Veterans for Common Sense

May 24, 2007 – When Kimberly Dozier, a CBS News correspondent, was nearly killed last Memorial Day by a roadside bomb in Baghdad that took the lives of her crew, she became the story instead of reporting it. Now, more than 25 operations later, Ms. Dozier is finally telling her own story, which will be a core part of “Flashpoint,” a CBS special to be broadcast on Tuesday night about the many lives transformed that day.

“The hardest part of it was re-living parts of it I didn’t remember,” Ms. Dozier said during a recent interview at the CBS headquarters in Midtown, where she returned to work earlier this year. It has been “weird” to be the journalistic subject, she said, but tracking down and interviewing the people who were with her that day has been cathartic.

“I’ve asked myself why did I make it when the others died,” she said, admitting that she sometimes felt discouraged as she learned to walk again, in a gantlet of surgery and therapy that took her from Iraq to Germany to New Zealand, as well as to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. “You ask yourself that over and over, especially in the beginning.”

In the last year, using her journalistic skills and her memories to help shape “Flashpoint” has been one of the easier challenges for the 40-year-old Ms. Dozier. A tall woman with short blond hair tucked neatly behind her ears, she was given 50-50 odds of surviving on May 29, 2006. She and her two-member crew were hit that morning after leaving their armored vehicle to shoot video in the street for a report about Americans soldiers working with Iraqi security forces.

“We were shredded by shrapnel,” Ms. Dozier said, a hellish end for a report on a slow news day at home.

Besides the CBS cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, and the sound man James Brolan, 42, Capt. James A. Funkhouser, 35, of the Army, and his Iraqi translator, called Sam in the program, died that day. Several American soldiers were critically injured. Ms. Dozier had lost virtually all her blood by the time she arrived at a treatment center. Her heart stopped twice.

She looks fine now, but her heavily scarred legs contain titanium rods, and she has screws in her skull. She took shrapnel to the head, fractured her femur and was burned from her hips to her ankles. Still, she is eager to return to the Middle East and to work, she said, mindful that what she went through is what happens to American troops 20 times a day in Iraq.

“I always, always wanted to be a foreign correspondent,” she said, recalling growing up partially overseas, one of six children of a homemaker and a former marine who did overseas construction.

“I knew there had been some sort of explosion,” Ms. Dozier recalled of her last day in the field, recounting her story in a generally matter-of-fact way. “I just got knocked into blackness. My mind was going, but I couldn’t see or hear for a few minutes. I could smell fireworks. I didn’t know at the time that my eardrums were shattered, so that explains why I couldn’t hear a lot.”

Her first concern was what happened to her crew, she said.

She got through it all with support from her family, her boyfriend and the prayers, she said, of people around the world. She is also grateful for the therapist for her head and those ones for her body. “They call me a poster girl for how to recover or how to avoid P.T.S.D.,” Ms. Dozier said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Flashpoint,” a one-hour special with Katie Couric as anchor, portrays the war through the detailed stories of the many lives touched by the explosion that Monday morning. Staff Sgt. Nathan Reed lost his lower right leg, among other injuries, and Sgt. Justin Farrar suffers from such post-traumatic stress that he is still unable to wear his uniform. “Flashpoint” shows him leaning on a cane, sobbing, at Captain Funkhouser’s grave in Texas.

The special is also a portrait of Mr. Brolan and Mr. Douglas, who left behind wives and children. There are close-ups of bloody wounds and of coffins, glimpses of a young daughter of Captain Funkhouser who says, “My daddy was a hero and he died.” “Flashpoint” also zeroes in on how improvised explosive devices (I.E.D.’s), like the one that hit the CBS team, are responsible for roughly half the American combat casualties in Iraq.

While Ms. Dozier comes across in the film and in person as intrepid, bright, and loyal to her colleagues and friends, at least one friend sees her as changed by her ordeal.

“She’s tough in the right way,” said Lin Garlick, the executive editor of CBS NewsPath, the network’s 24-hour news service. “She’s still Kimberly with her stories, with her depth of feeling for people. But there’s a slight guardedness to her now. I think she’s seen more than the rest of us want to see. That’s reflected in her eyes at times and I don’t think that will ever leave her.”

Ms. Dozier, a former print and radio reporter who has covered the Middle East as a CBS correspondent since 2003, has repeatedly asked herself if there is anything she could have done differently that Memorial Day. Her answer is no. Still, she sheds tears in “Flashpoint” only when Ms. Couric asks about her crew.

Ms. Dozier said that it took Bob Woodruff, the ABC news correspondent who was injured in Iraq earlier in 2006, to ease her guilt about her crew.

“He said: ‘You’re thinking, you’re the correspondent. You were in charge, you took them there that day.’ He said, ‘Look, those two guys did not get taken anywhere. They were their own bosses,’ ” she recounted. “And the thing I will always remember, that really stuck with me — and I’ve needed to pull it out several times — he said, ‘If you think any differently, if you think of it any other way, you’re dishonoring their memories.’ ”

Ms. Dozier is working on a book about her life and just finished an article for The New York Times about how Iraq combat is responsible for injuries that doctors have never encountered, also a topic of one of her reports for CBS.

Her return to television comes this Sunday on “CBS News Sunday Morning” with a report about female soldiers whose combat injuries made them amputees.

The journalism fire remains bright, Ms. Dozier said, but she is a different woman.

“You know that ticker you’ve got running in your head going, ‘Got to please Mom, got to please boss, got to’ — you’ve got all these judges out there,” she said. “Especially women do this. I have a freedom I never had before in terms of saying: ‘You know what? I don’t care.’ Because I know what’s important.”

May 24, 2007 – A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq—and to do so on his terms:

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”.

The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans.

The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.

You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”

Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.

Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President!

How shameful it would be to watch an adult… hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.

But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.

You lead this country, sir?

You claim to defend it?

And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.

How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.

Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and always—that the troops would not suffer.

A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.

Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.

You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.

“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…”

That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?

Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War.

All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.

The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.

Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening?

See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?

Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now.

The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided… tomorrow.

The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.

Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.

Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats… have failed us.

They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.

Mr. Bush and his government… have failed us.

They have behaved venomously and without dignity—of course.

That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted.
We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.

With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us.

They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come.

Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process—indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice—has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone.

The electorate figured this out, six months ago.

The President and the Republicans have not—doubtless will not.
The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there—and  permanently.

Because, on the subject of Iraq…

The people have been ahead of the media….

Ahead of the government…

Ahead of the politicians…

For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.

Our politics… is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.

Mr. Bush has failed.

Mr. Warner has failed.

Mr. Reid has failed.

So.

Who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies?

To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.

To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.

Friday May 25, 2007 — As benefits administrators, officials and politicians argue the worthiness of studies on Gulf War syndrome, researchers say they have no doubts that they’ve found the root of the problem.

Sarin gas.

And they have advice for as many as 300,000 troops exposed to small doses of sarin in 1991: Don’t use bug spray, don’t smoke and don’t drink alcohol.

“Don’t do anything that would aggravate a normal, healthy body,” said Mohamed Abou-Donia, a neurobiology scientist at Duke University who conducted two studies for the Army.

Research released in early May showed that 13 soldiers exposed to small amounts of sarin gas in the 1991 Gulf War had 5 percent less white brain matter — connective tissue — than soldiers who had not been exposed. A complementary report showed that 140 soldiers who were exposed had the fine motor skills of someone 20 years older — what researchers called a “direct correlation” to exposure.

The data was the work of Roberta White, chairwoman of the Department of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health.

Her study was noteworthy because it was funded by the Veterans Affairs and Defense departments, and used Pentagon data to triangulate the locations of troops who were in the path of a huge sarin plume unleashed when U.S. forces destroyed an Iraqi chemical weapons dump in Khamisiyah in March 1991. The study also used new technology to look at troops’ brains.

Of the 700,000 service members who served in Desert Storm, 100,000 have reported mysterious symptoms. Until recently, each study commissioned by the VA and Pentagon concluded the problems were caused by stress and had no physical cause.

“We’ve been asking for this for so long,” said Denise Nichols, a Gulf War veteran who spends much of her time fighting for more information. “It’s not surprising to me. It’s what I would expect.”

Nichols, like the other veterans, has heart palpitations, a cough, nose bleeds, joint aches, spine pain, twitching in her legs and leg pain. She also reacts to strong chemical smells with coughing so heavy she can’t breathe, she said.

The issue surged to the fore in a Senate hearing Wednesday as Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., asked if the VA would send out letters to veterans who may have been affected, as they did to 100,000 troops at higher risk of brain cancer because of sarin exposure.

Murray called the study a “great example” of how recent research can provide guidelines for care. It seems easy enough: If a soldier complains of Gulf War syndrome, why not check him out with an MRI?

She called the study’s findings “overwhelming,” but noted that the VA’s response, once again, was merely: “We’re going to study this.

“They were told, ‘It’s all in your head, you’re making it up.’ Now there is a study that provides a direct link. They deserve to know the answer,” Murray said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called the research “profound.”

“We started out by denying there was any problem,” he said. “It shows that many soldiers may have suffered brain damage.”

Dr. Gerald Cross, acting principal deputy undersecretary for health at the Veterans Health Administration, agreed with Murray that troops deserve answers.

But Cross said Sanders’ description of the findings “is different from how I read it.” Cross called the findings of White’s research a “slight anatomical variation.”

The debate over this issue goes back 16 years to when U.S. forces blew up the chemical munitions dump in Khamsiyah and released a plume of sarin gas to which thousands of U.S. troops were exposed — something the Pentagon denied until 1997.

As more research was done, and as veterans systematically sought details through the Freedom of Information Act, scientists showed Desert Storm vets exposed to sarin were at higher risk for brain cancer. And the veterans eventually showed the Pentagon knew that as many as 300,000 service members had breathed in small doses of the toxic fumes.

Paul Sullivan, of Veterans for Common Sense, said he filed FOIA requests in 1994, and then helped ensure research was made public that showed veterans were not making up their illnesses.

Eventually, 10 years after the Gulf War, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses was created by Congress. It held meetings to determine what needed to be done, to review research, and to fund further research outside the VA and Defense Department, Sullivan said.

“That’s why, in the last few years, you’ve seen all the sarin, depleted uranium and pyridostigmine bromide research,” Sullivan said. “It’s a bittersweet victory because people waited so long.”

To date, he said, no one has contradicted that research. As such, Sullivan said he thinks every Gulf War veteran should automatically be presumed to have been exposed to sarin.

In 1999, working on behalf of the Rand Corp., Beatrice Golomb, professor of internal medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, reviewed every study she could find on the issue. She said it was the first time anyone had pulled all that research together.

Golomb said she found a link between symptoms of Gulf War veterans and their exposure to sarin, pyridostigmine bromide (PB) and bug repellent, all of which overstimulate muscles by inhibiting acetylcholinesterase, a chemical that signals muscles to stop moving. The tongue, being a big muscle, eventually cuts off a person’s ability to breathe if it is overstimulated.

In the case of the bug repellent, the ill effects are aimed at the bug, not the person wearing the repellent.

In large enough amounts, PB is harmful, but in small doses it acts to prevent nerve agents from overstimulating muscles, and the effects of PB itself are temporary and reversible.

Exposure to sarin alone would be problematic enough. But for Gulf War veterans, exposure to sarin as well as PB and/or bug repellent may have been what ushered in Gulf War syndrome.

Abou-Donia’s research showed the combination of nerve agents, PB, bug spray and stress could cause any of those chemicals — as well as any lurking viruses — to cross the blood-brain barrier, causing other problems. He said he has no doubt there are other long-term effects of low doses of sarin on other body systems, citing chronic fatigue, muscle weakness and fibromyalgia as symptoms.

White’s work came in the wake of animal research that showed persistent central nervous system effects and acetylcholinesterase inhibition following exposure to sarin at levels too low to produce clinically observable symptoms.

The use of PB among troops, and PB’s potential role in Gulf War syndrome in combination with other substances, also has been scrutinized.

PB slows the effects of nerve agents, giving troops more time to self-administer antidotes. Research has shown PB offers troops a better chance of survival against the nerve agent soman, rather than sarin, because soman works much quicker than sarin.

Golomb’s research showed that just before the Gulf War, the U.S. government knew Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had sarin in his arsenal, but had no evidence he possessed soman.

As such, she said “there was no benefit” to giving troops PB to increase their survival odds in the event of a sarin attack as long as they had access to the antidote, she said.

Yet according to the Pentagon, about 250,000 troops were given PB during the Gulf War.

Golomb said the U.S. military changed its PB policy because of the report she did for Rand and is not dispensing it to troops in the current war in Iraq.

John Rash, who did research on PB for the Pentagon in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was charged with ensuring people could react with their antidotes quickly enough to prevent nerve gas poisoning.

Rash’s research looked at the long-term effects of PB in combination with sarin and soman on rats. At first, he said, the filaments separating muscle cells “turned to soup.” But within days, the membranes reappeared and the rats seemed to have recovered.

“That’s what made the Army particularly like our study,” he said.

But he said he didn’t look at how the drug would affect any other body system. And, he said, he knew the combination of stress and drugs could cause the agents to cross the blood-brain barrier.

Rash said his study was never published because the U.S. military didn’t necessarily want to publicize the results during the Cold War era. But he said it will come out within the next two years.

A human study in 1997 showed subtle deficits in short-term memory and attention, a slight elevation of hospitalization for circulatory diseases, and a twofold increase in brain cancer deaths more than four years after exposure.

To Abou-Donia, the connection became clear after terrorists hit a Tokyo subway with sarin in 1995. Hospital workers who were never in the subway but who worked with sickened passengers came down with the same symptoms reported by Gulf War vets.

“At last they can have peace of mind because they know what it was, most likely,” he said.

But, he said, there isn’t much that can be done now — although he cautioned Gulf War vets not to use insecticide.

“It’s kind of too late to do much of anything,” he said. “But the body has many redundant systems. Usually, if the damage is small, other neurons will take over. As time goes by, people will adapt.”

A list of units exposed to sarin in the 1991 Gulf War is online: http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/forces_in_hazard_00.htm

May 21, 2007 

Jeffrey Lucey (1981-2004)
Joshua Omvig (1983-2005)
Jonathan Schulze (1981-2007)

Like countless others, each of these young men served honorably in Iraq, but came home unable to cope with their memories of combat. Each one sought help from the military or from the Department of Veterans Affairs. But in each case, the hospital was overbooked, the counselors didn’t listen, or the bureaucracy moved too slowly.

Only months after their return from war, each of these young heroes committed suicide.

How did this happen? Simply because the veterans’ support system is overwhelmed. Over 50,000 Iraq veterans have already been diagnosed with PTSD. Tens of thousands are waiting for VA appointments. One-third of Vet Centers (walk-in counseling clinics for combat veterans and their families) lack adequate counseling staff. Even a VA official has admitted that waiting lists render mental health and substance abuse care “virtually inaccessible.”

I’d like to share the story of a friend of mine that experienced the failings of the current system first-hand. Drew Brown served as a Sergeant First Class training Iraq’s soldiers in Fallujah, Taji, Baghdad and Baquba. Like Joshua Omvig, Jeffrey Lucy, and Jonathan Schulze, Drew struggled to readjust when he came home and he sought help.

Now, Drew has bravely offered to share his story in the hopes of helping other Iraq veterans hold on long enough to get the care they need — and of spurring action in Washington to make sure no more Iraq veterans fall through the cracks:

“One night, while my wife slept only feet from me, I came to the conclusion that she would not be able to stop me if I chose to end my life. With the speed and accuracy of my years handling weapons, I could easily load a magazine, chamber a round, remove the safety and squeeze the trigger before she even got out of bed. I could taste the Hoppe’s #9, feel the front sight post as it pressed against the roof of my mouth.

For months I tried to schedule an appointment with the VA. I was told I would need to schedule an appointment three weeks out, at a hospital that is an hours’ drive away. The appointment would only be scheduled between 8:30 am and 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday. Even assuming I would walk right in and be seen, it would take me an hour to get there, an hour there, then an hour back to work. Who can blow half a day on an hour-long appointment? I can’t.

One issue I was particularly perturbed about was the Post Deployment Health Readiness Assessment (PDHRA). This was the Army’s paper trail, so the top brass could say, “Look! We’re accomplishing something!” Actually, they were only tracking, not treating. I filled out the form five times from October 2005 to December 2006. In all five instances, I asked for help from a mental health professional. In all five instances, I received no help and no follow-up calls.

In late February 2007, I was so incensed that the PDHRA was being bandied about by Generals as proof that they were tracking troops’ mental health problems, that I called the civilian company that is supposed to handle the forms. Eventually, a program manager told me my case was closed.

My case was closed? I was incredulous. I made him read the part on the copies of the forms where I asked for contact from a mental health professional, which he did. Then I asked him to show me the record of said professional contacting me, which he could not do. He asked me to again fill out the form and said he would reopen my case. I did what was asked dutifully, and waited.

Two weeks later, the PDHRA folks finally called me back. It only took 16 months.

I held nothing back from them and told them what was weighing on my mind. I had nothing to lose. In a span of minutes, I was on the phone with a counselor, then social worker from the local VA hospital. They took no chances and scheduled appointments as quickly as possible, and at an outpatient clinic that was minutes from my house.

That’s the good news. The bad news is my first appointment was 2 weeks later. There are those that might not have lasted that long…”

Thankfully, help came in time for Drew. But it took a full sixteen months for the military and veterans affairs’ systems to respond to his repeated requests for counseling. During that time, Drew was suffering from depression, anger, and flashbacks.

You can take action to help veterans like Drew get the help they need. Last week, IAVA officially endorsed legislation introduced by Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia, calling for the creation of a national veteran’s suicide prevention hotline. The bill is making its way through the House, and we will be pushing to get it passed. And you can help. Contact your elected officials and urge them to support this bill. This is just one step of many that will be necessary to ensure that all veterans get the care and treatment they deserve — whether their wounds are hidden or not.

May 19, 2007 – WASHINGTON: Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the U.S. military in the war zone, according to new government numbers.

At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as U.S. government contractors in Iraq.

That brings the total number of contractors killed in Iraq to at least 917, along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews. Truck drivers and translators account for a significant share of the casualties, but the recent death toll includes others who make up what amounts to a private army.

The numbers, which have not been previously reported, reveal the extent to which contractors – Americans, Iraqis, and workers from more than three dozen other countries – are largely hidden casualties of the war, and now are facing increased risks alongside U.S. troops as President George W. Bush’s escalation in Baghdad takes hold.

As troops patrol more aggressively in and around the capital, both soldiers and the contractors who support them, often at small outposts, are at greater peril. The contractor deaths earlier this year, for example, came closer to the number of U.S. military deaths during the same period – 244 – than during any other quarter since the war began, according to official figures.

“The insurgents are going after the softest targets, and the contractors are softer targets than the military,” said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense for manpower during the Reagan administration. “The U.S. is being more aggressive over there, and these contractor deaths go right along with it.”

Among the recent deaths were four Americans working as guards who died in a helicopter crash in January, 28 Turkish construction workers whose plane crashed north of Baghdad the same month, a Massachusetts man who was blown up as he dismantled munitions for an U.S. company in March, and a Georgia woman killed in a missile attack in March while working as a coordinator for KBR, the contractor that Halliburton subsequently spun off.

Donald Tolfree Jr., a trucker from Michigan, was fatally shot in the cab of his vehicle while returning to Camp Anaconda, north of Baghdad, in early February. His daughter, Kristen Martin, 23, said U.S. Army officials told her he was shot by a guard confused about her father’s assignment. The army confirms the death as under investigation as a possible friendly-fire episode.

Martin said she waited three weeks for her father’s body to be returned home and expressed resentment that dead contractors were treated differently from soldiers who fall in battle.

“If anything happens to the military people, you hear about it right away,” she said in a telephone interview. “Flags get lowered, they get their respect. You don’t hear anything about the contractors.”

Military officials in Washington and Baghdad said that no Pentagon office tracked contractor casualties and that they had no way to confirm or explain the sharp rise in deaths this year.

Major General William Caldwell 4th, the top spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, declined through an aide to address the matter. “Contractors are out of our lane, and we don’t comment on them,” said the aide, Lieutenant Matthew Breedlove.

Companies that have lost workers in Iraq were generally unresponsive to questions about the numbers of deaths and the circumstances that led to casualties. None acknowledged that they had seen an increase this year. But a spokesman for American International Group, the insurance company that covers about 80 percent of the contractor workforce in Iraq, said it had seen a sharp increase in death and injury claims in recent months.

The Labor Department records show that in addition to the 146 dead in the first three months this year, another 3,430 contractors filed claims for wounds or injuries suffered in Iraq, also a quarterly record. The number of casualties, though, may be much higher because the government’s statistical database is not complete.

May 23, 2007 – Roadside bombings and gunbattles across Iraq killed nine U.S. servicemen, and U.S. authorities were examining a body found in a river south of Baghdad that Iraqi police believe is one of three U.S. soldiers seized in an ambush nearly two weeks ago, officials said Wednesday.

U.S. authorities have not determined if the body found in the Euphrates River was one of three missing American soldiers from the May 12 ambush of their patrol near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Four Americans and one Iraqi soldier were killed in that attack.

The military said seven soldiers and two Marines were killed in separate attacks Tuesday, bringing the U.S. death toll for the month to at least 80. Last month, 104 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq.

U.S. officials have warned that American casualties were likely to increase as troops made more frequent patrols during the three-month-old U.S.-led security crackdown in Baghdad.

Six of the soldiers were killed by roadside bombs and the seventh was killed by small arms fire. The military said only that the two Marines were killed in combat operations in Anbar province.

In the town of Mandali, on the Iranian border 60 miles east of Baghdad, meanwhile, a suicide bomber walked into a packed market cafe and blew himself up Wednesday, killing 15 people and wounding 20 others, police said.

The cafe in the mixed Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish city, was usually frequented by police, but no police officers were there at the time, police said. Police said a man of in his 30s wearing a heavy jacket despite the searing heat was seen walking into the cafe just seconds before the blast.

In another devastating attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the house of two brothers who were supporting a Sunni alliance opposed to al Qaida in the Anbar province, killing 10 people, including the men, their wives and their children, police Lt. Col. Jabar Rasheed Nayef, said Wednesday.

The attacker, a 17-year-old neighbor, broke into the house of the two men, Sheik Mohammed Ali and police Lt. Col. Abed Ali, and detonated his bomb belt about 11 p.m. Tuesday in Albo Obaid, about 60 miles west of Baghdad.

The targeted men were part of the Anbar Salvation Council, a group of local Sunni tribal leaders who had banded together with government support to fight al Qaida, Nayef said.

More than 4,000 U.S. soldiers, backed by Iraqi forces have been searching for more than a week and a half for the missing Americans. U.S. and Iraqi troops endured temperatures of 115 degrees Tuesday as they trudged through canals waist-deep in sewage, searching for the missing soldiers.

A senior Iraqi army officer in the Babil area told The Associated Press that the body found Wednesday was that of an American soldier. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

But the U.S. military said no determination had been made.

“Iraqi police did find the body of a man whom they believe may be one of our missing soldiers,” Maj. Gen. William C. Caldwell told reporters. “We have received the body and we will work diligently to determine if he is in fact one of our missing soldiers.”

He said that if the body proves to be one of the missing soldiers, his family will be notified first.

An al-Qaida front group claimed it was behind the May 12 attack. But the Islamic State of Iraq posted no pictures of them on the Internet or offered other evidence to support the claim.

In an interview with the Army Times newspaper last week, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he believed at least two of the missing soldiers were alive.

“As of this morning, we thought there were at least two that were probably still alive,” he said in the interview, which was posted Saturday on the newspaper’s Web site. “At one point in time there was a sense that one of them might have died, but again we just don’t know.”

Also Wednesday, a parked car bomb exploded in a parking lot south of Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding 15 others, police said. The attack took place in the town of Jbala, about 45 miles south of Baghdad.

In other violence, gunmen drove into a commercial area in central Baghdad and opened fire on shops, killing four civilians and injuring 14 others, police said. The attack broke out in the Khulani neighborhood near a historic Shiite mosque. A joint patrol of U.S. troops and Iraqi security officers drove off the attackers, police said.

A day earlier, a car bomb exploded at an outdoor market in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing 25 people and wounding at least 60. At least 100 Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide Tuesday, according to police. They included 33 people found shot execution-style — presumably by sectarian death squads — and their bodies scattered across Baghdad.

PALMYRA — Raymond Everlith Jr. served his country for 22 years and in two wars in the Middle East, but when it came time for him to get his teeth fixed, his nation demanded $250.

When he retired from the U.S. Army Reserves as a master sergeant last September, after serving in both the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Everlith believed the Veterans Administration would provide his health care for the rest of his life.

But when he went to the Togus VA Medical Center in Augusta on Wednesday to have repairs made on the false teeth that were wired in during his mobilization to Iraq four years ago, Everlith was shocked to learn that not only would the hospital not fix his teeth, but would provide no free health care of any kind.

“Everybody always tells you, if you ever have a problem, and you’re a veteran, just go to the VA,” Everlith said. “That’s all I’ve heard for 20 years. And the one time I need help, I go to the VA, and they say, ‘We can’t help you.’ “

Everlith, 40, would typically qualify for VA health benefits, said Rene Deschene, service officer for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of Maine. Soldiers who served 24 months of continuous active duty and meet certain financial criteria, and those who served in Iraq, are eligible for VA health care.

Soldiers returning from Iraq who have not served 24 months of continuous active duty, however, must sign up for health coverage within two years or returning to the United States to maintain the benefits.

“If they fail to sign up with the two years, they have to meet the 24 months continuous service and the means test,” Deschene said.

Everlith said he had never heard of the policy until Thursday.

“Nobody ever said a word to me about it,” Everlith said. “There was nothing set up for us. Nobody told me I needed to go anywhere or do anything. They put me on a plane, processed me and sent me home.”

Deschene said the situation is not common, but has been known to happen.

“If he wasn’t (told), whoever was in charge of that transportation unit wasn’t doing their job,” Deschene said.

Everlith’s experience is not unheard of, particularly among those who serve in the reserves, Deschene said. The National Guard, which has very local command, does a good job of informing troops of benefits and how to secure them, Deschene said. And those exiting the military from active duty are automatically processed for benefits upon their departure. But reservist soldiers can have commands in different states and be attached to nearly any unit. Everlith, for example, served with the 11th Bravo Infantry, but was activated to serve in Iraq with the 3rd Personnel Command out of Mississippi. Sometimes the information that is supposed to be given to soldiers gets lost in the shuffle, Deschene explained.

“The major command for reserves have got to step up and make sure their people get the briefing,” Deschene said.

Jim Doherty, staff assistant for the center director at Togus, said the VA is constantly doing outreach and meeting with returning soldiers to brief them on securing their benefits.

“I’m beating the bushes and trying to tell people, ‘You need to sign up,’ ” Doherty said.

Getting the information to reserve units is sometimes difficult, he said.

“We cannot get into a unit unless we’re invited in,” Doherty said. “Sometimes their next echelon is in another state. It’s harder to have that single point of contact.”

Doherty said he was unsure when the two-year sign-up policy began, but believes it was 2003. It is possible, Doherty agreed, that the policy had not yet been announced at the time Everlith left Iraq.

Regardless of why he never signed up for the benefits, Everlith’s inability to receive VA health benefits now is, at least in part, due to his good health. The only option Everlith now has to receive benefits is to connect his injury or malady to his time in the service. The only other way Everlith, who drives an oil truck for a living and does have health insurance through the company, could qualify for VA health benefits is if he falls into a certain income category, which currently is about $24,000 or less per year.

“He has to become service connected for something,” Deschene said. “That’s his only option.”

Even though Everlith’s teeth were repaired by the Army during his mobilization, because it was a preexisting condition he was forced to sign a paper promising to pay the bill in order to have VA personnel fix his teeth.

“Because I was able to do my job and come out unscathed after 22 years with no lingering effect, I’m on my own,” Everlith said.

His father, Raymond Everlith Sr. of Fairfield, who was permanently disabled by injuries he received during the Korean War, has relied on the VA to provide his health care for more than 50 years. He said he is incensed that his son is not allowed the same benefit.

“This is no way to treat a veteran,” Everlith Sr. said. “He’s not looking for sympathy. He just wants to get work done on his mouth.”

Everlith said he wonders how many other veterans are in his position — he would like to hear from those who are at olesoldier2003@yahoo.com. He said he is not angry at his inability to receive benefits, but he is disappointed.

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Collins would look into Everlith’s case.

Everlith believes Congress should make VA health benefits for soldiers automatic after 20 years of service.

“To say, ‘Thanks for your service; you’re on your own now,’ which is what they told me (Wednesday), I was just shocked,” he said. “It’s just not right. The United States pays for health care for illegal immigrants, but they won’t pay for me. That’s the least they could do for somebody who gives 20 years for their country.”

Craig Crosby — 861-9253    ccrosby@centralmaine.com

May 18, 2007 – PHOENIX — Incensed by the sale of anti-war T-shirts and other paraphernalia emblazoned with the names and pictures of America’s military dead, some states are outlawing the commercial use of the fallen without the permission of their families.

Despite serious questions of constitutionality, Oklahoma and Louisiana enacted such laws last year, and the governors of Texas and Florida have legislation waiting on their desks. Arizona lawmakers are on the verge of approving a similar measure.

“You should have some rights to your own name and your own legacy, particularly if you’re a deceased veteran,” said state Sen. Jim Waring, a Republican who sponsored the Arizona bill. “Celebrities have that. Why shouldn’t our soldiers have that?”

The bills were prompted largely by pleas from military families upset that their loved ones’ names and photos were being used on phone cards, body armor and other products.

In many cases, the target of their ire is Dan Frazier, a Flagstaff man who sells T-shirts online that list the names of 3,155 U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. The shirts bear slogans such as “Bush Lied – They Died” and “Support Our Remaining Troops – Bring the Rest Home Alive.”

Margy Bons, a Phoenix-area woman whose Marine reservist son, Sgt. Michael A. Marzano, was killed by an insurgent bomb in Iraq in 2005, said he believed in his mission.

“My son was not duped into going to war,” she said. “I’m angry that somebody can use somebody else’s name for their political beliefs without permission.”

Frazier, 41, said he will not retreat. “I’m providing a valuable service to people to help show the enormity of the cost of war,” he said.

Under the Arizona bill, violators could get up to six months in jail and fines of $2,500 for an individual and $20,000 for an enterprise. A spokeswoman for Gov. Janet Napolitano declined to say whether she would sign the bill if it reached her desk.

The Florida bill would impose a $1,000 penalty per violation for using a military member’s name or photo commercially without permission.

Law enforcement officials in Oklahoma and Louisiana said they were unaware of any prosecutions under their laws. But the Arizona legislation also authorizes families to sue, and Bons said she will see Frazier in court.

Frazier said he has sold a couple of thousand shirts through his Web site, www.carryabigsticker.com, since 2005 and regards it as more of a political statement than a moneymaker. He said the shirts, which sell for $20 to $22, are expensive to produce.

Frazier said the various state bills and laws infringe on his First Amendment right to free speech.

Waring said Frazier is selling a commercial product, and that opens the door to state regulation.

“This is clearly commercial speech. He’s not giving the shirts away,” Waring said. “I don’t dispute that if he was giving the shirts away to make a political statement, we probably couldn’t do anything about that.”

However, a constitutional law expert said the facts that the dead soldiers’ names are public record and that the Arizona legislation grants exceptions for plays, articles and certain other uses could undermine its constitutionality.

“You can’t make some irrational distinctions and stop some people and not others without a really good reason,” said Paul Bender, an Arizona State University professor and a top Justice Department official in the Clinton administration.

Bender said the shirts are clearly a political statement: “He’s not advertising anything on the T-shirts.”