Veterans for Common Sense

Veterans take care of fellow veterans. The Boston Globe followed a Marine unit, “New England’s Own,” for one year, and their story was published today.  Reporter Charlie Sennot and photographer Bill Greene should earn a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for their accurate, informative, and moving accounts of our fellow Americans who stand between a bullet and our Constitution.  Please watch these three superb videos.

Back, but not at home: Battered returning vets struggle with transition

November 11, 2007 – FORT DEVENS – Every step mattered. Corporal Patrick Murray focused hard on his balance and gait as he approached the commanding officers of his Marine battalion one hot Sunday in July. Murray was due for a medal honoring his exemplary courage and spirit in the months since he and his gathered comrades returned from war. And he was determined not to let on how he’d earned it.

As he snapped to attention, there wasn’t a hint that Murray was missing his right leg, lost, above the knee, to a roadside bomb blast in Fallujah, Iraq. Or of the long, grueling months of surgeries and physical therapy. Or the ingenious computerized titanium leg on which he had learned again to walk.

Only after Lieutenant Colonel Brian Sulc pinned the Naval Achievement Medal on his uniform next to the Purple Heart did Murray stumble.

As he saluted and pivoted, the artificial limb inside his camouflage pant leg buckled, and he began to fall. His fellow Marines pressed forward to assist; Sulc and two other commanders helped Murray as he righted himself.

It was, they reflected afterward, a quietly symbolic moment. The pride, the fragility, the support, the grit – the values of the unit were all right there. These Marines have always been there for one another. And in this hard year home, especially, they have had to be.

The First Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment – the reserve infantry unit based in Central Massachusetts and known as “New England’s Own” – has a proud history in modern America’s many wars, including a record of exceptional valor, and devastating casualties, on Iwo Jima. When they returned home from Iraq last fall to Veterans Day speeches, parades, and accolades, there was more distinguished service to celebrate. And more devastation.

The 878 men who came home have struggled to come to terms with the fact that 11 did not; that 68 others, like Murray, suffered combat wounds; and that many more were hit with injuries less visible but with long-term effects, like bomb-blast concussions.

It is as if they all shared in those losses, and, in a real sense, most did. A Globe survey of more than 130 members of the battalion found that nearly 60 percent report one or more symptoms of war trauma – anger, depression, nightmares, hypervigilance – even if they have not been diagnosed with the disorder.

Many hasten to add that they are doing just fine, picking up life right where they left off. It is, in the main, a proud, resilient group, not much given to complaint. Service, most say, changed them irrevocably, and for the better.

But fully half say the transition back to civilian life has been hard. Money, for some, is tight, relationships with loved ones bruised, frustration with the government veterans bureaucracy real and growing. Reserve units like theirs have, in particular, reported problems with medical screenings for brain injuries.

There is also a powerful consensus that while most of their neighbors appreciate their service, civilians don’t quite get it. A sense of isolation grows out of that, particularly in New England, where military bases are few and hostility to the war runs high.

More than a few of the Marines have doubts about this war, too. But their focus is on their duty – and on getting well, or helping others to do so. In that, members of the battalion report some ringing successes but also some shameful failures as the nation delivers, unevenly, on its pledge to care for those wounded in service.

“That’s a pretty sacred promise,” said Captain Brendan Fogerty, a company commander. “And I just don’t think the system has done a good enough job living up to it.”

After Murray regained his balance, he returned to formation, flashing his signature Irish smile to his fellow Marines. They were all looking for that grin.

The command may have been honoring him for his service, but his fellow Marines depend on his spirit. Murray, 23, of North Kingstown, R.I., has a gift for making others laugh, even at the hardest moments. He has no time at all for sympathy or self-pity. Neither does the man who was sitting next to him in the Humvee when the blast hit Sergeant Terrence “Shane” Burke, a Boston police officer.

Burke lost his left leg in the explosion when Murray lost his right. “We like to go shopping for shoes together,” Murray quipped, getting a laugh from a circle of Marines.

Later, Murray explained: “These are guys whose actions saved my life. A lot of them have had a hard time in a lot of different ways. The least I can do is show them that I’m OK and keep them laughing. I owe them that much.”

The Globe interviewed scores of Murray’s fellow Marines over the last year, and many said that, in crucial and surprising ways, the 12 months home have been harder than the seven months in combat.

Indeed, it can be a particularly tough adjustment for reserve units like New England’s Own, who train together only one weekend a month. There’s not much time together to work things through. And so they’ve sought out one another through the Internet and late-night phone calls when memories of combat get in the way of life.

Often those are memories of one disastrous day – a day that, more than any other, decided for this battalion who would return home whole and who would not.

It was Sept. 4, 2006, another scorching summer day in Fallujah, Iraq, where the five companies of New England’s Own were scattered across three bases.

They had been mobilized for almost a year, and had been in Iraq since March. The word had come down and they were due to head home in a matter of weeks. Everyone was on edge. The pace of insurgent attacks had been rising with the heat.

The first order of business that day was a memorial service for a Marine, Corporal Jordan C. Pierson, 21, of Milford, Conn., killed by a sniper on Aug. 24.

As a lone trumpeter played taps and the Marines of C Company lowered their heads in silent prayer, the Humvees from Weapons Company patrolled the perimeter, guarding against mortar attacks on the funeral gathering – a tempting target.

Then, one of the Humvees in “Whiskey 3,” as the third platoon of Weapons Company was dubbed, rolled directly over a pressure plate planted by insurgents in the dirt track. The plate triggered the detonator on two buried 155mm artillery shells that had been wired together, a “Ramadi speed bump,” as it’s known in Iraq.

Murray was in the gunner’s turret of a Humvee approximately 100 yards away when he heard the blast and saw the smoke. His squad responded instantly.

They pulled Corporal Cody Hill from the flaming Humvee. He was left with severe burns and internal injuries. Three others were killed instantly.

Murray and his squad were ordered to secure the area. As they searched for insurgents they encountered Captain Fogerty. “Who was it?” they asked.

Fogerty shook his head. It wasn’t time to go over the casualty list. But when Murray and others insisted, Fogerty delivered the news: Lance Corporal Eric Valdepeñas, a 21-year-old from Seekonk, Mass.; Corporal Jared Shoemaker, 29, a police officer back in Tulsa; and Navy Corpsman Chris Walsh, an EMT from St. Louis, had all been killed. Hill was the only survivor.

Murray felt a wave of anger and grief tear through him. He and Fogerty had attended the same Catholic school as “Val,” a brilliant student and star athlete who had been pursuing an engineering degree at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst before he enlisted in the Marines. He had it all.

The other two, “Doc” Walsh and Shoemaker, were men Murray and the rest of the company knew less well but had come to admire deeply, even as they mocked their midwestern “John Wayne” drawl.

The Whiskey 3 squad was revered throughout the battalion. They’d helped free Iraqi civilians held hostage by insurgents in a medieval dungeon and saved the life of an infant girl who needed emergency medical care. They had built schools and taken on other “hearts and minds” projects that to them defined the purpose of the US presence in Iraq.

Murray recalls turning to Burke to say, “They really were the best we had.”

Weapons Company regrouped back at the base, a cluster of buildings known as Camp Baharia, on the fringe of Fallujah.

In Burke’s hooch, Murray and Fogerty talked, over coffee, about Valdepeñas and old days at Bishop Hendricken High School, in Warwick, R.I. Fogerty said the platoon needed to suit up again, straight away. There were no complaints.

As they headed out, Sergeant Mark Wills, 38, of Waltham, Mass., another close friend of Valdepeñas, stopped by. They had a cigarette and said little. Then Wills put his arm around Murray and said: “Keep your head down out there. Get back safe.”

As the doors of the Humvee slammed shut, Murray could see that Lance Corporal Jonathan Goldman, the assigned driver, was exhausted. Murray offered to drive and told Goldman to take the turret. At 8:45 p.m., dusk in the desert, the convoy of seven Humvees, led by Fogerty, set out.

As Murray looked back on that moment, he recalled “a real bad feeling” in the air that night.

“For the first time, I really felt like I wanted to get the hell out of there,” he said. “I was, like, OK, I want this to be over now.”

Through a narrow slit of bullet-proof glass, Murray guided the Humvee down the main roadway, past mud-brick and stucco buildings occasionally lit by thin strips of neon. Every heap of trash or donkey cart or bump in the road seemed a potential IED. Every open window in a building was a possible sniper’s nest. Wills dubbed the patrols on this road, “the roulette wheel of death.”

As an evasive measure, the Humvees often jumped the center divider of the four-lane road to throw off insurgents planting road side bombs. Murray did just that about one mile from the base, and as the Humvee bumped over the median strip, it hit a pressure plate, another Ramadi speed bump.

For the second time that day, an explosion of shrapnel tore up through the belly of a Weapons Company Humvee. Murray was thrown more than 50 feet from the vehicle, “like a Kung Fu fighter flying around on fire,” as he later put it. Goldman was popped from the turret like a champagne cork. Burke remained trapped in the passenger side of the crippled Humvee as it careened to a stop. He was pulled out just before it burst into flames.

Murray remembers trying to crawl to the curb for protection as insurgents opened fire. Sergeant Scott Parish of Andover, Mass., ran out and covered Murray, returning fire. Humvees circled like a wagon train to protect the wounded.

Back at Camp Baharia, Wills was lying on his bunk, writing in a journal about the devastating loss earlier in the day of his friend Valdepeñas.

“Moments ago,” he wrote, “we learned Whiskey 3 was hit. My little buddy Val is gone. Hill is in critical. I can’t believe this.”

Then Wills heard an explosion outside the wire. A desperate voice came over the radio, calling in “mass casualties.”

Realizing from the radio calls that it was Murray and Burke who were hit, Wills quickly suited up and formed a convoy that followed the glow of the burning Humvee through the darkness.

At the end of that day, Wills retreated to his bunk and his journal, a place where he had found solace through his worst days, like June 25 when his friend, Lance Corporal Paul Nicholas King of Tewksbury, Mass., died in his arms from a sniper round. Wills usually cast his writing as a conversation with his wife, Charlotte. He picked up his entry for Sept. 4 where he’d left off:

“Same (expletive) day. Hours later. Another platoon was hit by an IED. This time my buddy Murray lost his leg as well as Sergeant Burke lost his leg. Honey, I’m not feeling good about the rest of my time here.”

Back at Fort Devens, the aftershock of that bloody day hit home almost immediately

Lance Corporal Michael Stubbs, of Medford, was one who felt it. Stubbs, 24, had been wounded in Fallujah and was back at the fort in the status known as “medical hold,” still on active duty, but awaiting treatment.

A turret gunner, Stubbs had survived three IED blasts. But one, on May 25, left him with a concussion. He walked away from the blast and tried to shrug it off.

For weeks Stubbs toughed it out. His fellow Marines kept urging him to seek medical treatment. Finally, he went in to see a doctor, who recommended he be sent home for a medical evaluation. His command didn’t agree.

“Don’t be a pussy,” he remembers being told. “You’re fine.”

But the dizzy spells made it impossible for Stubbs to keep up during patrols. The Marines in his platoon begged the medical staff to take another look, saying they feared for his health and their safety as a unit. Finally, on Aug., 6, he was declared unfit for duty and sent to the Bethesda, Md., Naval Medical Center.

Stubbs’s medical records indicate he was diagnosed with a concussion and with injuries to his back and knees. Two days later he was shipped to Fort Devens and told there would be follow-up medical appointments.

That hasn’t been the case, he said.

“No one was there to help me,” he said. “There were no follow up appointments. I was told my records were lost.”

And to this day, Stubbs says he has never been screened for Traumatic Brain Injury, or “TBI,” a condition caused when the brain is shaken by a blast wave. But he suffers the symptoms – such as disorientation, depression, and anger – which can take months to surface.

Stubbs was having nightmares and suffering from sleeplessness – and drinking heavily as a way to self-medicate. But the command saw no physical injury and ordered him to perform work details, including painting the headquarters’ hallway.

And that’s what he was doing on Sept. 4 in the late morning. With the time difference in Iraq, it was approximately 12 hours after the explosion. Stubbs heard the squeaking sound of a pen on a white board in the command center. He watched an officer write out the news: “KIA – Shoemacher, Valdepeñas, Walsh. Gravely wounded: Burke, Murray, Hill.”

“I read that and it was like getting punched in the gut,” Stubbs said. “I went outside and coughed up my breakfast. I couldn’t stand up. I was a mess. It’s harder to be far away on a day like that and know there is nothing you can do.”

The blast wave was also heard as a knock on the Seekonk, Mass., door of the home of Dr. Jesus Valdepeñas and his wife, Anne-Marie.

At 6 p.m. on Sept. 4, two Marines in dress blues pulled into the driveway.

Lance Corporal Valdepeñas, the youngest of the couple’s eight children, had called just a week earlier, sounding excited about coming home. His mother was already in touch with Charlotte Wills, Mark’s wife, about planning a homecoming ceremony.

Then Dr. Valdepeñas looked out the window, saw the Marines, and knew why they were there. He threw open the door, blurting out, “It’s Eric, isn’t it?”

The Marines stood straight, and one of them said, “We want to thank you for your son’s service to our country.”

“I couldn’t breathe,” Dr. Valdepeñas recalled, during a visit this fall to his son’s grave. “I felt like my life ended right there. He was my youngest. . . . He was going to take care of us.”

The power was off, the air conditioning down, and the hallways dimly lit by emergency lights. The elevators were out as well, so Patrick Murray walked down three flights of stairs on his one good leg to sign in a visitor.

After a whirlwind of treatment and surgeries in Iraq, Germany, and Texas, Murray was in Malogne House, a dreary residential facility attached to Walter Reed military hospital in Washington. It is a holding tank for veterans, like Murray, who are transitioning back home.

“It’s not that bad,” said Murray, not one to complain.

He’d been the beneficiary of military trauma care, the best in the world by some accounts. But now he felt the victim of the frayed system of ongoing care for the wounded veterans.

A Veterans Affairs Administration official came by to brief Murray on his benefits and the paperwork required at a time when he was in great pain and heavily sedated. In graphic terms, Murray told him off. The counselor never returned.

Murray also remembers being tested for TBI and told that his memory loss and the trembling nerves in his hands could be traced to the day he fell out of a tree as a child.

“The doctor who did that test had the credibility of Dr. Seuss,” he said.

Captain Fogerty, 32, of North Kingstown, R.I., is slow to anger, but now he was irate.

He had been making a round of visits to Murray, Burke, Hill, and other Marines from his company who suffered wounds, and what he’d found didn’t sit well at all.

A particular concern was the treatment of Cody Hill, who suffered burns over 60 percent of his body as the sole survivor of the IED attack on the morning of Sept. 4. Hill and Burke, who had lost his leg on Sept. 4, were both sent to the Brooke Army Medical Center, in Texas, reputedly one of the best in the armed forces. Treatment records show that the young corporal saw a burn surgeon on Oct. 5, 2006, and that no one had prescribed a long-term rehabilitation plan for him until May 4, a delay that jeopardized his recovery.

Fogerty began to ask tough questions and says he and the Hill family were told by a nurse in the East Burn Ward that Cody “seemed to have slipped through the cracks.”

The nurse’s words infuriated Fogerty, and, in May, he banged out a memo outlining his findings. He addressed it up his chain of command, ultimately to a congressional committee investigating problems with the care of veterans.

He wrote of Hill’s falling “through the cracks,” of paperwork routinely lost, of military families unaware of what benefits they are entitled to, and of the maddening inability of the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs Administration to work smoothly together.

Cody Hill’s father, Carlyle, had quit his job on an Oklahoma ranch to help his son heal. He dressed his son’s burns and slept by his bedside. He never thought about it, he just did it.

The family was struggling financially, but no one showed them they were entitled to benefits – $29,000 in compensation and $100,000 in insurance. Paperwork went missing and the claim was delayed for months.

Fogerty tracked the lost paperwork back to a civilian-contracted physician who had been brought in to help an overwhelmed medical staff at Brooke. The folder lay on the doctor’s desk for months before disappearing altogether. Burke, who lost his leg, has suffered similar bureaucractic delays at Brooke, which have left him lingering in “medical hold.”

A spokesman for Brooke would not comment on Hill’s situation, but conceded that failures to coordinate care occur. The center, he said, plans to address the problem with a new staff position.

Sitting in his office one recent day, Fogerty said, “Not that much gets me steamed. But to tell you the truth, this is outrageous. . . . If I ran Weapons company to the standard that this bureaucracy is doing, I’d be fired, and deservedly so.”

It was Sept. 30, 2006, just five days before the battalion was to depart Iraq, and Sergeant Terry Rathbun was out on patrol. It was a tense time, but he was starting to feel pretty confident he’d get home to Norwich, Conn., in one piece.

Then a shot rang out. Captain Harry Thompson, his platoon commander, was hit and struggling to stand up. Rathbun lunged forward to keep him down and, at that instant, the sniper shot that might have killed Thompson struck Rathbun in the face.

On a hot, dusty day at Fort Devens this August, Rathbun, 36, received the Bronze Star for his heroism.

Rathbun had nothing but praise for the care he says he received at Bethesda Naval Hospital. But once he was released into the custody of the VA, he said, it was “one nightmare after another.”

His records never followed him from Bethesda. He wasn’t checked for TBI for nearly seven months. And when the tests confirmed he did have TBI, he was told the local VA did not have a rehabilitation program. Finally, after months of delays – delays that can do long-term harm to TBI patients – he was placed with a private therapy center in Groton, Conn.

Adding insult to injury, Rathbun kept getting medical bills and collection notices from the VA, even though all of his care was supposed to be fully covered. After six months of haggling, the situation was corrected, but not before Rathbun suffered a drop in his credit rating.

“You don’t want to complain about it because you figure, hey, there are a lot of guys who didn’t make it back at all,” says Rathbun, who suffers from dizziness, confusion, and depression. He has been unable to find work, and his marriage has broken up since he returned from war.

“I have to figure out how I am going to put my whole life back together,” he said. “I guess you think there is going to be a support system for you when you get back. But there really isn’t. You have to do it all for yourself.”

Mark Wills came home from war a changed person, and not necessarily for the better.

He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t control his anger, and he couldn’t clear his mind of the image of Nick King dying in his arms.

Even the roads around Boston were a problem. As he drove from one job to the next, tending lawns in suburbs around Route 128, the divided highway sometimes triggered memories of the IED-pocked thoroughfares of Fallujah.

But then he sought help at the VA in Jamaica Plain for counseling and found it to be helpful. Group therapy sessions gave him “the tools” he needed to recognize what was going on inside him.

PTSD has swept the battalion. Several Marines confided they have contemplated suicide. Wills never allowed himself to slip that far. He owes it to his wife and two children, he said.

But there are still bad days, like the week before, when he threw a rum-and-coke at his computer screen after hearing a heavy metal song on the radio that he’d often listened to with King.

He confided this one night in the small office in his home in Waltham, a sanctum dedicated to the war. There are photographs of the fallen and a flag signed by the members of his platoon. His desert boots, still splattered with King’s blood, are neatly placed in a corner cabinet.

There are a lot of things, he says, that he can’t let go of.

“I wasn’t ready for that, having a buddy die in your arms,” he said.

Wills is open about his struggles. And he has been encouraging his fellow Marines to get therapy. It is his role, he figures, to show them there is nothing wrong with a man, even a Marine, seeking help.

For Murray, Burke, and Hill, Sept. 4, 2006, is what wounded Iraq veterans call their “alive day.” The day they cheated death.

And so on Sept. 4 of this year, Wills invited a close circle of Weapons Company to his house to celebrate the living and remember the fallen.

Murray and Burke were there along with Hill. Stubbs also showed up. He was drinking heavily and was off the medication for PTSD that the VA had prescribed. To him the math was easy. The VA charged $40 for a copayment on a prescription for Celexa, the antianxiety drug they dole out to combat veterans.

“A 30-rack of Budweiser at $22 seemed like a better deal,” Stubbs explained.

Fogerty came as well. He still seemed haunted by the decisions he made in the field, saying later: “I don’t think that there’s a day goes by I’m not thinking about those guys. . . . What could I have done differently? I’m responsible for it. . . . In the end, God will judge me for that.”

In all, about two dozen Marines and their wives and girlfriends gathered in small clusters on Wills’s porch. They lit one cigarette after another and pulled hard on the tap of a keg.

For the family, the pain has never gone away. Dr. Valdepeñas quit his practice. He is consumed with depression. He and his wife rarely leave their home, they said, except to say the Rosary at Eric’s grave every day. The gardens he once tended to with Eric’s help have been taken over by weeds. There are pictures and shrines to their son at every turn in the house.

The parents were given a brochure from the VA about benefits, which provided a toll-free number for grief counseling. But their daughter, Nora Lough, 32, said they had never opened the brochure. They have relied on their faith to find comfort. She said that many of the Marines, including Fogerty and Wills, have stayed in touch and helped her parents in any way they could.

The military system, she feels, did what was required for the funeral but not much beyond that.

“I am surprised that no one follows up with the parents,” she said. “My parents really need help. To lose a child is very difficult.”

Three weeks after this Sept. 4 anniversary, Murray was packing up his room at Walter Reed.

He had finally been “med boarded” out of the military and was on his way home. He had landed a job as a foreman with Turner Construction and was excited about the future.

As he stuffed his belongings into large duffel bags, he held up a 4-inch-thick pile of paperwork he said he’d have to present to the VA. Within a week, that paperwork would go astray, and he found himself registered at the wrong VA center.

It’s a disgrace, he said. He hopes the private insurance that comes with his job will save him from having to rely on the government for help.

Murray slung his backup prosthesis over his shoulder as if it was a rifle and wheeled a cart loaded with his belongings out of his room. He loaded it all into his Jeep and began the journey back home to Rhode Island.

“It’s been a long, hard year,” Murray said. “I think I’m ready to let all that go. I want to move on.”

But there was one last mission. Murray went to the battalion’s weekend training session the third weekend of October. He wanted to say goodbye to his comrades. Wills was also there, turning in his gear and signing out of the military so that he could return to his lawn business.

Murray arrived in jeans and a sweatshirt, sporting a goatee and holding a can of root beer. After the battalion formation, the men in fatigues looked tired and dirty from a wet, cold weekend of training. There was sober talk among them of when the unit might redeploy to Iraq. But their faces lit up when they saw Murray, and they huddled around him.

Soon enough, he was telling them a story. And as he did, he was waving his arms and flashing that smile, and once again he had them all laughing.

Charles M. Sennott can be reached at sennott@globe.com

VCS Veterans Day Update – Lots of Breaking News

Dear VCS  Supporter:

One day in our future, what will it sound like in our homes when the Iraq War nightmare ends? Today’s holiday, formerly Armistice Day, was originally intended for us to gather in schools and religious sanctuaries and discuss the Great War and how to promote better relations among nations.

America needs accurate information about the serious and escalating consequences of war. Today, with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars worsening by the day, I awoke to a newspaper stuffed with 41 advertising inserts – only 7 of them offering discounts due to Veterans Day. Yesterday, while attending my daughter’s volleyball game, I asked a fellow parent about their plans for the three day holiday weekend. The parent said, “What holiday?” I replied, “Veterans Day.” She said, “What’s that.”

While some Americas enjoyed a day off without actually knowing why, VCS worked to raise public awareness about our veterans’ needs. Please share our VCS e-mails because, as a society, we have an individual and collective responsibility to learn the facts about the devastating consequences the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have on our soldiers, veterans, and their families.

Now for your weekly VCS news items:

* Australia’s new SBS “Dateline” documentary features VCS.

* Our VCS National Law Journal column about our class action lawsuit against VA.

* Our VCS letter opposing President George W. Bush’s nomination of retired Army Surgeon James Peake to lead VA.

* AP news article quotes VCS about illegal discrimination against our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war Reservists.

And more important items to share:

* The Boston Globe followed a Marine unit, “New England’s Own,” for one year, and their story was published today. Please watch the videos by reporter Charlie Sennot and photographer Bill Greene – they should earn a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for their informative seven part series.

* CBS Evening News with Katie Couric plans to broadcast a two-part investigative news story about the tragic epidemic of suicides among those who served in our military. Please watch CBS News on Tues., Nov. 13, and on Wed., Nov. 14.

* New VA Development: In 2004, then-Army Surgeon General James Peake gave misleading information to Congress about Iraq War Army suicides caused by Lariam pills. VCS urges you to pick up the phone and call Senators to block Peake’s confirmation because some Senators are taking strong interest in his role causing the Walter Reed scandal.

The Iraq War tidal waves VCS accurately predicted keep crashing on our home shores: House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner estimates VA will treat 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans in 2008. And news reports indicate 1.8 million veterans lack medical insurance – a national disgrace.

Our VCS message for Veterans Day: let us remember our veterans’ dedication to protect and defend our Constitution, and let us honor our social contract so they receive prompt and high-quality medical care and benefits.

This Veterans Day, VCS launches our end-of-year fundraising drive. As a non-profit recognized by the IRS, we rely on the generosity of our supporters like you. VCS made a huge difference this Veterans Day raising broad national awareness about challenges veterans face.

If you like what we do, please donate to VCS today. Our executive director (that’s me) will be making calls soon to our previous donors asking for your continuing support.

Thank you, welcome home, and I hope you had a nice Veterans Day.

Paul Sullivan, Executive Director
Veterans for Common Sense

Veterans for Common Sense November 2007 Fundraising Campaign Goal: $10,000

Help us meet our monthly goal by November 30, 2007.

Multiple Ways to Support Veterans for Common Sense

Make a donation through PayPal

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Send a check to:
Veterans for Common Sense
1101 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Suite 203
Washington, DC 20003

Veterans Day: Supporting our Veterans is a Mandate, Not a Slogan!

Each year on Veterans Day, Americans come together to honor our nation’s heroes.  Again, this year, our country is engaged in conflicts that require the dedication of our uniformed troops.  We may be divided on where we stand on this war, but we shall always stand together to support our veterans.  Our nation has a proud legacy of appreciation and commitment to the men and women who have worn the uniform in defense of this country.  We must be united in seeing that every soldier, sailor, airman and marine is welcomed back with all the care and compassion this grateful nation can bestow. 

Veterans Day has been observed annually on November 11th for 88 years.  Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice.  Armistice Day was first commemorated in the United States by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.  Congress passed a resolution in 1926 inviting all states to observe the day, and made it a legal holiday in 1938.  It has been observed annually on November 11 since then – first as Armistice Day, later as Veterans Day.

Veterans have kept their promise to serve our nation – and we must keep our promises to our veterans.  Democrats in Congress have made great strides in providing a new direction for funding these promises.  This Congress continues to demand that the President provide adequate funding for the warriors – not just the war.   The President approved a war funding bill in May which, at the request of Democrats in Congress, included $3.5 billion for veterans health programs.  Our men and women should not get first-class weapons in battle only to receive third-class benefits when they return home.  We must continue on a path to making the benefits provided to our veterans first-rate and uncompromised.

This year, Congress passed legislation to increase the VA budget by $6.7 billion above the 2007 level, the largest single increase in veterans’ funding in the 77-year history of the Department of Veterans Affairs.  The proposed budget increase will go for veterans’ health programs, including mental health care for returning veterans.  This bill means more than 1,100 new VA case workers to reduce the unacceptable delays in receiving earned benefits.  The bill also increases the VA’s maintenance and repair budget to prevent a Walter Reed scandal from occurring in the VA system. 

The reality is that this Administration did not ask for enough funding to begin addressing the problems faced by veterans.  The House passed the veterans funding bill with a vote of 409-2, with 185 Republican votes.  The President’s veto threats of the individual appropriations bills have gridlocked the budget negotiations and stalled this budget increase for veterans.  The 110th Congress will remain steadfast in fighting for the needs of America’s veterans.  I know that my colleagues in the House are committed to increase funding for veterans as soon as an agreement can be negotiated with the President. 

In 2008, the number of veterans receiving treatment is expected to include over 300,000 veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.  We must prepare to care for the veterans of current conflicts by beginning to address the long-term health care needs of combat veterans.  By enacting this budget, we are one step closer to keeping the promises we have made to our veterans. 

Currently, there are 25 million veterans in the United States.  On this 88th Veterans Day, please take the time to show appreciation to those who have answered the call to duty.  Although, we can never adequately thank them for their service and sacrifice to our nation, today we can humbly salute our brave veterans and soldiers.   

Congressman Bob Filner represents San Diego and Imperial Counties in the U.S. House of Representatives and is the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

Quote from Paul Sullivan at VCS: “This administration’s continual failure to have a plan for 1.5 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans smacks as the ultimate betrayal of our fighting men and women.”  View 25-minute news broadcast at this link: http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/forgotten_soldiers_134093

Investigative journalist Nick Lazaredes looks at the hidden cost of America’s war on terror.  Tens of thousands of US soldiers are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. They say they’ve been abandoned by the Bush Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs, claiming that government officials are actively trying to cover up the extent of America’s traumatised soldiers. For many vets, this means not enough help is being offered and their lives are plagued by anxiety and mental health issues. But for some, the results are even more tragic.  Dateline video journalist Nick Lazaredes meets the widow of an Afghanistan veteran who was severely depressed by his recall to fight in Iraq. He was killed in a police shootout on Christmas Day, his death dubbed ‘police-assisted suicide’.  As Dateline reveals, his story is not an isolated one.

Transcript

This week the Australian Army began its inquiry into the suicide of Australian combat veteran Captain Andrew Paljakka, who hanged himself in a Sydney hotel room back in February. He was the second reported suicide of an Australian veteran of the Afghan conflict. But in the US, there are signs that the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan have created an epidemic among it’s returning veterans, of homelessness, substance abuse and suicide. Dateline’s Nick Lazaredes reports the evidence is that the Bush Administration has been disguising the real magnitude of the problem.

REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes

MURIEL DEAN, VETERAN’S WIFE: This wall is the wall of our engagement photos. This here, this is us on our first Halloween together, we were mummies.

For a short time after Jamie Dean came back from active service in Afghanistan, life appeared to be good. Back home in southern Maryland, he’d been swept up in a whirlwind romance which resulted in marriage. But Jamie Dean was a troubled man.

MURIEL DEAN: These are his medals.

Plagued by nightmares, the 29-year-old former army sergeant felt tormented by the memories of his tour of duty.

MURIEL DEAN: Jamie would often say anyway “You don’t understand, nobody understands unless they’ve been there, you just don’t understand.” And you’re right, and I would tell him “You’re right, I don’t understand, but you need to talk about it if it’s bothering you.”

Encouraged to seek help by his wife, Muriel, Jamie Dean went to a local veterans’ affairs clinic. He had one appointment with a psychiatrist at the clinic and was quickly diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD. He started receiving a regimen of anti-depressants and sleeping pills through the post but, according to his wife, Jamie’s world completely fell apart when he received fresh call-up orders this time to Iraq.

MURIEL DEAN: His whole mood changed. He started withdrawing from me, drinking a lot more, he wasn’t taking his medicine after that. The sweats and the nightmares came back that he was having before and he would often tell me about his nightmares, that he was having nightmares that he was going to be killed over there. He should have never been recalled. And I don’t… he’d be here today if he wasn’t recalled. I know he would. It wouldn’t have sent him over the edge the way that it did.

It was Christmas day last year that Jamie finally snapped, firing a shotgun into the paddock at his father’s empty farmhouse.

JAMIE DEAN, MARYLAND POLICE TAPE: I done my time in the military, now I gotta go back.

POLICE NEGOTIATOR: They’re getting ready to call you back, you think?

JAMIE DEAN: They already called me back. And I lost all my friends.

POLICE NEGOTIATOR: You lost all your friends because you were overseas?

JAMIE DEAN: Yes. But then you come back and nobody respects that.

POLICE NEGOTIATOR: Nobody?

The police soon arrived and although they knew about Jamie’s diagnosis of PTSD, they responded aggressively.

JAMIE DEAN: Why are there people surrounding me? I want them to get the hell away from the back of the house.

POLICE NEGOTIATOR: They’re backing off. I told them to back off, I’m not lying to you.

JAMIE DEAN: I’ve got lights and everything and you know what? It’s about to get ugly. You have no idea what the fuck I’m about to do.

These photos show the damage after police fired 85 tear gas canisters into the building. Realising that the police were ignoring her husband’s fragile condition, Muriel Dean feared the worst.

MURIEL DEAN: And then I went to the police officer standing there, I said “You need to tell me what just happened.” Because I just started bawling, I felt something, I got goose bumps, and it wasn’t a good feeling. And, um, they called him back on the cell phone as I was sitting a little ways away and you heard the guy on the other line say “He’s deceased, but don’t tell the family.” And I don’t remember much after that.

Jamie Dean was shot dead by a police sniper.

MURIEL DEAN: I’m ashamed, you know, because the government needs to treat our veterans and our soldiers and our military a lot better than they do.

REPORTER: But the killing of Jamie Dean was by no means an isolated incident. In fact, throughout the United States, several veterans have died as a result of what’s been dubbed as “police-assisted suicide”. But what’s really alarming are the rates of suicide overall. The latest research indicating that male veterans are killing themselves at a rate four times greater than the general population. When you add to that the unprecedented numbers of homeless veterans, as well as those abusing alcohol and drugs, then it’s clear that America is facing an epidemic of mental health disorders.

KEVIN LUCEY: I was furious. On June 5, when our government turned their back to our son, I would never, I would never go back and I would never contact the VA. I wouldn’t do anything, because I knew by that time that they weren’t there to help us.

In his house in rural Massachusetts, Kevin Lucey has left untouched the bedroom of his only son Jeffrey.

KEVIN LUCEY, VETERAN’S FATHER: Well, the breath marks, they’re right here, and those have been there since the day Jeff died. We create this in our own minds but sometimes I wonder if he wasn’t looking out there for the last time, you know… it’s hard, very difficult.

This is where Jeffrey Lucey lived with his family when he returned from service as a convoy driver in Iraq. Already a veteran at 23, the trauma that followed him home from the war would soon end in tragedy and leave his family shattered.

JOYCE LUCEY, VETERAN’S MOTHER: They take them, they emotionally destroy them, and then they throw them back into society and say “OK, you’re on your own.” And, you know, whether they mean that or not, there is no… there was no outreach to Jeffrey.

When Jeffrey Lucey returned to civilian life, he was depressed and morbid. He told his sister he was a murderer and felt guilty about what he had done in Iraq. For months after he returned, he was vomiting on a daily basis and had frequent nightmares and psychological disturbances.

KEVIN LUCEY: Jeff had most of the symptoms that you would hear about. He had hallucinations, visual, audio, tactile. I mean, he felt people touching him, he could hear camel spiders in his room, to the point that he even had a flash light to look for the camel spiders. And the camel spiders, of course, are unique to Iraq. And…

JOYCE LUCEY: Jeff was very scared of spiders.

KEVIN LUCEY: Ever since a little boy. So finally, um, Jeff said that he needed help.

Jeffrey had already started expressing suicidal thoughts to his sister, and the family forced him into a clinic run by the Department of Veterans Affairs known as the VA. In hospital, he once again started talking about suicide.

JOYCE LUCEY: Jeffrey entered on May 28, he was released on June 1 after having told them that he had three ways to harm himself, he had a method on top of the whole plan.

REPORTER: He told the VA this?

JOYCE LUCEY: Yes.

KEVIN LUCEY: We have the records. It’s right in there on the records.

JOYCE LUCEY: He was admitted on a Friday by one psychiatrist, discharged on a Tuesday by another psychiatrist after a discharge interview.

Back at home, Jeffrey’s mental state deteriorated. His family were distraught when he overdosed on his medication and crashed the family car, but the VA refused to readmit him.

JOYCE LUCEY: And my daughter talked to somebody and said, “You know, he’s really bad.” And said, “I think my brother might be gone by this time next month if somebody doesn’t help him.” And she got the person on the phone concurred with her and said, “You might be right.”

As Jeffrey fell apart, so too did the Lucey family. They tried desperately to protect their son, emptying the house of anything he could use to harm himself. But just weeks later, his father Kevin returned home from work to make a shocking discovery.

KEVIN LUCEY: I walked downstairs and when I got there I saw that there was blood on his platoon picture and then I happened to see Jeff and I thought he was standing at first, but Jeff was hanging from the garden hose. The hose that he had told the psychiatrist he had purchased but we didn’t know about it. Um, that was the only thing we didn’t clear out of the house. And I went running over there and I put him in my lap, I was trying to push him up so I could take the hose from around his neck and I keep telling people this, but for the first time in months he really looked peaceful. He really did.

More than three years on, his mother Joyce struggles with the enormity of her loss.

JOYCE LUCEY: I remember saying to somebody, “What’s the date today? I want to remember the date my son died.” You realise something had happened, but there was his bed and there was his TV, and you’re thinking “Where is he?” You know, it was just insane. And I’m sorry. But anyway.

PAUL SULLIVAN, SPOKESMAN, VETERANS FOR COMMON SENSE: The Lucey family tragedy, and it’s a terrible, terrible tragedy, is indicative of what’s going on among our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

As spokesman for the lobby group Veterans for Commonsense, Paul Sullivan believes the government is badly failing its former soldiers.

PAUL SULLIVAN: There are multiple epidemics going on in the United States among our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. There’s an epidemic of suicides. It’s clearly stated by the military, record number of suicides this year. We have an epidemic of homelessness. News reports are coming out that as many as 2,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans already homeless from this war. Every American, everyone, should be highly alarmed that regardless of your position on the war, this administration is shamefully, shamefully betraying our veterans.

Sullivan certainly knows about the horrors of war as well as the inside running of the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served as a cavalry scout in the first Gulf War and later worked as a senior manager at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA. He believes the VA’s failings are no accident.

PAUL SULLIVAN: While I was working at VA, political appointees who are the top-level employees appointed by President Bush personally, were trying to undermine and destroy the Department of Veterans Affairs. They were coming up with policies to block veterans with PTSD from getting disability benefits and health care.

Sullivan claims these Bush appointees actively attempted to cover up the true scale of the PTSD problem.

PAUL SULLIVAN: In 2005 I was looking at the data as part of my job and seeing that there was a tidal wave of disability claims for mental health problems among returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. When I briefed the political appointees about this, one political appointee told me to “Make the numbers lower.” She said, “God doesn’t like ugly, you need to make the numbers lower.”

According to Sullivan, the political interference extended to misleading the US Congress, but the VA says the political winds are blowing in its favour.

DR IRA KATZ, DEPARTMENT OF VETERAN AFFAIRS: Well, political issues right now are recognising the absolute central importance of caring for veterans, is one of the most important issues in our country. The VA is now well funded. We must be the best-funded health care system in America.

Dr Ira Katz is the deputy director of the VA’s mental health division. He believes there are no problems with the treatment of returning vets.

REPORTER: Anecdotally, there appears to be a problem with the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. How do you perceive the issue?

DR IRA KATZ: VA is very actively involved in recognising and treating PTSD and other mental health conditions. Our treatment follows the most current evidence, and our treatment works.

Nearly 100,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have some form of mental health condition. Their impact on the government’s health care system will be enormous. But when it comes to forward estimates for the real cost of looking after its traumatised vets, the VA is hard to pin down.

DR IRA KATZ: Yeah, costs are difficult because it’s a fuzzy boundary about how to calculate the costs. Are we just interested in the costs of therapy? What about the stress on the family? What about lost productivity at work? It’s hard to draw a line about how best to count it.

While the VA seems coy about stating the exact cost of disabled veterans to the US Government, Paul Sullivan’s group assisted a Harvard University study to discover just that by securing secret VA statistics under freedom of information laws.

PAUL SULLIVAN: As a result of their study, Harvard University was able to show that the Department of Veterans Affairs will spend between $350 billion and $700 billion over the next 40 years for health care and for disability payments for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

STEVE EDWARDS, IRAQ VETERAN: Our mission in our area was to conduct combat patrols outside of the base and to secure the base. So we had the stress of having to go outside the base. We had to worry about IEDs, small arms fire, RPGs, things like that so we also had the stress of having to directly engage insurgents.

41-year-old Steve Edwards served in Iraq. He remains traumatised by the loss of colleagues and the way in which he handled it.

STEVE EDWARDS: There were days when it just like, you know, “Let’s just wipe out this whole fucking village, fuck all these people.” And then I think about it and it’s like, “God, what the hell did I say that for, I didn’t mean that.”

Steve is one of the lucky ones. He was diagnosed with PTSD and is receiving treatment from a Veterans Affairs clinic but he still thinks the system is failing his army buddies.

STEVE EDWARDS: There’s so many hoops and red tape to deal with that people get fed up and just walk away from it and it shouldn’t be that way.

Even after treatment, Steve’s mindset provides an insight into why so many young men and women are returning home as changed and deeply disturbed individuals.

STEVE EDWARDS: It altered me. I feel it killed something inside of me and at the same time awoken something in me that… was dark, that I didn’t want to get out, especially around my wife or daughter. And it’s that dark side that… where does it come from? I mean, obviously it’s in all of us, I mean, it just it took going to Iraq or going into a situation like that to bring it out and now that it’s out, you can’t put the cork back on the bottle, you know. You can’t put it away.

Upset that most of his friends haven’t been able to access care or benefits, Steve decided to join a lawsuit with other veterans against the VA.

STEVE EDWARDS: We’re just really trying to get the VA to see that there’s a problem with their system. We’re not saying that the VA’s bad, we’re not saying that the people working at the VA are bad, we’re not even looking for money. We’re just trying to say, “Look, your system is a good system, it’s a good idea, but you really need to revamp it.”

The VA has already attempted some revamping of its own. Many veterans were angered it tried to re-open 72,000 PTSD claims it had already approved despite having a backlog of 600,000 disability claims. When that was overturned by Congress, the VA asked the nation’s top medical body to re-define PTSD.

DR IRA KATZ: VA did this to de-stigmatise this illness, to make the case that mental health illnesses are real illnesses and to address criticism from different quarters that these weren’t real conditions. They are.

But veterans groups claim it was a cynical attempt to reduce claimants by narrowing the definition of PTSD. That attempt was rejected by the experts.

GORDON ERSPAMER, LAWYER: Think about someone with a traumatic brain injury that comes back, had a bomb go off near his head and the microscopic bleeding inside the brain. They’re zombies, they come back as zombies. Someone is going to have to take care of them the rest of their lives. Who is going to take care of these people? It’s the VA’s job to take care of these people and they’re just not doing it, they’re just not doing it.

Gordon Erspamer is one of the lawyers spearheading the unique lawsuit that Steve Edwards and other veterans and their families have taken out against the VA. He says the VA’s own predictions for disability claims show a burgeoning problem.

GORDON ERSPAMER: You can see, they’ve gone from about 335,000 in 2002 to a projected 950,000 by 2008, that’s just in a very short period of time.

The lawsuit that Erspamer has lodged against the VA is aimed at forcing the department to radically overhaul its entire system. It’s a move Erspamer believes is essential given the delays faced by those seeking to access care.

GORDON ERSPAMER: Our projection is based upon actual data, is that it takes 12 to 15 years for a PTSD claim to work its way through the entire system, assuming initial denial. 12 to 15 years. Well, what happens? Most of these guys die or they give up somewhere along the line. You can’t keep going that long.

According to Gordon Erspamer, the US military has discharged tens of thousands of veterans on the basis of what they claim were pre-existing personality disorders. Those vets will generally get no benefits at all.

GORDON ERSPAMER: They’re doing it just to get rid of people, to save money, so they don’t have to pay them disability benefits and they don’t have to pay them for the medical care. There’s been, through June, over 22,000 of those from Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean, we’re not talking about small numbers. 22,000 people, this is another budgetary thing. Part of our case deals with that issue and what we’re asking the court to do is to tell the VA “Look, you can’t rely on any of these personality disorder discharges. You’ve got to start from fresh with this veteran and decide do they have PTSD. If they do, is it service-connected, and give them benefits and ignore what the military did to them, because it’s so unreliable.”

At the Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC, people still flock to pay tribute to soldiers killed in a war most Americans would rather forget. The government’s failure to look after its Vietnam veterans means that today, almost 200,000 of them are still homeless and needing treatment. They’re now set to be joined by a new generation.

PAUL SULLIVAN: This administration’s continual failure to have a plan for 1.5 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans smacks as the ultimate betrayal of our fighting men and women. Bush, who failed to serve in the active duty military when he was called during the Vietnam War, is now sticking the knife in the back of our veterans. He ought to be ashamed.

JOYCE LUCEY: This whole thing has been ill-planned and managed from the very beginning, and that follows through when they returned home. They had their mission, what they wanted to accomplish, and I don’t think they were even going in the direction of what happens to these young men and women when they return home. That wasn’t even a thought, I really don’t believe that. And that’s the, um, the tragedy of this whole mess.

View 25-minute news broadcast at this link: http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/forgotten_soldiers_134093

Producer.
AARON THOMAS

Click here to watch video of interview with Jeremy Scahill:  http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110807J.shtml.

October 30, 2007 – Apparently there is one set of rights for Blackwater mercenaries and another for the rest of us. Normally when a group of people alleged to have gunned down 17 civilians in a lawless shooting spree are questioned, investigators will tell them something along the lines of: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” But that is not what the Blackwater operatives involved in the September 16 Nisour Square shooting in Iraq were told. Most of the Blackwater shooters were questioned by State Department Diplomatic Security investigators with the understanding that their statements and information gleaned from them could not be used to bring criminal charges against them, nor could they be introduced as evidence. In other words, “Anything you say can’t and won’t be used against you in a court of law.”

ABC News obtained copies of sworn statements given by Blackwater guards in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, all of which begin, “I understand this statement is being given in furtherance of an official administrative inquiry,” and that, “I further understand that neither my statements nor any information or evidence gained by reason of my statements can be used against me in a criminal proceeding.” Constitutional law expert Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says the offering of so-called “use immunity” agreements by the State Department is “very irregular,” adding he could not recall a precedent for it. In normal circumstances, Ratner said, such immunity is only granted after a Grand Jury or Congressional committee has been convened and the party has invoked their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. It would then be authorized by either a judge or the committee.

Military law expert Scott Horton of Human Rights First says, “What the State Department has done in this case is inconsistent with proper law enforcement standards. It is likely to undermine an ultimate prosecution, if not make it impossible. In this sense, the objective of the State Department in doing this is exposed to question. It seems less to be to collect the facts than to immunize Blackwater and its employees. By purporting to grant immunity, the State Department draws itself more deeply into the wrongdoing and adopts a posture vis-a-vis Blackwater that appears downright conspiratorial. This will make the fruits of its investigation a tough sell.”

Ratner says that while what was offered the Blackwater operatives is not immunity from prosecution, prosecutors would need to prove they did not use the sworn statements as part of their investigation. “Even though the person can be prosecuted if independent evidence is relied upon, often this is hard to demonstrate,” he says. As an example of the problems such immunity can pose, Ratner points to the case of Oliver North. “He had been granted ‘use immunity’ and was then prosecuted, supposedly on the basis of independent evidence,” Ratner says. “However, his conviction was reversed in the court of appeals because it could not be demonstrated that all of the evidence against him had an independent source outside of his own testimony.”

Aside from the fundamental problem that there is quite possibly no legal framework for charging the Blackwater shooters under any legal system – US civilian law, military law or Iraqi law – legal analysts and a former federal prosecutor say the State Department has already tainted the Nisour Square criminal investigation in several ways. The FBI was not dispatched to investigate the case until two weeks after the shootings occurred, meaning that the initial investigation was in the hands of a non-law enforcement agency that just happens to be Blackwater’s employer. By the time actual law enforcement, the FBI, was sent to Baghdad, the crime scene had been tainted and some of the perpetrators questioned with the alleged immunity provision. “To rely on non-law enforcement to conduct sensitive law enforcement activities makes no sense if you want impartial justice,” says Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who currently serves as Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “This investigation has already taken so long and it looks like the State Department has impeded the possibility of a successful criminal investigation.” The Washington Post reported that “Some of the Blackwater guards have subsequently refused to be interviewed by the FBI, citing promises of immunity from State.”

This is hardly the first indication that the government’s investigation of the Nisour Square shootings was lacking in integrity and impartiality. The State Department’s initial report on the shooting was drafted by a Blackwater contractor on official US government stationary. The FBI team initially dispatched to Baghdad to investigate Blackwater was to be guarded by Blackwater until Sen. Patrick Leahy raised questions about the arrangement forcing the Bureau to announce it would be guarded by official personnel and not personnel from the same company it was investigating.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story (aside from the loss of Iraqi civilian life) is that even if Blackwater was not so politically connected to the White House and even if there was a truly independent US Justice Department and even if immunity had not been offered and even if there was an aggressive investigation, it may all be totally irrelevant. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently dispatched a team to Baghdad led by veteran diplomat Patrick Kennedy to review the department’s private security force, the team returned with the conclusion that it “is unaware of any basis for holding non-Department of Defense contractors accountable under US law.”

While there are currently moves afoot in the US Congress to adjust language in the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to allow for prosecutions of State Department contractor crimes in US civilian courts and although there is a debate over whether the court martial system could be applied, the reality is that the political will to prosecute contractors has been totally absent since day one of the Iraq occupation. Not a single armed contractor has ever been prosecuted for crimes committed in Iraq – not under US civilian law, not under military law and certainly not in Iraqi courts, which have been banned by the US occupation authorities from going after private contractors.

What is so often lost in this new debate on accountability and oversight is this fact: private contractors now outnumber regular soldiers on the Iraq battlefield. The military – with its massive bureaucracy – has been unable or unwilling to effectively monitor the actions of its soldiers and prosecute them for crimes. Who will effectively oversee the 180,000-strong shadow corporate army? Will FBI teams really be running around Iraq chasing allegations (ever increasing) of contractor crimes and misconduct? Who will guard the investigators? Who will interview Iraqi witnesses? Where will the funding come from? Who will arrest the heavily-armed mercenary alleged to have committed a crime, particularly when he was doing exactly what he was supposed to do in keeping VIP US officials alive in Iraq?

While there may be some token prosecutions that stem from the recent uptick in reporting on contractor crimes in Iraq, the reality is that without private forces from Blackwater and its ilk, the US occupation of Iraq would be untenable. Nothing will be done that would actually jeopardize the use of such forces in the war zone. While Blackwater’s conduct in Iraq is horrifying, it is important to remember that US ambassadors – all four who have served under the Iraq occupation – owe their lives to Blackwater’s shoot-first-and-never-ask-questions cowboy tactics. They are the reason the company can brag it has never lost an American life it was protecting. Blackwater does its job and while it is essential to prosecute its operatives for their crimes, the ultimately responsible party is the entity that hired them and deployed them armed and dangerous in Iraq.

Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.

November 8, 2007 – How many times do we need to hear an alarm? Once again, major studies are finding a swiftly growing number of homeless Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, and a coming tsunami.

One out of four homeless are veterans, and though there hasn’t been a very comprehensive study of just Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the VA estimates at least 1500 homeless veterans of the current wars. I’ll bet you everything I got that the number is significantly higher.

There are a number of wonderful groups doing all they can to find these veterans and get them into housing. But that’s not enough. The real point to this tragedy is buried in the AP story:

“The Iraq vets seeking help with homelessness are more likely to be women, less likely to have substance abuse problems, but more likely to have mental illness – mostly related to post-traumatic stress, said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the VA.”

The VA finds that, overall, 45 percent of participants in the VA’s homeless programs have a diagnosable mental illness. We know from previous studies that greater than 30 percent of Iraq veterans coming home have some PTSD. Those studies were done before third deployments and 15 month extensions. And, remember, sometimes PTSD takes years for manifest itself. So bank on the number with PTSD being higher by war’s end and in years after.

And yet, the process for mental screening is deficient, as are the number of qualified people within the DoD and VA health systems to diagnose and treat PTSD. This doesn’t even address the severe VA underfunding that simply keeps veterans from getting the care they need.

It was just reported this month that two VA hospitals in Florida were turning veterans away, because they couldn’t deal with the load. The money crunch, as well, has the agency pinching pennies and setting the bar for PTSD, and full disability, very high. I had a soldier call me last year requesting a memorandum from an eyewitness officer from Iraq that could validate the soldier had in fact been in combat, despite the fact that the army had already concluded that this soldier was suffering from PTSD! These are the hurdles that are set up.

So, here’s how it goes. A veteran goes to the VA, if they can get in, because something is just not right in their mind. Instead of PTSD, they’re told they have “adjustment disorder” or a preexisting mental condition, neither of which allows them to collect disability. They don’t get the right treatment, allowing their mental condition to worsen. They simply cannot hold down a job, they don’t get disability, and, not surprisingly, they cannot afford a place to live and become homeless.

There is no blood test that can tell if you have PTSD. It’s not a simple injury to find — an injury to your psyche. And, until this administration gets serious about greater funding and a real strategy to deal with this coming tsunami, it doesn’t matter how many wonderful charitable groups are out there, trying to find and house homeless veterans, because we’ll just be dealing with the result — homelessness — rather than the root cause – PTSD.

Oh, and by the way, the president is vowing to veto the Labor-HHS bill which includes $3.4 billion for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which provides mental health and suicide prevention services, and $23.6 million for the military veterans that comprise a quarter of America’s homeless population in the Homeless Veterans Program.

The alarm is blaring, but who is listening?

November 7, 2007 – Today, the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee led by Chairman Bob Filner (D-CA), approved H.R. 3882, the Fair Benefits for Guard and Reserve Act.  The bill assists our nation’s Guard and Reserve forces in obtaining active duty education benefits for their extended service in Iraq .       

H.R. 3882 would change the length of service on active duty required for receiving certain education benefits.  The bill seeks to correct a problem that was recognized as a result of the mobilization of the Minnesota National Guard.  Currently, to qualify for Active Duty Chapter 30 benefits, a member must be obligated for a two year term and serve 20 continuous months.  H.R. 3882 still requires 20 months of service but changes the obligated term to less than three years, which would allow the Guard members to receive Active Duty benefits.  The bill, introduced by Timothy Walz (D-MN), was approved with a technical amendment by the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and will next be heard on the House Floor.     

“Today, we find our Guard and Reserve Forces being utilized in extended missions across the globe to include supporting missions in Iraq and Afghanistan ,” said Chairman Filner.  “Many times they find themselves deployed for the same period of time as many active duty service members for periods surpassing what their original orders might have designated.  Unfortunately, many of our Guard and Reserve forces are returning to find themselves falling a few days short of eligibility to receive active duty education benefits while others in the same unit are eligible.  H.R. 3882 corrects this problem in fairness to our servicemembers.”

November 6, 2007 – Today, U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) submitted the following statement for the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on “Hiring Practices and Quality Control in VA Medical Facilities.” He specifically addressed the issue at the Marion, Illinois VA Medical Center, which saw an increased number of patient deaths over the last months and was found to have employed a surgeon who had been barred from practicing in another state.

Obama, along with Senator Dick Durbin, has repeatedly pressed the VA for information on the situation in Marion. The senators sent a letter to Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Gordon Mansfield asking additional questions that were raised by the VA’s response, in regard to the unexpected deaths, other patient safety events and the credentialing process for VA doctors. Previously, the senators wrote outgoing Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson asking specific questions about the VA’s response to the increase in deaths at the center.

They also asked why Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, who had been barred from practicing in another state, continued to practice at the Marion VA Center until August, and asked about the background check performed before he was hired. This followed a previous letter to Secretary Nicholson, sent by Durbin and Obama, asking for more information on the ongoing investigation.

Obama has also joined Durbin in calling on the U.S. Attorney’s office to investigate allegations of criminal wrongdoing at the Marion VA.

Below is Senator Obama’s statement to the Committee, which is submitted for the hearing record:

“Senator Durbin and I have worked to get to the bottom of what went wrong at the Marion facility – and many questions still remain. We will keep fighting for answers, not only for our veterans and those families who have lost a loved one, but for all who have been affected by this loss. That is part of keeping our sacred trust to these true American heroes.

“While some may argue that the problems at Marion were isolated, I have serious concerns that medical errors, including fatal errors, may have occurred because of more systemic failings in the VA’s quality safeguards. GAO testimony about weak internal controls over privileging and physicians practicing with expired privileges in at least one VA facility strongly suggest that this problem may be more widespread. We have asked important questions about the VA’s medical credentialing and privileging process, and I hope that Dr. Cross, the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Health, can provide evidence today as to whether the VA views its current process as adequate. If not, he owes us answers about what he is doing today to improve the process.

“We also need to address the VA’s quality measurement tracking system. The data analysis that flagged the spike in unexpected deaths at the Marion facility – which was part of the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) – triggered action almost six months after the period in which that death rate was observed. When we are talking about the quality of care and safety of our veterans, we cannot wait six months to be alerted to and start investigating a tragedy like this one. We must have safeguards that would flag any problems much more quickly and accurately.

“Furthermore, we still have not yet been able to confirm how many of the deaths from April – September 2007 were unexpected at the Marion VA, and I urge Dr. Cross to provide that answer today. This is an important question because doctors who have since been dismissed were still authorized to operate during this time period.

“Last week, allegations of serious misconduct and possible criminal wrongdoing were presented to my office by a group of current and former VA employees. These allegations must be thoroughly investigated, not only by the Office of the Inspector General, but by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. If true, they reinforce the failure in oversight from the VA Health Administration of facilities across the country. When VA employees seek to report a medical error or a problem with the management, they must have protected avenues to do so.

“The majority of VA health staff perform their jobs with exceptional competence and compassion on a daily basis. They do not have an easy job. And they are the first to agree that our veterans deserve world-class medical care. So today, the VA must show us how they will put air-tight quality controls in place to anticipate and catch problems before they turn into tragedies.”

Click here for actual poll results:  http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/11/08/rel11e.pdf.

November 8, 2007 – More than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead.

Experts who work with veterans say it often takes several years after leaving military service for veterans’ accumulating problems to push them into the streets. But some aid workers say the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans appear to be turning up sooner than the Vietnam veterans did.

“We’re beginning to see, across the country, the first trickle of this generation of warriors in homeless shelters,” said Phil Landis, chairman of Veterans Village of San Diego, a residence and counseling center. “But we anticipate that it’s going to be a tsunami.”

With more women serving in combat zones, the current wars are already resulting in a higher share of homeless women as well. They have an added risk factor: roughly 40 percent of the hundreds of homeless female veterans of recent wars have said they were sexually assaulted by American soldiers while in the military, officials said.

“Sexual abuse is a risk factor for homelessness,” Pete Dougherty, the V.A.’s director of homeless programs, said.

Special traits of the current wars may contribute to homelessness, including high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and traumatic brain injury, which can cause unstable behavior and substance abuse, and the long and repeated tours of duty, which can make the reintegration into families and work all the harder.

Frederick Johnson, 37, an Army reservist, slept in abandoned houses shortly after returning to Chester, Pa., from a year in Iraq, where he experienced daily mortar attacks and saw mangled bodies of soldiers and children. He started using crack cocaine and drinking, burning through $6,000 in savings.

“I cut myself off from my family and went from being a pleasant guy to wanting to rip your head off if you looked at me wrong,” Mr. Johnson said.

On the street for a year, he finally checked in at a V.A. clinic in Maryland and has struggled with PTSD, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse. The V.A. has provided temporary housing as he starts a new job.

Tracy Jones of the Compass Center, a Seattle agency that has seen a handful of new homeless each month, said she was surprised by “the quickness in which Iraqi Freedom veterans are becoming homeless” compared with the Vietnam era. The availability of meth and crack could lead addicts into rapid downhill spirals, Ms. Jones said.

Poverty and high housing costs also contribute. The National Alliance to End Homelessness in Washington will release a report on Thursday saying that among one million veterans who served after the Sept. 11 attacks, 72,000 are paying more than half their incomes for rent, leaving them highly vulnerable.

Mr. Dougherty of the V.A. said outreach officers, who visit shelters, soup kitchens and parks, had located about 1,500 returnees from Iraq or Afghanistan who seemed at high risk, though many had jobs. More than 400 have entered agency-supported residential programs around the country. No one knows how many others have not made contact with aid agencies.

More than 11 percent of the newly homeless veterans are women, Mr. Dougherty said, compared with 4 percent enrolled in such programs over all.

Veterans have long accounted for a high share of the nation’s homeless. Although they make up 11 percent of the adult population, they make up 26 percent of the homeless on any given day, the National Alliance report calculated.

According to the V.A., some 196,000 veterans of all ages were homeless on any given night in 2006. That represents a decline from about 250,000 a decade back, Mr. Dougherty said, as housing and medical programs grew and older veterans died.

The most troubling face of homelessness has been the chronic cases, those who live in the streets or shelters for more than year. Some 44,000 to 64,000 veterans fit that category, according to the National Alliance study.

On Wednesday, the Bush administration announced what it described as “remarkable progress” for the chronic homeless. Alphonso R. Jackson, the secretary of housing and urban development, said a new policy of bringing the long-term homeless directly into housing, backed by supporting services, had put more than 20,000, or about 12 percent, into permanent or transitional homes.

Veterans have been among the beneficiaries, but Mary Cunningham, director of the research institute of the National Alliance and chief author of their report, said the share of supported housing marked for veterans was low.

A collaborative program of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the V.A. has developed 1,780 such units. The National Alliance said the number needed to grow by 25,000.

Mr. Dougherty described the large and growing efforts the V.A. was making to prevent homelessness including offering two years of free medical care and identifying psychological and substance abuse problems early.

One obstacle is that many veterans wait too long to seek help. “I had that pride thing going on, ‘I’m a soldier, I should be better than this,’” Mr. Johnson said.

Kent Richardson, 49, who was in the Army from 1976 to 1992 and has flashbacks from the gulf war, said, “when you get out you feel disconnected and alone.”

Mr. Richardson said it took him two years to find a job after leaving the Army. Then he became an alcoholic. He now stays at the Southeast Veteran’s Service Center in Washington, awaiting permanent subsidized housing.

Joe Williams, 53, spent 16 years in the Army and the Navy, including a deeply upsetting assignment in the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the dead from the gulf war were taken for autopsies.

For the past three years Mr. Williams has lived in a bunk bed in a Washington shelter. He was laid off, his car and house were repossessed, and his wife left him. He moved to Georgia, where he lost another job.

Broke and depressed, he walked from Georgia to a V.A. hospital in the Washington area, where schizophrenia was diagnosed. Now, after three years of medication and therapy, he feels ready to start looking for work.

“I have a mission I’ve got to accomplish,” Mr. Williams said.

Sean D. Hamill contributed reporting from Pittsburgh, Michael Parrish from Los Angeles and J. Michael Kennedy from Seattle.