Veterans for Common Sense

When a local service member dies in Iraq newspapers cover the family and community reaction. But what happens — or should happen — when the victim is horribly injured but survives? A former embed, editor, and father of an Iraq war veteran, reflects.

(June 10, 2007) — A week ago a Lancaster mother — one of the soldier-mothers in my hometown in Southern California — left to tend to her wounded son at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. How much the world has changed for Stacie Tscherny in the span of that one week.

Days earlier, she learned that her son, Army Spc. Jerral Steele Hancock, was seriously wounded in the fighting around Baghdad.

It was Memorial Day. It was his 21st birthday. This birthday, this crossing of the bridge into formal adulthood with the privilege to drink a legal beer would herald the last time Spc. Hancock would have two arms. And it would be the last time he would take a normal step or experience physical comfort or ease.

Serving as a tanker with the 1st Squadron, 8th Cavalry, Spc. Hancock was catastrophically wounded in an explosion that hit his armored vehicle. The vast majority of traumatic injuries inflicted in the Iraq war are not from gunfire, but from explosives.

In January the military marked the 500th American surviving with wounds that involved amputation.

In the past six months to a year, increasingly, a powerful new kind of explosive is inflicting more damage and more grievous injury. The evolution has been an evolution from the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to increasing use of the Explosively Formed Penetrators (EPFs).

“They can take out a Stryker, a Bradley, even an Abrams tank,” said Sgt. Travis Strong of Palmdale in a recent interview with me at his home at Balboa Naval Medical Center in San Diego. Strong was wounded severely enough both legs were amputated above the knee from the EPF explosion that destroyed his Stryker armored infantry carrier last year.

Sgt. Strong is another hometown soldier from the coverage area of the paper I edit, the Antelope Valley Press, a resident of Palmdale, a community of 130,000 on the edge of the Mojave Desert an hours drive from Ft. Irwin, the Army National Training Center.

In the past year or so when soldiers from our communities sustain traumatic injuries, as the newspaper’s editor — and as a “Blue Star Father” of a serving Marine — I usually get the informal notification call from Blue Star Mothers, a support group for parents of serving military.

Sgt. John E. Allen of Palmdale was killed on St. Patrick’s Day. It has been axiomatic that death and traumatic injury take no holidays.

Customarily, in coverage of the traumatic injury of local troops, it’s been my practice as a journalist with contacts in the military extended family network community to also be ready to move forward, or, if the family needs their zone of privacy borne from anguish, to back off.

People who have been badly hurt may want to tell their story. They usually do not want to tell it when every nerve ending in their battered body is in agony. But for the most part, they have been willing to share accounts of their extraordinary ordeal. It may take weeks or months to get ready to share that story, but the story is always compelling, always worth telling.

These wounded soldiers and Marines, these troops hurt in this continuing war that is fought by ambush with devastating explosives are the heralds that tell us what the cost of this war ultimately will be.

They also are the “canaries in the coal mine,” in that their care and their needs require all the scrutiny that an activist press can provide. God knows most of our profession was not diligent enough, probing enough, or demanding truth from power enough in the run-up to war. See Thomas Ricks in “Fiasco.”

Absent a devastating attack on the American homeland, it is to be hoped national media will engage in greater diligence before another foreign war gets a push from the White House and a pass from Congress, and the American people.

The lessons of military and congressional blind-spotting on Walter Reed Army Medical Center are all too fresh at the moment.

Accounts of care at the urgent-immediate post combat injury stage are that the care is first-rate. But the strains and burdens that families of the wounded will undergo are urgent also. And those needs need to be reported, by national media, by local media — by anyone with the means to see and the megaphone of communication to use.

In one case recently our newspaper covered the story of a National Guard soldier whose military insurance was canceled before final surgery to remove steel rods emplaced to repair his mangled legs, which were fractured in an IED blast that destroyed his Humvee.

It only was after news of the incident surfaced that the military and its insurance overseer effected a quick about-face and remedied the situation. This has got to be the first war waged by Americans where after-care for troops is handled through health maintenance organizations and insurance.

“You cannot believe what these young guys have gone through,” Stacie Tscherny, the mother of trooper Hancock, said. “Arms, legs, burns. They’ve lost eyes, they have burns to their faces.”

And she related that our country’s wounded are unbelievably strong-willed and strong-minded, the young men in the beds at Brooke, the catastrophically wounded from this war.

On departure for Texas last week, Tscherny was relieved that her employers extended her two weeks on short notice to go be with her son. Now she has been there a week. He has lost much. An arm to amputation. Skin to burn injuries. Other injuries that may impact mobility. Too
soon to tell. For trooper Hancock, life will never take a more serious or devastating course short of mortality.

“We communicate by blinking,” his mother told me. “His first sergeant was home on leave, and he came in to see him, and he was happy about that.”

The military is putting up Hancock’s mother in apartment-style housing on the medical campus. Suddenly, two weeks does not seem like enough time to tend to the needs of her son.

“We asked — I asked — does he want his mother to stay there with him, and he blinked ‘Yes.’”

Spc. Jerral Steele Hancock — 21 years old — is heavily medicated for pain. But severe pain is unavoidable with the fragility of his wounded body because too much pain medication impacts blood pressure, circulation and the heart.

“I think he understands what happened now with his arm,” the amputation, she said. “He cried tears, and I said ‘Don’t worry, honey. There’s lots of these young men who are coming back.”

Lots of these young men are coming back. And how we, as a nation, treat them, and how we as a nation honor them, and how we — as a nation — see to their effective care and rehabilitation will define the kind of nation that we are, in war or peace.

Spc. Hancock’s mother recounted in a telephone interview from Brooke, “I think how is it that he survived moves through two hospitals in Iraq, then on to Germany, then here to Texas, and I wonder with these young men how they maintain the spirit to not just die.”

She does not want to leave her son’s bedside. She does not want to leave the side of the son who communicates with her by blinking “yes” or “no” for understanding his needs, his feelings, his responses to questions.

While in support of her son at the trauma center, the U.S. military provides a “per diem” stipend for immediate family, a stipend that amounts to $1,600 a month — or, about $400 a week.

On leaving Lancaster where she resided for about a year, Tscherny had a new job that she commuted to in the San Fernando Valley. Her expenses are about average, which is to say that the $1,600 covers a little less than half the ordinary living expenses.

There is her home and its payments. Her son, and his young wife (who also is a mother) also has a house.

How to do it? What to do?

“I am going to try and do anything I can to be with my son while he needs me,” his mother said.

She said she has had conversations with great young soldiers, remarkable people. She said she has formed a friendship with a young G.I. who lost his eye, and part of his face, and who knows the ground of recovery.

Is there any way you can imagine that Spc. Hancock will not need his mother, and anyone close to him, for all time to come?

Is there any way you can imagine that handling of the treatment, and support for immediate family in such circumstance should fall short of actual need?

If we can approve $100 billion to run this war in its fifth year, it is hard to conceive that we do not have the money it takes to tend to the needs of immediate family of our military’s most injured and vulnerable souls.

—
Dennis Anderson (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of the Antelope Valley Press in Palmdale, Ca. He twice acted as an embed in Iraq, and his son has served there. He has written often about the war for E&P.

June 4, 2007 – According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, during the Iraq war, 56 percent of soldiers and Marines (henceforth I will use the term “soldiers” to include members of all branches, both male and female) have killed another human being, 20 percent admit being responsible for noncombatant deaths, and 94 percent had seen bodies and human remains.[i] According to Colonel Charles Engel, MD, MPH, director of the deployment health clinical center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, between 15 and 29 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Because soldiers still on active duty are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq, experts say that the PTSD rate among Iraq veterans could well eclipse the 30{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} lifetime rate found in a 1990 national study of Vietnam veterans. While these numbers are staggering and should give any rational human being pause, the readjustment difficulties suffered by active duty military and veterans because of their experiences in Iraq are not exhausted by references to trauma and PTSD. Tragically, as soldiers experience the horror and cruelty of war, especially urban counterinsurgency war, the moral gravity of their actions – displacing, torturing, injuring, and killing other human being (henceforth “combat behavior”) – becomes apparent, soldiers suffer not only the effects of trauma, but what I will term “moral injuries,” i.e., debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community.

The observation that some human beings become moral casualties because of their experiences in war is not new. Historically, many societies have recognized war’s deleterious moral effects and required returning warriors to undergo elaborate atonement and purification rituals, i.e., quarantine, penances, etc.[ii] These “therapies” provided the means and the opportunity to cope with the moral enormity of their actions in war. Tragically, the moral injuries of modern warriors, however, have been virtually ignored,[iii] overlooked, or disregarded by the conventional therapeutic community operating as it does within a Nietzschean-Freudian-Scientific legacy that views ethical concerns as clinically irrelevant – “autonomous man” ought [to] feel no guilt “nor bite of conscience” for his actions.[iv] Focusing, instead, upon stress and trauma, most moral symptoms presented by returning soldiers are either not taken seriously or assimilated under the diagnostic umbrella of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Consequently, the veterans receive the signal that an inability to forget, to put the war behind them, is either weakness or, perhaps worse, illness. Accordingly, veterans are advised to ignore what has occurred, to “de-responsibilitize,” i.e., to neutralize their feelings by accepting the “naturalness” of their behavior on the battlefield,[v] and/or to undergo a myriad of conventional therapies (psychoanalytic, behavioral, pharmacological, etc.) intended to enable them to deal with the stress and trauma of their experiences. In either approach, moral considerations are, for the most part, irrelevant.

Unfortunately, in most cases, moral injury neither responds well to medication nor can it be rationalized away. In fact, such methods, according to Robert Jay Lifton, tend to alienate them still further. Speaking about returning Vietnam Veterans, Lifton writes,

“The veterans were trying to say that the only thing worse than being ordered by military authorities to participate in absurd evil is to have that evil rationalized and justified by the guardians of the spirit . . . The men sought out chaplains and shrinks because of a spiritual-psychological crisis growing out of what they perceived to be irreconcilable demands in their situation. They sought either escape from absurd evil, or, at the very least, a measure of inner separation from it. Instead, spiritual-psychological authority was employed to seal off any such inner alternative.”[vi]

Such “therapeutic” advice as “forget it,” “live with it,” “act as though it never happened, or “don’t worry about it, human beings act that way in survival situations,” does little to alleviate the veteran’s moral pain and suffering.

As may be expected, the prevalence of moral injuries suffered by those who fought in a really ambiguous war, or in a counter insurgency/guerilla war, such as in Vietnam and Iraq, where, for example, the distinction between combatant and noncombatant is obscure at best, will be significantly greater and the symptoms more severe. However, all wars yield moral casualties. J. Glenn Gray, a philosopher, writes of his experiences as an Intelligence Officer during World War Two

“My conscience seems to become little by little sooted . . . .. (only) if I can soon get out of this war and back on the soil where the clean earth will wash away these stains! I have also other things on my conscience . . . A man named H., accused of being the local Gestapo agent in one small town was an old man of seventy . . . . I was quite harsh to him and remember threatening him with an investigation when I put him under house arrest . . . Day before yesterday word came that he and his wife had committed suicide by taking poison . . . The incident affected me strongly and still does. I was directly or indirectly the cause of their deaths. . . . I hope it will not rest too hard on my conscience, and yet if it does not I shall be disturbed also.”[vii]

Gray’s insights are especially valuable as they illustrate that even the actions and experiences of those involved in a “good” war and not directly confronting the enemy on the battlefield, can precipitate moral injury. Consequently, those military theorists who have argued that debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, etc., – what I have termed “moral injuries” – may be avoided by “educating” soldiers, probably convincing is better, about the justness and necessity of war and the “appropriateness” of their combat behavior,[viii] could benefit from Gray’s observations.

Psychologist and former Army Ranger, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman[ix] and others have written extensively and insightfully regarding the profound debilitating effects of killing in war – combat behavior. However, for whatever the reason – probably the aforementioned scientific bias against acknowledging moral injuries or at least the propensity of not taking the possibility seriously – Grossman has alleged the etiology of such symptoms to be traumatic stress. Rachel MacNair agrees, postulating the existence of a variant of PTSD she terms “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Syndrome (PITS).”[x] Both Grossman and MacNair argue that individuals who kill become traumatized as a consequence, not of being the victim of trauma as is the common interpretation of PTSD, but by being an active participant in causing trauma in others.

I find Grossman’s and MacNair’s conclusions problematic for the following reasons. After having been programmed by psychologically sophisticated military training and indoctrination techniques,[xi] and experiencing the grotesque life threatening conditions of service in Iraq, especially with repeated tours of duty, many, perhaps most, may view combat behavior as quite “normal” under the circumstances. Others may believe it betters their chances for survival and for returning home alive and intact. Still others may find having control over life and death empowering, exciting, exhilarating and as reinforcing the military stereotype of the elite warrior, “the toughest mother in the valley.” With appropriate “education,” many members of the military may be convinced, at least temporarily, that combat behavior in Iraq is justified, satisfying, and fulfilling as it brings freedom and democracy to a repressed people, and rids the world of evil-doers and terrorists. Consequently, convinced of its appropriateness, justness, and necessity, such combat behavior – causing trauma in others – may not be experienced traumatically by the warrior. That is not to say, however, that displacing, torturing, injuring or killing another human being, whether combatant or noncombatant, in a just or unjust war, does not have grave repercussions. While I applaud Grossman and MacNair for bringing attention to the likelihood of becoming symptomatic as a consequence of behavior in war (by virtue of what soldiers have done, not of what they have suffered), I regret their inability or unwillingness to recognize such distress as morally based. More important, however, their attempt to manipulate PTSD to accommodate moral injuries is more than just unfortunate, it does veterans a disservice by either allowing their injuries to be, at best, misdiagnosed and mistreated, at worst, ignored because they lack the crucial diagnostic criteria for PTSD (the traumatic event).

To correctly identify and adequately treat the injuries suffered by our servicemen and women in Iraq, we must appreciate the relevancy of moral values and norms to defining ourselves as persons, structuring our world, and rendering our relationship to it, and to other human beings, comprehensible. We must understand that these values and norms provide the parameters of our being – – what I term our “moral identity.” Most importantly, we must recognize that combat behavior often violates our moral identity and negatively impacts our self-esteem, self-image, and integrity causing debilitating remorse, guilt, shame, disorientation, and alienation from the remainder of the moral community – moral injury.

The monster and I are one.
I have feasted upon the flesh
of decaying corpses,
and with their blood
have quenched my thirst.
The transformation is complete
And I can never return.
Mea culpa, mea culpa,
Mea maxima culpa.[xii]

Acknowledging the existence of moral casualties in war by no means diminishes the importance or prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Rather, it enhances our understanding of the war experience and its devastating effects, expands our area of concern beyond trauma and PTSD, and allows us to more adequately meet the needs of our returning servicemen and women.

Endnotes

[i] These numbers were accurate as of July 1, 2004. I suspect, with the escalation of hostilities, that the percentages are even higher today.

[ii] For an interesting and detailed discussion of this subject, see Verkamp, Bernard J., The Moral Treatment of Returning Warriors in Early Medieval and Modern Times, (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1993).

[iii] A few notable exceptions include Robert Jay Lifton, Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims nor Executioners, (New York, Basic Books), 1973; and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Psychiatrist and author Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1994; and Odysseus in America, (New York: Scribner), 2002.

[iv] Kaufman, Walter, Without Guilt and Justice, (New York: Dell, 1973), pp. 114, 117, 125, 132-133.

[v] Deresponsibilization attempts a “cure” by convincing the patient of the “naturalness” of his behavior under the conditions of war. Stephen Howard explains.

Under the overwhelming threat of annihilation, our priorities regress to the survival state; all higher priorities, all ethical and moral considerations lose relevance, and only the survival of the individual and the immediate group retain significance.

Once the veteran realizes our primitive natures, he can “at last place into context some of his actions which he cannot comprehend or accept in any other way.” Consequently, Howard concludes, the veteran will come to accept that, as his actions were quite natural, his guilt, shame, etc., is irrational and totally unwarranted.

[vi] Lifton, Robert J., Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims nor Executioners, pps. 166-167.

[vii] J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, pp. 175-6.

[viii] Kilner, Peter G., “Military Leaders Obligation to Justify Killing in War,” Military Review, vol. 72, no. 2, Mar-Apr 2004.

[ix] Dave Grossman, On Killing, (New York: Little, Brown, and Co.) 1995.

[x] MacNair, Rachel, Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing, (Westport, CT: Praeger), 2002.

[xi] Nor should we underestimate the influence of a young lifetime of playing extremely violent interactive “point and shoot” arcade and video games[xi] – many frighteningly similar to the military conditioning of recruits to kill. See Grossman, Dave, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence, (New York, Crown), 1999.

[xii] Bica, Camillo “Mac”, war journal entry dated November 23, 1969.

Camillo “Mac” Bica, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His focus is in Ethics, particularly as it applies to war and warriors. As a veteran recovering from his experiences as a United States Marine Corps Officer during the Vietnam War, he founded, and coordinated for five years, the Veterans Self-Help Initiative, a therapeutic community of veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is a long-time activist for peace and justice, a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and a founding member of the Long Island Chapter of Veterans for Peace.

The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet.

June 10, 2007 – Raleigh, NC  – The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men’s estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court.

Following these gruesome deaths which were broadcast on worldwide television, the surviving family members looked to Blackwater for answers as to how and why their loved ones died. Blackwater not only refused to give the grieving families any information, but also callously stated that they would need to sue Blackwater to get it. Left with no alternative, in January 2005, the families filed suit against Blackwater, which is owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Erik Prince.

Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

After filing its suit against the dead men’s estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families’ existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.

Over 300 contractors have been killed in Iraq with very little inquiry into their deaths. The families claim that Blackwater is attempting to cover up its incompetence, its cutting of corners in favor of higher profits, and its over billing to the government. Due to lack of accountability and oversight, Blackwater’s private army has been able to obtain huge profits from the government, utilizing contacts established through Erik Prince’s relationships with high-ranking government officials such as Cofer Black and Joseph Schmitz.

In addition to assembling its litigation troops, Blackwater also stonewalled the families concerning any information about how the men were killed. Over the past two and a half years, Blackwater has not responded to a single question or produced a single document. When the families’ attorneys, Callahan & Blaine, obtained a Court Order to take the deposition of a former Blackwater employee with critical information about the incident, Blackwater quickly re-hired him and sent him out of the country. When the witness returned to the United States more than a year later, the families obtained another Court Order for his deposition. Blackwater again prevented them from taking his deposition by seeking the assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to block the deposition under the guise that he possibly possessed national secrets. Following an investigation, the U.S. Army reported that the witness had no secret information and that it had no objection to the deposition.

Blackwater has now lifted this atrocity to a whole new level by going on the offensive and suing the families for $10 million. The families now find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun as Blackwater, armed with a war chest and politically-connected attorneys, is aggressively litigating against them. Blackwater has also threatened to hold the administrator of the estates personally liable to scare him into abandoning his position, and has threatened the families’ attorneys as well.

The families are simply without the financial wherewithal to defend against Blackwater. By filing suit, Blackwater is trying to wipe out the families’ ability to discover the truth about Blackwater’s involvement in the deaths of these four Americans and to silence them from any public comment. In February, the families testified before Congress.

However, Blackwater’s lawsuit now seeks to gag the family members from even speaking about the incident or about Blackwater’s involvement in the deaths. This is a direct attack to their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

“I initially took this case because it was the right thing to do in helping the families find closure by discovering the events surrounding their loved ones deaths, ” said Daniel J. Callahan, attorney for the families. “I have found the evidence concerning Blackwater’s involvement in the deaths to be overwhelming and appalling. Even more disturbing though is the callous nature in which Blackwater has not only concealed the truth, but also outright sued to force the families to stop pursuing the case and to silence them.” Blackwater has spent millions of dollars and hired at least five different law firms to fight the families, rather than meeting and addressing what should be Blackwater’s top priority — the safety and well being of the mothers, wives, and children left behind. Blackwater has said that it will not pay one red cent to assist or console the surviving families, but instead has counter sued for $10 million.

Without help, Blackwater will succeed in avoiding scrutiny for its conduct, escaping accountability for its actions, and silencing the families of the four Americans killed in Fallujah. A defense fund has been established by which the public is able to donate money to assist the families with litigation costs and expenses.

Donations can be sent to the estates’ trust account, payable to “C&B ITF Blackwater Victims Defense Fund,” c/o Callahan & Blaine, 3 Hutton Centre Drive, Ninth Floor, Santa Ana, California 92707. Donations may also be made securely online through PayPal by going to blackwatervictims.com. All donations will be kept confidential and anonymous.

June 6, 2007 – The U.N. refugee agency reported this week that some 4 million Iraqis have been displaced by the war and more than half of those have left the country. The rest are looking for a safe haven in Iraq, and some of those have found it in Iraq’s Kurdish north.  VOA’s Barry Newhouse visited an office keeping track of the displaced Iraqis and has this report.

A worker in the residency office for the Kurdistan Regional Government stamps documents for newly arrived Iraqis in a crowded waiting room. Most of the people here are Sunni Arabs who have come from Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi.  Many of them refuse to talk about their plight.

One man says the situation in Baghdad has become so dire, that despite the ongoing security operation, this week he finally decided to leave.

He says he faced many problems in Baghdad from terrorist gangs and from Iraqi security forces that have sectarian agendas. He says the dangers and the economic situation became so bad that he had to flee.

This office issues permits for one of Iraq’s three Kurdish-controlled provinces. Since 2005, it has granted temporary residency permits to nearly 30,000 people – a small fraction of those in need.

U.N. refugee agency officials say fleeing Iraqis have overwhelmed local governments in some areas of the country. But U.N. officials also have criticized regions that turn away people who need assistance. 

Kurdish security forces restrict entrance to fleeing Iraqis at tightly controlled checkpoints, denying entry to people considered security risks. In general, Kurdish officials say they let in professional workers, such as doctors and engineers, or those who can have a local resident vouch for them.

Recently arrived Arabs in Kurdistan say they understand the need for controlling access.

This man says that he is not disturbed by the practice, because there are some
Iraqis who work with terrorist gangs, and the Kurdish forces must protect the region.

Those Iraqis who qualify for entry say staying in Iraqi Kurdistan is much better option than fleeing to Syria or Jordan. This businessman from Baghdad says in Syria, Iraqi refugees live in a legal limbo, in constant threat of deportation.

He says many families sell their homes and their possessions and go to Syria. But there, even if they have the permit from the U.N. refugee office, they will spend all of their savings, because there are no jobs. He says life there is expensive. In Kurdistan, he says, you can work.

But the influx of wealthy Iraqis has pushed up the cost of living for Irbil residents as well.  This Iraqi man, who has arrived recently, says he understands the locals are getting upset.

He says we know that rents are getting high, and it is bad for the poorest people here. But, he says, “We don’t have a choice.”

U.N. officials say the plight of Iraqis fleeing violence is getting worse, yet calls for international help have brought few results.

In Irbil’s residency office, several Iraqis said they were not looking for handouts, but merely a chance to start over after losing everything.

The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved its second and third fiscal 2008 spending bills that exceed President Bush’s requests, a $31.6 billion Energy and Water measure and a $64.7 billion Military Construction-Veterans Affairs spending bill.

Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman has said he will recommend a veto of any spending bill that goes over Bush’s top-line. But that could prove difficult, particularly in the case of the Military Construction-VA bill, which would provide $3.8 billion above Bush’s request for veterans’ medical care.

House Military Construction-VA Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Chet Edwards, D-Texas, called for a recorded vote after the measure appeared to pass unanimously by voice vote.

Despite GOP objections, Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., called the roll and the measure was approved 56-0. Appropriations ranking member Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., did not vote — when it was his turn he simply said, “We passed the bill.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., also dismissed the administration’s veto threats Wednesday, noting the president accepted some additional spending in the Iraq supplemental, including extra funds for VA health care. “We are hopeful that will happen again,” Hoyer said.

On Tuesday, the panel approved its first spending bill, a Homeland Security measure that goes $2 billion above Bush’s request. It will consider Thursday an Interior-Environment measure that contains a similar increase.

TAHLEQUAH, Okla.— Ray Spear would’ve become a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3707 in May, but he had to wait a month. There weren’t enough members at the May meeting to vote him in.

Like posts of the VFW all over the country, Tahlequah’s Post 3707 is seeing a decline in numbers, along with an increase in the age of members.

Tracing its history back to 1899, when soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War were not provided adequate medical care, the VFW works to ensure rights and benefits for veterans.

But as their ranks continue to decline – even as soldiers continue returning from the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq – VFW members are trying to get the word out that, more than a century later, the organization’s mission hasn’t changed.

“To keep it open, we’re going to have to have some help,” said Bill Taylor, past quartermaster of Post 3707. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

Along with past Commander and current Sergeant at Arms Gerald Summerlin, Taylor has been a steady presence at Post 3707. But neither was able to make it to the regular monthly meeting Monday because of health concerns.

“We’ve opened the doors a lot of times and we’d be the only ones there,” said Summerlin. “We’ve got two or three [members] who were in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam – all three wars. But we need anybody that’s eligible.”

VFW membership is available to all U.S. service members who have earned an overseas campaign or expeditionary medal and are on active duty, in the Reserves or who have been honorably discharged from the U.S. armed forces.

That’s most of the soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq, but few of them are joining up.

“When I first got out, I found the DAV [Disabled American Veterans] did everything I needed to do,” said Jason Jennings, a veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq. “As of right now, I’m going to school, working six days a week, I’m the president of the Veterans’ Association at NSU, and I’m an officer in my fraternity. I don’t have time for much else.”

Members of the VFW can relate. They were once young soldiers returning home to jobs, school, and families, too.

“When I came back from Vietnam, I didn’t want to have anything to do with [the VFW],” said Dan Garber, junior vice commander of Post 3707. “But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized the VFW works to get Congress to provide benefits like the GI Bill and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The government doesn’t provide benefits for veterans just because they want to. It’s organizations like the VFW that lobby to get those benefits.”

Post 3707 Commander Ken Rystedt agrees that, while the VFW benefits all veterans, it often takes a while for them to realize that fact.

“When I first got out of the service, I didn’t want to have anything to do with anything military, or any kind of veterans’ organization,” he said. “It took me 30 years to change my mind.”

Garber said he’s been told by some young potential members that they’ve just felt too much of a generation gap between themselves and current VFW members.

That, he said, won’t happen at Post 3707.

“Some people in the past have had the experience of coming to the VFW and not feeling welcome because they’re too young, but we’re not going to make people feel that way,” he said. “We need those young people. We need their ideas, we need their energy. And someday, they’re going to need this organization.”

Eddie Glenn writes for Tahlequah (Okla.) Daily Press.

June 6, 2007 – Compassion House has never made it to the Board of Supervisors’ agenda but the county has heard about issues surrounding the shelter for the past two months.

Mark and Yolonda Deane of Deane Outreach Ministry decided to convert their $625,000 home in Brandy Station [Virginia] into a homeless shelter for veterans.

The house on Gravel Road now has five veterans living in it: the maximum allowed by county ordinances for a single family home.

Last month, 43 residents of three Brandy Station neighborhoods signed a petition opposing the house and presented their concerns before the board.

They now plan to appeal to the Board of Zoning Appeals regarding the county’s decision to treat the shelter as a single family home.

Neighbors argue the shelter violates county zoning ordinances and is inappropriate, being 10 miles from public transportation and services.

Some worry veterans might have mental health conditions, chemical dependencies or criminal histories.

At Tuesday night’s meeting about 30 people attended, this time, to extend their support to Compassion House and the Deanes’ ministry. They urged the board to support it and uphold county laws as is.

Mike Whetston, an Army veteran, referred to Compassion House as a veteran transition facility rather than a shelter.

He noted neighbor concerns are valid but their complaints are not because no laws have been broken. He also reminded the board that the Deanes check their residents’ backgrounds and conduct random drug testing.

The five veterans living in the house attended Tuesday’s meeting. Most are working or looking for work and plan on living in the house until they can raise enough money to move out and start their lives over.

In previous articles, they have said they are only there due to unfortunate circumstances or bad choices.

“But the defamatory claims by neighbors that residents have psychiatric problems are unfounded and border on slander,” Whetston said. “These veterans seek a better life than the one they’re living.”

Cindy Kokernak, of the American Legion, echoed Whetston.  “No one ever asked to be homeless,” she said. “These are very proud men. They only took help that was offered to them.”

Yolonda Deane said she wants the community to feel welcome at Compassion House. However, some neighbors have resorted to photographing their property and gawking at the veterans living there, she said.

If neighbors in opposition attended the meeting, none spoke during the hearing.

Chairman John Coates cut off citizens at 7:30 p.m. to conduct county business on the agenda.

Yolonda Deane hopes Compassion House can help end homelessness, if anything, by serving as a kickoff for affordable housing opportunities in Culpeper. She also hopes the community will support the veterans who live there and the mission of Compassion House.

“These are men who served their country,” she said. “They are not addicted to chemicals. They are just men who are disabled or on disability money. I feel like people are closing their hearts and their minds to the veterans.”

Liz Mitchell can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 110 or emitchell@starexponent.com.

June 6, 2007 – ANCHORAGE, Alaska — About half of all National Guard equipment is being used in the Middle East, and the Guard’s senior uniformed officer said Tuesday that could hurt the organization’s overall readiness at home.

National Guard units have 53 percent of the equipment they need to handle state emergencies, said Lt. General H. Steven Blum. It falls to 49 percent once Guard equipment needed for war — such as weapons — is factored in, he said.

“Our problem right now is that our equipment is at an all-time low,” he said at a news conference after addressing 54 National Guard commanders from every state and territory attending the annual Adjutants General Association meeting here.

“We have the most skilled, trained and full forces we’ve ever had, but our equipment is not where it needs to be,” he said.

The lack of equipment was highlighted last month after a tornado leveled the town of Greensburg, Kan., leading Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to say the recovery process could take longer because so much of that state’s National Guard equipment had been sent for the war effort in Iraq.

Since then, other governors have also expressed doubts their state units would be able to adequately handle disasters because so many troops and equipment have been deployed. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also complained that his state’s National Guard equipment remained in Iraq after those troops returned home.

Blum said the equipment problem is the result of long-term strategy of assuming risk by underequipping — and underfunding — the Guard.

“Now that the Guard is no longer merely a strategic reserve but an operational force overseas and here at home, that strategy is being seriously re-examined,” he said. “I think at the highest levels of government, there is support for getting us this equipment.”

The equipment issue is the easiest problem to solve, Blum said. It is now just a matter of funding it.

He said Guard units nationwide need new trucks, Humvees and modern aircraft, not only to replace what has been sent to Iraq or Afghanistan but also to replace outdated equipment.

Current funding projections will get the National Guard 75 percent of what it needs by 2013, he said. Blum estimated it would take an additional $40 billion over the next five to six years to get the overall force to 100 percent.

Current plans call for the old equipment to be removed from service by 2009.

Blum also said Guard deployment numbers are back down to an acceptable level. The most deployed Guard force ever was Idaho, Blum said, which peaked several years ago with 82 percent of its force deployed. He said the numbers are now where they need to be and that he is not seeking a further reduction in the frequency with which Guard units are deployed.

Connecticut and Guam now have the highest percentage of deployed Guard troops, with 24 percent. New Mexico’s Guard has the least, with none currently deployed, according to Guard statistics. The national average for the percentage of deployed troops is 11 percent, according to Guard officials.

Blum, who was appointed by President Bush, serves as chief of the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va. He advises Army and Air Force officials on issues dealing with the National Guard. Blum served as chief of staff of U.S. Northern Command before his current role.