Veterans for Common Sense

November 27, 2007 – Every Saturday, the president of the United States gives a radio address to the nation. It is followed by the Democratic response, usually given by a senator or representative. This past Saturday the Democrats chose retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to give their response, the same general accused in at least three lawsuits in the U.S. and Europe of authorizing torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq. This, combined with the Democrats’ endorsement of Attorney General Michael Mukasey despite his unwillingness to label waterboarding as torture, indicates that the Democrats are increasingly aligned with President Bush’s torture policies.

Sanchez headed the Army’s operations in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004. In September 2003, Sanchez issued a memo authorizing numerous techniques, including “stress positions” and the use of “military working dogs” to exploit “Arab fear of dogs” during interrogations. He was in charge when the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison occurred.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who headed Abu Ghraib at the time, worked under Gen. Sanchez. She was demoted to colonel, the only military officer to be punished. She told me about another illegal practice, holding prisoners as so-called ghost detainees: “We were directed on several occasions through Gen. [Barbara] Fast or Gen. Sanchez. The instructions were originating at the Pentagon from Secretary Rumsfeld, and we were instructed to hold prisoners without assigning a prisoner number or putting them on the database, and that is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. We all knew it was contrary to the Geneva Conventions.” In addition to keeping prisoners off the database there were other abuses, she said, like prison temperatures reaching 120 to 140 degrees, dehydration and the order from Gen. Geoffrey Miller to treat prisoners “like dogs.”

And it’s not just about treatment of prisoners. In 2006, Karpinski testified at a mock trial, called the Bush Crimes Commission. She revealed that several female U.S. soldiers had died of dehydration by denying themselves water. They were afraid to go to the latrine at night to urinate, for fear of being raped by fellow soldiers: “Because the women, in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the portolets or the latrines, were not drinking liquids after 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. And in 120-degree heat or warmer, because there was no air conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep. What [Sanchez’s deputy commanding general, Walter Wojdakowski] told the surgeon to do was, ‘Don’t brief those details anymore. And don’t say specifically that they’re women. You can provide that in a written report, but don’t brief it in the open anymore.’” Karpinski said Sanchez was at that briefing.

Former military interrogator Tony Lagouranis, author of “Fear Up Harsh,” described the use of dogs: “We were using dogs in the Mosul detention facility, which was at the Mosul airport. We would put the prisoner in a shipping container. We would keep him up all night with music and strobe lights, stress positions, and then we would bring in dogs. The prisoner was blindfolded, so he didn’t really understand what was going on, but we had the dog controlled. The dog would be barking and jumping on the prisoner, and the prisoner wouldn’t really understand what was going on.”

Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch elaborated on Sanchez: “For those three months of mayhem that were occurring right under his nose, he never stepped in. And, also, he misled Congress about it. He was asked twice at a congressional hearing whether he ever approved the use of guard dogs. This was before the memo came out. And both times he said he never approved it. [W]e finally got the actual memo, in which he approves ‘exploiting Arab fear of dogs.’ ” Brody dismissed the military report clearing Sanchez of any wrongdoing: “It’s just not credible for the Army to keep investigating itself and keep finding itself innocent.”

This is not about politics. This is about the moral compass of the nation. The Democrats may be celebrating a retired general who has turned on his commander in chief. But the public should take pause.

The Democrats had a chance to draw a line in the sand, to absolutely require Mukasey to denounce waterboarding before his elevation to attorney general. Now they have chosen as their spokesman a discredited general, linked to the most egregious abuses in Iraq. The Bush administration passed Sanchez over for a promotion, worried about reliving the Abu Ghraib scandal during the 2006 election year. Now it’s the Democrats who have resuscitated him. Have they no shame?

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.

November 27, 2007

Editor’s Note from Brian Ross: In the third year of a joint project with the nonprofit Carnegie Corporation, six leading graduate school journalism students were again selected to spend the summer working with the ABC News investigative unit.

This year’s project involved an examination of whether, as happened in the wake of the Vietnam War, Iraqi war veterans were turning to drugs as a result of the trauma and pain of war.

The U.S. military maintains the percentage of soldiers abusing drugs is extremely small and has not increased as a result of Iraq.

The students’ assignment was to get the unofficial side of the story from soldiers, young men of their own generation.

Today’s report is the second in a series of five reports.

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When Spc. Matthew McKane listens to questions, he tilts his head to one side. When he answers, his speech is plain and matter-of-fact. A boyish grin occasionally creeps across his doughy cheeks and plays at the edges of his mouth, like a kid who got caught sneaking a cookie.

If only it were that simple. As a medic in Iraq, the 22-year-old McKane saw the ravages of war firsthand and found he couldn’t deal with it.

McKane said he turned to self-medication by using drugs to numb the senses, and he was not alone. Now McKane fears he will soon be discharged from the Army because of his drug use. Another medic, Spc. Jeffrey Smith, has already been kicked out for drug use and other misconduct charges and says he is dealing with his psychological trauma without medical or veterans’ benefits. And yet another Army medic, Sgt. James Worster, is dead from a drug overdose in Iraq.

Their stories are not unique. Many soldiers turn to drugs as a way to cope with psychological trauma from the war, according to advocates, health professionals and combat veterans.

“I guess the stress just overpowers your decision making. You just [need] a little bit to get away from reality,” McKane said. “You make stupid decisions.”

Iraq’s ER

McKane is from a small town between Buffalo, N.Y. and Erie, Pa. He said he enlisted in the Army right after high school to do something for his country and help pay for college.

The military took him to Georgia, Texas, Korea and then Arkansas. Bored in Arkansas, McKane volunteered to go to Iraq. He arrived in Baghdad in June 2006 and a day later was working in the emergency room.

His first patient was an elderly Iraqi woman who had been shot in the kneecap by a .50-caliber machine gun that “basically like blew her whole bottom leg out,” McKane said.

McKane’s friend and fellow medic, 26-year-old Jeffrey Smith, described the setting as “complete insanity.”

“We saw everything from gunshot wounds to people missing legs, arms, pieces of their face,” Smith said. “It’s not every day that a doctor sees six or seven people come in all at once and they’ve got four or five legs and arms between the six or seven of them.”

McKane said he felt nauseous during his first shift and had to leave the emergency room. But after a while he said he got used to the carnage.

“[It’s] kind of unfortunate that you have to get used to something like that, but you do,” McKane said.

McKane said his worst day was when a suicide bomber drove a car into a Baghdad orphanage. Dozens of screaming, crying, burned children, some younger than five years old, were rushed to the Combat Support Hospital, or CSH, for treatment.

“You’ll never forget that and just dealing with these poor kids, peeling skin off of them, trying to treat them,” he said.

Smith said to escape from the daily chaos and stress, if even for a short time, many soldiers working in the hospital began to abuse Ambien, Percocet and Prozac, as well as prescription painkillers available on the black market in Baghdad. But eventually even those drugs weren’t enough for some.

On Sept. 18, 2006, McKane said he and fellow medic Sgt. James Worster decided to use propofol, a powerful general anesthetic used to keep patients knocked out while on life support.

“[It was] us just being stupid, and just trying…a different coping mechanism, dealing with stress,” McKane said. “All I remember is we passed out. And I remember waking up like hours later and looking over at my friend, just to see, you know, just to talk to him about the whole thing. And I noticed he wasn’t on his bed anymore, and he was on the floor laying on his back.”

Worster was dead from an overdose of propofol, McKane said.

According to McKane, “All I remember is me standing up there after it happened&getting the glares from everybody in the hospital. I felt like I was never going to make it out of Iraq&I felt the only way to get out was to commit suicide.”

It was Worster’s second tour in Iraq, his widow Brandy Worster, 26, said. In between his deployments, Brandy said her husband saw a psychologist two to three times a week and took an antidepressant medication.

“He had a lot of problems from the first time [in Iraq] he never really got over,” Brandy said. “[He] dealt with things from children that were our son’s age to adults, whether it was Iraqis or other soldiers, probably seeing the worst he’s ever seen.”

Brandy blamed her husband at first, she said, but eventually the blame turned to acceptance and a need to move on. She said she tries to “give good memories” to their son, Trevor, who will be four years old this fall.

“I can understand why soldiers sometimes take something, so [they] don’t have to think about it,” she said. “They’re having to deal with all of this and not have any ways to combat what they are seeing.”

Returning Home

Following Worster’s death, an Army investigation ensued and McKane left the Baghdad emergency room. In October 2006, McKane and Smith returned to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Yet leaving Baghdad did not mean leaving the stress of combat behind. In Iraq, Smith played the guitar while leading a weekly worship, but at home he “wasn’t focused on God” and rarely attended church. The memory of mangled bodies continued to wear on him, he said, and he turned to self-medication with alcohol and drugs.

“I was pretty much [just] wanting to drown my sorrows with alcohol or smoking weed, or something, anything,” Smith said.

Smith admits to also using cocaine and ecstasy — anything that would get him through a few more hours. He became so desperate that he attempted suicide, he said.

“I don’t remember any of it, so, I don’t know if I blacked out, started taking pills,” Smith said. “So [the doctors] thought that I was trying to kill myself, which might be true. But I really don’t remember.”

Smith sought help at Evans U.S. Army Hospital at Fort Carson and eventually was sent to see civilian doctors, he said. Smith said a positive test for cocaine twice and marijuana once, however, led to him being kicked out of the Army.

McKane also had trouble with drugs when he returned to Fort Carson and said he tested positive for cocaine. McKane is currently in prison on misconduct charges. He believes he will soon be dismissed from the Army because of his drug use.

Smith, McKane and more than a dozen current or former Fort Carson soldiers who did speak to ABC News urged the public to be aware of the issues many combat veterans face when they come home.

“Realize that Iraq screwed a lot of us up,” Smith said. “And you really need to help these kids get straight before you just kick them out on the street.”

Additional reporting by Mansi Mehan and David Schneider.

Watch Brian Ross’ exclusive investigation, “Coming Home: Soldiers and Drugs,” Friday on “20/20” at 10 p.m. EDT.

November 27, 2007 – The Bush administration formally committed America yesterday to a long-term military presence in Iraq, pledging to protect the government in Baghdad from internal coup plots and foreign enemies.

The cooperation pact, endorsed by George Bush and the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, during a video conference yesterday morning, will set the agenda for a future American relationship with Iraq, the administration’s adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan, General Douglas Lute, told reporters at the White House.

“The two negotiating teams, Iraq and the United States, now have a common sheet of music with which to begin the negotiations,” Lute said.

The military, economic and diplomatic agreement would commit US forces to defending the government of Iraq from internal and external threats as well as fighting al-Qaida and “all other outlaw groups regardless of affiliation”, according to the declaration of principles released by the White House yesterday.

In return, Iraq pledged itself to “encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq”. The promise was immediately seen as a potential bonanza for American oil companies.

Lute offered few details on the scale of future US troop levels in Iraq or permanent US bases. He noted that the agreement, because it was not a treaty, would not be subject to oversight by Congress. “What US troops are doing, how many troops are required to do that, are bases required, which partners will join them – all these things are on the table,” he said.

Yesterday’s agreement was announced as Maliki indicated he intended to seek the renewal of the UN security council mandate for Iraq for one more year when it expires in December. The agreement has been in the works since last August, when the Maliki government officially requested the long-term strategic relationship with Washington.

The public unveiling of the proposed arrangement yesterday arrived at a time when the administration has been trying to showcase recent improvements in security in Iraq following the deployment of an additional 30,000 US troops at the beginning of the year.

Some of those forces are scheduled to begin leaving Iraq by the end of this year following the drop in violence. The rest are due to be withdrawn by the summer of 2008, although there has been little sign of the political reconciliation which was the main objective of the surge strategy.

Instead, the administration yesterday appeared to be urging Americans to look to American and Iraqi negotiators’ hopes of producing a broader agreement on their partnership next summer.

The timetable for negotiations indicated by Lute would see the state department open negotiations early next year. That all but ensures that Iraq will dominate next year’s US presidential elections.

November 26, 2007 – When a soldier loses a limb as a result of a roadside bomb, one such case was reported as having been classified by the Department of Veterans Affairs as “not” service-connected, thereby minimizing his sacrifice and disability benefit.

This was only one of several cases I viewed of how our homecoming wounded are being shafted. There is no reason why a GI needs to hire an attorney or plead his case before his congressman to get what is coming to him.  “Support of our troops” has become nothing more than an empty phrase with no meaning when it comes from the halls of Congress or the White House.  After watching the recent hourlong program, Waging War on the VA, I was convinced the war was against the veteran instead.

November 28, 2007 – In a sense, the first chapter of James Sperry’s return home for good is set to begin this afternoon.

That’s when Sperry, 22, plans to drive south from his parents’ west Belleville house to the Jefferson Barracks V.A. Medical Center in south St. Louis County.

There, on the hospital’s sprawling campus overlooking the Mississippi River, he will walk into a plain, three-story structure known as Building No. 50.

On the second-floor, the ex-Marine lance corporal will have his first meeting with counselors at the hospital’s newly opened clinic for Iraq War veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Sperry is hoping the clinic’s medical staff can prescribe him medicine for his migraine headaches and daily bouts of vertigo — a legacy of the traumatic brain injury he suffered when an insurgent’s rocket-propelled grenade bounced off his helmet in early November 2004, two days into the epic battle to retake the city of Fallujah.

The grenade exploded behind him, fracturing his skull and piercing it with shards from his Kevlar helmet.

Sperry also needs help sleeping. He only gets about an hour of shut-eye a night, and usually that’s interrupted by nightmares from his combat experiences in Iraq, he said.

Sperry traces his sleep problems to the endless stress of life in a war zone, of operating 24/7 for seven months straight.

“I never had a break when I was in Iraq,” Sperry said. “I was always going.”

Worst of all is the emotional numbness that haunts him. It’s a product, he believes, of seeing so many members of his Marine unit die in Iraq.

The worst was when his best friend died in his arms in August 2004 after a car bomb had exploded at a traffic checkpoint they were assigned to outside Fallujah.

“I had no feelings, no emotions,” said Sperry, a 2003 graduate of Belleville West High School, where he earned straight As and starred on the varsity golf team. “It was more like being dead inside.”

Sperry stands as a living testament to the global war on terror’s two signature wounds: PTSD and traumatic brain injury. As each year of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq tick by, the latest research shows alarming trend lines for both injuries.

At least 20 percent of combat vets from Afghanistan and Iraq have been diagnosed with PTSD. Experts warn the percentage of PTSD cases could balloon to 40 percent over the next decade because of the nature of combat in Iraq and the toll of repeated deployments.

As for soldiers and Marines who’ve suffered traumatic brain injuries, that number continues to soar.

The Pentagon has listed 4,471 troops who have officially suffered combat-related brain injuries. But last week USA Today reported that another 20,000 troops who were not classified as wounded in combat had shown signs of brain injuries. And the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force estimates that 150,000 troops — about 10 percent of the troops who’ve served in Iraq — have suffered head injuries in combat.

Sperry has returned to Belleville a very different man from the 18-year-old who shipped off to boot camp in October 2003.

Sperry married his high school sweetheart, Beth — also a former Marine — and together they have an 18-month-old daughter, Hannah.

Provided he makes solid progress at Jefferson Barracks, and he can overcome his short-term memory problems, Sperry hopes to return to school and receive training as a paramedic.

Sperry doesn’t spend much time looking back. Before enlisting in the Marines, he could have accepted one of several college scholarships to play golf.

“I thought about it, but only for a second. Then I thought I’d never change a thing,” he said. “I’ve seen the worst the world can offer, and I feel like that’s something that’s going to make me stronger in life.

“Right now I’m struggling with it, but there’s going to be a time where I’ll be stronger for it.”

Contact reporter Mike Fitzgerald at mfitzgerald@bnd.com or 239-2533.

November 25, 2007 – It was 9.30am when three men entered Haidar Musa’s sweet-shop and shot him repeatedly in the head as his eight-year-old daughter Zainab crouched in terror behind the counter.

By midday his stricken wife Kahiriya had packed Zainab and four other children into a car with a few possessions and fled their home town of Abu Ghraib for a life of penury in Baghdad, 20 miles to the east.

Eighteen months later, the six of them are living in a room that measures 12ft by 12ft, with a concrete floor. Its contents include a cooking pot, a sewing machine and thin sponge mattresses because this is their kitchen, sitting room and bedroom.

Asked when she intended to leave this squalor and return to the comfortable family home, Kahiriya Musa, 30, is emphatic. “Never,” she declares. “They will kill me if I return.”

While one of her husband’s killers has been arrested, she says, the other two have joined the Baghdad Brigade, a Sunni militia funded by the American forces which now holds sway in her old neighbourhood.

Members of the Baghdad Brigade receive $300 a man each month from the Americans, who also provide vehicles, uniforms and flak jackets. In return the brigade keeps out Al-Qaeda, dismantles roadside bombs and patrols the area, a task performed with considerable swagger by many of its 4,000 recruits.

The US military is delighted with the results achieved by the brigade in Abu Ghraib and by similar groups in other former “hot spots” of sectarian conflict that have seen a sharp decline in violence.

For Shi’ites such as Kahiriya Musa, however, a Sunni militia represents another potential source of terror in a country where millions have been traumatised by ethnic cleansing.

A 50{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} cut in car and roadside bombs, shootings and rocket and mortar attacks since June has brought hope that some of the 5m Iraqis driven from home may soon be able to go back. Yet many – Kahiriya Musa among them – are too frightened of the new militias and the ethnic cleansers in their ranks to risk moving.

Officials in the Shi’ite-led government also fear the burgeoning of fresh forces beyond its control. The question being asked in government circles is: have the Americans achieved a short-term gain in security at a cost of long-term pain that may be inflicted by the Sunni militias, which are already threatening to go to war against their Shi’ite counterparts?

The western province of Anbar first witnessed the phenomenon known as “the awakening” – the turning of Sunni tribes against the largely foreign fighters of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

For General David Petraeus, the American commander, the awakening has proved a powerful force with which to increase the impact of his surge of 30,000 US troops earlier this year.

By allying the US forces with Sunnis opposed to Al-Qaeda, the general has engineered victories over the brutal foreign fighters that seemed almost unimaginable 12 months ago.

US-backed Sunni militias have spread eastwards from Anbar across Baghdad. They already number 77,000, known collectively as “concerned local citizens”. This is more than the Shi’ite Mahdi Army and nearly half the number in the Iraqi army.

Exotically named groups such as the Knights of Ameriya and the Guardians of Ghazaliya strut the streets in camouflage uniforms, brandishing new AK47s that the Americans say they have not supplied.

Last week I entered the western Baghdad district of Ameriya by crossing check-points manned by the eager “knights”. Not only had some of them been members of groups aligned with Al-Qaeda eight weeks ago, but they had now created a virtual enclave surrounded by concrete blast walls.

To be among them without fear of kidnap was to sense the transformation of security in a place that was being torn apart by fighting only last August.

Some wore sinister masks, however, and observers are asking how long it will be before they turn on their Shi’ite counterparts when the Americans start reducing their troops next year.

Sergeant Jack Androski, of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, sees things differently. “Ameriya is the safest neighbourhood in all of Baghdad,” he said as he chewed on a falafel and gazed up the suburb’s main commercial street.

“This didn’t exist in May, We lost 17 soldiers on this main street. We used to be hit at least twice a day here and a 500lb bomb flipped one of our Bradleys [fighting vehicles] over.”

Androski paid tribute to the “bravery and determination” of the knights who helped to see off Al-Qaeda. But even Sunni residents see trouble ahead.

One pointed out former members of the Islamic Army – a group once closely associated with Al-Qaeda, whose atrocities included the murder of Enzo Baldoni, a kidnapped Italian journalist – among the knights.

In an Ameriya school last week some of the knights showed that although they may have switched allegiances, they still hold the fundamentalist beliefs that drew them to Al-Qaeda in the first place.

Carrying their weapons, they went from one class to the next, looking for mobile phones with “unIslamic” ringtones. One child with a pop music ringtone was slapped and kicked in the legs as a warning to the others.

Meanwhile, the targets of ethnic cleansing continue to suffer. Habib Haji, a 65-year-old widower from Sab al-Boor, north of the capital, received a letter giving him three days to leave with his daughter Salwa, 15, or die.

“I left immediately,” said Haji, whose 18-year-old son Mehdi had already disappeared after going out to buy some cigarettes.

According to Haji, the death threat came from men who used to be Al-Qaeda members but now form part of the awakening. Even the militia commanders confirm that they have the Shi’ites in their long-range sights after a turbulent few months.

First they tired of Al-Qaeda’s beheadings, bombings and strange demands, such as a ban on salads containing (male) cucumbers and (female) tomatoes, and on ice cubes because the Prophet Muhammad never had them.

Then the militias threw in their lot with the Americans to get rid of Al-Qaeda, but without losing their animosity for the occupying forces that many of them had been fighting.

Now they are starting to think about what happens when the Americans leave and how they can counter Iranian-backed Shi’ite forces. Abu Omar, an intelligence officer with the Baghdad Brigade in Abu Ghraib, was candid.

“Of course the coming war is with the [Shi’ite] militias,” he said. “God willing, we will defeat them and get rid of them just as we did Al-Qaeda.”

Abu Maroof, one of the brigade’s commanders, said that he regarded the Shi’ite militias, which include the Mahdi Army of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, as more dangerous than the United States. But he is also increasingly hostile to the government of Nouri al-Maliki, which is reluctant to absorb militia members into the official Iraqi security forces.

“If the government continues to reject them, let it be clear that this brigade will eventually take its revenge,” he warned.

It is little wonder that Shi’ite sheikhs have been queueing up this month to air their worries about the Sunni militias to Ahmad Chalabi, a former deputy prime minister who is now in charge of reconstruction and who straddles the sectarian divide.

“Many of the groups in the awakening are the same men who used to kill and displace our people,” one protested. “Any return of refugees is near impossible if this is not resolved.”

Chalabi has come to an accommodation with the Sunni sheikhs of Sab al-Boor, where Haji and his daughter lived: they will get better services – electricity, schools, factories reopened to create jobs – if they guarantee security for 100,000 refugees to return home from temporary shelter in Baghdad.

Several hundred families have already trickled back and their fate will be anxiously monitored. If Sab al-Boor seems safe, thousands more will follow.

Many others dread to think what the Sunni militias will do if the government refuses to have them in the security forces and the Americans leave them to their own devices.

Kahiriya Musa, for one, intends to keep her family close by in the hovel with the concrete floor: “I am afraid for my life and the lives of my children.”

After reading a number of e-mails and digesting their comments, I think I’d like to share my view of the Department of Veteran Affairs with you.

The National Cemetery Administration is the worst organization to deal with. Plain and simple, if your spouse is dealing with NCA, you’re dead! However, the NCA folks I’ve worked with are simply the greatest, most dedicated people I’ve met in Washington.

The Veterans’ Health Administration provides the best health care available in this country. Most of your non-VA physicians either did their internship or their residency at the VHA. Most of the successful prosthetic research done in this country is done by the VHA. There are, however, a lot of issues that need resolution.

—VHA employees are overworked and VAMCs are often understaffed. Last week I had a primary care appointment at VAMC Baltimore. It took almost two hours for a blood draw. There must have been 30 patients ahead of me and only two people doing the work. This can be solved in two ways, but both take money. More staff and better facilities Even if the blood draw clinic had been fully staffed, there’s only three work stations!

—VAMC staff are often “grouchy”. Live with it, they’re overworked and understaffed, I’d be grouchy too!!

—Access is also a pain in the butt. It takes too darn long to get an appointment. I agree, but than again it goes with staffing hospitals and clinics with people. I’ve waited 90 days for an appointment only to have them call that morning and cancel. Well, docs are people too. They have family emergencies, they get sick, they have car wrecks enroute to work. Anything that has ever happened to you in your life happens to them too! On the other hand, my Mom is a vet, and she waited 11 months for her appointment at the outpatient clinic. They cancelled it because the doc went on vacation. That’s poor management by the Hospital Director.

The solutions to VHA’s problems are really simple. Congress needs to pass mandatory funding for veterans healthcare and they need to fund the Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES) Commission recommendations for renovation and/or replacement of medical facilities. ( http://www.va.gov/cares/ ) I have one way to get ample funding for VAMC Washington. The Commander-in-Chief should deny health care for Congressmen at the National Naval Medical Center Bethesda. Instead, make them use VAMC Washington. VHA would get the money then!!

The Veterans Benefits Administration has more issues than you can shake a stick at. There is absolutely no reason for VBA to be hiring non-veterans. There is absolutely no reason for lawyers to be hired by VBA as claims adjudicators. VBA’s HR Department needs a complete retraining across the country. As a case in point, I applied for three positions as a Rating Veterans Service Representative with VBA – and I have ten years experience in claims work and am a 60{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} disabled vet. I qualified for a GS-11 position at one RO, but they filled the slot in-house; I qualified for a GS-13 position at another RO, but they hired an attorney; I was disqualified for a GS-10 position at a third RO due to lack of education. Many of the RVSR slots that are advertised on USAJobs are limited to in-house applicants only. That means that highly qualified non-VA employees can’t get them.

Part of this problem is caused by the Office of Personnel Management, whose “Position Classification Standard for Veterans Claims Examining Series, GS-0996” states “There is little doubt that persons with law degrees, upon entrance into this occupation, have a head start in learning how to adjudicate claims over persons without such training. For example, persons with a law school background normally are familiar with such matters as the admissibility of evidence, weight and credibility of evidence, domestic relations, and the descent and distribution of property. Persons without legal training have to gain this knowledge on the job.”

That my friends is a crock. If this was really the case than any RVSR who doesn’t have a law degree should be fired. If this is really the case why has VBA been trying to hire Registered Nurses as RVSRs? And that brings about the next question, which I have asked on G Street (VBA HQ) and never received an answer – If VBA wants RNs because of their familiarity with medical records, anatomy, and medical terminology, why aren’t they hiring veterans who served as Corpsmen and Medics?

OPM’s education requirements are as follows:
GS-5; Baccelaureate Degree
GS-7; One year of post-graduate education
GS-9; Master’s Degree, Doctor of Letters, or Doctor of Jurisprudence
GS-11; Doctor of Philosophy Degree

I would love to see how many Civil Service personnel meet these education requirements!!

Now from the veteran’s stand point, “VBA takes too long to process the claims.” “They have a Duty to Assist that they don’t perform.” “They denied my claim without a real reason.” “They took two years, even though they had all the evidence.” All of these are valid points, if you don’t understand the system.

First, VBA does take too long to process your claim. That’s a fact. Another fact is that as of 17 Nov, VBA had 645,630 claims in the system and 26.4{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of those were over 180 days old. There were an additional 164,076 claims in appeal. That’s a total of 809,706 claims that need to be worked (according to VBA Monday Morning Reports). There are approximately 1,500 “worker bees” in VBA working these claims. If VBA shut its doors for a year and accepted no new claims, they might be able to catch up. However, they can’t. Right now they 51,815 claims more than this time last year. Again, money and more staff is necessary, but, it takes at least two years (I’ve been told) to take someone in and make a VSR out of them. Plus we lose production time for the claims examiners with meetings, training, Federal holidays, vacation, sick leave, and all of the myriad things employees do – and you did them too!

Second, VBA has a definite Duty to Assist. So do you. VBA will get your service records and medical records from the National Personnel Military Records Center in St. Louis. However, those records are often insufficient. Are there JAG Reports? Accident/Incident Reports? Ship’s Logs and/or Unit Diary Reports? If so where are they? VBA will get the records, but you need to tell them what records and where to look. By the way, if you are/were a sailor, and you ever come to Washington for a visit and you don’t go to the National Archives and get copies of those pertinent ship’s log entries on you, then it’s your fault too. Records that you provide the VBA are, for the most part, nice to have, but unless they came from the Feds to VBA direct, they’re normally ignored. I know you don’t like to hear that, but the truth is that some of us are less honest than others and have been known to change their DD-214s and records!

Third, they denied your claim for one reason, they didn’t have the necessary evidence to support the claim. It’s YOUR claim, you need to ensure that VBA has everything they need to process it.

If you’re representing yourself, or are using an attorney or some other individual, than you are making a mistake. You need to remember that you are NOT filing a claim WITH THE VBA. You ARE filing a claim AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. VBA is not your friend. Their mission is two fold; to pay compensation to veterans who have valid claims against the government in accordance with existing law and to not pay on those claims which have not been validated. I’ll tell you without question that I cannot recommend a specific organization to represent you. Many service officers are good, a few are great, and a few are really bad. I can recommend specific individuals in certain geographic areas. I know of good service officers throughout the country, some are county, some are state, and some work for veterans’ service organizations. You should also keep in mind that many service officers have built relationships with the staff at the RO and can get things done based on a conversation rather than a garbage truck full of letters.

Appeals are a whole different ball game. They do take quite some time. Currently VBA has, as I said, 164,076 claims in appeal. That’s VBA. That doesn’t include the Board of Veteran Appeals or the Court of Appeals for Veteran Claims. After deciding 39,076 appeals, the BVA ended FY 2006 with 40,265 appeals pending and estimate receiving an additional 43,000 appeals in FY 2007. At that rate, the BVA will never catch up. The Board reports that it takes about 148 working days from receipt of a claim to adjudication.

As an FYI, based on a percentage of appeals submitted, BVA says AMVETS has the best rate in winning for their clients, followed by PVA and DVA and MoPH tied for third. VFW lost their appeals two-thirds of the time (Report of the Chairman of the VBA, 2006). CAVC, on the other hand, for FY 2007 received 4,644 appeals and adjudicated 4,877 appeals (Report of the Chief Judge). The Court reports that the average time from receipt to adjudication of an appeal is 416 days. Keep in mind there are only 256 working days in a year.

Now, in my view, there’s three separate issues here. First, the BVA is part of the VA and reports to the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs. I think the BVA should be removed from VA and set up as an independent agency. Second, frivolous claims. Too many vets refuse to believe their claim is invalid and appeal the VBA decision. These frivolous claims slow down the system. Third, the responsibilities of the CAVC should be changed to give them the same legal capabilities as any other Federal Appellate Court.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I know I’m a bit long-winded, but I think the worker bees of the Department of Veteran Affairs do an excellent job. I think the political appointees also do a creditable job. I think there is room for improvement in the way VA management handles their job.

I do not believe that the United States Congress or the House Veteran Affairs Committee do their job to the best of their ability. I do not believe the President of the United States has done his job, with regard to our disabled and indigent veterans. Above all, I do not believe that “We the People” have done our jobs either. We have been complacent in our attitudes towards the government and apathetic in our attitudes towards the war. If we want POTUS, the Congress, and VA to do their jobs, it’s up to us to do our job. We have the ultimate oversight responsibility, let’s exercise it.

[Note: VCS strongly encourages veterans to use Vet Centers.  VCS applauds VA’s positive outreach to de-stigmatize mental health conditions among our war veterans.  To learn more about VA’s Vet Centers, please go to this web site: http://www.vetcenter.va.gov/] 

November 27, 2007 – Joel Chaverri has seen combat, having participated in the 2004 attack on Fallujah, Iraq, the scene of some of the most bitter street fighting involving U.S. forces since Hue in Vietnam. He knows the readjustment that a young man must go through when he leaves behind that kind of carnage.

So when Chaverri left the Marines and returned to North Texas, he accepted a job with the Department of Veterans Affairs. His mission: to go out and tell young combat veterans that it’s OK to ask for counseling.  “I tell guys, ‘You don’t have to have a PTSD diagnosis or have a disability rating,'” Chaverri, 25, said. “‘You don’t have to have a disorder.’ Our brochures never use the word PTSD. We offer readjustment counseling.”

Established in 1979, Vet Centers around the country cater to former service members who have either post-traumatic stress disorder or lingering problems related to their service. Anyone who reads Doonesbury will recognize what they do through the character named Elias.

The Vet Centers in Fort Worth and Dallas do not prescribe medication, and they are not affiliated with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ medical system nor its mental health operation.

“We just do talk therapy,” said Michael Coulter, the team leader of the Fort Worth Vet Center, an Air Force veteran and a licensed master’s social worker.

Close to 400 veterans are receiving help from the Fort Worth Vet Center, most of them men in their late 50s to mid-60s who fought against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.

But 25 percent of the new clients coming in the door are young veterans, back from campaigns against militants in Afghanistan or Iraq. That percentage is rapidly growing, and it’s even higher in the six-state region encompassing Texas, where almost half of the new clients are young veterans.

Chaverri reaches them by going to National Guard and reserve units, university counseling centers and veterans service offices in a 52-county area of North Texas. Without an active-duty base nearby, he must be “creative” in reaching out.

“I never know where these guys are going to be,” he said. “I have to make sure that the people the veterans are going to contact know about the Vet Center. … Despite all the VA briefs I got coming off active duty, I never heard about the Vet Center.”

The VA has hired 100 veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq to do the same for its 207 Vet Centers across the country, and it plans on hiring more in the coming years.

Vet Centers have also added bereavement counseling for the immediate families of troops killed in action.

The symptoms of PTSD are essentially universal. Sufferers distance themselves from their loved ones. They get angry at small things. They have trouble sleeping. And alcohol or drugs too often become a form of self-medication.

“Those don’t change based on the war or the age of the person,” Coulter said.

But what causes the PTSD varies as much as the personalities and backgrounds of the people in the military.

There is no accurate predictor of what events, witnessed by what people, under what circumstances will result in PTSD, and of why some veterans can process what they’ve been through and others can’t.

“It’s very common that you’ll have two men from the same unit who experience the same thing; one will have PTSD, and the other won’t,” Coulter said. “That’s why it’s so individualized.”

Chaverri said even if a service member does not feel like he has PTSD, it can be difficult to resume a relationship with a girlfriend or spouse after time in a war zone.

“One of the things that every family member does is ask, ‘Did you kill anyone?'” he said. “Every time I say that in a presentation to veterans, I hear all the groans. So we encourage families to come in, too.”

It’s not surprising to people like Coulter that PTSD has been a concern for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.

Unlike in Vietnam, today’s military units are cohesive and long-standing outfits, where troops know each other, know their families and have deployed with each other numerous times. National Guard and reserve units are even more close-knit, all of which means that experiencing a violent death of a comrade can be corrosive.

“It’s much easier to identify the traumatic event” with younger veterans, Coulter said. “With that comes quicker treatment too, and it often decreases the amount of time a person has to seek professional help.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder cannot be cured, any more than diabetes can be cured, Coulter said. But like diabetes, he said, a person must learn how to handle it.

“We can’t erase people’s memories,” he said. “But we can help people deal with them.”

The Vet Center

For anyone who believes they need help from the Vet Center, counselors can be reached at 817-921-9095. The Fort Worth office is at 1305 W. Magnolia Ave. Counseling sessions are also held in Denton, Decatur, Stephenville, Wichita Falls and Mineral Wells.

The news that Saudi Arabia is the nation providing the greatest number of foreign fighters in Iraq underscores the lies and duplicity at the foundation of President George W. Bush’s policies in the Middle East. 
 
When the undersecretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing points to Saudi Arabia as a continuing conduit for millions of dollars to al-Qaeda, and the president ignores the assessment and then certifies that “Saudi Arabia is cooperating with efforts to combat international terrorism,” you know the fix is in.

Bush and the State Department are silent when a Saudi court orders a woman who was gang raped to a punishment of 200 lashes and six months in jail, as the civilized world howls with outrage over the latest abomination from a judicial system otherwise known for torture and public beheadings.

The House of Saud is never called the ruthless regime it is. It’s always referred to as the more benevolent-sounding “kingdom.” Bush has never used the terrorism label when describing the Saudis, despite indisputable evidence that they are providing people and money to spread terror and export the religious fanaticism rooted in the Saudi brand of Islam, ultra-conservative Wahhabism.

Protecting international oil interests and his family’s wealth explains why Bush continues to turn a blind eye to everything the Saudis do. A Thanksgiving Day story in The New York Times with the headline “Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to Allies of U.S.” got scant attention from the media, caught up in food and football.

A raid on a desert camp in Sinjar, near the Syrian border, provides detailed information about the backgrounds and hometowns of more than 700 foreign fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006. The raid — ironically on Sept. 11 — provided U.S. military intelligence with remarkable documentation about the suicide bombers and insurgents killing Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops.

The Times reported information discovered in the desert tent camp showed “Saudis accounted for the largest number of fighters listed on the records by far — 305, or 41 percent — American intelligence officers found as they combed through documents and computers in the weeks after the raid. The data show that despite increased efforts by Saudi Arabia to clamp down on would-be terrorists since Sept. 11, 2001, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, some Saudi fighters are still getting through.”

The Libyans, another Bush “ally,” followed the Saudis, providing 137 foreign soldiers, or 18 percent of the total. These fighters are all Sunni and part of the sectarian struggle for Iraq.

While the Saudi government denies an official role, it is simply no coincidence that Saudi citizens end up in Iraq. Senior American military officials told the Times they also “believed that Saudi citizens provided the majority of financing for al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. ‘They don’t want to see the Shias come to dominate Iraq,’ one American official said.”

In September, Stuart Levey, the undersecretary of the Treasury, told ABC News no one identified by the United States and United Nations as a terror financier has been prosecuted by the Saudis.

“If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia,” Levey said in an interview. “When the evidence is clear that these individuals have funded terrorist organizations and knowingly done so, then that should be prosecuted and treated as real terrorism, because it is,” Levey concluded.

Just a month after Levey argued the Saudis do nothing to prosecute the bankrollers of terrorist groups, Bush signed a document certifying the Saudis are an ally in his war on terror.

The president is required by U.S. law to send such a memorandum to the secretary of State to free up American aid packages and assure the recipient nations don’t support terror. That lie about the Saudis aside, why the hell would we send any kind of money to Riyadh? The money we funnel them for $100-a-barrel oil isn’t enough?

Bush’s admiration for the Saudis runs deep, especially for their criminal justice system. Based on a code Attila the Hun would find excessive, the Saudis routinely flog and torture people, and this year so far 124 have been beheaded.

When Bush, a prolific death penalty practitioner himself, holds hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, you can hear him saying, “Prince, you sure know how to keep ’em in line. If the damn liberals didn’t stop me, I’d be doing those public executions, too. It sure sends a message. And we both know torture does work.”

Bush’s personal silence over the fate of a gang-rape victim shows how beholden he is to his Saudi pals who support a vile legal system rooted in whim, cruelty and human degradation.

Seven men raped a 19-year-old Saudi woman in 2006. The men got sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison. But the Saudi court ruled the woman had to be punished too because their barbaric interruption of Islamic law was that she committed the horrible crime of being in the car of an unrelated man before she was attacked.

She was sentenced to receive 90 lashes, but she fought the punishment and appealed. How dare she, the mullahs muttered. We’ll show her. The Saudi Supreme Judicial Council increased the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison. The rapists’ sentences were doubled. The women and her attacker are members of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority.

The Bush administration is treating the case as an internal Saudi matter and refuses to condemn the woman’s punishment. You might think that as a practical matter, we don’t want to offend the Saudis, who at the last minute agreed to show up at the U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference starting this week in Annapolis, Md.

The real reason is money. Craig Unger reported in his insightful book “House of Bush, House of Saud” how he traced “more than $1.4 billion in contracts and investments from the House of Saud in companies in which the Bushes and their friends have had key roles.”

One of the Saudis’ greatest friends in Washington has been Bush’s departing U.S. Homeland Security Adviser Frances Fragos Townsend. She delivered a speech last month at Effat College in Jeddah gushing with praise for the Saudis.

Townsend said, “The most serious and dangerous terrorist threat comes from al-Qaeda,” of course not mentioning the Saudi funding sources for that threat. Being sloppy with her al-Qaeda script may have hurried Townsend’s departure.

In July, she slipped and admitted, “I don’t know if al-Qaeda was in Iraq before the war.” But alas, Townsend’s real forte is sycophancy, not thinking. Her handwritten resignation letter to Bush belongs in the suck-up hall of fame.

After the pro forma stuff about how her years of White House Service “have been both a blessing and a privilege,” Fran jumped the shark, using the words playwright Maxwell Anderson wrote to describe George Washington.

Anderson wrote, “There are some men who lift the age they inhabit, till all men walk on higher ground in their lifetime.” Townsend shamelessly added, “Mr. President, you are such a man.”

Someone with a sense of humor in the White House must have leaked the letter that left me howling. Then I laughed more reading Townsend’s speech to the Saudis and seeing she used the identical quote describing Bush, adding that it also “applies to King Abdullah.”

But somehow it seems fitting the two despots and business partners are lumped together. Although it’s unfortunate that Maxwell Anderson and George Washington are sullied in the process.

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@sbcglobal.net.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has made a grim discovery of manuals created by a coalescence of American fundamentalist Christians motivated by a theocratic thirst for power.

In the words of Mikey Weinstein, Founder/President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation: “Armageddon is not an exit strategy for the multitude of monumental errors created in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

In their ominous own words: The Campus Crusade for Christ goal of reaching the world through the military is becoming manifest with a terrifying speed:

“utilizing  various strategies to use to fulfill the “Great Commission” from Matthew 28:19 — Go and make disciples of all nations” by recruiting, creating, and sending out government-paid missionaries from U.S. Military training installations.”

This an overview of the divisions and subdivisions that come directly under Campus Crusade for Christ.  (This is only a partial list, showing the primary divisions. There are numerous other organizations that have connections to these, either through individuals or organizational affiliations, some of which actually have DoD contracts for their programs.)

The Campus Crusade Strategy:

The first tier is:

1. CHRISTIAN EMBASSY (targeting the Pentagon.)

2. MILITARY MINISTRY (targeting all other military installations.)

The second tier, operating under MILITARY MINISTRY, includes:

1. MILITARY GATEWAYS (Targets Basic Training installations, and other training locations such as the Defense Language Institute.)

2. MILITARY CAMPUS MINISTRY (Targets U.S. Military Academies.)

3. VALOR CADET AND MIDSHIPMAN MINISTRY (Targets ROTC.)

MILITARY GATEWAYS is then subdivided into branch specific organizations:

1. AIRMEN FOR CHRIST (Operating at Lackland Air Force Base.)

2. SAILORS FOR CHRIST (Operating at Great Lakes Recruit Training Command &

Navy Training School Command.)

3. WARRIORS FOR CHRIST (Operating at Parris Island .)

MILITARY GATEWAYS has no specific subdivision for the Army because there are many Army basic training locations, while all recruits for the other three branches pass through  a limited amount of  locations, primarily those listed above. MILITARY GATEWAYS is already operating at Fort Jackson , the largest Army basic training location, and list on their website Fort Benning , Fort Leonard Wood, and Fort Sill as the next three targets, as well as listing others on their current “Strategy Sheet.”

Quotes such as the following are typical those found on the websites and throughout the literature of  these organizations. 

Campus Crusade for Christ’s first strategic objective:

“Evangelize and Disciple All Enlisted Members of the US Military.  Utilize Ministry at each basic training center and beyond. Transform our culture through the US Military.”

(Source: Campus Crusade’s website and various Campus Crusade publications.)

From Military Ministry’s Executive Director, Maj. Gen. Bob Dees (ret.):

“We must pursue our particular means for transforming the nation — through the military. And the military may well be the most influential way to affect that spiritual superstructure. Militaries exercise, generally speaking, the most intensive and purposeful indoctrination program of citizens….”

(Source: “Life and Leadership,” the newsletter of Campus Crusade’s Military Ministry, Oct. 2005.)

Detailed instructions for carrying out the “Great Commission” can be found in the strategy manuals of the Military Ministry and the Military Missions Network, recently uncovered by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

These are few of the many examples of Christian Embassy and Officers’ Christian Fellowship members who also work for or endorse the Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry. Some are still active duty and some are recently retired.  Recently retired officers should not be dismissed here. A big part of the Campus Crusade’s strategy includes utilizing retired officers as “insiders” with unrestricted access to the targeted military installations.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey W. Oster, USMC (ret.), who led the Christian Embassy Discipleship Group for “Retired Generals & Admirals” in 2003 and 2004, is also the Executive Committee Chairman for Military Ministry.  The dates are significant here because Gen. Oster was active in both organizations when the Military Ministry’s “Strategy” handbook came out.  Gen. Oster retired from the Marine Corps in 1998, but from February through July of 2004 served as the Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq .

Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen was one of the officers in the Christian Embassy video.  He also led the “Joint Staff” Christian Embassy Discipleship Group in 2001 and 2002.. CDR Chris Williams was a Christian Embassy Discipleship Group leader from  2001 to 2004. Both Gen. Caslen and CDR Williams have been elected members of the Officers’ Christian Fellowship (OCF) Council.

The OCF website and the Christian Embassy website both link to the Campus Crusade Military Ministry website, so Caslen and Williams are prominent members of both of these two organizations that endorse the Campus Crusade Military Ministry. As members of the OCF Council, they are responsible to “Determine the OCF’s mission, purposes, and strategic direction” and “Provide policy and Ministry guidance.”

Col. Keith Morgan was a Christian Embassy Discipleship Group leader in 2003 and 2004. He is also the Family Ministries Director for the Military Ministry.

From the Military Missions Network (MMN) Board of Directors bios:

“Chaplain, Colonel Tom Blase is Wing Chaplain at Lackland AFB, Texas .  He is the senior chaplain of the largest USAF Chaplain Service team which ministers to Team Lackland personnel.  Lackland is the “Gateway to the Air Force”, where all enlisted members receive Basic Military Training.”

According to (MRFF) own army of private investigators: The MMN and the Campus Crusade Military Ministry are inextricably connected in so many ways that they are almost one and the same.

For example: The founder and president of MMN (Gary Sanders) is also an Associate Staff member of the Military Ministry of Campus Crusade For Christ.

The National Director of the Military Ministry of Campus Crusade For Christ (Col. Chuck Macri (ret.)), is also on the Board of Directors of MMN.

A number of other MMN board members, staff, and volunteers (some active military and some retired or former military) who are also associated with the Military Ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ itself, and other connected organizations, such as the Officers’ Christian Fellowship.

Besides their connections to each other, both MMN and Military Ministry are equally part of this story because one of the “strategy” manuals we found is from MMN, and the other is from Military Ministry.