to have noticed. Anything. All Katz and crew wanted to talk about were the fine new programs that the VA has inaugurated — programs that, as Filner repeatedly interrupted to point out, obviously are not enough to stem this outbreak of despair. Filner didn’t even try to disguise his frustration and impatience with these apologists who complained bitterly about how mean CBS was being about sharing their research and the creative new outreach plans they have come up with to bring psychically injured veterans into the system: The agency, according to Katz, is writing a letter that should go out this week or next to all veterans, raising these issues.” Right, Dr. Katz. A letter.

After only two of the four panel members had given their testimony, Filner cut the hearing short: “Throw this away and talk to the Bowmans, talk to Ms. Coleman, talk to Ms. Meagher, and say, What are we going to do about these issues? You’re not doing that. I mean, you had the advantage of listening to them. Respond to them … I still don’t know what you’re doing for those people … You have not done the job. We’re going to have another hearing on this. We’re going to have another hearing on this. And I want you to come back with a better report. This is not very useful.”

That was, I admit, a sweet moment.

There are countless examples, one more painful than the next, of ways this administration has cut corners on soldiers’ and veterans’ healthcare. They have, with consummate cynicism, decked themselves in yellow ribbons, mandatory lapel pins and cheap jingoistic rhetoric while simultaneously sucking and siphoning off the VA’s already inadequate resources. Mike Bowman’s testimony alone is a devastating indictment of those policies. And yet Katz continues to insist, as he did repeatedly during these hearings, that the VA has adequate resources to manage a crisis the parameters of which they have yet to determine and the measures to be taken that might actually intervene in the mounting death toll not yet articulated.

I have hope that good things will come of these hearings, but if they did nothing else, they made a few things very clear. For one, the VA is a system in crisis. It has been deeply underfunded for way too long. It has a bureaucratic system that is adversarial to veterans. And though it employs many dedicated and humanitarian care providers, it is led by a bunch of flunkies who say whatever they think they can get away with to avoid taking responsibility for those Americans who honorably enlisted to defend their country.

The hearings also made it perfectly clear that people like me, a pro-peace activist, can find common cause with a military family like that of Mike and Kim Bowman. The Bowmans still support this war, at least in part because they need to believe that their beloved son died for a reason. I cannot support this war, but I too have a beloved son. I cannot begin to imagine the heat of the rage I would feel had my son died as a result of stupid bureaucratic neglect and mismanagement, not to mention skimping. I may not be in favor of this war, but I am fierce when it comes to taking care of those we sent to fight in our name. The architects of the war and those who implement their policies at the VA have to wake up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror. With the deaths of so many of our children on their hands, I wonder how they manage.

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