Veterans for Common Sense

November 20, 2007 – We — that’s you and me — just had a Veterans Day. You might have missed it? Did you notice that we had fewer parades and TV and radio shows talked a little less about the holiday. Just last year, we were all over our men and women in uniform and retired — we all said no matter what we think of the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, we were going to honor thos who served … remember that?

Well, we have lost our way, we have failed them. We have let them all down. You cannot keep asking, hell demanding, that your soldiers go back to combat three, four and five times in five years — leave their families, lose their limbs, their lives, their souls and then not even have the decency to take care of them when they get hurt. We ought to be ashamed and embarrassed.

This year we were shown by the national media how poorly our wounded soldiers were being treated once they had their limbs replaced. We saw the rats literally crawling at our nation’s primary veterans hospital, less than 10 miles from the White House. While we celebrated this year’s Veterans Day, the broken promises were still being made to our returning veterans. Our men and women still have to wait months for appointments, years for payments, wade through miles and miles of useless paperwork to get the treatment that they have earned. Hell, this nation owes them.

Here is the deal we have made: You soldier, go and get blown up, leave your family, suffer numbing emotional damage, have your body blown apart, and we, the United States of America, will take care of you for the rest of your life. The soldier always does his part and this nation always lets them down.

We are now learning that the suicide rates of returning combat vets are four times higher than we thought. We also were treated to this fact that there are over 160,000 homeless veterans in this country. I do a lot of volunteer work at a homeless shelter and have worked to establish a veterans’ homeless shelters in Boston. I can say with a sadness that cuts very deep that we are now seeing returning veterans from this current war living on the streets of Boston and L.A. That ought to be enough to unseat a government.

How is this possible? We gave $10 billion to Pakistan since 9/1, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars — that’s hundreds of billions in Iraq — you would think a few billion could be set aside for the men and women making it all possible. A few billion to ensure that this nation does what it promised and takes care of those who have taken care of us.

For my disconnected, disinterested uncaring friends, it’s not about the damn money. We have the damn money, it’s us, we suck, we do not care. We do photo ops with soldiers standing behind us, we walk in parades and shake hands on the appropriate holidays. Some of us wear flags in our lapels, but we are all collectively allowing out government to perpetuate this crime, the crime of not taking care of soldiers.

We need a revolution of care and competence, we need a political action committee, we need something powerful outside the government to make this government keep its sacred promise to our soldiers. I am telling you — we have lost our way. I am hoping it’s not too late. This war with terrorists will not stop with Iraq and Afghanistan, so we all need to understand that we will need these great soldiers, Marines and special operation types for as long as we want to be a free nation.

Maybe that is enough to wake up?

Colonel David Hunt, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a FOX News military analyst and the author of the New York Times bestseller They Just Don’t Get It. He has extensive operational experience in counterterrorism, special operations, and intelligence operations. He has trained the FBI and Special Forces in counterterrorism tactics, served as the security adviser to six different Olympic Games, testified as an expert at many major terrorist trials, and lectured at the CIA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency. You can read his complete bio here.

November 21, 2007 – London, United Kingdom (Reuters) – The conflict in Afghanistan has reached “crisis proportions,” with the resurgent Taliban present in more than half the country and closing in on Kabul, a report said on Wednesday.

If NATO, the lead force operating in Afghanistan, is to have any impact against the insurgency, troop numbers will have to be doubled to at least 80,000, the report said.

“The Taliban has shown itself to be a truly resurgent force,” the Senlis Council, an independent think-tank with a permanent presence in Afghanistan, wrote in a study entitled “Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the brink.”

“Its ability to establish a presence throughout the country is now proven beyond doubt,” it said. “The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, some district centers, and important road arteries.”

Senlis said its research had established that the Taliban, driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S. invasion in late 2001, had rebuilt a permanent presence in 54 percent of the country and was finding it easy to recruit new followers.

It was also increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside and suicide bombs, to powerful effect, and had built a stable network of financial support, funding its operations with the proceeds from Afghanistan’s booming opium trade.

“It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when,” the report said.

“Their oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever.”

TROOP BOOST

NATO has a little over 40,000 troops operating in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force. The United States and Britain are the largest contributors, with 15,000 and 7,700 soldiers, respectively.

Those numbers pale in comparison to Iraq where at the peak of operations there were nearly 200,000 troops on the ground and where around 160,000 remain.

While Iraq is showing the first signs of an improvement in security, Afghanistan’s situation is becoming more precarious, Senlis argued, underlining the need for a rapid increase in troop numbers in a country that is larger than Iraq.

“In order to prevent NATO’s defeat at the hands of the Taliban, a rejuvenated ‘coalition of the willing’ is needed,” the report said, calling the proposal ‘NATO Plus’.

“Every NATO state is mandated to contribute to this new force, with a firm level of commitment that will provide a total force size of 80,000.”

Bolstering NATO’s presence in Afghanistan, and getting member countries to contribute more, is expected to be a major issue on the agenda at a NATO summit in Romania in April.

Before then, Britain, which is responsible for security in the restive south of Afghanistan, where violence has been greatest, is expected to unveil new security strategies, including a possible increase in troops and proposals to deter Afghan poppy farmers from selling their crop to the Taliban.

Senlis said that without the troop “surge,” and renewed efforts to win over the Afghan population and make reconstruction take hold, the country was in danger of falling back into the hands of the Taliban.

(Editing by Kate Kelland and Michael Winfrey)

[Note: Veterans for Common Sense opposes James Peake nomination to be the next VA Secretary.  To learn more, read our letter to Senators and a recent news article questioning Peake’s qualifications] 

November 20, 2007 – The Bush administration’s nominee to be the next secretary of veterans’ affairs will appear before a Senate committee Dec. 5 to answer questions about what he will bring to the job if confirmed.

This could be a quick process if retired Lt. Gen. James Peake, a West Point graduate and former Army surgeon general, satisfies the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee that he is prepared to take on the many challenges facing the Department of Veterans Affairs, including a growing backlog of benefits claims, lengthy waits for some appointments and treatment of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, especially for mental health issues.

But Senate aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Peake’s nomination could easily become a prolonged fight if his answers are unsatisfying or if his nomination somehow gets tied up in a partisan feud that has delayed action on legislation to improve veterans’ benefits and health care.

The Senate committee, chaired by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, has been complaining that leaving the VA secretary’s post vacant since Oct. 1 seems to indicate the Bush administration considers veterans’ issues to be unimportant.

The White House formally nominated Peake for the VA post on Thursday, just as Congress was beginning a previously scheduled two-week break. The Dec. 5 hearing will come on the first week back from the break. Congressional leaders hoping to end the legislative session no later than Dec. 21, which does not allow a lot of time for extensive hearings or investigation.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. William Matz Jr., president of the National Association for Uniformed Services and a member of the Veterans’ Disability Benefits Committee that has recommended numerous improvements in veterans’ programs, said he thinks Peake is “an excelled choice.”

Peake was commander of the Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Wash., in the mid-1990s when Matz was deputy commanding general at that post.

“I know him well,” Matz said. “What a great choice.”

KBR, Inc., the global engineering and construction giant, won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006—far more than any other company, according to a new analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. In fact, the total dollar value of contracts that went to KBR—which used to be known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root and until April 2007 was a subsidiary of Halliburton—was nearly nine times greater than those awarded to DynCorp International, a private security firm that is No. 2 on the Center’s list of the top 100 recipients of Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction funds.

Another private security company, Blackwater USA, whose employees recently killed as many as 17 Iraqi civilians in what the Iraqi government alleges was an unprovoked attack, is 12th on the list of companies and joint ventures, with $485 million in contracts. (On November 14, the New York Times reported that FBI investigators have concluded that 14 of the 17 shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, and that Justice Department prosecutors are weighing whether to seek indictments.) First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting, which immediately precedes Blackwater on the Top 100, came under fire in July after a pair of whistleblowers told a House committee that the company essentially “kidnapped” low-paid foreign laborers brought in to help build the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad. First Kuwaiti and the U.S. State Department denied the charges.

Other key findings from the Center’s analysis:

• Over the three years studied, more than $20 billion in contracts went to foreign companies whose identities—at least so far—are impossible to determine.

• Nearly a third of the companies and joint ventures on the Top 100 are based outside the United States. These foreign contractors, along with the $20 billion in contracts awarded to the unidentified companies, account for about 45 percent of all funds obligated to the Top 100.

• U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown more than 50 percent annually, from $11 billion in 2004 to almost $17 billion in 2005 and more than $25 billion in 2006.

According to David Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, the outsourcing of government has escalated across the board over the past five years, although oversight of the process has shrunk during this same period. In an interview with the Center for Public Integrity, Walker noted particular problems with military contracting. “We have identified about 15 systemic, longstanding acquisition and contracting problems that exist within the Defense Department—which is the single biggest contractor within the U.S. government—that we are still not making enough progress on,” said Walker, who heads the Government Accountability Office. “I mean, this stuff isn’t rocket science.”

While KBR earns the top spot among individual companies and their subsidiaries, the firm’s $16 billion in obligated contracts is eclipsed by $20.4 billion in contracts that went to a nebulous collection of companies identified by the U.S. government only as “foreign contractors.” The Center has filed a Freedom of Information request for the 50 largest contracts—collectively worth some $19.6 billion—awarded to these unnamed companies. The largest of these contracts is worth more than $6 billion—a sum that would catapult the unidentified recipient to the No. 2 spot on the Top 100.

In October 2003, when the Center published “Windfalls of War,” Halliburton’s Kellogg, Brown, and Root was also the top recipient of U.S. government contracts for the postwar effort, with more than $2.3 billion in awards over two years (see the story here). By contrast, Bechtel, the only other company on that 2003 roster to have received more than $1 billion in awards, won a second large contract in January 2004—this one for $1.8 billion—but left Iraq after completing its work in March 2007. Since this Top 100 represents contracts newly awarded in fiscal years 2004 to 2006, Bechtel is not on the list.

When the 2003 study was published, federal agencies did not comprehensively distinguish war contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan from other government contracts; therefore, Center researchers had to flush out these contracts one by one. Since then, however, most such contracts list Iraq or Afghanistan as their “place of performance,” making the contracting process more transparent and the search for data—available from the General Service Administration’s Federal Procurement Data System—more methodical.

But not all contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan are reported in this federal data system, including awards originating at one contracting agency in Baghdad, which reports only some aggregate totals for inclusion in the central database. Because the agency has so far refused to furnish these missing contracts, the Center is now seeking copies via Freedom of Information Act requests.

Officials in the Baghdad office say that these contracts are unlikely to change the rankings of the largest contractors on the Top 100, although some companies at the bottom of the list may change. According to Major General Darryl A. Scott, the commander of the Baghdad contracting office, these contracts are inaccessible not through willful omission, but because of the computer resources and human labor that would be required to integrate them into the main federal procurement database.

Iraq remains the clear priority of the U.S. government, the Center’s research shows, with more than seven times as many contracting dollars designated for spending there as for Afghanistan. Furthermore, minority-owned businesses received less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the total awards as primary contractors. (The GSA’s data does not provide subcontracting information.) And the data reveals that 12 of the 32 foreign contractors on the Top 100 are based in Turkey—far more than any other nation.

In the early months of the Iraq war, U.S. government officials were criticized for awarding contracts there without competition. Since then, however, much of the criticism has centered on cost-plus contracts, which guarantee that a vendor will earn either a fixed amount of profit or a set percentage of profit above its cost.

Of the $13 billion awarded through cost-plus contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2004 to 2006, 30 percent was awarded through simple cost-plus, fixed-fee arrangements that offer no incentives for performance or cost savings. The largest amount awarded to one vendor through cost-plus contracts, more than $8 billion, went to KBR. Much of that was the result of a contract to provide logistical support for U.S. Army combat operations.

 Senior Database Fellow John Perry provided data analysis for this story.

Top 100 Contractors
*  Unidentified Foreign Entities
1  KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root)
2  DynCorp International (Veritas Capital)
3  Washington Group International
4  IAP Worldwide Services (Cerberus Capital Management)
5  Environmental Chemical Corporation
6  L-3 Communications Holdings
7  Fluor Corporation
8  Perini Corporation
9  Orascom Construction Industries
10  Parsons Corporation
11  First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting
12  Blackwater USA
13  Tetra Tech
14  AMEC
15  Laguna Pueblo (Laguna Construction)
16  AECOM Technology
17  Toltest
18  Lockheed Martin
19  Weston Solutions
20  Red Star Enterprises
21  U.S.-Afghanistan Reconstruction Council
22  Triple Canopy
23  Shaw Group
24  General Dynamics
25  Innovative Technical Solutions
26  USA Environmental
27  Ellis Environmental Group
28  Petrol Ofisi
29  EOD Technology
30  I and S Acquisition Corporation
31  Refinery Associates of Texas
32  Mac International FZE
33  CH2M HILL Companies
34  Zafer Insaat (Zafer Construction Company)
35  Cape Environmental Management
36  Odebrecht-Austin Joint Venture
37  Aegis Defence Services
38  CACI International
39  Verizon Communications
40  Framaco International
41  Ronco Consulting
42  Emta Insaat
43  Technologists, Inc.
44  URS Corporation
45  Tyco International
46  Turcas Petrol
47  Prime Projects International General Trading
48  Rizzani de Eccher
49  Trigeant, Ltd.
50  Boeing Company
51  Harris Corporation
52  Zapata Engineering
53  Berger Group Holdings
54  Camp Dresser & McKee
55  Erinys International
56  Versar, Inc.
57  Biltek
58  Sperian Protection
59  United Infrastructure Projects
60  RSEA Engineering
61  URS Group-Louis Berger Group Joint Venture
62  Raytheon Company
63  SPARK Petrol
64  ITT Corporation
65  Yuksel Insaat
66  Northrop Grumman
67  Zenith Enterprises
68  Amjad Dar Essalam Contracting
69  Compass Group
70  Alfa Consult
71  Environmental Quality Management
72  Al Hamra Kuwait Company
73  Dogus Insaat (Dogus Construction Company)
74  Delta Petrol Urunleri (Delta Petroleum Products)
75  Kropp Holdings
76  SM Consulting
77  SHV Holdings
78  Metag Insaat (Metag Construction Trade Co.)
79  Al-Khaffaf Group
80  Stanley Baker Hill
81  Telford Aviation
82  SEI Group
83  CDM/CAPE Joint Venture
84  Watkinson, L.L.C.
85  First Iraq Contracting
86  AllWorld Language Consultant
87  MWH Global
88  Oshkosh Truck
89  Al Wadan Company
90  Diplomat Freight Service
91  Concentric Project Controllers
92  Computer Sciences Corporation
93  Ho-Chunk, Inc.
94  Coastal International Security
95  Global Innovation Partners
96  Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions
97  Detection Monitoring Technologies
98  Associates In Rural Development
99  ITAS Engineering
100  OBD Construction Company

November 20, 2007 – The Bush administration’s nominee to be the next secretary of veterans’ affairs will appear before a Senate committee Dec. 5 to answer questions about what he will bring to the job if confirmed.

This could be a quick process if retired Lt. Gen. James Peake, a West Point graduate and former Army surgeon general, satisfies the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee that he is prepared to take on the many challenges facing the Department of Veterans Affairs, including a growing backlog of benefits claims, lengthy waits for some appointments and treatment of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, especially for mental health issues.

But Senate aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Peake’s nomination could easily become a prolonged fight if his answers are unsatisfying or if his nomination somehow gets tied up in a partisan feud that has delayed action on legislation to improve veterans’ benefits and health care.

The Senate committee, chaired by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, has been complaining that leaving the VA secretary’s post vacant since Oct. 1 seems to indicate the Bush administration considers veterans’ issues to be unimportant.

The White House formally nominated Peake for the VA post on Thursday, just as Congress was beginning a previously scheduled two-week break. The Dec. 5 hearing will come on the first week back from the break. Congressional leaders hoping to end the legislative session no later than Dec. 21, which does not allow a lot of time for extensive hearings or investigation.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. William Matz Jr., president of the National Association for Uniformed Services and a member of the Veterans’ Disability Benefits Committee that has recommended numerous improvements in veterans’ programs, said he thinks Peake is “an excelled choice.”

Peake was commander of the Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Wash., in the mid-1990s when Matz was deputy commanding general at that post.

“I know him well,” Matz said. “What a great choice.”

Soldier decries AWOL arrest at hospital

Lexington, Kentucky, November 20, 2007 — A soldier facing his second tour of duty in Iraq said in a jailhouse interview he was at a hospital seeking mental help when he was arrested in the middle of the night for allegedly being absent without leave.

Spc. Justin Faulkner insists his superior officers at Fort Campbell knew about his mental problems but refused to provide adequate treatment.

On Thursday, Faulkner checked into a Lexington VA hospital, where doctors told him they wanted to keep him until Monday for observation. Police showed up at the hospital shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday to take him to jail.

“It’s humiliating, degrading,” Faulkner, 22, of Stanton, said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press minutes before his release from the Fayette County Detention Center. “It’s made me lose respect for the military. To come and arrest me at the VA, it wasn’t like I was trying to hide, trying to run. I was getting help. I am being punished for getting help.”

Faulkner, who concluded a one-year tour of duty in Iraq in February 2006, was due to head back there Monday to join the rest of his unit. He was released from jail on the condition he report back to Fort Campbell on Tuesday.

Faulkner said he would but insisted the Army would be “foolish” to send him to Iraq. He said he has been experiencing post-traumatic symptoms since realizing a few weeks ago that a return trip to Iraq was likely.

“I kept getting these flashbacks, these recurring scenes from when I was over there the first time,” Faulkner said. “I get these anxiety attacks at night, and sometimes during the day, I daze off. I can’t get it out of my head. It wasn’t until I was told I had to go back to Iraq, something just clicked in my head – it was like reliving your worst nightmare.”

Faulkner’s superior officer at Fort Campbell, Sgt. Donnie Burnett, said he wasn’t authorized to comment on the case.

Fort Campbell spokeswoman Cathy Gramling said she couldn’t comment on specifics because of privacy issues but said “there are systems in place on the installation and through the chain of command to ensure soldiers receive the treatment they require.”

Faulkner said those systems didn’t work for him.

Faulkner said he went to a psychiatrist at Fort Campbell for several weeks, most recently last Tuesday, but the drugs he was being prescribed didn’t help. That’s when he checked into the VA hospital.

Faulkner was in the National Guard during his first tour of duty but voluntarily signed up for active duty, even though he says he had questions about the lingering role of American forces in Iraq.

He said civilian life – including work as a prison guard – wasn’t working for him, and the Army offered him a $20,000 bonus to re-enlist. Not until his redeployment date got near did the symptoms become unbearable, he said.

As for the war itself, Faulkner says he supports the soldiers but believes it’s time for the troops to come home.

“To me, we’re fighting Bush’s war that his dad couldn’t finish,” he said.

The arrest comes days after the Army announced soldiers are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980. About nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared with seven in every 1,000 the previous year. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared with 3,301 last year.

Faulkner said he isn’t surprised.

“When you’re over there, you’re keeping peace between two religious communities,” he said. “They see it as pointless going back risking their lives to a war that’s not going to make any effect on them.”

Associated Press Writer Ryan Lenz in Evansville, Ind., contributed to this report.

November 16, 2007 – Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

While the totals are still far lower than they were during the Vietnam War, when the draft was in effect, they show a steady increase over the past four years and a 42 percent jump since last year.

“We’re asking a lot of soldiers these days,” said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. “They’re humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I’m sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier.”

The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter.

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year.

The increase comes as the Army continues to bear the brunt of the war demands with many soldiers serving repeated, lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military leaders — including Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey — have acknowledged that the Army has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat. Efforts are under way to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to lessen the burden and give troops more time off between deployments.

“We have been concentrating on this,” said Wallace. “The Army can’t afford to throw away good people. We have got to work with those individuals and try to help them become good soldiers.”

Still, he noted that “the military is not for everybody, not everybody can be a soldier.” And those who want to leave the service will find a way to do it, he said.

While the Army does not have an up-to-date profile of deserters, more than 75 percent of them are soldiers in their first term of enlistment. And most are male.

Soldiers can sign on initially for two to six years. Wallace said he did not know whether deserters were more likely to be those who enlisted for a short or long tour.

At the same time, he said that even as desertions have increased, the Army has seen some overall success in keeping first-term soldiers in the service.

There are four main ways that soldiers can leave the Army before their first enlistment contract is up:

_They are determined unable to meet physical fitness requirements.

_They are found to be unable to adapt to the military.

_They say they are gay and are required to leave under the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

_They go AWOL.

According to Wallace, in the summer of 2005, more than 18 percent of the soldiers in their first six months of service left under one of those four provisions. In June 2007, that number had dropped to about 7 percent.

The decline, he said, is largely due to a drop in the number of soldiers who leave due to physical fitness or health reasons.

Army desertion rates have fluctuated since the Vietnam War — when they peaked at 5 percent. In the 1970s they hovered between 1 and 3 percent, which is up to three out of every 100 soldiers. Those rates plunged in the 1980s and early 1990s to between 2 and 3 out of every 1,000 soldiers.

Desertions began to creep up in the late 1990s into the turn of the century, when the U.S. conducted an air war in Kosovo and later sent peacekeeping troops there.

The numbers declined in 2003 and 2004, in the early years of the Iraq war, but then began to increase steadily.

In contrast, the Navy has seen a steady decline in deserters since 2001, going from 3,665 that year to 1,129 in 2007.

The Marine Corps, meanwhile, has seen the number of deserters stay fairly stable over that timeframe — with about 1,000 deserters a year. During 2003 and 2004 — the first two years of the Iraq war — the number of deserters fell to 877 and 744, respectively.

The Air Force can tout the fewest number of deserters — with no more than 56 bolting in each of the past five years. The low was in fiscal 2007, with just 16 deserters.

Despite the continued increase in Army desertions, however, an Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures earlier this year showed that the military does little to find those who bolt, and rarely prosecutes the ones they find. Some are allowed to simply return to their units, while most are given less-than-honorable discharges.

“My personal opinion is the only way to stop desertions is to change the climate … how they are living and doing what they need to do,” said Wallace, adding that good officers and more attention from Army leaders could “go a long way to stemming desertions.”

Unlike those in the Vietnam era, deserters from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars may not find Canada a safe haven.

Just this week, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the appeals of two Army deserters who sought refugee status to avoid the war in Iraq. The ruling left them without a legal basis to stay in Canada and dealt a blow to other Americans in similar circumstances.

The court, as is usual, did not provide a reason for the decision.

November 16, 2007

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Announces Hearing on Mental Health for Veterans

Washington, D.C. – Chairman Bob Filner (D-CA) announced that the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs will hold a hearing to examine current mental health care available to our nation’s veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).  The hearing will focus on two recent reports: a National Alliance to End Homelessness study which showed that one out of four homeless are veterans and a CBS News report that found the rate of suicide among veterans is double that of the general population. 

“These two reports only highlight what we do not know about our veterans,” said Chairman Filner.  “I think the report on homeless veterans underestimates the reality of the number of America ’s heroes that are on the street tonight.  The tragedy of homeless veterans is that we know what we need to do to prevent it, but neither the military nor the VA bureaucracy is ready to do this.  What is worse is that we know the repercussions of not acting.”

The hearing will focus on recent statistical data from private sources as a platform to discuss comparative data from the VA on these issues.  Witnesses invited will include members of the media, scholars from the mental health care profession and representatives from the VA.  The hearing will take place in December. 

“One homeless veteran living on the street is one too many,” said Mike Michaud, Chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health.  “VA has very good homeless veterans programs, but the need is still great.  We must understand the factors, including mental health and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, that cause veterans to represent a disproportionately larger segment of the homeless population in our country.  We must find solutions to get these heroes back on their feet.”

“When we hear a report that the suicide rate for veterans is double that of the general population, and that the Department of Veterans Affairs isn’t even keeping track of the problem, clearly we need to ask some serious questions,” said Harry E. Mitchell, Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. “Our veterans deserve better, and so do their families.”

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks at the cases of three badly wounded veterans and their struggles to get disability benefits from the VA.  In the documentary, VA’s Acting Secretary Gordon Mansfield says 224,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans already filed claims against VA.  VA also recently confirmed 264,000 OEF/OIF veterans were already treated in VA hospitals in their response to our Veterans for Common Sense lawsuit against VA.  View news documentary.

March 9, 2007 – The scandal at Walter Reed is not an isolated incident. It is directly related to our foreign policy of interventionism.

There is a pressing need to reassess our now widely accepted role as the world’s lone superpower. If we don’t, we are destined to reduce our nation to something far less powerful.

It has always been politically popular for politicians to promise they will keep us out of foreign wars, especially before World War I. That hasn’t changed, even though many in Washington today don’t understand it.

Likewise it has been popular to advocate ending prolonged and painful conflicts like the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and now Iraq.

In 2000, it was quite popular to condemn nation building and reject the policy of policing the world, in the wake of our involvement in Kosovo and Somalia. We were promised a more humble foreign policy.

Nobody wins elections by promising to take us to war. But once elected, many politicians greatly exaggerate the threat posed by a potential enemy – and the people too often carelessly accept the dubious reasons given to justify wars. Opposition arises only when the true costs are felt here at home.

A foreign policy of interventionism costs so much money that we’re forced to close military bases in the U.S., even as we’re building them overseas. Interventionism is never good fiscal policy.

Interventionism symbolizes an attitude of looking outward, toward empire, while diminishing the importance of maintaining a constitutional republic.

We close bases here at home – some want to close Walter Reed – while building bases in Arab and Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. We worry about foreign borders while ignoring our own. We build permanent outposts in Muslim holy lands, occupy territory, and prop up puppet governments. This motivates suicide terrorism against us.

Our policies naturally lead to resentment, which in turn leads to prolonged wars and increased casualties. We spend billions in Iraq, while bases like Walter Reed fall into disrepair. This undermines our ability to care for the thousands of wounded soldiers we should have anticipated, despite the rosy predictions that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq.

Now comes the outrage.

Now Congress holds hearings.

Now comes the wringing of hands. Yes, better late than never.

Clean it up, paint the walls, make Walter Reed look neat and tidy! But this won’t solve our problems. We must someday look critically at the shortcomings of our foreign policy, a policy that needlessly and foolishly intervenes in places where we have no business being.

Voters spoke very clearly in November: they want the war to end. Yet Congress has taken no steps to defund or end a war it never should have condoned in the first place.

On the contrary, Congress plans to spend another $100 billion or more in an upcoming Iraq funding bill – more even than the administration has requested. The 2007 military budget, $700 billion, apparently is not enough. And it’s all done under the slogan of “supporting the troops,” even as our policy guarantees more Americans will die and Walter Reed will continue to receive casualties.

Every problem Congress and the administration create requires more money to fix. The mantra remains the same: spend more money we don’t have, borrow from the Chinese, or just print it.

This policy of interventionism is folly, and it cannot continue forever. It will end, either because we wake up or because we go broke.

Interventionism always leads to unanticipated consequences and blowback, like:

*A weakened, demoralized military;
*Exploding deficits;
*Billions of dollars wasted;
*Increased inflation;
*Less economic growth;
*An unstable currency;
*Painful stock market corrections;
*Political demagoguery;
*Lingering anger at home; and
*Confusion about who is to blame.

These elements combine to create an environment that inevitably undermines personal liberty. Virtually all American wars have led to diminished civil liberties at home.

Most of our mistakes can be laid at the doorstep of our failure to follow the Constitution.

That Constitution, if we so desire, can provide needed guidance and a roadmap to restore our liberties and change our foreign policy. This is critical if we truly seek peace and prosperity.