Veterans for Common Sense

Insult to Injury: You Know They Treat Us Like Shit Says Iraq War Veteran

WASHINGTON — Most patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington have a lot on their minds: the war they just fought, the injuries they came home with, the future that lies ahead. The last thing a wounded soldier needs to worry about is where the next meal is coming from. But for hundreds of Walter Reed patients, that’s a real concern. Starting this month, the Army has started making some wounded soldiers pay for the food they eat at the hospital.

Paying out of pocket for hospital meals can impose a serious financial burden, costing hundreds of dollars every month. That can be a lot of money to a military family. But perhaps worse, the meal charge feels like an ungrateful slap in the face to some soldiers. “I think it sucks,” said a soldier from West Virginia who broke his neck in Iraq after falling off a roof. “I think that people should be able to eat. They get us over there, get us wounded and shot up and then tell us: Fend for yourself. You are all heroes, but here you go.”

Whether it is the lack of protective armor for troopsin the field or, now, wounded troops paying for food, complaints from soldiers have shed an unflattering light on how the military bureaucracy takes care of its troops. And they have prompted accusations that the Pentagon is fighting the Iraq war on the cheap, no matter what the cost to soldiers. The meal charge policy “is an example of a much larger problem relating to the overall cost of the war. It is all an indication of extreme costs they are trying to make up on the backs of these men and women,” said Steve Robinson, a retired Army Ranger and the executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. “If the war is costing too much, the one place you don’t skimp is on soldier and veteran programs. The administration has no problem deficit-spending on the needs of conducting war, and we see no reason not to apply the same methodology to veterans’ benefits and soldier care.”

A veterans’ advocate who lost the use of his legs fighting in Vietnam said the meal charges constitute a personal affront to soldiers. “I don’t care what bureaucratic bullshit they come up with, this is an insult,” said Bobby Muller, chairman of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and director of the foundation’s Alliance for Security. “I cannot believe that people are being charged for their meals. This is a showstopper.”

For its part, the Army explains — and defends — the food charges at Walter Reed by saying they apply only to some outpatients, not inpatients confined to hospital beds. “I have been absolutely assured … that no inpatient has been charged for meals,” Walter Reed spokesman Don Vandrey told Salon. But until Jan. 3, outpatient soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan ate for free in the chow hall. Now outpatient soldiers there longer than 90 days pay for meals in cash. Although Walter Reed did not disclose the exact number of soldiers affected, the policy is most likely to affect at least the estimated 600 soldiers getting long-term outpatient care at the hospital in what the Army calls “medical hold.”

Soldiers in medical hold are considered outpatients, but they usually live on hospital grounds — some are put up in nearby hotels if housing on the grounds is full — and have little choice but to buy food at the Walter Reed chow hall. Even as outpatients, soldiers in medical hold often have serious injuries. Some have been blown up by roadside bombs or crumpled in Humvee wrecks. They have serious head wounds and amputations. Others are struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder after being flown out of Iraq with shellshock. Some soldiers in medical hold are waiting to get processed out of the Army because their wounds are so serious that they will never return to duty. But processing at Walter Reed can take over a year, much to the frustration of the soldiers who would prefer to get outpatient treatment near their homes and families. Soldiers in medical hold also complain they are still expected to line up for daily formations and buy new uniforms even as they struggle with debilitating physical and mental trauma from their service in Iraq. They say being charged for food while they’re recovering is one more indignity.

From the Army’s perspective, the meal charges follow Army rules that are supposed to prohibit soldiers from getting free food as well as a separate food budget. But the only soldiers prohibited from getting both, under the new rules, are the long-term outpatients. “If they get [the cash each month] they would be expected to pay for their meals,” said Vandrey, the Walter Reed spokesman. He said the hospital was “really cracking down on soldiers who are getting both.”

But here’s how the new rules drain hundreds of dollars a month from the pockets of soldiers: Enlisted soldiers get an extra $267.18 every month in their paychecks for food. So before this month, all soldiers at Walter Reed got free food at the chow hall and extra cash. Soldiers say they received that extra food money while they were serving in Iraq, too, and they just let their families spend it on groceries. Now, though, the outpatient soldiers forced to buy meals at Walter Reed say they could spend around $15 a day if they eat three square meals at the dining hall — about $3 for breakfast and around $6 each for lunch and dinner. That adds up to $450 a month, $183 more than soldiers’ food allowance from the military. (The situation is even worse for officers, who get only $183.99 extra each month for a food allowance.) The soldiers at Walter Reed point out that that they don’t have the option of eating at home to save money because they are stuck at the hospital. Vandrey said spending $6 for lunch and dinner sounds excessive. “I eat breakfast and lunch there every day and I never spend more than $5 a meal,” he said.

Most soldiers in medical hold eat at Walter Reed every day, too. But for those well enough to leave the hospital grounds, a favorite spot — and a rare treat – is the local Red Lobster, particularly if the press is paying. At a recent meal there, three soldiers from Walter Reed told Salon the new meal charges were putting a serious strain on already tight pocketbooks. (All three ate hefty-size meals.) “I don’t starve, [but] it might be beans and weenies or a cup of noodles,” said the soldier from West Virginia who was treated for the broken neck; he can now walk, but does so with an awkward, bowlegged gait. “I’m not going to starve to death, but it is an issue that really sucks.” A soldier from Pennsylvania said, “They want to charge us for uniforms, for food, everything.”

Notwithstanding the charges for food, it should be said, Walter Reed has gained recognition for its excellent medical treatment of acute battlefield injuries, including those sustained by amputees. Soldiers seem to agree that while the hospital has its problems, that particular credit is well deserved.

The soldiers interviewed for this story asked for anonymity because they feared getting into trouble with their chain of command for speaking out. Many soldiers from Walter Reed attended the Heroes Red, White and Blue Inaugural Ball last week, attended by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and others. Soldiers told Salon they were lectured on the bus on the way to the ball that they would face consequences if any untoward comments about the military appeared in the press. One soldier said he and others were told that they should not feel compelled to speak with reporters, but if they did, they would be in their commander’s office in the morning if they said anything negative.

Beyond the creeping food bill, perhaps what’s most bothersome to soldiers about the meal charge rule is the principle of the thing: Paying for food at an Army hospital after fighting in a war doesn’t seem right. “You know they treat us like shit up here,” said the soldier from Pennsylvania. One officer from the Army Reserve who served in Iraq told Salon he was “highly disgusted” at being asked to pay for food after being stuck at Walter Reed. “It affects me to a point, but it has a tremendous impact financially on the junior enlisted soldiers,” he said. “After these kids get physically or mentally injured in combat, and then you expect them to take away from their personal finances to feed themselves? That is what disturbs me the most.”

Two live grenades found in luggage of soldier returning from Iraq

ATLANTA (AP) Two live hand grenades were found in the luggage of a soldier returning from Iraq on Thursday, halting operations at the international terminal of Atlanta’s airport for about a half-hour, a spokeswoman said.

The soldier was aware of the grenades and tried to alert the Transportation Security Agency, “but it was too late. The bags were already being screened,” spokeswoman Felicia Browder said.

She said there was no evacuation of the terminal, but people were kept back a safe distance until a bomb unit removed the grenades.

Passengers on a handful of international flights were not able to leave their planes for more than a half-hour during the incident, Browder said.

The soldier, who was not identified, was released to the military, she said.

Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces (This Means a Military Draft Soon)

January 28, 2005

Dear Senator Frist, Senator Reid, Speaker Hastert, and Representative Pelosi:

The United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume. Those responsibilities are real and important. They are not going away. The United States will not and should not become less engaged in the world in the years to come. But our national security, global peace and stability, and the defense and promotion of freedom in the post-9/11 world require a larger military force than we have today. The administration has unfortunately resisted increasing our ground forces to the size needed to meet today’s (and tomorrow’s) missions and challenges.

So we write to ask you and your colleagues in the legislative branch to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. While estimates vary about just how large an increase is required, and Congress will make its own determination as to size and structure, it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years.

There is abundant evidence that the demands of the ongoing missions in the greater Middle East, along with our continuing defense and alliance commitments elsewhere in the world, are close to exhausting current U.S. ground forces. For example, just late last month, Lieutenant General James Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, reported that “overuse” in Iraq and Afghanistan could be leading to a “broken force.” Yet after almost two years in Iraq and almost three years in Afghanistan, it should be evident that our engagement in the greater Middle East is truly, in Condoleezza Rice’s term, a “generational commitment.” The only way to fulfill the military aspect of this commitment is by increasing the size of the force available to our civilian leadership.

The administration has been reluctant to adapt to this new reality. We understand the dangers of continued federal deficits, and the fiscal difficulty of increasing the number of troops. But the defense of the United States is the first priority of the government. This nation can afford a robust defense posture along with a strong fiscal posture. And we can afford both the necessary number of ground troops and what is needed for transformation of the military.

In sum: We can afford the military we need. As a nation, we are spending a smaller percentage of our GDP on the military than at any time during the Cold War. We do not propose returning to a Cold War-size or shape force structure. We do insist that we act responsibly to create the military we need to fight the war on terror and fulfill our other responsibilities around the world.

The men and women of our military have performed magnificently over the last few years. We are more proud of them than we can say. But many of them would be the first to say that the armed forces are too small. And we would say that surely we should be doing more to honor the contract between America and those who serve her in war. Reserves were meant to be reserves, not regulars. Our regulars and reserves are not only proving themselves as warriors, but as humanitarians and builders of emerging democracies. Our armed forces, active and reserve, are once again proving their value to the nation. We can honor their sacrifices by giving them the manpower and the materiel they need.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution places the power and the duty to raise and support the military forces of the United States in the hands of the Congress. That is why we, the undersigned, a bipartisan group with diverse policy views, have come together to call upon you to act. You will be serving your country well if you insist on providing the military manpower we need to meet America’s obligations, and to help ensure success in carrying out our foreign policy objectives in a dangerous, but also hopeful, world.

Respectfully,

Signed by: Peter Beinart, Jeffrey Bergner, Daniel Blumenthal, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Ivo H. Daalder, Thomas Donnelly, Michele Flournoy, Frank F. Gaffney, Jr., Reuel Marc Gerecht, Lt. Gen. Buster C. Glosson (USAF, retired), Bruce P. Jackson, Frederick Kagan, Robert Kagan, Craig Kennedy, Paul Kennedy, Col. Robert Killebrew (USA, retired), William Kristol, Will Marshall, Clifford May, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey (USA, retired), Daniel McKivergan, Joshua Muravchik, Steven J. Nider, Michael O’Hanlon, Mackubin Thomas Owens, Ralph Peters, Danielle Pletka, Stephen P. Rosen, Major Gen. Robert H. Scales (USA, retired), Randy Scheunemann, Gary Schmitt, Walter Slocombe, James B. Steinberg

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted (10 to 8) today to endorse Alberto Gonzales as U.S. Attorney General. Despite support for Gonzales by all the Republican Committee members, other lawmakers and civil rights and human rights groups had cited grave concerns over the Bush administration’s pick.

Skeptical lawmakers and advocates had asked for another Committee hearing on the nominee. They said some of Gonzales’ answers at the first hearing on January 6 were not sufficient to allay doubts about his record on torture and human rights.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) urged senators to oppose confirmation of Gonzales if more information was not forthcoming.

“We strongly believe that an additional Committee hearing, the production of relevant documents under the Administration’s control which have not been previously made available, and more complete responses to written questions already posed are all necessary for a full and fair review of Mr. Gonzales’ confirmation,” the letter said. “If these actions are not taken prior to a Committee vote, then we urge you to oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales.”

In November 2004, dozens of civil and human rights groups sent a letterto members of the Judiciary Committee, raising questions about Gonzales’ record. Since then, the list of organizations signing on to the letter has grown.

In addition, many others, including religious leaders, military veterans, lawyers, and former judges, have expressed their concerns over Gonzales’ nomination, citing his role in setting the current administration’s policy on detention, interrogation, and torture.

“We want American service members who are captured to be protected from torture under international and U.S. laws,” said Charles Sheehan Miles, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. “Under the arguments put forth by Alberto Gonzales, our own servicemen and women would be subject to torture and we would have no recourse to the Geneva conventions.”

Several groups had outright opposed the nomination, citing mainly Gonzales’ record on torture and human rights.

“As a human rights organization committed to protecting the rule of law, we are compelled to take what is, for us, this unusual step. This is the second time in 27 years that Human Rights First has opposed a presidential nominee, and the first such action since 1981,” Human Rights First stated. “But in a nation committed to observing the rule of law as it is, not as power finds it convenient to be, we cannot accept the President’s decision here. We urge the Senate to reject Mr. Gonzales’ nomination.”

The civil rights community also addressed the importance of diversity in the President’s administration.

“The Leadership Conference recognizes the historic significance of Mr. Gonzales’ appointment as the first Hispanic American to serve as Attorney General,” said Henderson, who went on to note “LCCR’s significant concerns with Mr. Gonzales’ past law enforcement record and his failure during the confirmation process to clearly explain his positions on critical civil and human rights issues” as the basis for the organization’s position.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund expressed concerns about Gonzales’s record, while the National Council of La Raza endorsed the nomination.

Gonzales’s confirmation is expected to move to the Senate floor for a vote soon. 

VA nominee pledges probe of benefits

By SUZANNE GAMBOA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON — Jim Nicholson, President Bush’s nominee to head the Veterans Affairs Department, promised Monday to look into reported disparities in disability compensation from state to state.

Nicholson, a Vietnam War veteran and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told a Senate panel that disability benefits should not vary based on where a veteran lives.

Freshman Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. , a new member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, question Nicholson about a report in the Chicago Sun-Times earlier this month about compensation disparities.

Obama said that his state is 50th among 52 states and territories for the average amount of disability compensation. A veteran in Illinois can expect to receive $5,000 less than a veteran in Puerto Rico, he said.

“If a veteran has lost a leg and lives in Illinois, he should get the same disability as a veteran who lost a leg and lives in Puerto Rico,” Obama said.

The VA inspector general is investigating the disparities. Nicholson said he was unaware of any incentives being offered to VA disability compensation adjudicators for refusing benefits or keeping them low, as some veterans have suggested to Obama.

“Veterans’ entitlement to federal benefits is the same regardless of where in this country they may reside,” Nicholson said. “This is really a high priority for me, to really get my arms around this.”

Nicholson’s nomination was approved by the Senate panel. He still faces a confirmation vote before the full Senate.

Other committee members questioned Nicholson on services to veterans returning from Iraq, particularly in mental health; the effect of military base closures on veterans’ health care and how he’ll balance veterans’ needs with an anticipated tight budget proposal next month from Bush.

“It now appears clear that the fiscal environment that you will inherit will be less friendly than the relatively flush times the VA has enjoyed over the past four years,” said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, the committee’s chairman.

Nicholson has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Colorado governor in 2006.

Iraq Veterans Turn War Critics

Sean Huze enlisted in the Marine Corps right after the Sept. 11 attacks and was, in his own words, “red, white and blue all the way” when he deployed to Iraq 16 months later. Unquestioning in his support of the invasion, he grew irritated when his father, a former National Guardsman, expressed doubts about the war.

Today, all that has changed. Haunted by the civilian casualties he witnessed, Corporal Huze has become one of a small but increasing number of Iraq veterans who have formed or joined groups to oppose the war or to criticize the way it is being fought.

The two most visible organizations – Operation Truth, of which Corporal Huze is a member, and Iraq Veterans Against the War – were founded only last summer but are growing in membership and sophistication. The Internet has helped them spread their word and galvanize like-minded people in ways unimaginable to activist veterans of previous generations, who are also lending help.

“There’s strength in numbers,” Corporal Huze said. “By ourselves, we’re lone voices, a whisper in a swarm of propaganda out there. Combined, we can become a roar and have an impact on the issues that we care about.”

Those who turn to the groups are generally united in their disillusionment, though their responses to the war vary: Iraq Veterans seeks a quick withdrawal from Iraq; Operation Truth focuses on the day-to-day issues affecting troops and veterans.

Iraq Veterans Against the War, which started in July with 8 people, now has more than 150 members, including some still serving in Iraq, said Michael Hoffman, a former lance corporal in the Marines and a co-founder of the group.

Operation Truth, based in New York, began with 5 members and now has 300, with an e-mail list of more than 25,000 people. Its Web site is a compendium of soldiers and veterans’ stories, a media digest on the war, and a rallying point on issues affecting troops.

Iraq veterans are keenly aware of the need to argue for their interests, given the struggles of veterans of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf war. The older veterans have offered a reservoir of knowledge and compassion to help Iraq veterans avoid the mistakes they made.

It took Vietnam Veterans of America almost 15 years to have an effect on government policy, said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group for gulf war veterans. Mr. Robinson said his group did not come into its own for about eight years, despite help from Vietnam Veterans of America.

Mr. Robinson is working closely with Operation Truth, which he said had already surpassed his operation in raising money.

For Corporal Huze, the transformation began when he returned home in fall 2003. Unable to forget the carnage he had seen in Iraq, he began to grapple with the justification for the war, he said.

“By sometime in December 2003, I came to the conclusion that W.M.D.’s weren’t there and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and now I’m left with all that I’d experienced in Iraq and nothing to balance it,” Corporal Huze said, emphasizing that he was speaking as a citizen, not as a marine. “When I came to that conclusion, I felt this sense of betrayal. I was full of rage and depression.”

That rage has since fueled Corporal Huze, a native of Baton Rouge, La., who is awaiting a medical discharge for a head injury. With the consent of his commanding officers at Camp Lejeune, he speaks regularly to the media and others as a representative for Operation Truth.

“Who I was before the war, who I was in Iraq and who I am now are three very different men,” Corporal Huze said. “I don’t think I can ever have the blind trust in the government like I had before. I think that my being over in Iraq as an active participant, I’m a bit more responsible than others for things there. And I think by speaking out now, it’s my amends.” He added, “I don’t know if it will ever balance.”

Operation Truth does not address the necessity of the war. David Chasteen of suburban Washington, a former Army captain in the Third Infantry Division and a member of the group’s board, said Operation Truth hoped to stake out a nonpartisan position on aspects of the war that could realistically be changed, as opposed to tackling the administration’s Middle East policy.

“Our attitude was ‘Want to do something? Here’s what you can do: get body armor to the guys on the ground, get interpreters to people on the ground, get people who know how to plan this stuff on the ground,’ ” said Mr. Chasteen, who said his experience in Iraq as an expert on unconventional weapons left him disillusioned about the war. “Maybe if we tell people what we saw, maybe some of these things can get fixed. I definitely think we added momentum to some issues.”

Operation Truth points out that when Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld took questions from soldiers in Kuwait last month about equipment shortages, the Web site’s readers sent 3,400 e-mail messages in 24 hours to members of Congress asking for hearings into the issue, which are to be held in the next few months.

Organizing those who have recently returned from Iraq is an uphill battle, older veterans and Iraq veterans agreed. The first priority for many is resuming their lives. And unlike most Vietnam veterans, many Iraq veterans have remained in the military after returning, limiting their ability to participate in groups critical of the government.

Despite their different focuses, Operation Truth and Iraq Veterans Against the War overlap on some issues, most notably with lobbying the government to address what is expected by many veterans of Iraq and previous wars to be a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among those who served in Iraq.

Some who served in Vietnam, like Tim Origer of the Santa Fe, N.M., chapter of Veterans for Peace, have said Iraq veterans face a more intense version of the stresses they experienced: constant threats inherent to guerrilla war, inability to distinguish friend from foe, and profound despair that often accompanies taking a life, especially a civilian’s.

In March 2003, reports of suicide-bombing attacks on American soldiers had reached Sgt. Rob Sarra’s Marine Corps unit in an Iraqi town called al-Shatra. A short time later, soldiers saw an older woman walking toward them with a small bundle. The marines, fearing that she might be a bomber, called to her to stop, but she kept walking.

“I was looking at her, and I thought ‘I have to stop this woman,’ ” Mr. Sarra said. “So I fired on her, and then the other marines fired on her.”

“When we got to her, we saw that she was pulling out a white flag,” he said. “She had tea and bread in her bag. I kept thinking, ‘Was she a grandmother? Was she a mother?’ “

Mr. Sarra, who has left the Marines after nine years, struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder in Iraq and at home in Chicago before seeking counseling and help from other veterans. Now he is one of the leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

“When someone is wounded or goes through P.T.S.D., it brings what they went through to the forefront,” Mr. Sarra said. “I knew when I joined the Marines that if I was going to be there for 20 years, I’d face combat. But the question is, why did we go?”

A grenade tossed into Robert Acosta’s Humvee in Baghdad in July 2003 left him without his right hand and shattered his legs. Mr. Acosta, 21, spent months in hospitals surrounded by other young amputees, watching news about government commissions concluding that Iraq had no unconventional weapons.

He began reading, watching the news and talking to people, especially Vietnam veterans like Mr. Origer in Santa Fe. Last summer, his girlfriend heard Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Operation Truth, speak on the radio. Mr. Acosta contacted him. By the fall, Mr. Acosta had become the organization’s public face, appearing in a provocative television advertisement.

Mr. Acosta, who is attending community college in Southern California, said he hoped to bring friends from his old unit in the First Armored Division into Operation Truth as they leave the Army, because they might start to experience some of the problems he faced. For instance, he said, he once used duct tape to hold his prosthesis together because he could not get it repaired quickly at the local Veterans Affairs hospital. And people often asked about his injury.

“People would just come up to me and say, ‘How’d you lose your arm?’ ” Mr. Acosta said. “And I’d say, ‘In the war.’ And they would be like, ‘What war?'”