Veterans for Common Sense

Marine on leave from Iraq charged in knife attack

DAYTONA BEACH — Janet Tibbetts went to sleep on a friend’s sofa and woke up to a nightmare.

The 43-year-old woman, in town for Bike Week, told police she was roused from slumber Saturday night by a knife-wielding man who said he was a U.S. Marine who had returned from Iraq. He said he was going to cut off her 14-year-old son’s head while she watched, police said.

“I told him he wasn’t taking my son anywhere,” Tibbetts said, “and I got up to confront him.”

A tearful Tibbetts — who is recovering from multiple stab wounds — recalled the ordeal her son and three friends endured this weekend.

“You see this crap on TV and you never think it’s gonna happen to you,” Tibbetts said Monday.

According to a police report, Tibbetts and her son and their friends Debbie Brown, Barry Moore and Sherri Whidden were terrorized by Pfc. James J. Bovadilla, a U.S. Marine on active duty.

Bovadilla, 24, a Los Angeles native stationed in Camp LeJeune, N.C., recently returned from Iraq, a Marine spokesman said. He is a heavy equipment operator with the Marine’s Alpha Company, Transportation Support Battalion.

Lt. Jorge Escatell said Bovadilla is on leave but it is not clear why he was in Daytona Beach.

The recently widowed Tibbetts said she and her son, Bobby, were in town visiting Brown for Bike Week at her Hollywood Avenue apartment. While Brown, Moore and Whidden went out for the evening, Tibbetts and the boy watched TV and then went to sleep.

Bobby Tibbetts heard a noise in the kitchen and awoke to see Bovadilla approaching his sleeping mother with knives hidden behind his back, the police report says.

Tibbetts said she heard her son say, “Mom, do what he tells you.”

Bovadilla announced he was taking Bobby. When Tibbetts jumped up to stop him, the Marine attacked her, stabbing her left side with a kitchen knife and threatening to decapitate the teen, the police report shows.

Tibbetts said Bovadilla kept apologizing for his actions, but also told them he “had to make a statement.”

“He told us the Marines had broken up his family and had done him wrong,” Tibbetts said. “He said he had been in Iraq.”

Bovadilla put down his knife when the terrified woman began to talk about losing her husband in a motorcycle accident six months ago.

“I thought it would help if he could see that I was a person, too,” Tibbetts said.

But the moment of calm was broken when Tibbetts’ three friends returned home to find a stranger in the blood-spattered living room.

Moore began to scuffle with Bovadilla, who stabbed him several times, while Brown hid in a closet and tried unsuccessfully to call police from her cell phone, the police report states.

Brown then screamed at Bobby to get help.

The boy said he bolted through a second-story window, landing on a roof just below and then jumping to the ground. He ran toward patrol cars parked at the end of Main Street.

“I told them: ‘Someone broke into our apartment and they’re trying to kill my mom,’ ” Bobby Tibbetts said

According to the police report, the two officers found Bovadilla in the building’s stairwell.

Bovadilla told them he had become “spooked” as he walked on Hollywood Avenue and had crept into the crawlspace of Brown’s apartment building, the report said. He told them he remembered nothing else.

Bovadilla was being held Monday night at the Volusia County Branch Jail on $100,000 bail, charged with aggravated assault and aggravated burglary.

Moore remained hospitalized Monday at Halifax Medical Center with stab wounds to the face and a punctured eardrum.

Tibbetts was released from the hospital Monday afternoon.

As she sat outside the facility in a wheelchair, she lit a cigarette and said she was grateful to Moore and her son: “We came here for vacation, and we’re lucky to be alive.”

LYDA LONGA lyda.longa@news-jrnl.com

Veterans: New resource for war vets

WHAT’S UP: Close to 1 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating the largest group of war veterans since the Vietnam era, which ended 30 years ago. “Regardless of how you feel about the war, most of us agree that those service members deserve the best possible care and treatment our country can provide,” says an advocacy group called Veterans For Common Sense. “Unfortunately … some of our service members have fallen through the cracks with reports of homelessness, trauma and suicide.” In response, the group has compiled an unbiased guide for returning service members to help them navigate the bewildering array of benefits and programs aimed at those who have served.

WHAT’S NEXT: “Our goal is to … let the returning veterans know of where they can get assistance if there are any issues with readjustment on their return home,” the group says. The guide, posted on the Web site www.veteransforcommonsense.org, includes links to official government offices, as well as nongovernment and grass-roots groups. It even lists such organizations as Adopt-A-Platoon or Operation Hero Miles that directly support troops in the field. The group thinks its guide will be an important resource, pointing out that a New England Journal of Medicine report estimated that up to 15 percent of veterans returning from the war in Iraq eventually may seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Let’s be sure war vets get prompt, pro-active treatment

I read with great interest and concern, the Feb. 17 article on page one which addressed the issue of “whether the current Veterans Affairs Department can adequately help troops who may return from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder.”

I have worked closely with combat veterans at the Veterans Affairs Medical Centera in Temple and in Dallas where I spent a year specifically working with, diagnosing, and treating combat veterans with PTSD, primarily from the Vietnam War, but also the Gulf War and others. I am ashamed to admit that I had a prejudice, believing these individuals were a bunch of drunken, drug-abusing, moochers of society with a strong sense of entitlement because of a few years of service.

After working extensively with these veterans, I gained a whole new perspective regarding the development of PTSD and the almost inevitable drive to self-medicate in the absence of appropriate medical and psychological intervention. To more specifically understand the plight of Vietnam veterans, Jonathan Shay’s book “Achilles in Vietnam” is very enlightening. I am fearful that many of the same circumstances peculiar to the Vietnam War will come to attend those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and likewise increase their risk of PTSD.

Numerous studies have indicated that with aggressive early intervention, the incidence and severity of PTSD can be greatly reduced. Among combat veterans the significance of this extends to a decrease in alcoholism and illicit drug abuse; a decrease in domestic instability with an improved ability to maintain both marital and social relationships; greater work productivity with a lessened dependency on government support; and a decrease in future utilization of medical services (especially for psychiatric issues).

This is a case of pro-actively spending a dime to save a dollar in the future. These men and women have contributed mightily to the common good. We can and should provide the resources to assure a future for them free of the devastating consequences of PTSD or at the least, to minimize its impact on them, their families, and communities.

This is not only a funding issue because it also concerns the adequacy of services already being provided. Every combat veteran should be screened as soon as possible after they are transferred out of combat duty. I also believe a screening would be appropriate for all other veterans at discharge from military service. I would encourage those of you who are concerned about either these veterans and/or the funding issues to contact your U.S. congressmen and let them know of your concerns.

– Byron R. Wadley, M.D., is a Longview psychiatrist and a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Failing those who served

Veterans enter new battle – for benefits

Tens of thousands of veterans find winning the disability payments they’re owed is often doomed by lengthy delays, hurt by inconsistent rulings and failed by the veterans reps who try to help them

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/veterans/

Guard’s ‘draft’ duty in Iraq is backfiring

Once upon a time, the National Guard’s job was what its name implies: Guard us against surprise disasters, organized violence or security threats at home, with short-term, relatively low-risk service. Not so any more.

President Bush has “drafted” more than 108,000 of our 333,000 Guardsmen and women for endless months of dangerous duty in Iraq.

This week, Montana’s Gov. Brian Schweitzer appealed to Bush to bring back some of his state’s Guard troops and equipment from Iraq to deal with a wildfire “blowup” expected this summer in that state’s vast, dry timberlands. Magnitude of Montana’s problem:

•About 1,100 of the state’s 3,500 National Guard troops, traditionally used to help fight frequent forest fires, are on extended duty in Iraq.

•Ten of the state’s 12 Blackhawk helicopters, often used to haul firefighters and huge water tanks, are stationed in Iraq.

All across the USA, there are similar shortages of Guard members and equipment to deal with homeland emergencies. That sad situation seems sure to get worse.

National Guard recruiters are having their worst year in recent history. Their target is 63,000 new soldiers, but they are about 25{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} below their monthly goal to date.

Traditionally, a National Guard three-year service commitment has been for one weekend a month and two weeks summer training camp, plus possible emergency short-term duty. But Bush sneaked in his full-time, long-term draft for duty in Iraq.

Many Guard members and their families are upset about that bad faith deal. It’s backfiring and is another reason why the best way to support our troops in Iraq is to bring them home, sooner rather than later.

Iraq War Veteran Presents ‘A True Picture of Iraq’

U.S. unaware of realities of Iraq war, vet says

Critical of the U.S. media and Bush administration, a veteran of the war in Iraq spoke Thursday night about the realities of the conflict, saying that U.S. soldiers there were ill-equipped, poorly trained and largely unsupportive of the war.

Specialist E-4 Patrick Resta, who served as an Army medic in Iraq for eight months before returning to the United States in November, spoke before an audience of about 80 Brown students and local community members in Salomon 001.

Resta criticized the poor coverage of the Iraqi war by the U.S. media and said the goal of his speech and accompanying slide show was to show what it was really like in Iraq.

“One of the most important things veterans can do, like myself, is come out here and present a true picture of Iraq, because the American media isn’t letting people have that true picture,” he said.

Resta pointed out how poorly equipped U.S. soldiers were in Iraq. He said that of the 1,000 vehicles his brigade brought into Iraq, only about 10 to 15 percent of them were armored. In addition, of the vehicles that were armored, many of them had only a half-inch sheet of plywood or sandbags as protection.

“If you look at this fuel truck,” Resta said, referring to a vehicle in a photograph, “what you see are three sandbags. That’s the armor on that vehicle.”

Resta said many troops, including him, took out loans to buy their own personal armor, which they either wore or used as protection in their vehicles. He said he was never trained to use the rifle he was issued and his gas mask did not fit properly.

Resta said he also wanted to dispel the notion that Iraqis were content with the U.S. presence in their country.

“First, (Iraqis) would say, they were glad that Saddam (Hussein) was gone,” he said. “But they would always follow that up with, ‘At least under him, we had security.’ “

Resta also dismissed the idea that most of the troops in Iraq were satisfied with their situation, citing a poll in a military magazine that found that about 60 percent of soldiers in Iraq did not approve of the war. He also said soldiers were open about their disapproval of the war, and many wanted to leave.

“There was a running joke that IRAQ stood for ‘I really am quitting,’ ” he said.

Resta said he was upset at the apathy many people felt toward the war. He said Iraq was a potential Vietnam, but attributed the difference in the protests between the Iraqi war and Vietnam War to the absence of the military draft.

“The reason that this is being forgotten is because there’s no draft, and there’s no one protesting it because it’s not affecting them,” he said. “It’s sad.”

But Resta said he thinks the reinstatement of the draft is just around the corner.

Derek Seidman GS, who brought Resta to Brown with the help of student groups Common Ground and the Brown Muslim Student Association, said he was pleased with Resta’s speech.

“I just thought it was really important for Brown students to hear a solider who went over there and (about) what compelled him to speak out against the war,” Seidman said. “He has really important stuff to say.”

Audience members also said they found Resta’s presentation important. Some called the media’s representation of the war in Iraq alarming.

“I think that it’s a disgrace that our media does not portray everything in Iraq,” Liza Littenberg-Brown ’08 said.

“It’s just unfathomable that what’s going on in Iraq is this far off the mark,” added Leah Segal ’08.

I served on a U.S. Army Civil Affairs team while deployed to Iraq. Among other things, Civil Affairs soldiers are tasked with evaluating and repairing the local infrastructure and minimizing the effects of battle on civilians. Typically, CA operates in small teams of 6 to 8 soldiers that are attached to combat forces for a designated area on the ground. I kept a diary during the deployment, and the following is an example of a typical day:

June 19, 2003 Baghdad, Iraq

It’s been an absolutely brutal day. The thermometer hit 122 degrees before 1300 hours, and we’re not even into the peak of summer. The team spent the day driving around trying to buy 10,000 gallons of gas for the generators at the Yarmouk Hospital. You would not believe the level of bureaucracy involved in it. The black market is such a problem here that they have devised elaborate systems to prevent large gas purchases.

We started out at the hospital, which serves about half of Baghdad and is considered one of the best around. Right. We call it “Stephen King Memorial Hospital,” since it’s always a horror show. More on that later. We picked up the head of maintenance for the hospital and drove to the Doura refinery to get a permission slip from the clerk to buy that much gas. From there we went to the distribution center, which is across town. No dice, permission slip invalid, must go back to see the distribution manager at Doura. Back to the refinery, meet with the MFIC of oil distribution for all Iraq. Drink tea, make nicey-nicey-smiley-smiley, get his permission, go back to distribution across town. Try to pay for the gas, get told they only take checks. Off to the bank at the Ministry of Oil. Got the check, delivered it to the distribution center, got the receipt. Back to the refinery with the receipt to be told that we’ve been screwing off for too long and that all the trucks are gone for the day. Maybe tomorrow.

Some of these bastards are being needlessly bureaucratic in hope for a bribe. Fine by me, we can arrest the lot of them and they can spend a fun few weeks in the Sauna & Detention Center at the airport.

All things considered, the 10,000 gallons of gas only cost $500. What a bargain. The guy that we helped from the hospital had the nerve to ask us to pass on to his boss that he did a good job and deserved a “bonus”, which our interpreter said is basically another bribe. We patiently explained to him that he needed to file the contract and paperwork from this little adventure so that we would not have to do this again. We’ll see.

After driving back and forth across the city for most of the day, it was back to Yarmouk Hospital to investigate reports of a “garbage problem”. That’s putting it lightly. They throw everything in a pile out back, including needles, bloody bandages, and human body parts. It seems the doctors do not understand the whole “biohazard” idea. What happens to the stuff? They don’t care, but I know a stray cat was dragging a human liver away for dinner. Another had a finger in his mouth and fled the scene as soon as we arrived.

We’re at Yarmouk Hospital almost every day, which will hopefully make a difference because that place is a hell-hole. It’s so over-the-top gross that it’s comical. Bloody drag marks on the floor, and none of the doctors even notice. The morgue refrigerators are broken, so there are dead bodies stacked like cordwood against the back fence. The administrators want a wall built by the morgue, since bodies have started turning up missing every night. Frickin’ body snatchers! Although, it does solve the problem of overcrowding…

Three of us walked in yesterday, and one of the dead dudes had been left in the middle of the hallway. He had frozen in the dying cockroach position with his arms and legs up and fingers in claws. Our team leader, Captain Sinclair, walked right past him on the way in and didn’t notice him, but on the way out she finally saw him, jumped back and exclaimed, “Jesus! Where’d he come from!” We tried to explain that he’d been there the whole time, but she didn’t believe us. It’s not like we would cook that up just for a practical joke (it’s much too hot out for that kind of shenanigans).

CPA (the civilians who “work” downtown ) contracted without us knowing for a company to put in new generators at the hospital. Cool, right? The old ones are on their last legs, and that’s the only back-up system the hospital has for the 12 hours a day the power is off. The shady contractor was lifting one of the generators out with a crane but didn’t unhook the power cable. When the cable pulled taught, the generator swayed to the side and struck another generator, sparked, and they both burst into flames. The contractors all sprinted away, leaving the fire to burn. After somebody went and got the fire truck (you can’t just call 911 here), the firemen showed up in flimsy jumpsuits and sandals, and proceeded to smoke cigarettes while standing in puddles of spilled fuel.

With the generators blown there’s no power to the hospital at all when the grid is off. So, our team arranged a dedicated line from the electrical substation so the hospital would have 24/7 power. Unfortunately, Hadji likes to steal power lines and burn them to retrieve the melted copper, and the dedicated line is exposed where it runs under a bridge. (Of course, trying to cut a power line will get you shot by U.S. troops, no questions asked.) The bridge is like a shooting gallery, but every few days a Hadji will manage to cut and steal the live wire. Six times in three weeks, and people die at the hospital every time the power goes off. It just goes to show that some people can’t be helped. It also goes to show that I never expected I’d advise soldiers that the ROE says you kill people for stealing wire.

Jason Thelen served as a Captain in the US Army Reserve during Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is the one in a series of columns he is writing for Veterans for Common Sense. He can be reached at jthelen294@yahoo.com

Find more articles by Jason Thelen. Read previous columns here:

American Style Democracy in Iraq — Arrogance? March 4, 2005

The Feres Doctrine Prevents Accountability and Endangers the Troops, February 24, 2005

It could have just as easily been me, February 18, 2005

Open Letter to Senator Cornyn, February 9, 2005

Dear America from an Iraq War veteran, February 2, 2005

Dispatches From The Quagmire: Safe at Home, Ill at Ease

The biggest group of Washington soldiers who served in Iraq are starting to return, and it’s not clear we’re ready for them.

In the Seattle armory on a recent Saturday morning, several dozen spouses and parents of National Guard soldiers stationed in Iraq listen to a briefing by Guard and Veterans Affairs staff on what to expect when their loved ones return and how to deal with it. There’s a recently returned soldier in the room, too, and he’s exuding a serious intensity and nodding his head as such issues as scream-inducing nightmares and emotional numbness arise. He’s in the room as a media handler, not a participant, but the discussion strikes such a painful chord that he raises his hand.

“It’s kind of difficult for me sitting here listening to this,” says 48-year-old Sgt. 1st Class Jack Martin, adding that he might have to leave. Martin served nine months in Iraq with the Guard’s 81st Brigade Combat Team and returned early, shortly before Thanksgiving, because of back problems aggravated by war. “Every day for three months, we got mortared and rocketed,” he relates, referring to attacks on his base near Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. The experience has left him so jittery, he says, that when he heard someone humming upstairs in the armory, he thought an alarm was going off and nearly jumped out of his seat. Sleeplessness is a chronic problem. “Last night, I went to sleep at 5 o’clock,” he says. “My alarm went off at 5:30.”

Soldiers like Martin are beginning to come back from the war. Several Washington state units have completed their tours, including a 4,000-strong Army Stryker Brigade and two Guard units of a little over 100 soldiers each. The largest group of Guard returnees, the 3,200 Washington soldiers of the 81st Brigade, is arriving home now, in phases. Unlike earlier waves of returnees, the 81st Brigade—part of the “weekend warrior” force that the war has employed in unprecedented numbers—has witnessed some of the deadliest fighting in Iraq and has lost nine members.

Those already home are trying to process what they’ve experienced and re-enter society. Preliminary information suggests that these soldiers, encountering a kind of guerrilla, on-the-ground combat that American troops haven’t seen since Vietnam, are having significant mental-health issues. Last July, a New England Journal of Medicine study sent a lightning bolt through the medical establishment in reporting that up to 17 percent of soldiers surveyed met the criteria for major depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In part because the soldiers surveyed were in Iraq before the insurgency grew more intense, that is widely considered to be too low a figure to describe the troops serving there now.

As federal, local, and private agencies gear up to receive these soldiers, everybody is trying to avoid the mistakes of Vietnam, when traumatized soldiers returned to a hostile or disinterested homeland and little government support. “We, as a country, screwed it up about as bad as it could be screwed up,” says John Lee, deputy director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs. Today, in many ways, Washington is leading the way in services for Iraq veterans. At the same time, the scarcity of new funding for such services calls into question the government’s ability to handle the influx of soldiers yet to arrive. “I don’t think we’re ready to deal with who’s coming home,” says U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, a former Navy psychiatrist.

Some soldiers now back home seem to be adjusting well. “I went out and played in the desert,” is how 22-year-old Ben Nyquist talks about the 14 months he spent on active duty with a Seattle-based Reserve unit known as the 70th Regional Readiness Command. Uninvolved in direct combat, he came home in May and immediately resumed his part-time job as a barista in a Factoria Starbucks and his place at Bellevue Community College, studying computer engineering. “I picked up my life where it left off,” he says.

Probably more typical is Michael Kunzelman, who served in Iraq for 15 months with the Guard’s 1161st Transportation Company. Hauling supplies around Iraq, Kunzelman once had his truck blown three feet off the ground by a roadside bomb. His truck landed in one piece, and he just kept driving. For the most part, the 39-year-old Burien resident is functioning normally, having taken a new job upon his return for a company that rebuilds railroad tracks. But he has his moments, like on a business trip when he awoke in a motel at 3 in the morning, on the floor, with his blankets spread from one side of the room to the other. The weirdest thing, as he told his dad, was that he remembered nothing of the tortured night. “I know,” said his dad, a Vietnam vet.

Many of these soldiers, coming from the Guard and Reserves, are older than those who fought in previous wars, so they are returning to lives in progress, lives that often include families. The stress placed on those families has been one hallmark of the war so far. “Extreme increase in divorces,” reads a slide presented at the recent armory event.

“They’re not the same people that left,” says Sheila Kelly, who is married to a soldier in the 1161st. “They have this life we’ll never know—they’ll never talk about it.” She says her husband is “just quiet and pulled back, like he’s scared to open up. Even if things happen at work now, he doesn’t talk about it much.” Their three kids, ages 10, 12, and 18, notice it, too. “They kept asking what was wrong with Dad. Is he OK? All I can say is, ‘Give Dad time.'”

For veterans looking for jobs, this can be a difficult time. Federal law protects the jobs of most guardsmen and reservists while they are at war. But soldiers who had jobs like seasonal farm work are not protected. Others quit their old jobs thinking they could easily find new ones upon their return. Still others were in the regular armed services but left after their tour to discover that the job market was far from easy.

“I never fathomed it would be this difficult to find work after serving my country,” says Steve Hurt, a 26-year-old Ephrata resident and a member of the 1161st. When Hurt got back in August, he found that his wife and newborn had moved from their residence in Leavenworth to Ephrata to be closer to other families of his unit. Hurt stayed there, thinking he could do better than the $8-an-hour retail job he had in Leavenworth. In five months, despite numerous applications, nothing has turned up except an offer from a trucking company, which would require him to be on the road for two or three weeks at a time with only a few days between stints. “After being gone for 18 months, I don’t know if that’s what I want to do,” he says.

Meantime, one gets the sense that Hurt and his peers are still making sense of what they saw in Iraq and what they continue to see on TV. Hurt calls Iraq “a whole different world,” where people in remote areas live in mud houses and the men, according to his commanders, send their wives and children out to the middle of the road to stop an Army convoy. “We were cautioned not to stop for anything,” he says, a directive that unsettled several in the unit, including him, “a pretty strong Christian.” Having seen the insurgency and the resulting casualties, Hurt says he “doesn’t understand why the military is still there. . . . If the country doesn’t want to be free, let ’em be.”

Others would eagerly go back, like Staff Sgt. Kenneth Harmon-Brown of the Guard’s Bravo Company, 14th Combat Engineers Battalion, based at Fort Lewis. One of the presenters at the Saturday armory event, Harmon-Brown says when he saw Iraqis in their mud houses, he’d get a great feeling that he was making their quality of life better. Still, he keenly remembers some of the less pleasant aspects of duty. Often, he and fellow soldiers in his unit would be charged with finding and disarming explosives that Iraqis had hidden in the innards of dead dogs, sheep, and other animals lying on the side of the road. “You’d be digging through some dog’s chest cavity,” he says. “There’d be those smells and the sounds of maggots, and now you’re crawling through this stuff.”

“We have learned a lot about taking care of soldiers returning from combat,” says Steve Hunt of the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound’s main facility on Beacon Hill in Seattle. There was no term “post-traumatic stress disorder” when Vietnam vets were first coming home. That label came years later, when the psychological trauma endured by vets could no longer be ignored. Now, Hunt says, there is an appreciation for war trauma and also an awareness that doctors might need to treat symptoms they don’t understand, such as the nerve damage government authorities finally admitted Gulf War soldiers suffered after exposure to chemical agents. In an attempt to address both physical- and mental-health needs for troops coming back now, the VA has set up a “deployment health clinic.” Hunt, who is its medical director, encourages returning soldiers to come to the clinic for a comprehensive exam, including a mental-health screening. The clinic hopes to catch soldiers who might not acknowledge they need treatment, a prevalent phenomenon in a military culture that views psychological distress as a weakness and a potential career killer.

The VA, through its satellite Seattle Vet Center, has also recently hired a retired Navy chaplain and psychologist, Mike Colson, to serve as an outreach coordinator for returning troops. Colson got out of the Navy in November, after serving in Iraq and experiencing what he calls his own “dark period” for which he sought counseling. He, along with other VA staff, are continually engaged in workshops like the one at the armory, talking with soldiers and their families about war’s psychological effects and how to get help.

Not only the federal VA but the state Department of Veterans Affairs offers PTSD counseling. The department contracts with private therapists around the state, which is especially helpful in rural areas not served by VA facilities. It is the only such state agency in the country to do so. It is also one of an array of state and federal agencies to sign a “memorandum of understanding” meant to coordinate all types of services for soldiers returning to Washington, from health needs to job placement. “There’s a huge state commitment to veterans coming back,” says Julie Mock, the Bothell-based board president of the National Gulf Resource Center, an advocacy group for veterans.

Yet the state’s PTSD program is not expecting any new funding, given the horrible shape of the state budget. In fact, it’s trying to keep its funding from being cut, according to Tom Schumacher, the program’s director. He estimates that the program’s caseload has increased about 30 percent in the past year. “We’re really going to have to make do somehow,” he says.

There’s been no great surge of federal money to the VA, either. Miles McFall, director of PTSD programs for the Seattle and American Lake facilities, says that he has, to date, hired no new staff to deal with returning troops. He hopes to do so, though, by winning a portion of a $10 million pool of federal grant money for which VA facilities around the country are now competing. “I resist the perception that the VA is on the ropes and doesn’t have funding to take care of people,” McFall says, noting that only a percentage of soldiers are plagued with mental-health problems and only a percentage of those seek treatment. “I don’t anticipate having a landslide we can’t handle.”

At this stage of the game, though, with many or most of Washington state’s soldiers who have served in Iraq yet to return, it’s hard to say. “Do we have the resources?” asks John Lee of the state Department of Veterans Affairs. “I don’t know. There are some things about the population returning that we simply do not know about.”

nshapiro@seattleweekly.com