Veterans for Common Sense

Meet the Stenographers

Press shirks duty to scrutinize official claims

By Steve Rendall

A bizarre debate has emerged regarding whether journalists have a duty to investigate and assess the credibility of sources and their claims. Some highly placed journalists seem to say such judgments are not their job. Citing what they say are journalistic principles, they claim that investigating and reporting about the veracity of claims and the credibility of sources is just not what they do.

In fact, it’s not only their job, it’s an essential task of journalism. The Society of Professional Journalists is very clear on the subject: At the top of the group’s Code of Ethics, under the heading “Seek Truth and Report It,” the very first tenet implores journalists to “test the accuracy of information from all sources.” Another tenet stresses the importance of gauging the credibility of sources: “The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.”

But from the Iraq Warto the 2004 presidential race, reporters shirked their journalistic duty to take a critical approach to official and partisan claims—to document them when they are true, and debunk them when they are false. Indeed, many journalists have become little more than stenographers, repeating whatever they are told without question.

“Professionalism” on Iraq

In a column lamenting the media’s largely uncritical acceptance of White House claims regarding the Iraq War and occupation, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (4/27/04) attributed this failure to “professionalism.” Citing unnamed “journalistic rules,” Ignatius argued that journalists couldn’t scrutinize administration claims unless the questions were first raised by high profile Democrats and other elites:

In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn’t create a debate on our own.

As a New York Times reporter covering the Iraq War, Judith Miller’s reporting on WMD was unrivaled in its influence, if not in its accuracy. Her coverage relentlessly played up the Iraq WMD threat (“All of Iraq is one large storage facility” for WMD, she credulously quoted a pseudonymous source—9/8/02), while muting conflicting evidence. Miller explained how she saw her role in a New York Review of Books interview (2/26/04):

My job was not to collect information and analyze it independently as an intelligence agency; my job was to tell readers of the New York Times, as best as I could figure out, what people inside the governments who had very high security clearances, who were not supposed to talk to me, were saying to one another about what they thought Iraq had and did not have in the area of weapons of mass destruction.

Miller’s work was prominently cited in a Times mea culpa on May 26, 2004, in which the paper’s editors apologized for a lack of skepticism toward sources hyping a non-existent Iraqi WMD arsenal.

Prejudice for the president

While Miller and Ignatius claim that professional constraints kept them from fact-checking their sources’ claims and from confronting them with contradictory information, CBS News anchor Dan Rather offered a competing reason why Iraq War coverage often left the public badly informed. Fielding a question on Iraq coverage at a Harvard forum on the media (7/25/04), Rather explained his journalistic philosophy as it applies to covering the most powerful source on the planet:

Look, when a president of the United States, any president, Republican or Democrat, says these are the facts, there is heavy prejudice, including my own, to give him the benefit of any doubt, and for that I do not apologize.

The Harvard forum revealed even more reasons why news media might not dig deeply into dubious claims promoted by a conservative White House. In a discussion that included several nightly news anchors, there was general agreement that media were under increasing pressure from well-organized right-wing activists. ABC anchor Peter Jennings described the impact of conservative activists:

I think there is this anxiety in the newsroom and I think it comes in part from the corporate suite. I think that the rise, not merely of conservative opinion in the country, but the related noise being made in the media by conservative voices these days, has an effect on the corporate suites…. This wave of resentment rushes at our advertisers, rushes at the corporate suites and gets under the newsroom skin, if not completely into the decision-making process, to a greater degree than it has before.

Rather’s admission that many, himself included, share a presumption in favor of the president’s truthfulness, and Jennings’ acknowledgement of an ever-present conservative pressure on newsrooms, may help to explain why George W. Bush has gotten away with so many deceptive declarations. As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne (9/24/04) observed on coverage of the 2004 campaign: “A press corps that relentlessly nitpicked Al Gore in 2000 in search of ‘little lies’ and exaggerations has given Bush wide latitude to make things up.”

Consider Bush’s statement about Saddam Hussein, made at a joint press conference with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (7/14/03): “We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in.” This charge, repeated at a joint press conference with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski (1/27/04), is an astonishingly brazen falsehood, given that U.N. inspectors were busily going about their work in Iraq with a great deal of publicity in the months before the U.S. invasion, yet it was not even reported by most media outlets. The New York Times, for instance, never mentioned it. The Washington Post’s report on the comment (7/15/03) took pains to avoid calling it a lie, instead writing that the president’s assertion “appeared to contradict the events.”

The media’s habit of tiptoeing around the truth and the patent refusal of many reporters to call things by their proper names prompted Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and one of the few trenchant media critics in the mainstream press corps, to write this grim assessment (9/6/02):

The next time the administration insists that chocolate is vanilla, much of the media—fearing accusations of liberal bias, trying to create the appearance of “balance”—won’t report that the stuff is actually brown; at best they’ll report that some Democrats claim that it’s brown.

When “the facts” are lies

The rise of the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth marked another episode in which many reporters seemed to abandon any attempt to ascertain the reality of the story—and some defended this dereliction as a professional virtue.

The Swift Boat Vets’ claims that Democratic candidate John Kerry’s Vietnam record was fabricated and his awards undeserved were given widespread publicity, particularly in August, in the period between the Democratic and Republican conventions. Many attribute Kerry’s slide in the polls at this time to the group’s campaign—and its amplification by the bountiful media attention it received.

At the time, Swift Boat Vet coverage came under fire from critics who said journalists had failed to adequately expose the group’s misleading and contradictory claims (American Prospect, 8/23/04; CJR Campaign Desk, 8/25/04). They pointed out that the coverage often amounted to little more than a presentation of Swift Boat Vet charges set alongside rebuttals from the Kerry camp, a form of “some say/ others differ” reporting that assigned equal weight and credence to each side and left the public at a loss as to who was telling the truth.

When Editor & Publisher reporter Joe Strupp (8/24/04) interviewed Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie about Swift Boat coverage, he asked about a front-page Post article (8/22/04) that, in Strupp’s words, “appeared to give equal credibility to both Kerry’s version of the events in Vietnam (which is supported by his crewmates and largely backed up by a paper trail) and the Swift Boat Veterans.”

Defending his paper, Downie told Strupp that some Post reporting had undermined the Swift Boat Vets, but added: “We are not judging the credibility of Kerry or the [Swift Boat] Veterans; we just print the facts.”

As Strupp and others have pointed out, the Kerry vs. Swift Boat Veterans judgment was not exactly a hard one: On Kerry’s side you had the official military record and virtually everyone who served on Kerry’s boat; on the other, a well-funded group of anti-Kerry activists with considerable links to the Bush camp, whose leaders have a penchant for falsehood and self-contradiction (CJR Campaign Desk, 8/25/04).

That’s not the way NPR’s Washington editor saw it, though. Responding to similar criticisms about Swift Boat coverage, NPR’s Ron Elving told NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin (NPR.org, 8/25/04): “There is no way that journalism can satisfy those who think that Kerry is a liar or that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are liars.”

In fact, journalism would eventually reveal many Swift Boat claims to be, yes, lies, with belated exposés published by the New York Times (8/20/04), Chicago Tribune (8/22/04) and Nightline (9/14/04). (The most comprehensive exposé of Swift Boat Vet mendacity, though, has been done by Bob Somerby of the website Daily Howler; see, e.g., 8/23/04, 9/14-17/04.)

In late August a forceful Los Angeles Times editorial (8/24/04) declared the Swift Boat Vet charges “false.” However, then the editors went on to say that news reporters at the Times were constrained from doing the same: “But the canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying outright: These charges are false…. Not limited by the conventions of our colleagues in the newsroom, we can say it outright: These charges against John Kerry are false.”

The editors don’t explain what journalistic canons restrict journalists from calling a falsehood a falsehood—from calling things what they are.

Pushing the limits

However mysterious, the belief in this convention is widespread, particularly among mainstream journalists, and it has touched other campaign coverage.

In October a listener wrote to NPR, complaining about NPR host Juan Williams’ interview with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (10/5/04). Criticizing Williams for failing to hold the governor accountable for what she saw as deceptive statements, the listener wrote: “What I heard was Jeb Bush getting a free run to state his politics with no questioning of his obvious wrong and misleading statements. This is not the first time I have heard Williams ‘interview’ this way.”

A week later, she received a personal note from Williams defending his softball style:

Thanks for the note. The interview with Governor Bush, as with other public officials, is intended to allow them to state their views and positions. That allows you, and others, to make an informed decision about their policies and actions.

If Williams had an interest in any possible “wrong and misleading statements” by his interview subject, he didn’t express them to the listener. Nor did he explain how listeners are supposed to make an “informed decision” when the people whose job it is to inform them refuse to do so.

On those occasions where journalists do set out to hold news subjects accountable for dubious claims, the results can be bizarre. A New York Times article (10/8/04) addressing George W. Bush’s habit of taking liberties with the truth started out well enough. Headlined “In His New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts,” the article documented a pattern of Bush distortions—including claims that as president, Kerry planned to “wait for a grade from other nations” before acting in self-defense, to raise taxes on the middle class and to install a vast national healthcare system.

However, at the crux of the piece, in place of what should have been a simple declarative sentence assessing Bush’s credibility, the reader was confronted by this tortured, anonymously sourced sentence: “Several analysts say Mr. Bush pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were distorted accounts of Mr. Kerry’s positions on health care, tax cuts, the Iraq war and foreign policy.”

Letting the country down

The media’s refusal to call a distortion a distortion or to question a source’s credibility has received little criticism from most journalists, and a spirited defense from some. However, criticism has sprung up in some prominent non-journalist circles.

Reacting to the media’s “he said/she said” reporting in the Swift Boat Veterans episode, Comedy Central’s Daily Show (8/23/04) ran a parody of the coverage with anchor Jon Stewart grilling “reporter” Rob Corddry:

Stewart: Here’s what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry’s record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the U.S. military, and hasn’t been disputed for 35 years.
Corddry: That’s right, Jon, and that’s certainly the spin you’ll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days.
Stewart: That’s not a spin thing, that’s a fact. That’s established.
Corddry: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontrovertible fact is one side of the story.
Stewart: But isn’t that the end of the story? I mean, you’ve seen the records, haven’t you? What’s your opinion?
Corddry: I’m sorry, “my opinion”? I don’t have opinions. I’m a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called “objectivity”—might want to look it up some day.
Stewart: Doesn’t objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what’s credible and what isn’t?
Corddry: Whoa-ho! Sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! Listen, buddy: Not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.

Rock musician Bruce Springsteen delivered a more sober but no less pointed critique. In a Rolling Stone interview (9/22/04) largely about his political views, Springsteen offered this assessment of media coverage of the campaign:

The press has let the country down. It’s taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that. I think that Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power.

Vets urged to consider counseling

BY DALTON NARINE
Knight Ridder Newspapers

(KRT) – Government agencies are trying to bring in out of the cold veterans all across the country who need counseling for issues that include post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Daniella David, director of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Program at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs VA Medical Center in Miami, has a key part in the effort. This is no small task. The readjustment and mental health issues of today’s veteran are unique, says David, whose targets are veterans in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, Fla. And in many cases they are compounded by the perception that a stigma will attach to seeking help.

The peculiarities of the new veteran are a product of the all-volunteer military. Adapting to the draft-free times, this force blends young whippersnappers, gung-ho but knowing little about life, with an increasing number of women and mature National Guard and Reserve troops. (The average age of a Vietnam vet was 19, compared with 24 for today’s vet.)

These weekend warriors – some in their 30s, 40s and 50s – leave behind the comforts of family and jobs and enter a regimented milieu. They are forced to regain something close to youthful vigor to survive on the battlefield. And when they get back home, they find difficulty coping.

STRESSFUL TRANSITIONS

“Most of the older veterans are coming home to spouses and children whom they haven’t seen in a year or more,” David says. “They have to readjust to getting out of soldier mode to being home. And that’s stressful, even for combat-support troops, because they are constantly in harm’s way, too.”

Unlike his counterparts from past wars, the Iraq veteran faces physical and psychological traumas that spring from an urban battleground that combines international politics and guerrilla warfare.

Some 2.4 percent of the 9,700-plus wounded during combat in the 20-month Iraq war are amputees. Chuck Scoville, amputee program manager at Walter Reed, told a congressional committee that the number is twice the rate of both world wars. In addition, 350 psychiatric casualties have been admitted to Walter Reed; 20 percent have PTSD. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, one in six Iraq war veterans suffers from a stress-related disorder.

In the Vietnam War, a 10-year venture, one-third of the 2.4 million troops were diagnosed with PTSD, but the disorder was recognized seven years after U.S. troops withdrew in 1973. So proportionately, and factoring in the time frame and troop strength, the Iraq war may be producing more amputees and psychiatric cases.

Early psychiatric intervention, David emphasizes, can prevent long-term consequences. Her flag is being carried by the VA’s Outreach Program, the Vet Center and the Defense Department clinic at the VA in Miami-Dade, all of which offer free services with degrees of confidentiality. So far, the Outreach Program has contacted 2,000 veterans in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, 500 of whom have come aboard. Some of the others may have signed up with the Vet Center, which has reached 2,015 veterans and signed up 515.

WHAT IS PTSD?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric illness that can occur following life-threatening events such as combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents or personal assaults such as rape. Combat troops who suffer from PTSD often relive some of their experiences through nightmares and flashbacks. They have difficulty sleeping and feel detached or estranged from friends and family. Such symptoms can significantly impair the person’s life. Counseling, which could include group therapy, helps the patient cope.

ATHLETIC STARS ADD SOME CHEER

Figuring sports figures would lift the spirits of war amputees, a Cincinnati man has established a program that arranges meetings between amputees and their favorites players.

The program, Impact Player Partners, is Dick Lynch’s way “to give something back to wounded vets.”

Lynch enlisted the support of Christian Okoye, a former Kansas City Chiefs running back, and Dick Lajoie, chief financial officer of Belcan Corp., an engineering company in Cincinnati.

“We ask amputees … who they want to meet,” Lynch says. “Then we put the veterans at ease.”

That’s how Army Sgt. Brian Wilhelm felt in June when he met his hero, former Chicago Bears Super Bowl quarterback Jim McMahon. Marine Cpl. James Eddie Wright was introduced to Dolphins linebacker Junior Seau. Other sports legends who’ve chatted with amputees include golf’s Arnold Palmer and NASCAR hotshots Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson.

Amputees can reach Lynch at 513-205-0693 or www.impactplayer.org

US military sees sharp fall in black recruits

Dolly Wilson’s father proudly served in the Second World War and her husband in Vietnam. But her children will not join the military if she has any say in it.

“We don’t want our kids to go into no war for nothing,” said Mrs Wilson, snatching a cigarette with colleagues outside her Washington office.

Marines listen to George W Bush at Camp Pendleton

“Bush has two daughters. Let them go over and fight,” she added, to a chorus of “That’s not our war” from the others.

James Golladay served in the US coastguard, but would discourage his two teenagers if they came home talking about enlisting. “I wouldn’t want them to experience anything like that,” he said, as he passed a US army recruiting office on 14th Street, Washington.

Constance Allen’s husband, grandfather, uncle and son all served, but she would “never” let her grandson join up.

Mrs Wilson, Mr Golladay and Mrs Allen are not typical of America as a whole. But their views are enough to give the Pentagon cause for alarm. The reason? All three of them are black.

For years, black Americans have formed the backbone of the all-volunteer US army, filling a quarter of its ranks, though blacks account for only 13 per cent of the population. Blacks are more likely to treat the army as a lifelong career; a third of senior sergeants and non-commissioned officers are black. Suddenly, that is changing.

Apart from a sudden fall in the past two months in recruiting for the part-time National Guard, army recruitment as a whole has held more or less steady this year, with the help of increased enlistment bonuses and an early call-up for some youths originally due to enter basic training next year.

But the proportion of black recruits into the army was only 15.6 per cent, down from 22.3 per cent in the fiscal year 2001. In the part-time army reserve, the drop is sharper.

Army officials decline to speculate about the collapse in black recruiting, instead noting what they call a positive development, that army numbers will now reflect the make-up of society better.

Behind the scenes, there is more concern, according to Prof David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland.

“If there are fewer blacks coming in – and it is blacks who stay in and become NCOs – then six, seven, eight, nine years down the road, you can anticipate a shortage of sergeants,” he said.

Prof Charles Moskos, an expert on the military and race at Northwestern University in Chicago, said the drop-off began even before the Iraq war, with the election of President George W Bush in 2000 in the face of overwhelming black antipathy, an attitude that lingers to this day.

That hostility increased exponentially with the invasion of Iraq, which was opposed by a large majority of black Americans, amid suspicion over the reasons given for toppling Saddam Hussein and anger at billions of dollars spent overseas, rather than at home.

Mrs Allen pointed to the rain-lashed streets of Washington, a large, poor, mainly black city that also happens to be the nation’s capital.

“You’ve got so many homeless people here, they were in the military, half of them. You look at that, people ask, ‘Why should I go fight the white man’s war when there’s nothing for us here?’ ” she said.

Mr Golladay said blacks tended to join the military for stable employment, college scholarships and the chance to learn valuable skills.

Pentagon statistics from 2003 back him up, showing that 67 per cent of black soldiers served in support or rearguard units, working as technicians, medical assistants, clerks or cooks. Only 16 per cent of black soldiers were in combat units.

Asked why blacks chose rear-line units, Mr Golloday answered: “People looked to the military as a way of receiving benefits. People want to transition into a civilian life later. Being a chief gunner isn’t something that people will pay a lot for.” Then he laughed, and added: “And they don’t want to die.”

Crucially, among older generations there are also sharp memories of the Vietnam War, in which blacks were seen as bearing an unfair burden of casualties. Martin Luther King spoke of it being fought by people of colour against people of colour in the interests of whites.

Kayla Roach, a black woman, said: “I know families whose kids want to join the military, and their parents are saying no. Maybe they have just one or two children and it’s scary to them.”

The perception has spread among black Americans that in the war on terrorism, rear-line units are as vulnerable as front-line infantry squads.

Prof Moskos defended the US military as one of America’s most racially integrated large institutions.

“The army is not a utopia but it is the only place where whites are routinely bossed around by blacks,” he said.

To Mr Golladay, the military is not the problem. “People join understanding that they might go to war,” he said. “But this war now, I feel it’s unnecessary.”

Emmaus grad speaks against war in Iraq
Michael Hoffman spent two months there with Marines.

By Randy Kraft
Of The Morning Call

December 17, 2004

If you have one of those magnetic ”support our troops” ribbons on your car, Michael Hoffman suggests you grab a marker and add a few words: ”Bring them home now.”

Hoffman, who graduated from Emmaus High School in 1997, returned to the school Thursday night to speak out against the war in Iraq.

”Being against the war is the only way to be for the troops,” said Hoffman. ”We’re doing them no good by sending them over there.”

The 25-year-old Marine veteran is a co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a 5-month-old organization that claims 150 members, including some on active duty in Iraq. It wants the immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq, ”real” reconstruction aid for that country and properly funded and administered veterans’ benefits.

”I need to make sure this stops,” he said. ”The honest truth needs to be told in order for this war to end. We’ve got to get these guys home now before another guy is killed on either side.

”This war would be over right now if people really understood the horror of it.”

Like Vietnam, said Hoffman, the only way to end the war will be for millions of Americans to get out on the streets every week and demand that it end.

More than 80 people attended the program, sponsored by the school’s chapter of Amnesty International. Hoffman spoke for nearly 90 minutes, taking questions from the mostly supportive audience for most of that time.

He said the primary reason we’re fighting in Iraq is to get its oil. He maintained the war was never really about finding weapons of mass destruction, capturing Saddam Hussein or establishing democracy.

Hoffman served in Iraq for nearly two months during the invasion last year. He helped aim a battery of 155mm howitzers at targets 10 to15 miles away. He never was told what they were shooting at, only given coordinates. His battery fired about 700 rounds a day, pounding its way across the country.

”Artillery is nameless and faceless,” said Hoffman, adding he’s haunted every day, wondering: ”Who did I kill?” He knows he helped to kill innocent Iraqis.

”We haven’t learned the lessons from Vietnam,” said Hoffman. ”Most of our enemies are average Iraqis fighting back against this occupation. We have violated their sovereignty.”

If another country invaded the United States, bombing and killing innocent women and children who had nothing to do with the war until their lives were taken, ”wouldn’t we all be up in arms defending our country?”

He claimed the majority of troops on the ground in Iraq feel ”we shouldn’t be there. They don’t see the point. We’re not doing any good.” A member of the audience disagreed, saying the military overwhelmingly supported Bush in the last election.

Hoffman said Bush went to war before the military was properly equipped. He said the administration has disregard for people who are willing to serve.

He said American soldiers are fighting only to protect their lives and the lives of their friends because someone is shooting at them.

Hoffman is the son of Rick and Susan Hoffman of Macungie. His father, who videotaped his appearance, said he is proud of his son both because of what he is doing now and because he served in a war he did not believe in.

Michael Hoffman said the United States should not abandon Iraq, but should end the military occupation. He said Iraqis can establish democracy, if they want it and if we ”stop occupying them and trying to do the job for them.”

randy.kraft@mcall.com

610-820-6557

Guard Reports Serious Drop in Enlistment

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 – In the latest signs of strains on the military from the war in Iraq, the Army National Guard announced on Thursday that it had fallen 30 percent below its recruiting goals in the last two months and would offer new incentives, including enlistment bonuses of up to $15,000.

In addition, the head of the National Guard Bureau, Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, said on Thursday that he needed $20 billion to replace arms and equipment destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan or left there for other Army and Air Guard units to use, so that returning reservists will have enough equipment to deal with emergencies at home.

The sharp decline in recruiting is significant because National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers now make up nearly 40 percent of the 148,000 troops in Iraq, and are a vital source for filling the ranks, particularly those who perform essential support tasks, like truck drivers and military police.

General Blum said the main reason for the Army National Guard’s recruiting shortfall was a sharp reduction in the number of recruits joining the Guard and Reserve when they leave active duty. In peacetime the commitment means maintaining their ties to the military with a weekend of service a month and two weeks in the summer.

Over the last 30 years, General Blum said, the Guard has counted on these soldiers with prior military service for about half of its recruits. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, many of these soldiers have been hesitant to join the Guard because of the increasing likelihood that America’s citizen-soldiers will be activated and sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for up to 12 months. Indeed, many of the active-duty soldiers the Army would like to enlist in the Reserves have recently fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, and some have no inclination to do so again.

In an effort to halt the slide, the Army National Guard this week approved recruiting incentives that triple the enlistment bonuses to $15,000 for soldiers with prior military experience who sign up for six years (tax-free if soldiers enlist overseas), Guard officials said. Bonuses for new enlistees will increased to $10,000 from $6,000.

The Guard has already said it intends to increase the number of recruiters to 4,100 from 2,700 over the next three months, the first large increase since 1989.

“We’re in a more difficult recruiting environment, period,” General Blum told reporters in disclosing the new figures and the new incentives. “There’s no question that when you have a sustained ground combat operation going that the Guard’s participating in, that makes recruiting more difficult.”

There are 42,000 Army National Guard soldiers serving in Iraq and Kuwait, and 8,200 serving in Afghanistan. Since Sept. 11, General Blum said, there have been about 100,000 Army National Guard troops activated for duty at home or abroad at any given time.

General Blum’s remarks come just a few days after the chief of the Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, told The Dallas Morning News that the Army Reserve recruiting was in a “precipitous decline” that if unchecked could inspire renewed debate over the draft. General Helmly told the newspaper that he personally opposed reviving the draft.

For the first two months of the fiscal year 2005, which started Oct. 1, the Army Reserve has also stumbled, falling 315 recruits short of its goal of 3,170 soldiers, a drop of 10 percent.

In November, the Guard recruited 2,902 enlistees, about 26 percent below its target of 3,925 recruits. In October and November combined, the Guard recruited 5,448 enlistees, nearly 30 percent below its goal of 7,600. At full strength, the Guard has 350,000 soldiers.

In the 2004 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the Guard missed its overall recruiting target of 56,000 soldiers by more than 5,000, the first time it had missed its yearly goal since 1994. The active-duty branches of the armed services all met their recruiting goals last year.

As a result, General Blum said, the Guard has lowered its reliance on recruits with military experience to just 35 percent of its overall total and will seek a much larger pool of recruits with no military experience.

“We are correcting, frankly, some of our recruiting themes and slogans to reflect a reality of today,” he said. “We’re not talking about one weekend a month and two weeks a year and college tuition. We’re talking about service to the nation.”

General Blum expressed confidence that the nearly $300 million in recruiting bonuses in this year’s budget and the increase in the number of recruiters would propel the Guard to meet its yearly goal but said that probably would not happen until August or so. “I think we’ll recover,” he said.

Some military personnel specialists offered a much more pessimistic forecast and said the lower recruiting numbers were the harbingers of tougher times to come.

“I don’t think this is an aberration,” said David R. Segal, a military sociologist who directs the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. “I think we’re going to see significant shortfalls in recruitment, and I think we’re to begin to see retention problems. We’re also going to see increasing concerns at the state level about how the Guard will man itself and perform its state missions.”

The Guard’s woes do not end with recruiting. General Blum said the Army National Guard needed $20 billion over the next three years to buy additional radios, trucks, aircraft, engineering equipment and other materiel that have been wrecked or left behind in Iraq or Afghanistan..

“Otherwise, the Guard will be broken and not ready for the next time it’s needed, either here at home or for war,” General Blum said.

A spokesman for the Florida National Guard, Lt. Col. Ron Tittle, said Guard units in the state, which mobilized some 5,000 troops to deal with the three hurricanes in August and September, were already experiencing some shortages.

“It could hinder us to some degree,” Colonel Tittle said. “But we adapt and make do. We’ll accomplish the mission.”

Analysis: Disabled veterans question VA benefits

By Al Swanson
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Chicago, IL, Dec. 15 (UPI) — Disabled military veterans and political leaders in Illinois are posing tough questions to the Department of Veterans Affairs on why there’s no uniform way to assess the consistency of decisions on disability claims at its regional offices.

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The VA will pay $25 billion in disability compensation to 2.7 million disabled military veterans this fiscal year, according to Stars and Stripes. The maximum disability benefit is about $2,500 a month — around $30,000 a year.

The plight of disabled vets made headlines this month after the Chicago Sun-Times ran a series showing disabled veterans from Illinois have ranked near the bottom in federal disability benefits for 20 years.

It appeared disability ratings and compensation depended on where a veteran lived and filed a claim, leaving veterans to wonder whether they were treated fairly.

The Government Accountability Office told Congress the “VA cannot provide reasonable assurance that similarly situated veterans who submit claims for the same impairment to different regional offices receive reasonably consistent decisions.”

Illinois was 50th of 52 areas — all the U.S. states and Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia — in federal disability pay.

In the Midwest region, Minnesota paid the most to disabled vets, an average $7,872 annually, followed by Missouri at $7,848, Wisconsin at $7,739, Iowa at $7,490 and $6,910 in Indiana.

Disabled Illinois veterans received an average $6,802 — more than $100 a year less than Indiana vets got. Benefits received by disabled veterans in most Midwestern states were below the national average disability pay of $8,065.

Disabled vets in Maine and New Mexico received as much as $4,000 a year more last year, the Sun-Times investigation found. The average benefit paid to wounded vets in Puerto Rico was $11,607 and $10,842 in Maine.

U.S. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said veterans residing in Illinois were on the short end of the benefits stick and called for uniformity in determining disability pay.

Hastert requested a nationwide study of VA disability pay.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., accused the VA of treating injured Illinois veterans as “second-class” soldiers.

“When you agreed to serve this country, there were promises made to you that need to be kept,” Durbin told veterans Tuesday at VFW Post 2791 in Tinley Park in south suburban Chicago.

As Durbin listened to a small group of Vietnam and Korean War veterans talk about their problems with the VA, more than 100 vocal veterans criticized the Chicago VA regional office at a hearing of the City Council’s health committee.

A VA report obtained by the Sun-Times ranked Illinois 46 of 52 states and territories in disability pay in 1984. Twenty years ago injured veterans in Puerto Rico averaged $6,500 in disability pay while Illinois vets averaged $3,002.

“They’ve always had these statistics,” said Allen Lynch, a Vietnam Medal of Honor recipient who heads the Illinois Veterans’ Rights Bureau.

The Illinois congressional delegation and Gov. Rod Blagojevich sent letters to outgoing VA Secretary Anthony J. Principi inviting him to Chicago before Jan. 5, 2005, to meet with veterans who feel they’ve been shortchanged and respond to their claims.

“Our veterans all served under the same red, white and blue standard, and their disability claims should be measured by a single, fair standard as well,” wrote Durbin. “Unfortunately, it appears that the application of the VA’s rules in its 58 regional offices is delivering unequal results for our disabled veterans in their time of need.”

Principi ordered the VA inspector general to conduct an independent review of how disability claims are rated and promised to rectify inequities in disability pay.

“I am very concerned about allegations of disparity in how VA decides the claims of Chicago veterans,” Principi said in a statement Friday. “My department is committed to treating every veteran’s claim fairly and equitably. If that isn’t happening somewhere in our system, it will be corrected.”

President George W. Bush nominated former Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson to succeed Principi, and Democratic U.S. Senator-elect Barack Obama has invited Nicholson to meet with veterans in Illinois.

Illinois veterans officials call the VA’s response an encouraging first step.

“They let us know they will be sending a team from the veterans affairs benefits department to conduct a review of the claims,” Laurie Tranter, a veterans affairs spokeswoman, told the Chicago Tribune. “This means the VA is going to take this very seriously, and they are going to review the process to see if there isn’t a better way to review benefit claims.”

Durbin said many Midwest states were shortchanged when it comes to benefits for their disabled veterans. Mental-health experts expect up to 17 percent of Iraq war veterans will suffer post-traumatic stress after their tours.

A study in the July issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder was lower among troops in Afghanistan who had been exposed to fewer insurgent bombings and random attacks than in Iraq.

Stars and Stripes reported nearly 30,300 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans had sought healthcare though the VA system through June. Their most common complaints were musculoskeletal problems, nervous system and digestive disorders and dental problems.

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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ

Some Marines Mentally Ill After Iraq, Documents ShowFrom a Times Staff Writer

December 15, 2004

U.S. Navy documents released Tuesday provided detailed accounts of Marines suffering from deep psychiatric problems after serving in Iraq.

The portraits of the psychologically damaged troops were painted in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act petition.

According to the documents, some Marines appeared delusional, describing how they single-handedly shot Iraqi soldiers in combat, or stabbed Iraqis on the ground who might have been feigning death.

One said he was feted at a special dinner with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Another bragged of being honored at a homecoming parade. Neither event occurred.

Another Marine described shooting Iraqi soldiers off a conveyor belt in a cement factory, and then being shot himself. He said he next “fired all his ammo and threw his knives at his assailant.”

Another Marine told how he and his unit would “go through villages” and stab Iraqi soldiers lying on the ground to make sure they were dead. Some were stabbed 28 times, he said.

“I didn’t have a bayonet; the Marines were out of bayonets,” the Marine told investigators. “I had to stick Iraqis with machetes.”

Both stories were discredited.