Veterans for Common Sense

Sanford, North Carolina, December 20, 2007 (AP) — Private First Class Jason Scheuerman nailed a suicide note to his barracks closet in Iraq, stepped inside and shot himself.

“Maybe finaly I can get some peace,” said the 20-year-old, misspelling “finally” but writing in a neat hand.

His parents didn’t find out about the note for well over a year, and only then when it showed up in a government envelope in his father’s rural North Carolina mailbox.

The one-page missive was among hundreds of pages of documents the soldier’s family obtained and shared with The Associated Press after battling a military bureaucracy they feel didn’t want to answer their questions, especially this: Why did Jason Scheuerman have to die?

What the soldier’s father, Chris, would learn about his son’s final days would lead the retired Special Forces commando, who teaches at Fort Bragg, to take on the very institution he’s spent his life serving — and ultimately prompt an investigation by the Army Inspector General’s office.

The documents, obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests filed by Chris Scheuerman, reveal a troubled soldier kept in Iraq despite repeated signs he was going to kill himself, including placing the muzzle of his weapon in his mouth multiple times.

Jason Scheuerman’s story — pieced together with interviews and information in the documents — demonstrates how he was failed by the very support system that was supposed to protect him. In his case, a psychologist told his commanders to send him back to his unit because he was capable of feigning mental illness to get out of the Army.

He is not alone. At least 152 U.S. troops have taken their own lives in Iraq and Afghanistan since the two wars started, contributing to the Army’s highest suicide rate in 26 years of keeping track. For the grieving parents, the answers don’t come easily or quickly.

For Jason Scheuerman, death came on July 30, 2005, around 5:30 p.m., about 45 minutes after his first sergeant told the teary-eyed private that if he was intentionally misbehaving so he could leave the Army, he would go to jail where he would be abused.

When the call came out over the unit’s radios that there had been a death, one soldier would later tell investigators he suspected it was Scheuerman.

___

Scheuerman spent his early years on military posts playing GI Joe. The middle child, he divided his time after his parents’ divorce between his mother’s house in Lynchburg, Va., and his father’s in North Carolina where he went to high school.

He was nearly 6 feet tall and loved to eat. His mother, Anne, said sometimes at 10 p.m. she’d find him defrosting chicken to grill.

Likable and witty, he often joked around — even dressing up like a clown one night at church camp, said his pastor, Mike Cox of West Lynchburg Baptist Church. But he had a quiet, reflective side, too, and sometimes withdrew, Cox said.

“You always knew how he felt. He wore his emotions on his sleeve,” his mother said. “If he was angry, you knew it. If he was upset, you knew it.”

Scheuerman liked military history and writing, but decided college wasn’t for him. After a short stint in landscaping, he followed what seemed an almost natural path into the military. His mother had spent a year in the Army, and his father, a physician’s assistant, retired as an Army master sergeant. One of his two brothers also joined and is now in Afghanistan.

He enlisted in 2004 and was sent to Iraq from Fort Benning, Ga., in January 2005 with the 3rd Infantry Division. On leave a few months later, Scheuerman told his father he was having a hard time with combat and killing people.

“I’ve seen war,” his father said. “I told him that a lot of what he was seeing was normal. That we all feel it. That we’re all afraid.”

Back in Iraq, things didn’t improve. One soldier — whose name was blacked out on the documents like most others — said he saw Jason put the muzzle of his rifle in his mouth, and told investigators other soldiers had seen him do something similar.

“He said it was a joke,” the soldier said. “He said he had thought about it before but didn’t have a plan to do it.”

Scheuerman was reprimanded for not bathing or shaving and spending too much time playing video games. He misplaced a radio and didn’t wear parts of his uniform. Sometimes, Scheuerman was singled out for punishment, one soldier told an investigator. “I don’t know why,” the soldier said. Another said his noncommissioned officers were yelling at him “more days then not.”

His platoon sergeant said in a disciplinary note that Scheuerman’s actions put everyone in danger. “If you continue on your present course of action, you may end up in a body bag,” he wrote.

In another, his squad leader said, “You have put me into a position where I have to treat you like a troublesome child. I hate being in this position. It makes me be someone I don’t like.”

Scheuerman was made to do push-ups in front of Iraqi soldiers, which humiliated him.

As he was punished, “it appeared as though he was out of touch with reality; in a world all his own,” his platoon sergeant said in a report.

After the punishment, Scheuerman slept on the floor of his unit’s operation’s center in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

An Army chaplain who met with him about a month before he died said his mood had “drastically changed.” He said Scheuerman demonstrated disturbing behavior by “sitting with his weapon between his legs and bobbing his head on the muzzle.” He told Scheuerman’s leaders to have his rifle and ammunition magazine “taken from him immediately” and for him to undergo a mental health evaluation.

Scheuerman checked on a mental health questionnaire that he had thoughts about killing himself, was uptight, anxious and depressed, had feelings of hopelessness and despair, felt guilty and was having work problems. But in person, the psychologist said, he denied having thoughts of suicide.

Less than a week later, Scheuerman’s mother got an e-mail from her son telling her goodbye. She contacted a family support official at Fort Benning and later received a call saying her son had been checked and was fine. Later, her son sent her an instant message and said her phone call had made things worse.

The same day as her call, Scheuerman’s company commander requested a mental evaluation, noting that the private was a “good soldier” but displays “distant, depression like symptoms.”

Visiting with the psychologist for the second time, Scheuerman said he sometimes saw other people on guard duty that other soldiers do not see, suggesting he was hallucinating. And he said that if he wasn’t diagnosed as having a mental problem, he was going to be in trouble with his leader. Yet he again denied being suicidal, the psychologist reported.

The psychologist determined Scheuerman did not meet the criteria for a mental health disorder, and that a screening test he had taken indicated he was exaggerating. He told Scheuerman’s leaders he was “capable of claiming mental illness in order to manipulate his command.”

Still, when he sent Scheuerman back to his barracks, he told the private’s leaders that if Scheuerman claimed to be depressed, to take it seriously. He recommended Scheuerman sleep in an area where he could be watched, that most of his personal belongings and privileges be taken away for his safety.

The evaluation “created in the leaders’ minds the idea that the soldier was a malingerer all along,” an officer from his unit evaluating the case as part of a post-suicide investigation would later determine.

Shortly after the psychologist’s determination and a few weeks before he died, Scheuerman’s Internet and phone communication were shut off. His parents did not hear from him again.

The night before he shot himself, his rifle — which had since been returned to him — was found in a Humvee. The next morning, one soldier said Scheuerman “was quiet and seemed depressed. He said he had a rough night and didn’t sleep well.”

Later that day, he was punished again and given 14 days of extra duty.

Scheuerman had tears in his eyes, but one of his noncommissioned officers said he was surprisingly calm before he went to his room, weapon in hand.

“I told him to go upstairs and clean his gear and change his uniform,” his squad leader told investigators. “I was soo angry with him, I went outside to smoke and talk to someone so I didn’t blow up.”

Less than an hour later, he said he heard someone yelling that Scheuerman had done something.

“At that point, I knew I was already too late,” he said.

Scheuerman’s body was discovered in a closet, blood streaming from his mouth.

___

Initially, Scheuerman’s father said he trusted the Army would investigate his son’s death and take action.

“I did not want to believe that it was as bad as I thought it was, so I chose not to make hasty judgments,” Scheuerman said from his kitchen table, sitting beside his ex-wife, whom he plans to remarry. “I chose to systematically try to get all the information that I could and once I received all the information I could, my worse fears were realized.”

Each document that arrived brought more pain.

When a copy of his son’s suicide note appeared, Scheuerman broke down crying. In the note, his son said he wanted to say goodbye, but his ability to contact the family was taken away “like everything else.” He said he’d brought dishonor on his family and his Army unit.

“I know you think I’m a coward for this but in the face of existing as I am now, I have no other choice,” Scheuerman wrote. “As the 1st Sgt said all I have to look forward to is a butt-buddy in jail, not much of a future.”

Chris Scheuerman wants to see a more thorough investigation, and some of his son’s leaders punished — perhaps even criminally charged — and the psychologist brought before a medical peer review committee. “We will not see a statistical decrease in Army suicides until the Army gets serious about holding people accountable when they do not do what they are trained to do,” he said.

Citing privacy, Maj. Nathan Banks, an Army public affairs officer, declined to discuss the case.

Eventually, Jason Scheuerman’s father sought the assistance of Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., who spoke with Army Secretary Pete Geren on Oct. 1 and asked him to initiate an investigation by the Inspector General’s Office. Geren agreed.

The Scheuermans say they hope the investigation will bring about changes that will prevent other suicides.

“The people that I trusted with the safety of my son killed him, and that hurts beyond words because we are a family of soldiers,” Scheuerman said.

December 19, 2007 – In warfare’s long history, the rules of the battlefield have remained unchanged. Soldiers follow their orders, and refrain from criticizing their command. It is a pact. They will fight, kill and die for the decisions of kings, generals and presidents. They will do it all as service, to country, to friends, to family, to honor. In exchange for abstractions, they offer all they have.

So it was noteworthy on Aug. 19, 2007, when seven active enlistees of the U.S. Army published a letter from Iraq in the pages of the New York Times. Over the course of 1,414 words, they offered America a military critique from the field — about the intractable war, about the current military strategy, about the hollowness of the political debate in Washington. In passages thick with nuance, they did what soldiers, even noncommissioned officers, rarely do. In an unmistakable act of patriotism, they went outside the chain of command.

“Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal,” the essay began. “Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.”

The men did not write in a vacuum, or from the comfort of a Washington think tank. As they were preparing their essay, one of them, Staff Sgt. Jeremy A. Murphy, an Army Ranger, was shot in the head. He survived. Less than a month later, two others, Sgt. Omar Mora and Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, died in a vehicle rollover in western Baghdad. Still in their 20s, each left behind a wife and a young daughter.

It is, of course, impossible to note in a single article the stories of each of the 892 American men and women who died so far this year serving in Iraq, or of the 3,895 who have died since the war’s inception or the 28,661 who have been wounded. But in the story of Mora and Gray, we are given a clear glimpse of what our soldiers died for. They did not just die for the mission, as prescribed to them by their superiors. “We need not talk about our morale,” they wrote in the Times. “As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.”

They died in service to a country where even the soldier in the field has the right to question the judgment of the commander in chief. They died in service to the idea that political and military leaders must be held to account for their failures and challenged on their facts. A month after their article ran in the Times, the soldiers words echoed through the halls of Congress, when the war’s Gen. David Petraeus and its chief diplomat, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, came to testify. “Are we going to dismiss those seven NCOs? Are they ignorant?” asked Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican who opposes continuing the war, at one hearing. “They laid out a pretty different scenario, General, Ambassador, from what you’re laying out today.”

The general and the ambassador did not directly respond. They showed charts and cited statistics that gave reason for optimism. Indeed, the numbers were following a positive trend from August. The monthly toll of American fatalities, which had gone from 84 in August to 65 in September, continued to drop, to 37 in November. The number of bombings and incidents involving improvised explosive devices also declined. But the concerns of Mora, Gray and their friends never focused on these sorts of statistics. “Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere,” the men wrote.

The political improvements that the so-called surge was meant to deliver have not materialized. The Iraqi police and army remain corrupt. The religious and ethnic factions remain deeply hostile to one another. Living conditions for the Iraqi populace remain abysmal. According to a recent report, Baghdad still gets less than half as many hours of electricity, four years after the invasion, than it did before the war.

“In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect,” the men wrote. “They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal. Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit.”

In Washington, these words were churned through the political grinder. Advocates for a prompt withdrawal waved them as evidence that the Bush policy was failing and the troops must come home. Even the New York Times’ editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, trumpeted the article as evidence of the military strategists’ failure. “Not every soldier in Iraq buys this Potemkin war they are selling,” he told Editor and Publisher.

After his death, Mora’s stepfather, Robert Capetillo, said that Mora had told his family before his death that the article was misinterpreted as a call for withdrawal, when it was in fact a call for a new strategy. The 28-year-old, a child of Ecuador who had grown up in Texas City, Texas, was still very much committed to continuing his service, with dreams of joining the Army Special Forces. “My son gave his life for his country because he loves his country, and because this country raised him like he was its own,” his mother, Olga, told the newspaper in Galveston. Mora finally earned his citizenship papers just a few weeks before he died. In a similar way, Gray’s parents told their local press of a boy who always wanted to be a soldier. He would dress up in his grandpa’s Army uniform and decided at age 5 that he wanted one day to be a Ranger in the 82nd Airborne. He left behind a 5-month-old daughter. He had spent only 14 days at her side.

Both men represented the best of America’s democratic tradition, where even in wartime, enlisted soldiers have a right to their opinions. If there is a lesson in their memory, it may be that true patriots respectfully speak up when they see something going wrong. It cannot be unpatriotic to criticize the military. It shows no flagging of spirit to point to a new direction. And for this reason Omar Mora and Yance T. Gray are Salon’s People of the Year.

December 19, 2007 – Taking aim at Bush administration secrecy, Congress yesterday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would toughen the Freedom of Information Act and penalize government agencies that fail to surrender public documents on time.

The bill would speed the process of releasing government documents to the public under the FOIA, as the act is known, and broaden the information available to the public by including, for example, additional government contracting information. The measure passed the House by voice vote yesterday, less than a week after it was similarly approved by the Senate.

The White House has objected to some of the bill’s provisions, but proponents expect it to clear the final hurdle during the congressional recess next week, when bills left unsigned for 10 days can pass without the president’s signature.

“This is an amazing success story that should have happened 40 years ago,” said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The archive was established more than two decades ago to push for FOIA reform.

The bill would encourage faster compliance with FOIA requests. By law, agencies must respond within 20 days, but in practice the process can take months or years. Delays lengthened in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as agencies began to favor nondisclosure in the name of national security.

Under the measure, requests would be assigned public tracking numbers. Agencies that exceed the 20-day deadline for responses would be denied the right to charge requesters for research or copying costs.

The bill would strengthen the ability of people who sue over their FOIA requests to collect attorneys’ fees and would establish an office at the National Archives to accept citizen complaints about unfulfilled FOIA requests, issue opinions and foster best practices.

“In an era of increased government secrecy, we cannot postpone reforming the very act that keeps our government open to the people whose government this is,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). “FOIA helps make government accountable and responsive to the people.”

The bill stalled in the Senate earlier this year when Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) put a hold on it. But Kyl, now minority whip, reversed himself, becoming a co-sponsor of the revised Senate version that the House passed yesterday.

December 18, 2007 – Congress is moving to block the Department of Veterans Affairs from commercially developing its West Los Angeles Medical Center site.

The 388-acre property between Westwood and Brentwood contains a veterans hospital and other facilities, as well as many undeveloped acres in a densely developed area.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has sought to develop or lease some of the area, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Henry Waxman and other California officials want it to remain as-is so other veterans facilities could be built there.

The Bush administration had argued that disposal of the land could generate more than $4 billion in revenue, which could be used to improve other veterans’ facilities around the country.

A measure by Feinstein to block development of the land is part of a catchall year-end spending bill passed by the House on Monday and expected to pass the Senate.

“There’s no reason in the world that a veteran from Ohio should be shortchanged on benefits simply because he is from Ohio.”
U.S. Rep. Zack Space, an Ohio Democrat

December 19, 2007 – WASHINGTON – Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with debilitating mental ailments are discovering that their government disability payments vary widely depending on where they live, a McClatchy analysis has found.

As a result, many of the recent veterans who are getting monthly payments for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Department of Veterans Affairs could lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits over their lifetimes.

The Bush administration has sought to reassure soldiers that they will be treated fairly, but veterans in some parts of the country are far more likely to be well compensated than their compatriots elsewhere are, the analysis found.

McClatchy’s analysis is based on 3 million disability compensation claims records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and separate documents the VA provided. The analysis is the first to examine the issue of state-to-state variations in compensation for those young veterans who have left the military since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001.

For veterans, their families and their advocates, the issue of disability compensation is hugely important. Disability checks are now worth up to $2,527 a month for a single veteran with no children. Because they last a lifetime, low payments set now — when veterans are young — have a dramatic impact.

So far, more than 43,000 recent veterans are on the disability compensation rolls for a range of mental conditions from post-traumatic stress disorder to depression and anxiety. Of those, more than 31,000 have post-traumatic stress disorder, which has emerged as one of the signature injuries from the war on terrorism.

Given the number of soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is a fraction of what the total will be.

The VA’s assessments of those injuries, however, are all over the map.

Of the recent veterans processed by the VA office in Albuquerque, N.M., 56 percent had high ratings for post-traumatic stress disorder. Of those handled by the office in Fort Harrison, Mont., only 18 percent did, the McClatchy analysis found.

The Missouri office, in St. Louis, ranks sixth from the bottom, with only 22 percent having high ratings. The Kansas office, in Wichita, ranks 21st from the bottom, with 31 percent having high ratings.

“There’s no reason in the world that a veteran from Ohio should be shortchanged on benefits simply because he is from Ohio,” said U.S. Rep. Zack Space, a Democrat from Ohio, where veterans had among the lowest compensation rates. “And there’s no reason a veteran from New Mexico should be getting more benefits simply because he lives in New Mexico.”

A VA benefits official, Michael Walcoff, said the VA was working to minimize unwarranted variations. Judging a condition such as PTSD, however, can be difficult, he said.

So far, 1.5 million Americans have served in the global war on terrorism, and half of them have left active service and transitioned to veteran status, VA documents show.

Those discharged veterans alone already have produced more than 180,000 disability cases, in which veterans are found to have mental or physical ailments linked to their military service. Most already are receiving monthly compensation checks.

Among all the ailments that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans now have, PTSD ranks fourth, behind ringing in the ear, back strain and hearing loss. But because it tends to be far more debilitating than those other conditions — and generates far higher payments — PTSD is the most important disability to emerge from the recent wars.

After years of grumbling by some veterans that they were getting shortchanged, the regional discrepancies became a hot political issue in 2004, after reports by Knight Ridder Newspapers (which McClatchy acquired last year) and others highlighted wide state-to-state swings in the numbers of veterans on compensation rolls and the amounts of their payments.

Under prodding from Congress, the VA said it would work to make its decisions more uniform among the more than 50 regional offices that process disability claims.

This summer, a new report commissioned by the VA again detailed wide variations in disability payments from state to state.

The McClatchy analysis found that a recent veteran with PTSD on the rolls in Albuquerque is likely to have a higher payment than a new veteran with PTSD on the rolls in the Montana office.

The VA workers who decide PTSD cases determine whether a veteran’s ability to function at work is limited a little, a lot or somewhere in between. They examine the frequency of panic attacks and the level of memory loss. The process is subjective, and veterans are placed on a scale that gives them scores — or “ratings” — of zero, 10, 30, 50, 70 or 100.

McClatchy’s analysis found that some regional offices are far more likely to give veterans scores of 50 or 70 while others are far more likely to stick with scores of 10 or 30.

Consider the New Mexico and Montana offices, where there are big differences up and down the scale.

In Montana, more than three-quarters of veterans have ratings of zero, 10 or 30. In New Mexico, a majority have ratings of 50 or 70. On top of that, 6 percent of New Mexico veterans had the highest rating possible — 100, worth $2,527 a month — compared with just 1 percent of Montana veterans.

Because payments are loaded toward the highest end of the scale — the difference between the highest rating and the next highest rating is more than $1,000 a month — the huge gap in ratings has a significant impact on how much the VA is paying, on average, to veterans in different states.

Factoring in all mental and physical disabilities, the average payment for recent veterans ranges from a high of $734 a month in the Little Rock, Ark., office to a low of $435 in Honolulu. The average payment in Wichita is $533, and it is $502 in St. Louis.

VA regional office rankings for PTSD scores

This list contains these elements in this order: regional office, percent of cases with high rating (50 or above) for PTSD, average payment for all disabilities for recent veterans.*
          
Albuquerque, N.M.
56{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$669

Phoenix
51{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$597

Little Rock, Ark.
48{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$734

St. PaulMinn.
46{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$557

Providence, R.I.
45{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$579

Denver
45{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$567

Boston
44{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$519

Louisville, Ky.
44{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$580

Salt Lake City
43{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$489

Oakland, Calif.
42{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$559

Portland, Ore.
41{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$660

Detroit
39{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$536

New Orleans
38{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$525

St. Petersburg, Fla.
38{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$518

Buffalo, N.Y.
37{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$523

Chicago
37{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$479

Houston
36{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$609

Columbia, S.C.
35{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$564

Newark, N.J.
35{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$479

Anchorage, Alaska
35{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$482

Muskogee, Okla.
35{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$560

Fargo, N.D.
34{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$491

Los Angeles
34{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$477

Milwaukee
33{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$531

Waco, Texas
33{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$530

Honolulu
33{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$435

Seattle
33{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$538

San Diego
33{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$525

Montgomery, Ala.
33{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$571

Philadelphia
32{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$497

Togus, Maine
32{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$661

Baltimore
32{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$527

Huntington, W.Va.
31{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$586

Wichita
31{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$533

Winston-Salem, N.C.
31{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$545

White River Junction, Vt.
30{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$492

Indianapolis
29{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$477

New York
29{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$487

Sioux Falls, S.D.
29{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$515

Roanoke, Va.
27{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$538

Nashville, Tenn.
27{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$467

Hartford, Conn.
27{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$492

Reno, Nev.
27{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$518

Atlanta
26{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$494

Cleveland
26{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$488

Manchester, N.H.
26{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$525

Wilmington, Del.
24{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$462

Des Moines, Iowa
23{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$530

St. Louis
22{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$502

Cheyenne, Wyo.
21{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$441

Pittsburgh
21{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$443

Boise, Idaho
20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$502

Jackson, Miss.
20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$469

Fort Harrison, Mont.
18{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$500

Totals
35{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}
$528

*McClatchy identifies “recent veterans” as those who joined the military after the first Persian Gulf War and were discharged sometime after the Afghanistan war started.

SOURCE: McClatchy analysis of VA data. Two offices — in Nebraska and Washington, D.C. — were excluded for insufficient data.

VCS Challenge – Help Us Raise $10,000 by December 31

Dear VCS Supporter:

Thank you for making a difference in 2007 !

This year we successfully pressed for several pieces of legislation, and VCS appeared in dozens of favorable news articles about issues important to us – veterans, national security, and civil liberties.

After the fiasco at Walter Reed became national news in February, many more people became familiar with our efforts on behalf of veterans. Thanks to VCS, America knows VA hospitals already treated 264,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

In 2008, VCS plans to intensify our efforts to publicize the plight of our returning veterans and promote common sense policies. We need your support now more than ever.  VCS released our policy goals Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans for 2008 today.

As part of our year-end fundraising appeal, a donor agreed to donate $10,000 if our 12,000 VCS members contributed $10,000 before December 31.  We can meet this challenge.

Please help VCS obtain these matching funds by donating to VCS today.

Our VCS advocacy efforts helped our veterans. The bill we supported, the Dignified Treatment of Wounded Warriors Act, passed Congress. Among other things, it expands free healthcare for our Iraq sand Afghanistan war veterans from two years to five years. VCS also helped get VA $1.8 billion to hire thousands of doctors and claims processors so our veterans get faster healthcare and benefits.

Please support our legislative policy success by donating to VCS today.

Our VCS publicity efforts uncovered serious problems facing our veterans. In November, CBS Evening News broke the story about the suicide epidemic among our veterans. Congress then held hearings about this tragedy. ABC News reported on increased drug abuse, and dozens of local newspapers and TV stations reported the needs and concerns of veterans after speaking with VCS.

Please support our national and local publicity efforts by donating to VCS today.

Help us meet our $10,000 donor challenge this month. VCS plans to travel and meet with veterans, conduct research into VA and military policies, meet with legislators, run our web site, and press forward with our lawsuit against VA in 2008. With your support, we will publicize our positions on key issues and fight to improve government policies for our veterans, our national security, and our civil liberties.

Thank you,

Paul Sullivan
Executive Director
Veterans for Common Sense

VCS provides advocacy and publicity for issues related to veterans, national security, and civil liberties. VCS is registered with the IRS as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, and donations to VCS are tax deductible. VCS does not provide direct services to veterans.

Help us meet our urgent fundraising goal by December 31, 2007.

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P.O. Box 15514
Washington, DC 20003

December 15, 2007 – Senate Republicans blocked a bill yesterday that would restrict the interrogation methods the CIA can use against terrorism suspects.

The legislation, part of a measure authorizing the government’s intelligence activities for 2008, had been approved a day earlier by the House and sent to the Senate for what was supposed to be final action. The bill would require the CIA to adhere to the Army’s field manual on interrogation, which bans water boarding, mock executions and other harsh tactics.

Senate opponents of that provision, however, discovered a potentially fatal parliamentary flaw: The ban on harsh questioning tactics had not been in the original versions of the intelligence bill passed by the House and Senate. It was a last-minute addition during negotiations between the two sides to write a compromise bill, a move that could violate a Senate rule intended to protect legislation from last-minute amendments that neither house of Congress has had time to fully consider.

Although it’s not unheard of for new language to be added in House-Senate negotiations, the rules allow such a move to be challenged and the language stripped from the bill.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, placed a hold on the intelligence bill, preventing a Senate vote.

December 15, 2007 – The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps – the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force – can be promoted.

A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the proposed regulations. But the requirement of coordination – which many former JAGs say would give the administration veto power over any JAG promotion or appointment – is consistent with past administration efforts to impose greater control over the military lawyers.

The former JAG officers say the regulation would end the uniformed lawyers’ role as a check-and-balance on presidential power, because politically appointed lawyers could block the promotion of JAGs who they believe would speak up if they think a White House policy is illegal.

Retired Major General Thomas Romig, the Army’s top JAG from 2001 to 2005, called the proposal an attempt “to control the military JAGs” by sending a message that if they want to be promoted, they should be “team players” who “bow to their political masters on legal advice.”

It “would certainly have a chilling effect on the JAGs’ advice to commanders,” Romig said. “The implication is clear: without [the administration’s] approval the officer will not be promoted.”

The new JAG rule is part of a set of proposed changes to the military’s procedures for promoting all commissioned officers, a copy of which was obtained by the Globe. The Pentagon began internally circulating a draft of the changes for comments by the services in mid-November, and the administration will decide whether to make the changes official later this month or early next year.

The JAG rule would give new leverage over the JAGs to the Pentagon’s general counsel, William “Jim” Haynes, who was appointed by President Bush. Haynes has been the Pentagon’s point man in the disputes with the JAGs who disagreed with the administration’s assertion that the president has the right to bypass the Geneva Conventions and other legal protections for wartime detainees.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said that Haynes was traveling and unavailable for an interview, and she did not respond to other written questions submitted by the Globe. In the past, Haynes has made several proposals that would bring the JAGs under greater control by political appointees.

As part of the uniformed chain of command, the JAGs are not directly controlled by civilian political appointees. But Haynes has long promoted the idea of making each service’s politically appointed general counsel the direct boss of the service’s top JAG, a change Haynes has said would support the principle of civilian control of the military.

One of Haynes’ allies on the Bush administration legal team, former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, recently coauthored a law review article sharply critical of the JAGs’ unwillingness to endorse the legality of the administration’s treatment of wartime detainees.

Yoo, who wrote a series of controversial legal opinions about the president’s power to bypass the Geneva Conventions and antitorture laws before leaving government in 2003, called for some kind of “corrective measures” that would “punish” JAGs who undermine the president’s policy preferences.

Yoo’s law review article did not specifically discuss injecting political appointees into the JAG promotions process, and Yoo said in an e-mail that he did not know anything about the new Pentagon proposal. But several retired JAGs said they think the proposed change is an attempt by the Bush administration to turn Yoo’s idea into a reality.

Under the current system, boards of military officers pick who will join the JAG corps and who will be promoted, while the general counsels’ role is limited to reviewing whether the boards followed correct procedures. The proposed rule would impose a new requirement of “coordination” with the general counsels of the services and the Pentagon during the JAG appointment and promotion process.

The proposal does not spell out what coordination means. But both JAGs and outside legal specialists say that it is common bureaucratic parlance for requiring both sides to sign off before a decision gets made – meaning that political appointees would have the power to block any candidate’s career path.

“It only makes sense to put this in if you want [general counsels to exercise the power to give] thumbs up or thumbs down, in order to intimidate JAGs,” said retired Colonel Gordon Wilder, who was the Air Force’s top JAG specialist in administrative law until last January.

Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor who is also general counsel to the National Institute of Military Justice, agreed that the regulation boils down to giving political appointees the power to veto JAG promotions.

“The message would be clear to every JAG, which is that when you have been told that the general counsel has a view on the law, any time you dare disagree with it, don’t expect a promotion,” Saltzburg said, adding “I don’t think that would be in the best interest of the country. We’ve seen how important it can be to have the JAGs give their honest opinions when you look at the debates on interrogation techniques and the like.”

Key members of the Bush administration legal team have pushed to subject the JAGs to greater political control for years.

In the early 1990s, both Haynes and Vice President Cheney’s top aide, David Addington, were politically appointed lawyers in the Pentagon during the Bush-Quayle administration. On their advice, Cheney, who was then the defense secretary, proposed making each service’s general counsel the boss of his JAG counterpart, but the Senate Armed Services Committee forced the administration to back down.

In 2001, Haynes and Addington were restored to power in the Bush-Cheney administration, and the conflict over JAG independence resumed amid the fights over such war on terrorism policies as harsh interrogations.

Responding to the conflicts, in 2004 Congress enacted a law forbidding Defense Department employees from interfering with the ability of JAGs to “give independent legal advice” directly to military leaders. But when President Bush signed the law, he issued a signing statement decreeing that the legal opinions of his political appointees would still “bind” the JAGs.

And throughout the past several years, the administration has repeatedly proposed changes that would impose greater control over the JAGs, such as letting political appointees decide who should be the top service JAGs. Each previous proposal has died amid controversy in the Pentagon or Congress.

The new proposal goes further than anything the administration has pushed before because it would affect all military lawyers, not just the top JAGs. Retired Rear Admiral Donald Guter, the Navy’s top JAG from 2000 to 2002, said the rule would “politicize” the JAG corps all the way “down into the bowels” of its lowest ranks.

“That would be the end of the professional [JAG] corps as we know it,” Guter said.

Uncovering the Past 

December 16, 2007 – BECKLEY, W.V.— Jimmy Jay Furr has always felt a strong sense of respect for American military veterans.

Furr’s father and brother were veterans, and he finds himself overcome with emotion on Veterans Day when disabled veterans pass down Main Street.

That is why Furr, 46, of Hinton, responded when he saw a newspaper advertisement asking for assistance in cleaning up an old veterans cemetery. The cemetery had been designated for black veterans over a century ago, and had since fallen into disrepair.

Furr went looking for the cemetery. Following the directions he had been given, he drove down a dirt road along a narrow ridge line near Stanaford. At the end of the road, he stopped in the woods among waist-high brush.

About that time, a man rode by on an ATV. Furr asked the man if he knew where the black veterans cemetery was.

“You are in it,” the man responded.

Furr began searching through the brush until he found a white headstone with a cross carved on it. It was the grave of a World War I veteran who had been buried there decades ago. He kept looking and found another headstone, then another.

Over the next several months, Furr chopped back the brush and hauled away the trees that had grown amid the graves.

Despite the backbreaking work, he felt compelled to continue.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of veterans laying there being disrespected,” he said. “They fought for this country. We shouldn’t forget anybody.”

He eventually uncovered nearly 100 graves of veterans from the Civil War, World War I and World War II.

“It was just my way of saying (to the veterans) that I thought about you, and remember you,” he said.

Some of the individual graves left an impression on Furr. He recalls the day he found the grave of a veteran named John Smith who had served as a preacher in World War I.

“When I saw his marker, I thought — well, it’s nice to meet you, sir,” he said. “I cleaned that grave up real nice.”

Furr estimated he spent hundreds or even thousands of hours working in the large cemetery.

His goal was to trim the brush until he could push a mower over the ground, but his first attempts at mowing the terrain met with rocks, roots and stumps.

“I broke the (mower) blades and then had them fixed. Then I broke the chassis and had it fixed. I just kept going back,” he said.

Furr was eventually successful at returning the cemetery to decent condition.

“When I got done, I stood back and looked at it, and started to cry,” he said. “I wasn’t able to serve in the military, and this was my way of thanking these men.”

Now, Furr’s challenge is to maintain the cemetery. Most of the friends and immediate family of the veterans interred there have died or moved away long ago.

He has asked other individuals and organizations to help him with the work, but has not received any assistance.

Going it alone has not been easy. He admits he has not had time to return to the cemetery in recent months. The weeds and litter are starting to overtake the graves once again.

“I’ve had some health issues, and the money has been short, too,” he said.

“If people really knew the cemetery was there, and the shape it is in, some people would come to help out. It could be a beautiful cemetery.”

Bill Billeter writes for The Register-Herald in Beckley, W,Va.

December 19, 2007 – The warriors pose for the camera in a group shot – some holding their weapons in one hand and their holy book in another.

Elsewhere, a poster bears a quotation calling for the killing of enemy leaders and forcing the defeated people to convert.

If you think the images come from Islamic fundamentalist training camps in remote regions of the Middle East you’d be wrong.

The photo depicts Army trainees at Fort Jackson, S.C., where in addition to basic combat training recruits may also attend “God’s Basic Training,” while the poster — boasting a quotation from conservative author Ann Coulter — adorns the door of a Military Police office at Fort Riley, Kansas.

“These are startling and disgusting revelations of further unconstitutional behavior by technologically the most lethal organization ever created by humankind — the U.S. military,” said Mikey Weinstein, whose group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, discovered the evangelical-oriented program at Fort Jackson and the Coulter poster at Fort Riley.

The group also has found at the Fort Riley exchange the Muslim-critical “Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam” on display right next to The Holy Bible. And at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., a new “Enabled By Christ” Christian men’s store operates at the base exchange, Weinstein said.

Officials with the bases in question and the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, however, deny there is any deliberate intent to impose a religious belief on troops, and a Fort Riley spokesman told Military.com command would look into Weinstein’s allegations there.

“Command at Fort Riley takes the Army value of respect very seriously,” said Maj. Nathan Bond.”The things you have mentioned to me, if they are true, do not seem in line with the Army values of respect, and we will look into it.”

Maj. Scott Bullock, chaplain for the 2nd Battalion, 39th Basic Combat Training Bn., at Fort Jackson, said in an interview the weekly Bible study program is strictly voluntary. “I make a simple announcement for new soldiers: If you choose to come to this … you are welcome to come, especially those from an evangelical protestant background.”

Bullock said the recruits posing with their rifles in the photos do so because they’ve been directed to train as if they were in theater, taking their weapons with them everywhere they go. He said that recruits attending any religious service at the base chapel also would be carrying their weapons.

The “God’s Basic Training” program is part of the military ministry backed by Campus Crusade for Christ.

Judd Anstey, a spokesman for AAFES in Dallas, described the “Enabled By Christ” store as a short-term concession, one of about 15 AAFES-wide — of 50,000 — that has a religious affiliation. He also said that 75 percent of the vendor’s products are for hunting.

“Beyond what is in his stock,” Anstey said, “if someone from another religion comes in, let’s say, wanting a Torah or a Koran, he would order that special.”

Weinstein said the officials can “tell it to the judge,” since he plans to include the allegations into a lawsuit he and Army Specialist Jeremy Hall filed in September against the Defense Department over an officer’s disrupting a meeting of non-Christian believers and allegedly threatening Hall with punishment for organizing the event, held in August at Camp Speicher, Iraq.

Hall is now stationed at Fort Riley. The case, filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, names as defendants Defense Secretary Robert Gates, representing the DoD, and Maj. Freddy Welborn, the officer who allegedly broke up the meeting and threatened to keep Hall from reenlisting.

Weinstein said they are seeking an injunction to prevent Welborn from conduct “that has the effect of establishing compulsory religious practices,” and also asking Gates to ensure Welborn does not interfere with Hall’s free speech rights.

Gates is named in the suit, Weinstein said, because he allegedly has let the military engage in a pattern of unconstitutional behavior regarding promotion of religious belief.

Earlier this year Weinstein’s organization revealed that senior Pentagon officials participated in a Christian Embassy video, endorsing the work of the group and of Christianity, while in uniform and against the backdrop of the Pentagon.

The DoD Inspector General ultimately determined that seven officers, including four generals, engaged in misconduct by appearing in the videos. Weinstein said the Pentagon has never said what actions were taken against the officers.