Veterans for Common Sense

November 15, 2007 – In a déjà vu announcement, the Department of Veterans Affairs says a computer containing the names, Social Security numbers and birthdates of 12,000 veterans was taken over the Veterans’ Day weekend from the VA medical center in Indianapolis.

Three computers were taken from an unlocked room at the Roudebush VA medical center in Indianapolis, and one computer contained records that could be used for identity theft. Federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies are investigating.

The records are of veterans who had been treated as patients at the hospital. They could include information about what medical examinations the veterans had received but not the results of the exams.

“I am upset that the VA repeatedly fails to comply with its own policy to safeguard veterans’ personal information,” said Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., the former chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, who has been pushing VA to improve computer security.

“The VA must give immediate assurance to over 12,000 veterans that it will provide full credit monitoring and protection of sensitive personal information,” Buyer said.

VA officials had no immediate response to questions about the theft.

A policy established earlier this year calls for immediate notification of everyone whose information is missing and a review of the potential threat of identity theft in such situations. Buyer was the chief sponsor of the legislation that created the policy.

If there is a risk of identity theft, VA policy calls for the government to provide free credit monitoring to those affected.

The policy was created after the May 2006 theft from the home of a VA employee of a laptop and computer storage device with personal information on more than 26 million people.

VA also has been trying to make its computers and computerized records more secure, an effort that includes requiring personal data to be encrypted. It is not known if records taken in the Indianapolis theft were encrypted.

November 14, 2007 – More than 1,000 people from 85 countries who are accused of such crimes as rape, killings, torture and genocide are living in the United States, according to Department of Homeland Security figures.

America has become a haven for the world’s war criminals because it lacks the laws needed to prosecute them, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said Wednesday. There’s been only one U.S. indictment of someone suspected of a serious human-rights abuse. Durbin said torture was the only serious human-rights violation that was a crime under American law when committed outside the United States by a non-American national.

“This is unacceptable. Our laws must change and our determination to end this shameful situation must become a priority,” Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, said at a hearing of the subcommittee Wednesday.

He’s trying to get more information about specific cases.

One is that of Juan Romagoza Arce, the director of a clinic that provides free care for the poor in Washington. In 1980, Romagoza was a young doctor caring for the poor in El Salvador during the early period of his country’s civil war when the military seized him and tortured him for 22 days. An estimated 75,000 people died in the 12-year war.

Romagoza told Durbin that he was given electric shocks until he lost consciousness, then kicked and burned with cigarettes until he came to. He also told of being sodomized, nearly asphyxiated in a hood containing calcium oxide — which can cause severe shortness of breath when inhaled — and subjected to waterboarding, including being hung by his feet with his head immersed in water until he nearly drowned.

Romagoza and two other torture victims brought a civil suit in U.S. federal court in West Palm Beach, Fla., against two Salvadoran generals who moved to Florida in 1989: Jose Guillermo Garcia, who was the minister of defense, and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who was the director general of the Salvadoran National Guard.

In 2002, a jury found them liable for the torture of the three, and a judgment of $54.6 million was entered against them and upheld on appeal.

Romagoza said he didn’t expect to see any of the money.

He testified that he’d received many threatening phone calls and letters at the time of the trial but that he’d overcome his fears and testified.

“I felt like I was in the prow of a boat and that there were many people rowing behind that were moving me into this moment,” he told Durbin’s panel. “I felt that if I looked back at them I’d weep, because I’d see them again, wounded, tortured, raped, naked, torn and bleeding. So I didn’t look back, but I felt their support, their strength and their energy.”

He said he and others were angry and frustrated that the two men “live in the same country where we have found refuge from their persecution.”

Durbin said he’d send a letter asking the U.S. attorney in South Florida what was being done in the case.

“If he says he doesn’t have authority, we should change the law. If he has the authority and is not using it, we should change the U.S. attorney,” Durbin said.

Durbin and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., have introduced legislation that would authorize the government to prosecute anyone found in the U.S. who’s guilty of genocide, human trafficking or recruiting child soldiers.

David Scheffer is a Northwestern University law professor who was the ambassador at large for war-crimes issues during the Clinton administration. He testified that after the experience of war-crimes tribunals after World War II and international tribunals prosecuting many atrocities over the past 15 years, “one would be forgiven to assume that surely in the United States the law is now well established to enable U.S. courts — criminal and military — to investigate and prosecute the full range of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. . . .

“That, however, is not the case.”

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NOV. 14

The date of Wednesday’s hearing is significant in the history of war crimes, Justice Department official Sigal P. Mandelker told the subcommittee:

On Nov. 14, 1935, the Third Reich issued regulations that deprived Germany’s Jews of their citizenship and established a system to classify people as Jews based on their ancestry and affiliations.

On Nov. 14, 1945, the International Military Tribunal convened in Nuremberg, Germany, to try Nazi leaders.

On Nov. 14, 1995, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia issued its first indictments on genocide charges over the massacres of as many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. Two of the leaders indicted, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, remain fugitives.

The Republican will to power remains ferocious. It will take a dauntless Democratic leader to win back the White House and restore dignity to the Constitution.

Nov. 15, 2007 – Under crisis conditions of an extraordinary magnitude political leadership of the highest level will be required in the next presidency. The damage is broad, deep and spreading, apparent not only in international disorder and violence, the unprecedented decline of U.S. prestige, and the flouting of our security and economic interests but also in the hollowing out of the federal government’s departments and agencies, and their growing incapacity to fulfill their functions, from FEMA to the Department of Justice.

The more rigid the current president is in responding to the chaos he has fostered, the more the Republicans still supporting him rally around him as a pillar of strength. His flat learning curve, refusal to admit error and redoubling of mistakes are regarded as tests of his strong character. Whatever his low poll ratings of the moment, his stubborn adherence to failure is admired as evidence of his potency.

The patently perverse notion that weakness is strength is the basis of Bush’s remaining credibility within his party. His abuse of presidential power is seen as his great asset rather than understood as his enduring weakness. But when the president assumes all the responsibility, he also receives all the blame, which becomes unitary and unilateral. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson stated the constitutional principle in the 1952 Youngstown Steel case: “When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.”

In his waning year, Bush is pointedly indifferent to the predictable consequences of his collapse. According to those who have met with him recently, he envisions himself as a noble idealist having made moral decisions that will vindicate him generations from now.

Despite the obvious shortcomings of his policies, he has startlingly succeeded in reshaping the executive into an unaccountable imperial presidency. And Bush’s presidency is now accepted as the only acceptable version for major Republican candidates who aspire to succeed him. All of them have pledged to extend its arbitrary powers. Their embrace of the imperial presidency makes the 2008 election a turning point in constitutional government.

This campaign pits two parties running on diametrically opposite ideas of the presidency and the Constitution. There has not been such a sharp divergence on the foundation of the federal system since perhaps the election of 1860.

Two models of the presidency are at odds, one whose founding father was George Washington, the other whose founding father was Richard Nixon. Under the aegis of Dick Cheney, who considered the scandal in Watergate to be a political trick to topple Nixon, the original vision has been entrenched and extended. Cheney is the pluperfect staff man, beginning as Donald Rumsfeld’s assistant in the Nixon White House, and was aptly code-named “Backseat” by the Secret Service when he pulled the strings in the Ford White House as chief of staff. For Cheney and the president under his tutelage, eagerly acting as “The Decider” on decision memos carefully packaged by “Backseat,” the Constitution is a defective instrument remedied by unlimited executive power.

Like Nixon, Bush and Cheney act on the idea that the more they operate outside the constitutional system, the stronger they are. But, unlike Nixon, they are willfully contemptuous of facts and evidence, believing that unfettered power gives them the authority to create or impose their own. Bush and Cheney have refined and simplified Nixon’s concept, purging it of his realism and flexibility. There will be no opening to Iran as there was an opening to China. In Bush’s imperial presidency, neoconservatism meets Nixonianism, the ideology providing the high concept of low politics.

In ways that Nixon did not achieve, Bush has reduced the entire presidency and its functions to the commander in chief in wartime. And in order to sustain this role he has projected a never-ending war against a distant, faceless foe, ubiquitous and lethal. Fear and panic became the chief motifs substituting for democratic persuasion to engineer the consent of the governed, as Jack Goldsmith, Bush’s former director of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, explains in “The Terror Presidency.” He writes, “Why did the administration so often assert presidential power in ways that seemed unnecessary and politically self-defeating? The answer, I believe, is that the administration’s conception of presidential power had a kind of theological significance that often trumped political consequences.”

The imperial president must by definition be an infallible leader. Only he can determine what is a mistake because he is infallible. Stephen Bradbury, the acting director of OLC in the Justice Department who wrote secret memos justifying the torture policy in 2005, defined this Bush doctrine in congressional testimony in 2006: “The president is always right.” Placing his statement in context, Bradbury explained that he was referring to “the war paradigm,” the neoconservative idea of the Bush presidency, “the law of war,” wherein the president is a law unto himself. This notion seems medieval, but it is central to the new radical Republican notion of the presidency. When Bradbury uttered his extraordinary remark, he did not think he was saying anything unusual. His statement, after all, was only a corollary of Nixon’s infamous one made in his post-resignation interview with David Frost, “When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” Bush exceeds Nixon in his claim of divine inspiration from the Higher Father.

Every executive policy does not exist on its own merit but as part of an overarching plan to establish an executive who rules by fiat. Enforcing these policies is intended to break down resistance to aggrandizing unaccountable power for the presidency. Warrantless domestic surveillance is a case in point.

Torture is the linchpin of the new Republican argument on presidential power. Abuse of detainees is the metaphor for beguiling the public into supporting abuse of the presidency. The sadomasochistic ecstasy of torture and the thrill of vengeance are the ultimate appeal of the party of torture. Projecting violence against accused terrorists in an endless war is a deep political strategy to forge and fortify a new regime. This novel form of government, never before installed in the U.S., despite precursors from Nixon’s planned seizure of powers, is being cemented into place so that its penetrability and removal will become extraordinarily difficult. Those who undertake the task of rebuilding the structure will be vulnerable to harsh political attacks as unpatriotic and subversive. Thus restoring American constitutional government after Bush demands the most strategic political and bureaucratic genius.

So vital is torture to the imperial presidency that Bush staked the nomination of his new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, on his refusal to oppose a ritual designed during the Spanish Inquisition to purge sinful heresy: waterboarding. Were Mukasey to have called waterboarding torture, as it surely is, he would have been obligated to prosecute those responsible for war crimes.

Mukasey’s testimony was symptomatic of the new constitutional order forged by Bush. Even more insidious, the secretive process to which the administration subjected Mukasey to get him to toe the line underlines that the radical changes Bush has made in the presidency are not merely for one administration, but intended for all that follow.

On Oct. 25, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois received written responses from Mukasey to questions he had submitted. In one question, Durbin asked about a report that Mukasey had met with unnamed conservative figures to discuss his legal views and allay any misgivings they might have.

The list of names extracted from Mukasey by Durbin passed by unnoticed in the controversy. Mukasey revealed that on order of “officials within the White House” he sat down with six prominent right-wing leaders, whose gathering constituted a de facto subcommittee of the “Inner Party” of the conservative movement. Those present were Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese III; former Reagan and Bush I legal officials Lee Casey and David Rivkin; the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo; the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Edward Whelan; and the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (founded by Pat Robertson), Jay Sekulow.

Mukasey’s meeting with this group at the insistence of the White House amounted to a supra-official confirmation hearing. The incident demonstrates that the Bush imperial presidency is a central tenet of the permanent elite of the party extending beyond his administration. Politicizing paranoia, subsuming intelligence by ideology, purging and deputizing prosecutors, dismissing law by fiat (signing statements) and holding in contempt checks and balances are not temporary measures. It is no accident, as the Marxists (or neoconservatives) say, that President Bush will address the 25th anniversary gala of the Federalist Society on Thursday.

All major Republican candidates for president have embraced Bush’s imperial presidency, but none has surpassed in his fervor Rudy Giuliani. The possibility of holding unaccountable power and conducting a presidency on the footing of what one of his closest advisors, the literary critic as foreign policy expert manqué Norman Podhoretz, has called “World War IV” has wildly excited him. Giuliani time, indeed.

Whether Giuliani becomes the nominee or not, he has defined more clearly than the others the coming themes of the Republican campaign for 2008. His political premise in running for mayor of New York was that the city was under siege, overrun by crime and chaos. His answer to crime was his new police commissioner: Bernard Kerik, the lawless lawman.

Giuliani’s image of New York then is transformed now into an image of the country besieged from within and without. As mayor he stoked inflammatory racial confrontation and basked in demagogy. His heated and cynical paranoid style has gone international. (For cynicism, few episodes exceed his showdown in 2000 with the Brooklyn Museum over an African artist’s painting of a portrait of Jesus using elephant dung as a material when Giuliani was slipping in the polls against his prospective opponent for the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton. When the chips are down, Giuliani always looks for the elephant chip.) Whether he becomes the Republican candidate or not, he has helped consolidate Bush’s authoritarian model as the only acceptable one for Republicans.

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Now, on a personal note, I have reached the end of my critique of the Bush administration, having elaborated it for years. (In fact, my book on “The Strange Death of Republican America” will be published in April 2008.) As events continue to unfold there will undoubtedly be many more things to say about Bush, Cheney, their administration and the Republican field. But given the momentous stakes, I have decided that nothing is more important than committing myself wholly to the outcome. Therefore, beginning here, the tone changes.

Readers know of my background in the Clinton White House. (See “The Clinton Wars.”) They are familiar with my long friendship with Sen. Hillary Clinton. When she recently asked me to join her campaign as senior advisor I felt I must accept, though not out of obligation but, rather, wholeheartedly. There will be other times and places for me to explain how I have seen her grow into the person I now feel is best qualified and suited to restore the presidency, an office I observed and participated in for four years and about whose nature, I know from working closely with her, she has a deep grasp.

I believe that the reason the Republicans have promoted the talking point that Hillary is unelectable is that they fear that more than any other candidate she can create a majority coalition, win and govern. They fear more than loss in one election; they fear the end of the Republican era beginning with Nixon. They know that she has the knowledge, skill and ability to govern. They know that she has already taken everything they can throw against her and is still standing.

Just as the disintegration of the Democrats brought about the rise of the Republicans, the collapse of the Republicans has created an opening for the Democrats. But the Democrats have been victims of their own false euphoria, sanctimony and illusions before. Now, only the Democrats can revive the Republicans. Nixon, Reagan and Bush were all beneficiaries of Democratic disarray and strategic incompetence. The Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory before and it can happen again, even under these circumstances, when history is turning the Democrats’ way.

The Democrats at key junctures have been seduced by the illusion of anti-politics to their own detriment. Anti-politics upholds a self-righteous ideal of purity that somehow political conflict can be transcended on angels’ wings. The consequences on the right of an assumption of moral superiority and hubris are apparent. Their plight stands as a cautionary tale, but not only as an object lesson for them. Still, the Republican will to power remains ferocious. The hard struggle will require the most capable political leadership, willing to undertake the most difficult tasks, and grace under pressure.

November 14, 2007 – SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — A soldier who served two combat tours in Iraq was arrested Wednesday as he was preparing to surrender to Fort Drum officials after spending more than a year AWOL seeking treatment for his post traumatic stress disorder.

Sgt. Brad Gaskins, 25, of East Orange, N.J., said he left the northern New York post in August 2006 because the Army wasn’t providing effective treatment after he was diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression.

“They just don’t have the resources to handle it, but that’s not my fault,” said Gaskins, speaking at a news conference in Syracuse just hours before he was arrested at the Different Drummer Cafe in Watertown, less than 10 miles from Fort Drum.

Gaskins, an eight-year Army veteran who also did a peacekeeping tour in Kosovo, was taken into custody by two civilian police officers from Fort Drum and two Watertown city policeman, said Tod Ensign, an attorney with Citizen Soldier, a GI rights group that is representing Gaskins. Ensign said he was on the phone with military prosecutors at Fort Drum working out the details of Gaskins’ surrender when the soldier was arrested.

Fort Drum spokesman Ben Abel said after a soldier is AWOL for more than 30 days he becomes classified as a deserter and a federal arrest warrant is issued.

Abel said Gaskins would be turned over to his unit commanders, who will decide whether he is to be prosecuted or not.

Ensign said Gaskins’ case is part of a “coming tsunami” of mental health problems involving Iraq and Afghanistan vets.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) said more than 100,000 soldiers were being treated for mental health problems, and half of those specifically for PTSD.

“We hope they don’t just recycle him and push him back into the role of soldier. They need to see him as a badly injured person and he needs to be treated that way,” said Ensign, whose organization previously represented Spc. Eugene Cherry, another Fort Drum soldier who was facing a court martial and a bad conduct discharge after going AWOL to get treatment until the Army softened its stance and gave him a general discharge in July.

Gaskins said he enlisted in 1999, excited to be serving his country and with the dream of becoming a policeman after fulfilling his military duty. He was scheduled for discharge in 2009.

In 2003, Gaskins was deployed to Iraq and said he served his first tour without incident. He was sent back to Iraq in June 2005, and his mental health began deteriorating.

In his second tour, Gaskins said his job was to conduct road searches and locate IEDs.

In one outing, Gaskins said his unit found an IED and were waiting for an explosives team to arrive to disarm it. An Iraqi police officer decided to shoot the IED, which caused an explosion that leveled a nearby house.

“It killed a family of four … that sight will never leave my mind. These people were in their house eating their breakfast. They never had a chance,” Gaskins said.

The disturbing experiences continued. A friend in another unit was killed. Gaskins said he was in numerous gunbattles, including one in which two Iraqi police officers were accidentally killed by his unit. His unit was ambushed several times and he saw the aftermath of countless suicide bombings, including one that left 25 people dead.

“It takes its toll. It’s a constant fear every day,” he said.

Gaskins left Iraq in February 2006 and was transferred to the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, where he sought help for his worsening mental problems.

Upon his return, he began suffering flashbacks and nightmares, headaches, sleeplessness, weight loss and mood swings that took him from depression to irrational rages, he said.

Military doctors sent Gaskins to the Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, where he spent two weeks and was diagnosed with PTSD. He soon returned to his unit, but continued having problems. When he asked his commanders about returning to Samaritan, they told him it would delay any chance he had at obtaining a medical release.

“There is a stigma that comes with seeking help and you basically jeopardize your entire career,” Gaskins said.

At the time, the Fort Drum mental health facility had a staff of a dozen caring for approximately 17,000 troops, Ensign said.

Over the past year Fort Drum has expanded its mental health facility staff to 31, with plans to add another 17 staffers, Abel said. “Is there a need for more — yes,” he said.

Abel said he was unaware of the specifics of Gaskins’ case and declined to comment on it.

Unable to get proper help, Gaskins said requested a two-week leave and went home to New Jersey, where he had one of his most worrisome experiences.

“My wife came home late one night and startled me awake. I think I blacked out. I ran at her with a knife and almost stabbed her. I didn’t know what I was doing … I don’t want to hurt anybody,” said Gaskins, who said he hasn’t been able to find a job because of his PTSD.

Gaskins and his wife are currently separated as he tries to deal with his mental problems. He has only supervised visitation rights with his two children, a 3-year-old son and a 9-year-old stepdaughter.

Gaskins said he called Fort Drum officials, told them about the incident, and said he wasn’t coming back.

“They never sent anyone to help me,” Gaskins said, adding, “I never attempted to hide. I stayed at my house.”

November 12, 2007 – SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ? The military burial is how this nation shows gratitude to the men and women who have faithfully defended our country.  Wes Nell knows that sacrifice, serving for your country. 
           
Every year the 85 year old veteran climbs an extension ladder and places his flag in the same place, prominently displayed at the front of his house.
   
“You see, I am a little shaky, but I get up there,” says Nell.
   
Wes fought in World War II in the South Pacific.  His roommate, Norman Robert Chester fought in Germany, even rescuing prisoners locked in concentration camps.  The two were room mates for 31 years.
   
“He was the brother I never had,” says Wes of his roommate Bob.

Bob and Wes met after the war.

“I appreciated fighting for our country, and he did too, because we were at war,” says Wes.  It’s a sentiment shared by the World War II generation; a generation fading by the day.

In June, Wes’ buddy Bob became one of those voices silenced.  He died of natural causes at the age of 83.  He suffered, but according to Wes, now he’s at rest.

But Wes can’t rest until his friend is given a proper burial.  Bob did not have a family, –no close relatives to bury him.  Bob’s remains sat on a shelf in the coroner’s office for the four months since his death.  Wes wanted to bury him, but was told he couldn’t because he’s not family.
   
Larry Otto, who lived next door to Bob and Wes for more than two decades, says the one thing Bob wanted when he passed away was to be buried as a veteran.  “We would like to see Bob gets his wish,” says Otto, “that he be buried in a veteran’s cemetery with the honor he deserves.”
   
That honor is one a group called the Missing in America Project is fighting for veterans across the country.
   
“This is a secret that has gone on too long,” says Fred Salanti, head of the Missing in America Project.  “Many many people have known about this, have been told about this, but it’s like anything that’s a skeleton in the closet, even in our own families, who’s going to bring it out?”
   
Salanti, a Vietnam vet himself, estimates the cremated remains of at least 15,000 veterans just like Bob Chester have long been forgotten or overlooked.  That’s 15,000 veterans sitting on shelves, never honored; never getting the proper burial.  Since Missing in America formed a year ago, the group discovered a troubling newspaper photo.    The Oregonian took photos of a warehouse at an Oregon State Hospital with 3,500 brass canisters – all numbered and named – left on shelves.  Salanti and his group believe that at least 1,000 veterans are there, some even dating back to the 1890s.
   
“These are our people who wrote a blank check for their lives and said ‘I’m going to die for you’,” said Salanti.  “How do we respect them?  It’s not by leaving them on a shelf.”

Salanti believes the ashes, forgotten or ignored by their families, are spread all across this country, from state hospitals to funeral homes.  The project has spent the last year knocking on the doors of funeral homes nationwide, asking to be let in to identify these veterans so they can get them properly buried in a national or state cemetery.  It’s a challenging task, considering not all the nation’s 45,000 funeral homes are willingly opening their doors to show what’s in their back rooms.

We took this information to Richard Wannemacher, a representative with the Memorial Division of Veterans’ Affairs in Washington, D.C.  The V.A. is the agency responsible for burying veterans, and Wannemacher admits the agency does not always know when a veteran dies.

“All we’re concerned about is that every person in one of those funeral homes that’s identified as a veteran be offered the opportunity to be honored in one of our shrines in the nation,” says Wannemacher.  “Some things slip through the cracks as years go by,” he says.  He blames family members for forgetting their loved ones.

But how could a homeless vet, or someone with no family like Bob Chester end up at a national cemetery if the government has no idea they died?  We’ve learned that there are no laws requiring a coroner or a funeral home to verify if someone ever served in the military.  So if no one is really checking and there is no family, these ashes of the forgotten soldiers can end up sitting on shelves. 

Wannemacher says they’ll accept a call from anyone about a veteran’s death, but Wes Nell says when he called the V.A., they weren’t interested in helping.

“They acted like they were reading from a card or something,” says Wes.  “I’ve been through a lot of things in my life, but I’ve never been talked to like that, over trying to have someone buried.”

We couldn’t let that happen to Bob Chester, so we worked the phones, first calling the coroner’s office, then the V.A. where we finally got the results Bob’s friends have waited months to hear.  “The fact that this situation has occurred is deplorable, but on behalf of a grateful nation, thank you for his service,” says Wannemacher of Bob Chester.

On October 23rd, under a sunny, breezy day, Bob Chester was buried at the cemetery in Dixon with full military honors, in front of Wes, his friends and members of the Missing in America Project.

“I could tell him how good this has been, how wonderful . . . he wouldn’t believe it,” says Wes Nell.

Bob Chester, honored as a hero with a dignified burial, won’t end up forgotten on a shelf.  In a year, the Missing in America Project has managed to bury 162. 

“Peace,” says Fred Salanti, “it’s just peace.  They’re not abandoned; they’re not on a dusty shelf.”

But there’s much more to do.  Thousands of America’s war veterans are warehoused in back rooms, dusty basements and closets waiting for a proper burial.  It’s a monumental effort, but Salanti says it’s the right thing to do.

“We have veterans that want to be taken care of,” he says.  “If we ant to mouth the words that we’re patriots, if we want to mouth the words we want to honor and respect our veterans, then let’s do it for all of them.  The ones left on the shelf, and the current ones.”

Just recently the group found a funeral home in the Midwest with the cremated remains of 300 people.  They are now trying to identify how many of the 300 are veterans.

Veterans Affairs says they will ask all funeral homes…. to work with the Missing in America Project.

And on this Veterans Day, at 85 years old, Wes Nell climbed his old extension ladder yet again outside his Sacramento home.  This time, he displays two flags: his regular one, and now Bob’s flag, in a place of honor.

November 14, 2007 – There were calls in the Senate today for the Department of Veterans Affairs to take immediate action to deal with the hidden epidemic of suicides among veterans.

That’s after our CBS News investigation revealed that, in 2005 alone, 120 of those who have served in the military took their own lives every week – more than double the suicide rate for those who haven’t served.

Now the question is whether the VA is willing or able to deal with it, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.

The failure of the VA to track the alarming number of suicides nationwide among those who have served in the military appears to be part of a broader pattern – and a bigger problem.

Veterans’ rights advocate Paul Sullivan was a data analyst for the VA from 2000 to 2006.

“I don’t think they want to know. We call it the “don’t look, don’t find” policy,” he said. “The VA doesn’t collect data, then they don’t have to do anything about it.”

The mental health numbers the VA does report reveal an agency under siege: 100,000 vets now seeking help for mental health issues. That’s 52,000 for post-traumatic stress disorder alone.

And now, in addition to these reports criticizing the VA’s treatment and spending practices come two more blows: of nearly 90,000 Army vets who served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, a study released yesterday found 28.3 percent experienced mental health problems, while the report – due out tomorrow – says while veterans are 11 percent of the general population, they now make up an estimated 25 percent of the homeless.

“When you raise your right hand and put on that uniform, you assume you’re going to be taken care of,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Reickhoff is an Iraq War veteran who says despite all of the good doctors and good intentions, “the VA system is not at all prepared. This country has not ramped up resources to meet this flood of people coming home.”

The VA recently responded to such criticism by opening a suicide prevention hotline, hiring thousands of new workers, including suicide-prevention coordinators at all it’s medical centers. But for those who have lost loved ones to suicide …

“We are deeply sorry to hear about any death,” Katz said. “This is one of the most important things ever for us.”

“I can tell you honestly, Dr. Katz, a lot of the parents I have talked to harbor enormous anger at the VA,” Keteyian said.

“One of the factors that led us to develop prevention programs that go beyond those available in any other health systems, is precisely those tragedies,” Katz said.

“We remake the Army after every war. We bring in new equipment. We bring in new weapons. We need to do the same thing at the VA,” Reickhoff said. “It doesn’t matter where you stand on the war – we’ve got to take care of the warriors.”

NPR NEWS REPORTS:

PENTAGON FIGURES SHOW SUBSTANTIALLY MORE TROOPS
DISCHARGED FOR MENTAL HEALTH-RELATED BEHAVIOR ISSUES
THAN BEFORE THE WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
ON NPR NEWS ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
TODAY, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15

AUDIO TO BE AVAILABLE AT 7 P.M. (ET) AT WWW.NPR.ORG

November 15, 2007; Washington, D.C. – NPR News is reporting that new figures from the Pentagon, released to NPR, show that since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, substantially more troops have been discharged from the Army for behavior and discipline issues which are potentially related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other serious mental health conditions.  The report from NPR correspondent Daniel Zwerdling is airing today on NPR News All Things Considered.

Based on numbers provided by the Army – comparing discharges roughly since the war in Iraq began to the same period before the war – Zwerdling reports that, since the war:

• 40 percent more soldiers have been discharged for a personality disorder.
• Nearly 20 percent more soldiers have been discharged for misconduct.
• More than twice as many soldiers have been discharged for drug use (part of the misconduct category).
• In all, more than 28,000 soldiers have been discharged from the Army for a personality disorder and/or misconduct.

Zwerdling has reported extensively on the military’s treatment of returning soldiers suffering from PTSD and other mental health issues.  In his December 2006 report “Mental Anguish and the Military,” the result of a five-month investigation into the military’s treatment of returning soldiers suffering PTSD at Fort Carson, Colorado, soldiers complained of being harassed, punished and in some cases discharged for seeking treatment for emotional problems triggered by their service in Iraq.  In a recent return visit to the base, Zwerdling reported that soldiers with PTSD and other mental health problems are still facing inadequate treatment by commanders there.  Those reports have won numerous honors, including a 2006 Peabody, an award from the Investigative Reporters and Editors and the 2007 RFK Journalism Award.

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November 14, 2007 – Demond Mullins spent a year in Iraq with the National Guard. When he came back, he felt alienated and angry at what he had seen and done in the war. Now Mullins has found a degree of peace in higher learning.

“Academia … that’s where I’m at,” the City University of New York grad student says. “Right now, school, books — Weber, Marx, Durkheim — that’s my medication.”

That’s his medication now. But if it’s true that there are seven stages of grief, it’s fair to say that Mullins is going through several stages of adjusting to his new life.

His military transport plane brought him back in the fall of 2005. When he arrived at New Jerseys’ Fort Dix, there were no bands waiting to welcome him home, Mullins says.

What waited instead was a pair of white-painted school buses. Those buses would carry the surviving members of his National Guard unit back toward civilian life.

Mullins, who grew up in Brooklyn, spent a year as a clothing model. He was ambitious enough to join the National Guard to pay for college.

That was the life Iraq interrupted.

Ignoring the Awkward Questions

And when he tried to resume it, Mullins’ old friends kept asking questions, like “What was it like when you shot someone?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “My experiences are not pornography for my friends or for anyone else. I use the word pornography because I feel like it is just the … exploitation of my personal experiences for someone else’s entertainment.”

Mullins says he either ignored the question “or I would just say, ‘You know, I don’t want to talk about things like that’ or just say, ‘I didn’t shoot anybody or whatever.'”

‘Stressed Out and on the Edge’

He says he’s not sure if he did shoot and kill anybody, though he knows exactly what he did at close range.

“I dehumanized people,” Mullins says. “I don’t even know how many raids I did while I was there. But during raids you’re throwing them up against the wall, you’re tying their hands behind their back, you’re dragging them out of the bed. You’re dehumanizing them in front of their wives and their kids and, you know, the women are crying and the children are crying and you’re just like, whatever. Put a bag over their head or blindfold, drag them into the Humvee.

“Certain exhibitions of violence on my part that were probably unnecessary — were definitely unnecessary. But I was really stressed out and on edge at the time and I conducted myself … like that.”

When he returned from Iraq, Mullins says he felt angry at himself. He broke up with his girlfriend. He spent days in his apartment.

“Staring at the wall. Not eating. I lost about 15 to 20 pounds,” he says. “My friends still look at me and like, ‘What happened to you?'”

Mullins says he was depressed to the point of being suicidal. Two of his friends have died since their return from Iraq, including one who shot himself in the face, Mullins says.

“To me, that would be the only way that I was capable of doing it because it was fast and it was a tool that I was very familiar with,” he says.

Mullins got counseling from the Department of Veterans Affairs. He didn’t like it and didn’t want to take medication.

He managed to resume college, get a degree and move on to graduate school.

Speaking Out Against the War

Along the way, Mullins focused his anger. He spoke out against the war at marches and rallies.

He appeared in an anti-war documentary called The Ground Truth.

“When I first started anti-war activism, it was because I felt guilty,” Mullins says. “Because I’d meet people, especially a lot of civilians on the street, and they say, ‘Oh, thank you for your service. Thank you for protecting America.’ Like, what are you talking about? I wasn’t protecting America. I was protecting myself and my buddy, you know?”

After Mullins participated in the film, he felt less of a need to speak out.

And by this semester at graduate school, most of his fellow students and at least one of his professors had no idea of his background.

“I had no idea he was a veteran,” says sociology professor John Torpey. “It’s just not something you would have ever known. He seemed a little sheepish about people knowing it.”

Learning and Understanding

Mullins, who knows so much about war from personal experience, comes to class and speaks about social and political theories of war. Recently, he was leading a class discussion — learning by teaching.

Mullins says he can apply the principles he’s learning to the situations he experienced in Iraq.

“I can understand the chaos that is society, the chaos that is life through a theory,” he says. “In some way, I look at my experiences in Iraq and I can understand them through theory.”

Mullins says he has gone through degrees of change since the documentary was filmed.

“When I came back from Iraq, I was just like, anti-war, anti-establishment and anti-myself,” he says. “But it’s time for me to move more in the direction of where my interests are going.”

Is he feeling less alienated?

“I’m feeling more like I’m understanding this country, this society. And I don’t want to scream against it. Right now, I’d just like to study it.”

There was a time when Mullins was screaming against his own life. For now, at least, he seems to be studying that, too.

November 14, 2007 – The stress and depression caused by combat in Iraq often don’t appear until a few months after a soldier has returned home, researchers reported today.

Six months after their deployment ended, the number of soldiers referred for mental health care was nearly three times as high as when they first returned, and the number reporting relationship problems with their families and others had quadrupled, according to results from a new screening tool used by the military to assess the troops’ mental health.

Overall, about 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of active-duty Army soldiers and more than 40{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of National Guardsmen and reservists were referred for care or had sought care on their own, a military team reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Psychologists hope that catching problems early and getting soldiers into treatment will prevent the type of long-term mental health problems that afflicted many soldiers who fought in Vietnam, said Dr. Charles S. Milliken of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, who led the study.

“We know from civilian studies and others . . . that if you can get to these problems earlier, the chances of effectively treating them are much better,” he said.

The incidence of mental health problems during the Vietnam War was about the same as that of the current war, he noted. But studies have shown that as many as 10{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of Vietnam vets still suffer chronic and disabling symptoms.

The trends reported by Milliken and his colleagues are similar to those seen in smaller studies of returning Iraqi veterans, but some experts cautioned that the absolute numbers of troubled soldiers may be artificially high because of the nature of the questionnaires used.

Psychologist Richard J. McNally of Harvard University noted that he and Dutch colleagues published a study on Dutch soldiers earlier this year using a similar questionnaire. The questionnaire showed that about 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the professional soldiers suffered symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

But when the subjects underwent clinical interviews, they found, only about 4{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} actually suffered the disorders.

Milliken conceded that the large numbers did not represent clinical diagnoses.

“We have intentionally set the bar pretty low,” he said. “We’re hoping to find early symptoms and intervene before they can become full-fledged clinical diagnoses.”

The study reflects an increased emphasis by the military on catching incipient mental health problems when veterans return from combat duty. Beginning in May 2003, the Department of Defense began administering the Post-Deployment Health Assessment to all returning soldiers.

Milliken, Dr. Charles W. Hoge of Walter Reed and their colleagues reported in March 2006 on the first results from the survey. They found that about one in eight soldiers suffered from PTSD or other disorders, but they speculated that the number would grow as the soldiers began re-integrating into society.

A small preliminary assessment confirmed that speculation, and the Army initiated a second survey six months after the soldiers’ return.

The new report details the outcome for the first 88,235 soldiers who took both surveys.

Of those, 4.4{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} were referred for mental health care in the first screening, and an additional 11.7{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} were referred during the second screening.

Three-quarters of those who later received mental health care had not been referred for care, but sought it out themselves. Overall, 20.3{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of active-duty personnel and 42.2{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of reservists and guardsmen surveyed underwent some form of treatment.

The results were not surprising, said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The initial screening was performed while the troops were on the way home, and soldiers may have minimized symptoms for fear that admitting to an illness would delay their reunions with their families.

There is also a well-known “honeymoon period” after return that persists until their experiences begin to sink in.

The higher rates among reservists and guardsmen are also not surprising, Rieckhoff said. A stigma is still associated with mental health problems, and career soldiers may be less likely to admit to them.

But the reservists may be more likely to suffer problems because they are dropped back into society without having the fellowship of a community of others who shared their experiences.

“You can literally be in Baghdad one week and Brooklyn the next,” he said. “That’s a pretty tough shift.”

The quadrupling of those reporting interpersonal conflicts also was understandable, experts said. Despite the wide availability of telephone calls and Internet connections in this war, the soldiers were still isolated from their family and friends at the time of the first assessment, so few conflicts would be expected.

But after six months of close contact with friends and family, frictions would be much more likely.

One surprising finding of the new study was the lack of correlation between treatment and improvement in symptoms. More than half of those identified as having problems in the original study “improved without treatment,” and many of those who received treatment did not improve, Milliken said.

November 13, 2007 – Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek indictments, and some officials have expressed pessimism that adequate criminal laws exist to enable them to charge any Blackwater employee with criminal wrongdoing. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. declined to discuss the matter.

The case could be one of the first thorny issues to be decided by Michael B. Mukasey, who was sworn in as attorney general last week. He may be faced with a decision to turn down a prosecution on legal grounds at a time when a furor has erupted in Congress about the administration’s failure to hold security contractors accountable for their misdeeds.

Representative David E. Price, a North Carolina Democrat who has sponsored legislation to extend American criminal law to contractors serving overseas, said the Justice Department must hold someone accountable for the shootings.

“Just because there are deficiencies in the law, and there certainly are,” Mr. Price said, “that can’t serve as an excuse for criminal actions like this to be unpunished. I hope the new attorney general makes this case a top priority. He needs to announce to the American people and the world that we uphold the rule of law and we intend to pursue this.”

Investigators have concluded that as many as five of the company’s guards opened fire during the shootings, at least some with automatic weapons. Investigators have focused on one guard, identified as “turret gunner No. 3,” who fired a large number of rounds and was responsible for several fatalities.

Investigators found no evidence to support assertions by Blackwater employees that they were fired upon by Iraqi civilians. That finding sharply contradicts initial assertions by Blackwater officials, who said that company employees fired in self-defense and that three company vehicles were damaged by gunfire.

Government officials said the shooting occurred when security guards fired in response to gunfire by other members of their unit in the mistaken belief that they were under attack. One official said, “I wouldn’t call it a massacre, but to say it was unwarranted is an understatement.”

Among the 17 killings, three may have been justified under rules that allow lethal force to be used in response to an imminent threat, the F.B.I. agents have concluded. They concluded that Blackwater guards might have perceived a threat when they opened fire on a white Kia sedan that moved toward Nisour Square after traffic had been stopped for a Blackwater convoy of four armored vehicles.

Two people were killed in the car, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed and his mother, Mohassin, a physician. Relatives said they were on a family errand and posed no threat to the Blackwater convoy.

Investigators said Blackwater guards might have felt endangered by a third, and unidentified, Iraqi who was killed nearby. But the investigators determined that the subsequent shootings of 14 Iraqis, some of whom were shot while fleeing the scene, were unprovoked.

Under the firearms policy governing all State Department employees and contractors, lethal force may be used “only in response to an imminent threat of deadly force or serious physical injury against the individual, those under the protection of the individual or other individuals.”

A separate military review of the Sept. 16 shootings concluded that all of the killings were unjustified and potentially criminal. One of the military investigators said the F.B.I. was being generous to Blackwater in characterizing any of the killings as justifiable.

Anne E. Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said she would have no comment until the F.B.I. released its findings.

Although investigators are confident of their overall findings, they have been frustrated by problems with evidence that hampered their inquiry. Investigators who arrived more than two weeks after the shooting could not reconstruct the crime scene, a routine step in shooting inquiries in the United States.

Even the total number of fatalities remains uncertain because of the difficulty of piecing together what happened in a chaotic half-hour in a busy square. Moreover, investigators could not rely on videotapes or photographs of the scene, because they were unsure whether bodies or vehicles might have been moved.

Bodies of a number of victims could not be recovered. Metal shell casings recovered from the intersection could not be definitively tied to the shootings because, as one official described it, “The city is littered with brass.”

In addition, investigators did not have access to statements taken from Blackwater employees, who had given statements to State Department investigators on the condition that their statements would not be used in any criminal investigation like the one being conducted by the F.B.I.

An earlier case involving Blackwater points to the difficulty the Department of Justice may be facing in deciding whether and how to bring charges in relation to the Sept. 16 shootings. A Blackwater guard, Andrew J. Moonen, is the sole suspect in the shooting on Dec. 24 of a bodyguard to an Iraqi vice president.

Investigators have statements by witnesses, forensic evidence, the weapon involved and a detailed chronology of the events drawn up by military personnel and contractor employees.

But nearly 11 months later, no charges have been brought, and officials said a number of theories had been debated among prosecutors in Washington and Seattle without a resolution of how to proceed in the case.

Mr. Moonen’s lawyer, Stewart P. Riley of Seattle, said he had had no discussions about the case with federal prosecutors.

Some lawmakers and legal scholars said the Sept. 16 case dramatized the need to clarify the law governing private armed contractors in a war zone. Workers under contract to the Defense Department are subject to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, or MEJA, but many, including top State Department officials, contend that the law does not apply to companies like Blackwater that work under contract to other government agencies, including the State Department.

Representative Price’s bill would extend the MEJA legislation to all contractors operating in war zones. The bill passed the house 389 to 30 last month and is now before the Senate.

He said it cannot be applied retroactively to the Sept. 16 case, but he said that the guards who killed the Iraqis must be brought to justice, under the War Crimes Act or some other law.

Paul von Zielbauer contributed reporting from Camp Pendleton, Calif.