Veterans for Common Sense

November 7, 2007 – The White House’s nomination of retired Lt. Gen. James Peake as the next secretary of Veterans Affairs is an interesting choice.

Peake began his career as an infantryman, was wounded in Vietnam, became a doctor and spent 40 years in uniform before retiring in 2004 after four years as Army surgeon general. If confirmed, he’d be the first retired flag officer, and the first doctor, to serve as VA secretary.

He would clearly bring a unique perspective to the job. But that’s no reason for the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee to treat his nomination lightly.

Peake was Army surgeon general in the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Many of the problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and with the Army’s disability rating system — which led to the firings and resignations of senior officials this year — can be traced to policies in place during his tenure.

This is not to say Peake is responsible for those leadership failures. But senators should seek a clear understanding about what he knew, or should have known, while serving as surgeon general.

Next, the committee must press Peake on VA’s health care budget, which the Bush administration has shortchanged over the past seven years. Senators should demand assurances that Peake will be open and forthright about VA’s full budget needs — even if doing so irks his White House bosses.

They also need to know Peake’s views on recent proposals for overhauling the disability evaluation and ratings system. Which have the most merit?

Finally, how would he tackle VA’s growing backlog of 600,000 claims?

The issues facing VA, amid a long war with no end in sight, are too vast and serious for the Senate to treat this nomination with kid-glove formality.

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.

WASHINGTON, November 7, 2007 – On Veterans Day, politicians will praise the 30,000 troops “officially wounded” in action in Iraq and Afghanistan as if this “statistic” were some kind of “fact.” In doing so, they’ll harm the men and women who carry the burden of our nation’s defense in today’s very dangerous world.

That 30,000 number is a fantasy.

Here’s the truth about the human cost borne by the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as shown by data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Of the 1.5 million troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 720,000 (48{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}) are now veterans in the civilian population.

Of these, 202,000 have filed claims for VA disability benefits. The VA granted benefits in more than 90{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the cases processed so far, and will grant more upon appeal or presentation of additional evidence.

In other words, real statistics show that one out of four veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan is disabled in military service. This should shock no one as troops return to the war zones for their third, fourth, and now fifth tours of combat duty.

Of the 720,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, a quarter million have turned to the VA for treatment – more than one out of every three veterans of the combat theaters.

The figures above don’t include troops still on active duty, many of whom remain in the service after being harmed by war. They too must not be forgotten.

Yet that 30,000 figure keeps floating in political and media circles as if it had authority. Well, it all depends on what you count. If you intentionally count to get a low number, you’ll get a low number. Obviously, someone wants a low number. But what happens as a result?

For one thing, the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center developed as Washington officials dazzled each other with low “casualty counts,” but this was just the tip of an ugly iceberg! Even as our troops shed their blood in Afghanistan and Iraq, health care and benefits for veterans have been decaying across the nation.

Our government tried to do war on the cheap, failing to recognize the back-end cost of veterans with disabilities. True, it increased funding for VA programs each year – by amounts far below the rapidly increasing needs of our disabled heroes.

By using the tightest definition to minimize the casualty count, politicians deny reality, preparing a ruinous future for all disabled veterans, especially our youngest generation. In no way is America prepared to deal with the aftermath of today’s wars as it will be experienced by veterans in the VA.

This is not meant as criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to present a more complete picture of the sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform.

Much is made of the idea that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan differ from past generations of America’s defenders. Actually, that’s been true of every generation of veterans to date, and the veterans’ movement has accommodated those differences.

But one thing will always be the same. Veterans age, and the costs of war last a lifetime.

A soldier who suffers a severe brain injury in Iraq today will still be a disabled veteran 60 years from now when reaching the age of today’s World War II veterans. Our nation will still owe that veteran every care in the world.

We must not allow self-serving rhetoric to shortchange any American hero – not now, not ever!

David Gorman is the Executive Director of the Disabled American Veterans, and he works in their Washington, DC headquarters.

November 6, 2007 – Sometimes the music was American rap, sometimes Arab folk songs. In the CIA prison in Afghanistan, it came blaring through the speakers 24 hours a day. Prisoners held alone inside barbed-wire cages could only speak to each other and exchange their news when the music stopped: if the tape was changed or the generators broke down.

In one such six-foot-by-10-foot cell in February 2004, equipped with a low mattress and a bucket as a toilet, sat a man in shackles named Ibn al Sheikh al Libi, the former al Qaeda camp commander described by former CIA director George Tenet in his autobiography last year as “the highest ranking al-Qa’ida member in U.S. custody” just after 9/11.

In this secret facility known to prisoners as “The Hangar” and believed to be at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, al Libi told fellow “ghost prisoners,” one recalled to me for a PBS “Frontline” to be broadcast tonight, an incredible story of his treatment over the previous two years: of how questioned at first by Americans, by the FBI and then CIA, of how he was threatened with torture. And then how he was rendered to a jail cell in Egypt where the threats became a reality.

In his book, officially cleared for publication, Tenet confirms how the CIA outsourced al Libi’s interrogation. He said he was sent to a third country (inadvertently named in another part of the book as Egypt) for “further debriefing.”

The Bush administration has said that terrorists are trained to invent tales of torture.

Yet, on this occasion, the CIA believed al Libi’s tales of torture — an account that has proved to be one of the most serious indictments of the agency’s practice of extraordinary rendition: sending suspected Islamic terrorists into the hands of foreign jailers without legal process.

In a CIA sub-station close to al Libi’s jail cell, the CIA’s “debriefers,” who had been talking to al Libi for days after his return from Cairo, were typing out a series of operational cables to be sent Feb. 4 and Feb. 5 to the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Va. In the view of some insiders, these cables provide the “smoking gun” on the whole rendition program — a convincing account of how the rendition program was, they say, illegally sending prisoners into the hands of torturers.

Under torture after his rendition to Egypt, al Libi had provided a confession of how Saddam Hussein had been training al Qaeda in chemical weapons. This evidence was used by Colin Powell at the United Nations a year earlier (February 2003) to justify the war in Iraq. (“I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al Qaeda,” Powell said. “Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.”)

But now, hearing how the information was obtained, the CIA was soon to retract all this intelligence. A Feb. 5 cable records that al Libi was told by a “foreign government service” (Egypt) that: “the next topic was al-Qa’ida’s connections with Iraq…This was a subject about which he said he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story.”

Al Libi indicated that his interrogators did not like his responses and then “placed him in a small box approximately 50cm X 50cm [20 inches x 20 inches].”  He claimed he was held in the box for approximately 17 hours. When he was let out of the box, al Libi claims that he was given a last opportunity to “tell the truth.” When al Libi did not satisfy the interrogator, al Libi claimed that “he was knocked over with an arm thrust across his chest and he fell on his back.” Al Libi told CIA debriefers that he then “was punched for 15 minutes.” (Sourced to CIA cable, Feb. 5, 2004).

Here was a cable then that informed Washington that one of the key pieces of evidence for the Iraq war — the al Qaeda/Iraq link — was not only false but extracted by effectively burying a prisoner alive.

Although there have been claims about torture inflicted on those rendered by the CIA to countries like Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Uzbekistan, this is the first clear example of such torture detailed in an official government document.

The information came almost one year before the president and other administration members first began to confirm the existence of the CIA rendition program, assuring the nation that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.” (New York Times, Jan. 28, 2005)

Last September, these red-hot CIA cables were declassified and published by the Senate Intelligence Committee, but in, a welter of other news, one of the most important documents in the history of rendition had passed almost without notice by the media. As far as I can tell, not a single newspaper reported details of the cable. (Senate Intelligence Committee, page 81, paragraph 2)

A spokesman of the intelligence committee told me last month: “We were not able to establish definitively who was told about the cable or its contents or who read it.” Other members of Congress may soon be taking up this story to find out just who at the White House was told about the cable.

Meanwhile, al Libi, who told fellow prisoners in Bagram he was returned to U.S. custody from Egypt on Nov. 22, 2003, has disappeared. He was not among the “high-value prisoners” transferred to Guantanamo last year.

*Stephen Grey is the reporter for the documentary “Extraordinary Rendition” that was broadcast on Frontline/World, Tuesday, Nov. 6 on PBS. He is the author of “Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA’s Rendition and Torture Program” (St Martin’s Press). He is an award-winning investigative reporter who has contributed to the New York Times, BBC, PBS and ABC News among others.

October 29, 2007 – President Bush’s choice for attorney general told senators Friday the Constitution does not prevent the president from wiretapping suspected terrorists without a court order.

Michael Mukasey said the president cannot use his executive power to get around the Constitution and laws prohibiting torture. But wiretapping suspected terrorists’ without warrants is not precluded, he said.

“Foreign intelligence gathering is a field in which the executive branch is regulated but not pre-empted by Congress,” Mukasey wrote in response to questions by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Mukasey’s letter was made public by Leahy on Friday as part of a larger package of documents in Judiciary Committee members asked the retired U.S. district court judge from New York to elaborate on two days of oral testimony last week.

His answers focused on queries about executive power and did not address what Leahy and other senators have said is the chief obstacle to his confirmation: Mukasey’s refusal to say if an interrogation method that simulates drowning amounts to torture outlawed under domestic and international law.

A letter signed by the committee’s 10 Democrats demanded that Mukasey answer that question. The panel’s senior Republican, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, has made the same request.

Several lawmakers have publicly said their vote depends on whether Mukasey equates waterboarding with torture. Some Republicans have said privately they also would be concerned if Mukasey doesn’t answer that question.

Mukasey’s nomination needs support from 10 senators on the 19-member panel to advance to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation. A Democrat familiar with the committee’s deliberations said that Mukasey may not get the votes he needs unless he answers the question about waterboarding. Leahy has refused to schedule a committee vote until Mukasey provides his answer.

Democratic aides said Leahy’s question about executive power is a secondary, but still important matter. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Mukasey’s answer would be deemed acceptable by the lawmakers themselves.

In a letter dated Oct. 18 but first disclosed Friday, Leahy said he was troubled by Mukasey’s answer during last week’s hearings that the president may be able to act in conflict with the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, in ordering warrantless eavesdropping.

Leahy noted that Mukasey also said that the president could not authorize torture even if he believed it would serve his constitutional responsibilities as commander-in-chief.

“In both situations, the president, in authorizing such conduct, would be flouting both statutory and constitutional prohibitions based on a broad assertion of executive power,” Leahy wrote. “I am concerned that this legal justification could lead to a continuation of the kind of warrantless surveillance in violation of statute that we have seen.”

In a reply of just over two pages, Mukasey echoed much of the administration’s legal reasoning.

“Torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are prohibited by the laws of the United States, which of course includes the Constitution,” Mukasey wrote. In contrast, “the weight of authority indicates that warrantless surveillance to collect foreign intelligence is not unconstitutional so long as it is otherwise reasonable.”

FISA requires a warrant signed by a secret court before the government can wiretap anyone in the United States believed to be international terrorists or agents of foreign powers. The law also requires a warrant to tap any computer and phone lines inside the country, regardless of who is on either end.

Bush’s controversial eavesdropping program targeted people outside the nation’s boundaries who are believed to be members of al-Qaida, according to the Justice Department. Details of the program are classified, but it apparently eavesdropped on lines inside the United States without court permission. It argues that changes in technology mean a large portion of purely foreign communications pass through the United States, and the outdated surveillance law prevents the collection of needed intelligence.

Civil libertarians and privacy advocates worry the program vacuumed up many Americans’ communications without the protections that the FISA court orders provide.

Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan and Pamela Hess contributed to this report.

November 6, 2007 – Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, is trying to impeach Vice President Cheney for what he describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors” before the invasion of Iraq.

Right after the proposal was read on the House floor this afternoon, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stepped forwarded and tried to convince lawmakers to table the bill.

“Impeachment is not on our agenda. We have some major priorities. We need to focus on those,” Hoyer told Fox News.

Update at 3:39 p.m. ET: We thought that the vote to table was over — the clock said 0:00 — but lawmakers are still switching things around and Kucinich is within a few votes of getting his bill to come up for a vote.

Update at 3:43 p.m. ET: At least 149 Republicans have voted in favor of considering the impeachment resolution. Hoyer’s motion, which would have blocked a vote, looks like its going to fail by at least 31 votes.

Update at 3:53 p.m. ET: The 15-minute vote began at 2:53 p.m. ET. It’s been an hour, and they’re still voting. The tally stands at 170-242 right now. Hoyer needed 218 votes to push the bill off the agenda. He’s 72 votes short. (As an OD reader later pointed out, Hoyer was 48 votes short, not 72 as we said at the time. Supporters of the measure had a 72 vote lead. We apologize for our mathematical ineptitude.)

Update at 4:02 p.m. ET: Hoyer’s motion failed 251-162. The House is now voting on whether to vote on whether the resolution should be sent to the Judiciary Committee.

Update at 4:25 p.m. ET: The vote to decide to vote (yes, you read that correctly) just ended. By a 218-194 margin, the House has to vote on whether to send the resolution to the Judiciary Committee. That’s happening right now.

Update at 4:30 p.m. ET: Perhaps we should pause to explain. When most  Republicans unexpectedly — and on orders of GOP leadership, the AP is reporting — switched sides and voted against tabling the measure, they essentially forced Democrats to keep talking about it on the floor. Tabling the measure would have killed it.

Debate over Cheney’s impeachment is in direct opposition to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s wishes. She has repeatedly said an impeachment of Cheney or President Bush is off the table. Thus, failing to table this measure is a essentially a jab in Pelosi’s ribs.

“We’re going to help them out, to explain themselves,”  Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told the AP of the impeachment’s supporters. “We’re going to give them their day in court.”

Update at 4:32 p.m. ET: The House just voted, 218-194, to send the resolution to the Judiciary Committee. That should end today’s debate — but it does keep the resolution at least technically alive.

“The truth is dark under your eyelids. What are you going to do about it?” – Against the Winter by Charles Simic

“What is the cost of war,” you ask? Might as well ask, “What is the cost of eternity?”

They say the total cost of the War on Terror out to some vague point in the future will approach $2.4 trillion. A war against a psychological political ideology will cost $2.4 trillion. Think about that.

I read another estimate that said the war in Iraq is currently costing $2 billion a week. This from an administration that lost pallets full of money to the tune of $9 billion in cash that cannot be accounted for.

Tracking insanity is crazy. Somewhere, someone much smarter than I am can show you how many schools could have been funded for our children, how much health insurance coverage a struggling family could have had, how many new bridges and roads, jobs, etc. etc. could have been repaired, developed, and maintained. The list is unending.

But here’s the thing; all wars start with small numbers that erupt into huge unfathomable “can’t imagine” statistics that absolutely stun us. Hard to get your head around “conceptual” trillions upon trillions and oodles and mega-oodles of money that can’t possibly exist every time you peek at your wallet.

So while the great punditocracy speak of trillions of dollars, let us look at some real numbers.

The math of war:

An M16A2 is 36.93 inches long; with sling and a 30-round magazine, weighs 8.79 lbs. and has an effective range of 800 meters (area target) and 550 meters (point target) and takes approximately 4.25 pounds of trigger pressure to end life.

The weight of sadness and devastation is 5.5 grams or 1.94 ounces per bullet.

The muzzle velocity is 2,800 feet per second traveling at the speed of death.

A GI — one each, O.D. in color, average weight, 170 lbs. average age of 24, sent to do battle while leaving behind two parents, a spouse/significant other and 2.3 children within the immediate family. Add to that an uncle or two, an aunt, and three cousins and you total 12.3 people.

One AK-47 (used and leftover from previous wars) is 39 inches long; with a 30-round banana clip weighs 9.2 lbs. and has an effective rang of 780 meters (area target) and 300 meters (point target) and takes approximately 3.75 lbs. of trigger pressure to end life.

The weight of sadness and devastation is 9.75 grams or 2.8 ounces per bullet.

The muzzle velocity is 2,400 feet per second traveling at the speed of death.

One Iraqi male, average weight 140 lbs., average age 25, dual role of citizen/bad guy either resistance fighter or collateral damage, with two parents, wife, and 4 children within the immediate family. Add in two uncles, three aunts, and a dozen cousins for a total of 25 people.

Now multiply the GI numbers by 140,000 troops and you have 1,722,000 immediate family members and relatives waiting, praying, dreading each and every day their loved ones serve in the war. Still waiting in the wings are the extended family, friends, and neighbors.

As there doesn’t seem to be readily available numbers on the size of the Iraq resistance/enemy forces, let’s take a conservative 150,000 “enemy” count involved in fighting and you get: 3,750,000 immediate family and relatives in the direct path of the war.

If I were to ask questions, here is what I would ask:

* How much does a tear drop weigh?

* What is the fair market value of a broken heart?

* If a dollar bill only weighs 1 gram, is it still heavy enough to buy back the lie that killed?

* Can a thousand memories fill the empty side of the bed at night as she cries herself to sleep?

* How many times can you rub the smiling photograph before you ever feel the skin of love you once held in your arms?

* What is the speed of yesterday when all your tomorrows ended at 3:21 p.m. on Jubaili Road?

* And Mr. President, when you cry on the shoulder of God, do you ever look down into His lap and see the war dead that He cradles tenderly, wishing He had the power to stop you?

What is the cost of war?

More than we can bear.

Special Update on VCS Lawsuit Against VA

Dear VCS Supporter:

I wanted to provide our supporters with a progress report on our landmark VCS class action lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In addition, VCS needs your help today so we can gather and document individual “real-life” examples of VA horror stories – veterans who experiencing difficulty such as delays or denials getting PTSD treatment or PTSD disability benefits from VA.

First, a status report on our case. VA says our lawsuit is only a “policy gripe.” VA tried to dismiss our case on the grounds that our complaint fails to state a claim. Our legal team is currently drafting a response that outlines the government’s mistakes and the merits of our suit. We expect a ruling from the Judge by Spring 2008.

Second, an important element in the success of our lawsuit will be our ability to present “real-life” stories to the Judge and the Jury. While the overall statistics demonstrate how the government has failed our veterans on a grand scale, we must show the Court how these systematic failures ruined individual veterans and their families.

While all stories involving PTSD claims and healthcare are important, some of the most compelling stories are:

(1) Tragic situations where the VA failed to provide sufficient or prompt care to a veteran resulting in suicide or attempted suicide
(2) Cases where VA turned away or delayed a veteran for PTSD care because of a lack of VA healthcare providers
(3) Situations where VA denied PTSD medical treatment and/or disability benefits where a personality disorder discharge was involved in any way with VA’s decision.

If you have a compelling story regarding delays or denials of PTSD medical treatment or PTSD disability benefits, and you would be willing to have your story documented in support of our lawsuit, now is the time to step forward.

While we have many horror stories on file, each additional story from different parts of the country can help the hundreds of thousands of our veterans waiting now. Your story can also help the hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans still in the service who are about to get discharged and enter the VA.

To learn more about how you can help our case against VA, please go to our VCS special lawsuit website, www.veteransptsdclassaction.org, or contact Paul Taira from our legal team at (415) 268-7610 or ptaira@mofo.com. Someone from our fantastic team of lawyers will contact you for an interview. Veterans, family members, and former VA employees or VA consultants are encouraged to contact us.

VCS will be sending out updates on a quarterly basis to keep everyone informed on developments. In the meantime, please contact me at VCS if you have any questions. Your support for our suit is appreciated.

Finally, VCS needs to raise $10,000 during November to pay our monthly program expenses providing advocacy for veterans. Please donate to VCS today.

Thank You,

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.

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H RES 799      RECORDED VOTE      6-Nov-2007      4:23 PM
QUESTION:  On ordering the previous question [to send the Resolution to Committee]
BILL TITLE: A resolution raising a question of the privileges of the House.

Note: The text of H Ress 799 is not yet available from the Library of Congress.  Please scroll down this page to see how each Representative voted.

AyesNoesPRESNVDemocratic2155 12Republican3189 8Independent    TOTALS218194 20

—- AYES    218 —

Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Altmire
Andrews
Arcuri
Baca
Baird
Baldwin
Barrow
Bean
Becerra
Berkley
Berman
Berry
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Blumenauer
Boren
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd (FL)
Boyda (KS)
Braley (IA)
Brown, Corrine
Capps
Capuano
Cardoza
Carnahan
Carney
Castor
Clarke
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Conyers
Cooper
Costa
Costello
Courtney
Cramer
Crowley
Cuellar
Cummings
Davis (AL)
Davis (CA)
Davis (IL)
Davis, Lincoln
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Donnelly
Doyle
Edwards
Ellison
Ellsworth
Emanuel
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Farr
Fattah
Frank (MA)
Giffords
Gilchrest
Gonzalez
Gordon
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hall (NY)
Hare
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Herseth Sandlin
Higgins
Hill
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hirono
Hodes
Holden
Holt
Honda
Hooley
Hoyer
Inslee
Israel
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
Johnson (GA)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (NC)
Jones (OH)
Kagen
Kanjorski
Kennedy
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind
Klein (FL)
Lampson
Langevin
Lantos
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Loebsack
Lofgren, Zoe
Lowey
Lynch
Mahoney (FL)
Maloney (NY)
Markey
Marshall
Matheson
Matsui
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum (MN)
McDermott
McIntyre
McNerney
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Melancon
Michaud
Miller (NC)
Miller, George
Mitchell
Mollohan
Moore (KS)
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Murphy (CT)
Murphy, Patrick
Murtha
Nadler
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—- NOES    194 —

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—- NOT VOTING    20 —

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Yarmuth

November 6, 2007 – Just last Thursday, President Bush spoke of his Freedom Agenda spreading democracy across the globe: “We are standing with those who yearn for liberty.”

Yesterday, the Bush administration unveiled a pragmatic new foreign policy: The Stand by Your Man Agenda.

In the intervening period, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a U.S. ally, had suspended his country’s constitution, arrested Supreme Court judges, closed media outlets, and beat or imprisoned demonstrators by the hundreds — using some of his billions of dollars in American military aid to impose martial law.

Bush’s Freedom Agenda frowns upon these activities — and yet Bush and his aides acted yesterday as if Musharraf had made an illegal right on red, or perhaps parked in a handicapped space.

“What we think we ought to be doing is using our various forms of influence at this point in time to help a friend, who we think has done something ill-advised,” one of Bush’s top aides declared from the podium in the White House briefing room.

“The question is, what do you do when someone makes a mistake that is a close ally?” the official argued. “The president’s guidance to us is see if we can work with them to get back on track.”

So would there be consequences for Musharraf’s misbehavior? “That’s going to depend heavily on what we hear, obviously, from the Pakistani government,” he said, making sure to add: “And that is not a threat in any way.”

It didn’t even rise to a diplomatic slap on the wrist — and Bush aides must have realized this was not something to be proud of. Before the official briefed reporters from behind the microphone, an aide removed the oval White House seal from the lectern. And the White House ordered that the official, though he has appeared on the Sunday television talk shows, speak anonymously.

“Can we make it on the record?” the Associated Press’s Terry Hunt asked at the start of the briefing.

“No,” replied White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. “The president has spoken on the record.”

Indeed he had — no more forcefully than Mr. Anonymous.

“With respect to Pakistan, it is also our desire to see a return to democracy in the shortest time possible,” Bush announced in the Oval Office. “I hope now that he hurry back to elections,” he added.

And what happens if Musharraf ignores Bush’s hopes and desires? “Hypothetical question,” Bush replied.

Did Bush misjudge Musharraf? No answer.

It has been a humbling few days for the administration and its attempts to exercise American power. Last week, Bush aides begged Musharraf not to suspend the constitution — and he ignored them. Similarly, Bush met in the Oval Office yesterday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urging him not to send troops into Iraq to fight Kurdish militants — and Erdogan evidently gave him no commitment.

“In an environment where international support and cooperation does not exist, Turkey, quite naturally, will exercise its own right to protect itself and its people against terrorism,” the prime minister, echoing some of Bush’s own “war on terror” language, told the National Press Club after his meeting with the president.

The defiance by Musharraf and, to a lesser extent, Erdogan, left Bush and his aides sounding like representatives of a pitiful giant.

“We made it clear to [Musharraf] that we would hope he wouldn’t have declared the emergency powers he declared,” said Bush.

White House press secretary Dana Perino voiced her “hope” that Pakistan will proceed with elections.

And Mr. Anonymous mentioned his hopes eight times in his 40 minutes with reporters. “We hope that we’ll get some clarification on the intentions of the government in the next few days. . . . We are hopeful that we will see some clarification. . . . We hope they will do that.”

Missing were the serious diplomatic words such as “outrageous” and “unacceptable.” In their place were gentle sentiments such as “unfortunate” and “disappointed” and, two dozen times, “concern.” The concern was so slight, though, that the official admitted that Bush hadn’t even spoken directly with Musharraf.

Elaine Quijano of CNN asked about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s charge that Bush had sacrificed democracy for Musharraf’s help against terrorists.

The official replied that Pakistan was “emblematic of the president’s strategy generally.”

USA Today’s David Jackson asked if this might be termed “a setback for the Freedom Agenda.”

“We don’t know, because we don’t know how this story comes out,” Mr. Anonymous said.

Cox News’s Ken Herman asked if Bush was giving Musharraf a deadline for action.

“No,” the official replied.

Steven Myers of the New York Times said that the administration seemed “to have had very little influence” on Musharraf.”

“We have a lot of influence,” the official replied, “but we don’t dictate.”

Speak softly and carry a slender reed: It’s a key component of the Stand by Your Man Agenda.