Robert Bales was no ‘lone gunman’

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Team VCS

Our entire society is responsible for the trauma faced by veterans

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/robert-bales-lone-gunman-article-1.1046802#ixzz1pa7pg77u

 

By VCS Advocate Christopher Miller

By / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, March 19, 2012, 11:36 AM

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/robert-bales-lone-gunman-article-1.1046802#ixzz1pa88YKxP

 

Our country today is in the enviable position of being able to fight a gritty multi-front counterinsurgency far away in unfriendly and inhospitable terrain. And we’ve been doing it for over 10 years now. The average American hasn’t felt so much as a bump in the road for it. There has been no draft, no fuel rations, no chocolate shortages. When I served in Iraq, we used to say “the military is at war: America is at the mall.”

 

Since the recent murders committed by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales in Afghanistan, the perpetrator as has been called “troubled,” “crazed” and other such adjectives. The military is probing for alcohol involvement. He received a medical exam prior to deployment but, no surprise, was given a clean bill of health by military doctors. He was injured twice and witnessed fellow soldiers maimed and killed on previous deployments. He was also reportedly having family troubles back home.

 

They’re looking for the reasons why Bales did it. Yet, none of these single things caused this incident on their own. All of these circumstances were caused by yet another circumstance: sending a man to Iraq three times and then to Afghanistan for a fourth tour.

 

It is true no one made him pull the trigger, so he should bear personal responsibility for his actions. Bales should be punished to the full extent of the law if found guilty.

 

But America shares in the collective responsibility for this incident. If you send young men and women off to war, they will not come back the same. If you send them off to combat every other year for a decade, they will not come back okay. War is an action for which there are all kinds of consequences. But because the average American only knows war as something that happens long ago or far away, it is easy to shake our heads and ask how someone could possibly do this.

 

In fact, the average American hardly notices we’re still at war. Blaming it on the “lone gunman” pushes away the collective national responsibility for the consequences of sending volunteers to war for ten years.

 

Soldiers returning from war are often accused of being desensitized from violence due to what they’ve experienced. In some cases this is true. But the average American at home is desensitized to the violence that combat veterans face. I can vouch for the fact that I very much feel the toll of what I experienced in Iraq. I think about it daily, sometimes when I don;t want to. I’m sure other combat veterans will say the same. But war and violence are something average Americans only experience on the evening news or watching TV series like “Homeland.” This is an enviable position.

 

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/robert-bales-lone-gunman-article-1.1046802#ixzz1pa6n3ugn

 

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TBI sufferers invited to share their stories online to help others

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Team VCS

SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is collecting video testimony from people suffering from traumatic brain injury, or TBI.

 

About 1.7 million Americans suffer a traumatic brain injury each year, according to the CDC, with the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center estimating that since 2000, more than 233,000 of those TBI sufferers have been servicemembers or Department of Defense employees.

 

Since March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, the CDC partnered with the CDC Foundation to launch the Heads Up TBI Film Festival, an online collection of video and written testimonials about traumatic brain injury. The initiative is designed to empower affected servicemembers and civilians to seek help and to place important information for diagnosis and treatment at the fingertips of survivors, caregivers, health care professionals, parents, coaches, children, and school professionals, according to Gail Hayes, senior press officer at the CDC Injury Center.

 

“The Heads Up initiative is a series of educational programs, that all have a common goal: to help protect people of all ages from TBI and its potentially devastating effects,” Hayes said. “The goal for the film festival is to … give a voice to TBI — so it is no longer the ‘silent epidemic.’ ”

 

There are no incentives for participating, Hayes said, but at the end of March, the CDC and CDC Foundation will create a compilation video using the stories.

 

Interested parties are asked to log onto YouTube and upload a video sharing their personal story dealing with TBI, including why they feel this is an important issue, then tag the video with “HeadsUpFilmFestival.” Those who don’t have access or interest in making a video can share their experiences on the festival’s Facebook page, Hayes said.

 

“You can talk about anything and everything in a video that gives meaning to your experience. What caused your brain injury? What changes are you coping with? Name some awesome resources that make your recovery possible. Share what hurts, what helps, who listens, who cares,” Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury spokeswoman Jayne Davis said in a news release Wednesday.

 

All of the videos posted to the YouTube channel will be reviewed by the foundation’s staff, Hayes said.

 

With the TBI Act of 1995, the CDC was tasked with conducting surveillance, research, as well as raising awareness about traumatic brain injuries, Hayes said. For the past 15 years, the CDC has developed and distributed research and educational information. Their work is not specific to servicemembers but to all TBI sufferers.

 

For more information on TBI, including festival information, data/statistics, signs and symptoms, what do if you have a brain injury, and where to find support and resources, as well as downloadable educational materials, go to the CDC’s TBI page, the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center page, or the Defense Centers of Excellence Brain Injury Awareness Month page.

 

burkem@pstripes.osd.mil

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Torturing Bin Laden

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Team VCS

Al-Qaida documents show Obama was right about targeting Islam…

From Slate.com

By |Posted Monday, March 19, 2012, at 8:25 AM ET

Two years ago, President Obama changed the way the U.S. government talked about its conflict with Osama Bin Laden. The administration announced that we were at war not with “jihadists,” “Islamists,” or even “terror.” Instead, our enemy was al-Qaida, and al-Qaida’s Muslim victims were our friends. Republicans denounced this reframing of the war as a capitulation to radical Islam and political correctness. But now we know, from Bin Laden’s own hand, that the reframing hurt al-Qaida. Obama was right, and his critics were wrong.

On May 26, 2010, John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, gave a speech outlining the new language:

Our enemy is not “terrorism” because terrorism is but a tactic. … Nor do we describe our enemy as “jihadists” or “Islamists” because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children. Indeed, characterizing our adversaries this way would actually be counterproductive. It would play into the false perception that they are religious leaders defending a holy cause, when in fact they are nothing more than murderers, including the murder of thousands upon thousands of Muslims.

The next day, the White House released its National Security Strategy. The document declared:

The United States is waging a global campaign against al-Qa’ida and its terrorist affiliates. To disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qa’ida and its affiliates, we are pursuing a strategy that … denies al-Qa’ida safe haven, and builds positive partnerships with Muslim communities around the world. … We will always seek to delegitimize the use of terrorism and to isolate those who carry it out. Yet this is not a global war against a tactic—terrorism—or a religion—Islam. We are at war with a specific network, al-Qa’ida, and its terrorist affiliates who support efforts to attack the United States, our allies, and partners.

Conservative pundits ridiculed the administration, arguing that we should define our enemies as soldiers of Allah because that was how they described themselves. Republican politicians agreed. “Radical Islam poses the single greatest threat to America today,” said Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. Yet “the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge the link between Radical Islam and the terror attempts of the past nine months.” Peter King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, chimed in:

Even though we have been at war against radical Islamic jihadists since they killed almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11, the Obama Administration fails to even mention such terms. … John Brennan and others in the Obama Administration … have used this critically important National Security Strategy as another opportunity to satisfy the politically correct left wing …

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Over the next several months, King and other Republicans escalated the assault on Islam, whipping up hysteria over the “Ground Zero mosque.” Soon, their cause was taken up by Republican presidential candidates. Newt Gingrich led the way, and Rick Santorum followed. “We’re fighting a war against radical Islam,” Santorum asserted in a debate on Nov. 22, 2011. In a debate on Jan. 7, 2012, Santorum complained: “This president has sanitized every defense document, everything. There’s no—the word ‘radical Islam’ doesn’t appear anywhere. Why? Because … we’re trying to fight this politically correct war and not being honest with the American public as to who the enemy is.”

Usually, this kind of macho windbaggery can’t be falsified. But this time, Allah was merciful. On May 2, 2011, Obama, in a fit of political correctness, sent a SEAL team to kill Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The SEALs, upon entering Bin Laden’s compound, inexcusably failed to call him a radical Islamist. They did, however, shoot him dead and make off with a haul of al-Qaida documents. Some of these documents have now been declassified, and David Ignatius of the Washington Post has just published the first eyewitness account of them. He writes:

Bin Laden’s biggest concern was al-Qaeda’s media image among Muslims. He worried that it was so tarnished that, in a draft letter … he argued that the organization should find a new name. The al-Qaeda brand had become a problem, bin Laden explained, because Obama administration officials “have largely stopped using the phrase ‘the war on terror’ in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims,” and instead promoted a war against al-Qaeda. The organization’s full name was “Qaeda al-Jihad,” bin Laden noted, but in its shorthand version, “this name reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them.” … Bin Laden ruminated about “mistakes” and “miscalculations” by affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere that had killed Muslims, even in mosques. He told Atiyah to warn every emir, or regional leader, to avoid these “unnecessary civilian casualties,” which were hurting the organization. “Making these mistakes is a great issue,” he stressed, arguing that spilling “Muslim blood” had resulted in “the alienation of most of the nation [of Islam] from the [Mujaheddin].”

There you have it. Gingrich, Santorum, and their pals were wrong. Obama and Brennan were right. So was George W. Bush in his steadfast refusal to blame Islam for 9/11. Bin Laden wanted a religious war. Bush and Obama refused to let him have it. At the end of his life, isolated by left-wing drone strikes and marked for death by PC commandos, this was Bin Laden’s chief lament. And that, Sen. Santorum, is why you don’t call it a war on radical Islam: because choosing your words carefully is part of winning the war.

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Troops’ Mental Health: How Much Is Unknown?

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Team VCS

 

Gen. Peter Chiarelli, former vice chief of staff for the U.S. Army, says the Army lacks reliable diagnostic tools to screen for mental health. EnlargeSusan Walsh/AP

Gen. Peter Chiarelli, former vice chief of staff for the U.S. Army, says the Army lacks reliable diagnostic tools to screen for mental health.

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March 18, 2012

The killing of 16 Afghan civilians last Sunday is now one of the greatest points of tension between the United States and Afghanistan. U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly killed the civilians in cold blood; those close to him say they were shocked by the news.

According to the Pentagon, Bales had been treated for a traumatic brain injury that he suffered in Iraq in 2010, though the extent of the damage is unclear.

Other information leaked by military officials indicate Bales, who was on his fourth deployment, may have “snapped” under pressure due to possible marital problems or alcohol abuse. Bales’ civilian lawyer has cast doubt on those theories.

Screening With Uncertainty

Gen. Peter Chiarelli spent the last couple years of his military career working to help troops returning from combat with invisible wounds of war like post-traumatic stress.

He retired from the military in January, ending a four-decade career as a vice chief of staff of the Army. He is now the CEO of One Mind for Research, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding cures for brain disorders.

Chiarelli said he could not comment on the specifics of Bales’ case, but he tells Weekend Editionhost Rachel Martin that the staff sergeant would have been screened before, during and after every deployment.

“I can guarantee you that he was screened, and before he was allowed to redeploy, doctors indicated that he was fit for deployment,” Chiarelli says. “Unless the investigation shows something different, this is not uncommon for a force that has been fighting in two separate theaters for over 10 years.”

He says what the incident “proves more than anything … is just how much we don’t know.” As vice chief, Chiarelli says he was frustrated by not having reliable diagnostic tools to screen for behavioral health issues.

“This was a huge problem for us, and continues to be a problem today,” he says.

When it comes to screenings, some are done by a health care provider when a soldier returns home. There are also written surveys.

“I don’t trust those as much because soldiers know how to answer those in order to be able to go home to their loved ones and not be caught up in future evaluations,” Chiarelli says.

It’s also possible, he says, that soldiers know how to game the system in order to be redeployed.Related NPR Stories

But Chiarelli is also careful not to stereotype.Stamping Out Stigma

“What worries me when we talk about this, more than anything else, is that there’s a tendency to kind of paint a brush across every single soldier, male and female, who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and think that they have come back with post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury,” he says. “That’s simply not the case.”

Misconceptions can spread into other areas of the veterans’ lives, like when they talk to employers. Stigma may make some employers think twice about hiring someone who fought for years in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Balancing between raising awareness and combating stigma can be a tricky task.

“You want to raise awareness, you want people to get the help that they need,” Chiarelli says, “but at the same time, you do not want to leave the general public with the idea that everyone is suffering from these traumas.”

One tool for cutting the cultural bias is language. Rather than saying “post-traumatic stress disorder,” or PTSD, he calls it only “post-traumatic stress.”

“I have totally dropped the ‘D,’ and one of the reasons I’ve dropped the ‘D’ is no soldier likes to be told that he has a ‘disorder.’ The key is to try to get him into treatment,” Chiarelli says. “There are very effective treatments available, but if you can’t get them inside the doors so they can get that help, they do no good.”

The general’s position has evolved over his years at war. He says one of his greatest regrets is not putting the name of a soldier who committed suicide on a memorial in his division.

“There was a general belief back then [in 2004, 2005] that individuals that committed suicide did not deserve to be on the same memorials as individuals who had lost their life due to enemy action,” he says. “That is a tremendous regret that I have.”

While Chiarelli has not reached out to that soldier’s family, he hopes “that one day I will do that and right that wrong.”

Whose Responsibility?

The commander on the ground, he says, has a responsibility to look out for the mental health of those under his command.

“We all have a responsibility to look for the signs. And the signs are obvious. We know the signs. We’ve taught the signs. People understand the signs,” Chiarelli says.

The signals are high-risk behavior, such as self-medicating with alcohol, anger management, involvement in partner abuse and drug abuse.

“We have a responsibility not just to tell him to get help,” he says. “We have a responsibility to ensure that they get the help that they need.”

The impact of post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury reaches beyond the soldier in need.”I get upset when people start throwing numbers around about the number of people that are affected. I promise you, all the numbers are far less than the real number,” Chiarelli says. “Because for every soldier that’s out there that has a family, you multiply that number by the size of their family. That’s why we have got to find a way to properly diagnose and treat these diseases.”

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Opinion: Soldier accused of shooting rampage: Not PTSD alone

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Team VCS

From CNN GPS Blog a very insightful article. It is important to understand all the factors and to not unfairly make assumptions about all veterans based on  the actions of a few. Human behavior  always has been and remains very complex. We must resist the urge to over simplify and label.–Scouts Out

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Dr. Harry Croft is a former Army doctor who has evaluated more than 7,000 veterans with PTSD.  He is medical director of the San Antonio Psychiatric Research Center, has been in private practice for 35 years and just released his new book, I Always Sit With My Back to The Wall (written with coauthor, Reverend Dr. Chrys Parker).

By Harry Croft – Special to CNN

The shocking news of an American soldier allegedly going on a shooting rampage and taking the lives of 16 Afghanistan civilians has captivated the world this week. The question everyone is trying to answer: What caused him to snap and commit such a heinous act?

Details are slowly emerging, but as a former Army doctor and someone who has evaluated more than 7,000 veterans with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), I believe a combination of factors pushed the unnamed soldier over the edge.

This soldier was more than likely suffering from PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), but these conditions alone would not have caused him to go on a killing spree. Even in the most severe cases I’ve seen in my 30 years of research and treating patients, I have never seen or heard of anyone with PTSD alone doing such a thing. Yes, PTSD typically brings on symptoms of anger, irritability, and even at times, rage.  It causes a person to feel distant and detached, easily startled or hyper-vigilant. The person might be unsociable and have trouble expressing his or her emotions. But killing 16 people is not a result of combat-related PTSD alone.

In addition to suffering with PTSD, something else is the primary reason he went out of control.  Possibly he was suffering from drug or alcohol abuse, major depression, psychosis or other conditions. He might have also had an argument with a fellow soldier or with his wife back home. Or perhaps he received some upsetting news that made him snap.

Reports also suggest that the day before the incident, the unnamed soldier witnessed a horrific event: someone close to him, possibly another soldier, becoming seriously injured. Some reports say this fellow soldier’s leg was shot off.  We don’t yet know the relationship to this injured person, but if it was someone fairly close, it could have pushed the assailant further into a depressive state.

What most non-military people don’t realize is just how strong the relationships are between fellow soldiers. Military “brothers and sisters” are constantly in life and death situations and are always watching each other’s backs. That’s why when we see soldiers with a psychiatric condition, it’s not uncommon for them to cope better with their military friends and “family” than their real family back home.  The stress these men and women are under on a daily basis is unimaginable to the average person.  And this war has added another factor: repeated deployments to the same combat areas, something unprecedented in the history of modern American warfare.

In fact, for many soldiers now serving, especially those with PTSD, even when home they are never really totally home. They are always thinking about the combat zone and what their next deployment will bring.  In the case of the unnamed soldier, we now know he didn’t want to be deployed again. This was his fourth deployment and reports are he didn’t want to go back and that doing so was a last-minute event. If he was suffering from depression, this could have potentially made that a lot worse. If he was using drugs and alcohol to cope with his PTSD, being redeployed could have made him start using even more.

The other interesting piece to the puzzle is that immediately after the killings, the accused soldier didn’t run or hide. He came back to base and turned himself in. This tells us he clearly knew what he was doing, which makes an insanity defense unlikely.

A lot of attention has also focused on this soldier’s TBI (traumatic brain injury). He apparently lost part of a foot and suffered a concussion on a past deployment. Psychiatrically speaking, although a concussion or TBI can loosen conscious control over behavior, it is unlikely that both conditions occurring in the same troop would cause something like this to happen. There had to be multiple other factors that came into play.

Some people have said perhaps where he was based played a role. This soldier was stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which houses a unit that has been under tremendous stress and saw 12 suicides this past year alone. It also has a high divorce rate among soldiers who live there. Despite any of this, it’s still not enough of an explanation – by itself – of why someone would do this.

In the coming weeks and months we will certainly learn more about this person and the incident itself. We might never know all the details, but without a doubt it will be a combination of different factors that go above and beyond just combat-related PTSD. 

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Congress: How Much More Must Veterans Sacrifice?

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Team VCS

March 15, 2012 (PolicyMic) – At a time when over 2.5 million American men and women have been added to the rolls of combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Veteran’s Affairs Committees of both the U.S. House and Senate have agreed to cap budget increases for the Department of Veterans Affairs. There is bipartisan agreement that despite America’s having more returning veterans than it has had since the end of WWII, the recent end of the Iraq War, and an imminent drawdown in Afghanistan, the VA will have to meet this increase in need with a flat budget. Congress cannot agree on anything, but they agree that our newest veterans should sacrifice more for the country at a time when they need support the most.

Last week, I was informed by the VA that a record number of veterans have applied for GI Bill benefits, so many that it would take six weeks to process requests. This should surprise no one as multi-tour veterans such as myself leave the military after a decade at war and seek to enter the civilian world with a job market, never friendly to veterans, which has turned even more bearish since the 2008 downturn. Unemployment among young veterans is around 30{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}. Hundreds of thousands have been wounded or suffered health issues due to one or more combat tours. Problems with PTSD, TBI, depression, and alcohol abuse have developed into an unspoken suicide crisis among soldiers and veterans.

In a joint letter to the budget ‘Super-Committee’ signed by the chairmen and ranking members of the Veteran’s Affairs Committees of both the House and Senate, it was stated “we believe no constituency better understands the challenge America faces, and no constituency is better suited to, again, lead by example by putting country first.” The letter was signed by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL), and Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA). Veterans are being called upon by Congress to sacrifice for the country yet again. Both parties seem willing to let it happen.

America’s veterans are being thrown under the bus by those who are supposed to represent them, showing vets only get paid ‘lip service’ by Congress. None of these members, despite their committee assignment, ever served a day in uniform. The only member of the committee to ever serve is Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). Yet, most of them represent military and veteran-heavy districts. It may result from having the most veteran-underrepresented Congress since WWII, with only around 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} ever serving.

Veterans have already sacrificed a great deal for the country when they wore the uniform, but now they’re being asked to sacrifice more after they’ve left and returned to private citizenship. The difference between veteran’s benefits and other benefits is that they’re earned and not given. They’re not awarded because veterans simply paid in to the system; they’re awarded because we fought, were hurt, and would have died for the country if called upon.

How much more must America’s veterans sacrifice for you?

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Veterans Agency Broke Law in Contract Awards, U.S. Watchdog Says

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Team VCS

From Bloombergnews.com By Kathleen Miller on March 15, 2012

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs violated a 2006 law that directs the agency to favor small businesses led by veterans, a government watchdog agency ruled for the third time in six months.

Aldevra LLC, a Portage, Michigan-based kitchen supplies vendor owned by a disabled Gulf War veteran, had protested the VA’s attempt in December to buy an ice maker from a preselected group of government contractors.

Attorneys with the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative arm, agreed with Aldevra owner Rodney Marshall that VA buyers should have first researched whether veteran-owned companies were able to provide the device at a reasonable price before turning to other vendors.

“In sum, we find unreasonable, and inconsistent with the statute, the agency’s failure” to determine whether a fairly priced product was available from businesses owned by disabled veterans, according to the GAO decision released today.

VA officials argued the agency is meeting its goals for contracting with veterans, and can prioritize spending with certain groups, including preselected vendors that often offer volume discounts, before turning to veteran-owned companies, according to the GAO decision.

If the agency changed its position, it might steer as much as $3 billion in federal contracts a year toward small companies owned by veterans, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government.

Third Time

Jo Schuda, a VA spokeswoman, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail and phone call seeking comment. She has previously said the agency has requested guidance from other agencies, including the White House Office of Management and Budget, on its veterans contracting policies.

Moira Mack, an Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

This is the third time the GAO has sided with a veteran- owned business that complained the VA wasn’t following the 2006 contracting law. In October, the agency backed Marshall after he contested a VA plan to buy three griddles, a skillet and a food slicer from preselected vendors.

The GAO also sided with Waldorf, Maryland-based Kingdomware Technologies Inc. in December after the technology vendor said the VA had failed to research whether veteran businesses could provide an IT product and services at a San Francisco VA facility.

The latest GAO decision won’t help Aldevra and other veteran-owned companies unless the VA is forced to follow the 2006 law, Marshall said.

“We have multiple GAO decisions,” Marshall said in an e- mail yesterday. “Now we just need the White House and Secretary Shinseki to enforce and follow the Vets First law,” referring to agency chief Eric Shinseki.

Agencies have refused to follow GAO guidance no more than five times during the past decade, Ralph O. White, the GAO’s managing associate general counsel for procurement law said at a joint hearing of two U.S. House of Representatives Veterans’ Affairs subcommittees in November.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kathleen Miller in Washington at kmiller01@bloomberg.net

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Afghan Shooter’s Base Hunkers Down Under International Focus

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Team VCS

By Gopal Ratnam, Alison Vekshin and Susanna Ray on March 14, 2012

For the last two years, Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state has become accustomed to the media’s glare, and not just for its contributions of thousands of troops to the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The sprawling installation between Mount Rainier and Puget Sound, home to both Army and Air Force commands, has played a critical role in the wars, providing everything from infantry brigades built around Stryker armored vehicles, to giant transport aircraft, to elite Special Forces and Rangers units.

Lewis-McChord, the biggest base on the U.S. West Coast, also has been the focus of headlines and government inquiries into suicides, deaths and crimes by soldiers based there. Now it’s attracting international attention because a 38-year-old Army staff sergeant deployed from the base is accused of killing at least 16 civilians in Afghanistan villages.

“Every base has its own problems, but no other base has had as much bad press as this base,” said Jorge Gonzalez, 32, executive director of Coffee Strong, a veteran-run nonprofit coffee shop in Lakewood adjacent to Interstate 5 near the base.

It’s an unfair rap, Washington’s governor said yesterday.

Leaders at the base care “very much about its returning military personnel, and making sure that they are doing it right,” Governor Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, told reporters in Seattle. Base officials have learned the lessons from Vietnam War veterans and are trying to help troops adjust to their jobs and families, she said. “So I’m not here to say that some blame goes to Fort Lewis.”

‘Most Troubled Base’

Lewis-McChord was called the U.S. military’s “most troubled base” in 2010 by the military’s Stars and Stripes newspaper.

Among the cases cited by the newspaper was the killing of three Afghans in separate incidents in 2010 involving troops from the base. Four soldiers pleaded or were found guilty, and seven others were convicted of lesser crimes from drug use to assaulting soldiers, Army Major Christopher Ophardt said yesterday in an e-mail.

Army spokesman George Wright at the Pentagon said in response to an e-mail inquiry that he didn’t have details about how crimes committed by soldiers based at Lewis-McChord compared with those at other facilities.

Suicides at the base rose to 12 last year from nine each in 2009 and 2010, Ophardt said. The Army Medical Command is investigating whether the base’s medical center improperly reversed post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses in soldiers.

Economic Contribution

Lewis-McChord, home to the Army’s I Corps, the Air Force’s 62nd Airlift Wing, and other units, employs 43,000 military personnel and 15,000 civilians, according to Joe Piek, a base spokesman.

The base supports 56,000 family members and contributes $4 billion a year to the regional economy, he said yesterday in an interview.

With multiple tours of duty for many of its troops, the base has accounted for 115,000 deployments of active-duty, reserve and National Guard personnel to Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. Deaths of troops from the base include 201 in Iraq and 76 in Afghanistan.

“The problem is our military is getting tired,” said state Senator Mike Carrell, a Republican who represents Lakewood. “We’ve been at war for 10 years. Some of these guys have been deployed four or five times.”

Even then, most soldiers return to their lives “seamlessly” after a deployment, Carrell said in an interview.

In a city such as Lakewood, with a population of 50,000, and “you’ve one person that does a murder, does that reflect on the whole city?” Carrell said.

Parking-Lot Shooting

Units belonging to the Army’s I Corps have a storied history that includes liberating the Philippines from Japan during World War II and guarding the Korean Demilitarized Zone at the end of the Korean War.

Reports of trouble at the base cited in Stars and Stripes included the 2010 case of Army Specialist Brandon Barrett, 28, a Lewis-McChord soldier who was shot dead in a Salt Lake City parking lot after he shot and injured a police officer. In September of that year, Robert Quinones, 29, a former soldier who had been based at Lewis-McChord, held three people at gunpoint at Fort Stewart, Georgia, demanding mental-health treatment.

In January, a former Lewis-McChord soldier, Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, killed a ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. He had left military service in 2009, Ophardt said.

Read more

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-13/afghan-shooter-s-base-hunkers-down-under-international-attention#p1

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Afghan Massacre: Rush To Judgment

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Team VCS

For the past few days, Washington’s, America’s, probably much of the world’s airways have been filled with commentary about the horrific killings in Afghanistan allegedly committed by an American soldier. Radio, TV and the blogosphere have been inundated with reports, predictions, and speculation—why he did it, what it means for the American war effort in Afghanistan and what it means for the future of the military. The New York Daily News featured the headline “Sergeant Psycho.” Other, less inflammatory and ridiculous story headers have appeared across the spectrum of platforms, prompting a backlash of stories denouncing the press stereotype of returning veterans as ticking time bombs of psychoses. No sane person would commit such an act. So it seems safe to assume that there is some sort of mental health issue—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or something considerably worse—at play. But the rush to judgment by the pontificating classes has been disturbing.

I don’t think anyone could catch every panel of experts pulled together to opine on this subject, but I’ve made a point to watch and listen to many of them. And one thing in particular struck me about the ones I’ve watched and listened to: none of them included a soldier who has come through the war with PTSD. I’ve heard lots of policy experts, a couple retired general officers and a few medical professionals. But not a single returned combat veteran who has survived PTSD. So, as a combat veteran who has survived PTSD and now takes part in research and treatment for wounded warriors with PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), I’d like to weigh in.

To the editors and entire staff of the New York Daily News: Screw You. Go to war, come home, go to war again. Keep this up for 10 years. Then see how funny you think that headline is. You have no standing to make this judgment. None.

To our elected officials and the people who elected them: this is what you get when you refuse to do what is necessary to create and maintain sufficient military force to fight your wars. This means everything necessary up to and including the implementation of a draft. We’ve been fighting for 10 years—twice as long as World War II—with insufficient forces.

The All-Volunteer Army was designed as a peacetime force. It was never supposed to carry us through 10 years of war. The National Guard and Reserves are supposed to be a strategic reserve. Congress and two successive administrations have worn the military down through misuse.

That said, this is one individual action apparently carried out by a single soldier. There are 2.4 million men and women who went to Iraq and Afghanistan and didn’t commit this horrific crime. Be proud of all of them and make sure you hold your elected representatives responsible to provide the care the returned veterans need once they are home.

To the well-meaning psychologists and psychiatrists who believe that the medical community should remove the word Disorder from the diagnosis of PTSD in order to reduce the stigma of soldiers seeking help: you’ve got it 100{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} wrong.

Instead of reducing the stigma of a soldier asking for help, this would increase it. Being wounded in the service of one’s country is entirely honorable. Seeking medical attention for “stress” is considered breaking. We know that PTSD changes the way the brain works and even its size and shape. That change makes this an injury, a combat injury. The diagnosis should be for Trauma-Induced Brain Injury or something similar.

I heard someone on the radio today say that PTSD is the common cold of mental health conditions. That’s really unlikely to lower the stigma of a soldier asking for help. From personal experience I can tell you I would have swapped a cold any day for the experience of sitting alone in the desert with a pistol in my hand ready to commit suicide because I couldn’t stop the images of dead and mutilated bodies from taking over my brain. No, most definitely not a cold. And not helpful.

As for the future of our mission in Afghanistan. In my experience with small wars, sometimes it is one seemingly small event that changes the course of history. In Kosovo, it was Racak: the murder of forty-five Kosovar Albanian civilians on a frigid January evening by Serbian police and soldiers stiffened NATO’s resolve to stop the violence. The bombing campaign began a few weeks later.

It’s profoundly unsettling to think that this event could have the opposite effect, weakening the resolve of the U.S. and its allies to remain in Afghanistan.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/03/14/afghan-massacre-rush-to-judgment/#ixzz1p9M353wS

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VCS Supports Senator Webb’s Military and Veterans Education Reform Act of 2012

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Team VCS

 

Below is the text of an official letter of support from Veterans for Common Sense

in support of  important legislation designed to ensure our military recieve a quality education. Please tell your elected officials to support this reform

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The Honorable Jim Webb

United States Senate 248 Russell Senate Office Bldg

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Webb:

Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) strongly supports your urgently needed legislation, ”The Military and Veterans Education Reform Act of 2012”. VCS supports the critical reforms contained in this bill. We must protect the integrity of our higher education system and the promise of the Post 9/11 GI Bill and DOD tuition assistance programs. These benefits are to help our service members and veterans succeed when they come home; we owe it to them to ensure that success to the best of our abilities.

When our military and veterans chose to pursue a higher education they should have the confidence that the institution and the courses it offers meet basic standards. To that end our military and veterans need full access to all the information relevant to making a fully informed decision about their education. VCS has been troubled by serious problems among a number of for-profit colleges. VCS is concerned in particular with the aggressive, misleading and manipulative recruiting tactics, as well as the lack of transparency regarding basic facts about the performance and the accreditation credentials of a number of these for-profit colleges. VCS believes that “The Military and Veterans Education Reform Act of 2012”, addresses and will seek to correct many of these deficiencies.

Protecting our service members and veterans’ future should be our highest priority; the future of America depends on it. VCS supports “The Military and Veterans Education Reform Act of 2012”, and we hope the bill receives prompt hearings and a quick passage.

Sincerely,

Patrick Bellon, MPA

Iraq Veteran 

Executive Director

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