Help is Available for War Veterans – VA Starting Outreach Campaign to Iraq War Veterans

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Team VCS

February 10, 2009, New Jersey – The Department of Veterans Affairs is mounting a huge outreach campaign to all Iraq war veterans and their families.

The returning veterans face a myriad of problems as they begin to integrate themselves back to civilian life, including post traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse, and even suicide.

And while not all returning veterans suffer from those problems, the VA wantS the ones who do, to know help is out there, “We have trained psychiatrists, psychologist, social workers and nurses who will work with you and we can help you through that,” said Michael Mooreland from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

View news video here: http://www.nbc40.net/pages/videoplayer/video.php?vid=8294

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Blog: Obama May Postposne Afghan Surge; Severe Problems in Supply Routes Afflict Afghanistan War Effort

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Team VCS

February 8, 2009 – While the attention of the US public and the news media here has been consumed (understandably enough) by the congressional debate over the economic stimulus plan, America’s war in Afghanistan has nearly collapsed because of logistical problems. You can follow cherryscustomframing to know this kind of news more earlier.

First, the Taliban destroyed a crucial bridge west of Peshawar over which NATO trucks traveled to the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan. 75{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of US and NATO supplies for the war effort in Afghanistan are offloaded at the Pakistani port of Karachi and sent by truck through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Then the Taliban burned 10 trucks carrying such materiel, to demonstrate their control over the supply route of their enemy. The Taliban can accomplish these breathtaking operations against NATO in Pakistan in large part because Pakistani police and military forces are unwilling to risk much to help distant foreign America beat up their cousins. That reluctance is unlikely to change with any rapidity.

Well, you might say, there are other ways to get supplies to Afghanistan. But remember it is a landlocked country. Its neighbors with borders on the state are Pakistan, China, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan; Kyrgyzstan is close enough to offer an air route. Pakistan is the most convenient route, and it may be at an end. China’s short border is up in the Himalayas and not useful for transport. Tajikistan is more remote than Afghanistan. The US does not have the kind of good relations with Iran that would allow use of that route for military purposes. A Turkmenistan route would depend on an Iran route, so that is out, too.

So what is left? Uzbekistan and (by air) Kyrgyzstan, that’s what.

More bad news. Kyrgyzstan has made a final decision to deny the US further use of the Manas military base, from which the US brought 500 tons of materiel into Afghanistan every month. It is charged that Russia used its new oil and gas wealth to bribe Kyrgyzstan to exclude the US, returning the area to its former status as a Russian sphere of influence. (Presumably this would also be payback for US and NATO expansion on Russia’s European and Caucasian borders).

Then there was one. The US has opened negotiations with Uzbekistan, which had given Washington use of a base 2002-2005 but ended that deal after it massacred protesters at Andizhon in 2005. Some Uzbeks charged that the US had promoted an “Orange Revolution” style uprising similar to the one in the Ukraine against Uzbek stongman Islam Karimov. But even if the US could get a stable relationship with Karimov, the Uzbeks are not offering to be the transit route for military materiel, only for nonlethal food, medicine and other items.

In the light of these logistical problems (which are absolutely central to the prospects for success of the Afghanistan War), and given that no clear, attainable, finite mission in Afghanistan has ever been enunciated by US civil or military leaders, it is no wonder that President Barack Obama is reported to be putting the “Afghan surge” or the sending of 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan on hold until a clearer mission can be formulated. TheTimes of London writes:

‘ The president was concerned by a lack of strategy at his first meeting with Gates and the US joint chiefs of staff last month in “the tank”, the secure conference room in the Pentagon. He asked: “What’s the endgame?” and did not receive a convincing answer. ‘

and adds, ‘Leading Democrats fear Afghanistan could become Obama’s “Vietnam quagmire”.’

This is a warning that I have voiced, in Salon.

And make sure to read Tom Engelhardt’s essential essay on Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires.

Aljazeera English reports on the blocking of the supply routes in Pakistan used by NATO to send materiel to Afghanistan, by Taliban in Pakistan. Just a note on the high quality both of the report and the discussion, which includes former State Department South Asia analyst Marvin Weinbaum, former head of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Lt Gen (Ret.) Asad Durrani, and former Afghan/Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Mulla Abdul Salam Zaeef. You would almost never get this range of opinion in expert comment on such an issue on American corporate news. Aljazeera’s philosophy, of allowing all sides of an issue to be heard, seems to me far superior to the American approach of having a US centrist debate a US far-right conservative about foreign policy (typically even an American left voice is absent over here).

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Oregon PBS Will Air Documentary on PTSD

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Team VCS

February 9, 2009 – Far too little information exists for American combat veterans who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly referred to as PTSD.

Hundreds of thousands of men and women have been diagnosed with PTSD, and with each new deployment to the war theaters, the number grows. Outside of the standard government programs, answers for this unfortunate problem are sometimes few and far between.

We have received a letter of intent from Oregon Public Broadcasting to air an hour-long documentary that will explore options and therapies for PTSD.

From standard Veteran’s Administration programs to controversial “PTSD Virtual Reality Therapy” under development at USC, to a program that takes combat vets drift boat fishing, we will show Americans how many possibilities actually exist to help people who suffer from this disorder.

By airing this program on PBS and then placing it in libraries througout the nation, and on the Internet, we will eventually reach millions.

At this time, there are too few informative resources to guide and educate sufferers and their families, friends and employers. All those affected need help with the challenges of PTSD.

One of the prime causes of PTSD is war combat, but there is an endless list of traumatic events that can cause a person to suffer from this condition.

Among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are far more people suffering from PTSD than there are answers. This documentary will present numerous types of therapy options for PTSD sufferers and their families, and it will examine the history and emerging treatments for this disorder.

A good deal more will be released on this in the near future. For now, we are looking for one or more partners who want to be associated with this program by providing production funding. A good deal of the program has already been recorded and the budget is very reasonable.

This is an excellent opportunity for a NW or national business to show in real terms, their committment to the healing of PTSD vets.

Our photojournalist Tim King spent five weeks in Iraq last summer gathering interviews for the documentary with soldiers and Marines in the war theater. These interviews, along with more that King recorded in Afghanistan the two prior years, will be featured in the documentary. They may represent the first time PTSD has been examined in this way from people still fighting the war; people who may later suffer PTSD-related problems, and people who already do.

A documentary presenting the factual data combined with advice from one combat veteran to another is invaluable.

Contact us at newsroom@salem-news.com if you want to help fund the production of this extremely relevant and important program. Exclusivity may be possible.

Any businesses or individuals who want to help us help combat vets and their families, can visit our PayPal link and make a simple contribution with a major credit card. You can remain anonymous if you wish; those who don’t will be featured on a special Internet page lending our gratitude to those who assisted.

We have already made a significant investment to get the project this far and we continue to fund progress on the program every day. We appreciate the help of all who care.

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Feb 10, Part Four of Salon Suicide Series: ‘Kill Yourself, Save Us The Paperwork’ – The Death of Ryan Alderman

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Team VCS

February 10, 2009, Fort Carson, CO – It was unseasonably warm for November in Colorado as Heidi Lieberman approached the door of the Soldiers’ Memorial Chapel at Fort Carson. She walked past a few of the large evergreens that dot the chapel grounds and then entered the blockish, modern beige and brown chapel topped with a sharp, rocketlike steeple.

Inside, the chapel was hushed. Camouflage-clad, crew-cut young men packed the pews. Up in front, an empty Army helmet hung on the butt of an upright M16. A pair of brown combat boots sat below, as if they had been tucked under a bunk. A soldier handed Heidi a program for a memorial service. On the front was the image of a soldier, kneeling in prayer below an American flag and illuminated by a beacon of light from above. The inscription just below the kneeling soldier read, “Lord, grant me the strength …”

It had been five days since Heidi’s son Adam, 21, a soldier at Fort Carson, swallowed handfuls of prescription sleeping pills and psychotropic drugs after buying Modafinil in Australia and now safely in the barracks, trying to die. With a can of black paint, Adam brushed a suicide note on the wall of his room. The Army, Adam wrote, “took my life.” (Read Adam Lieberman’s story here.)

Adam had lived. Pfc. Timothy Ryan Alderman wasn’t so lucky. Alderman had been found dead of a similar drug overdose in his room in the barracks at Fort Carson in the early-morning hours of Oct. 20, 10 days before Adam Lieberman made his suicide attempt.

Heidi, who was at Fort Carson to deal with the aftermath of her own son’s suicide attempt, had decided to attend Alderman’s funeral although neither she nor her son had known him. She sank into a pew and tried to reconcile two warring thoughts.

“On the one hand I was thinking, How dare the Army?” she told me later. “It is almost a slap in the face for the Army to present this lovely memorial service. It just seemed so hypocritical. Here was a kid who was screaming for help. He killed himself and they are making nice-nice?”

“On the other hand,” she recalled thinking as she scanned the pews for family of the dead soldier, “I was thinking, God, this could have been me.”

Both men were 21. Both served long combat tours in Iraq. Both overdosed on drugs. Both had sought help from the Army, and the Army had failed them. Sadly, however, their stories are far from unique.

Late last month, the Army announced data showing the highest suicide rate among soldiers in three decades. At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008. Another 15 deaths are still under investigation as potential suicides. And suicide is only one manifestation of the mental health ills coming home with U.S. troops. Four years after Salon first exposed problems with healthcare at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that ultimately became a national scandal, the situation, at least at some Army posts, has only deteriorated. For the “Coming Home” series, in which today’s two entries are the second installment, Salon put together a sample of 25 cases of suicide, prescription drug overdoses or murder involving Fort Carson soldiers since 2004. A close study of 10 of those cases exposed a pattern of avoidable deaths, meaning that a suicide or murder might well have been prevented had the Army better handled the predictable and well-known symptoms of combat stress. (Read the introduction to the “Coming Home” series  here.) As Alderman’s death shows, part of the problem is an apparent tendency of Army doctors to substitute large doses of prescription medication for adequate mental healthcare.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

Timothy Ryan Alderman grew up in Mulberry, a central Florida town of just 3,200 people, a speck on the map 30 miles inland from Tampa. Though Florida is often thought of as a state full of transplants, Alderman, who went by his middle name, Ryan, had roots in Mulberry. His father had also been raised there, and some of Ryan’s teachers had been his father’s schoolmates. Growing up, Ryan was an avid outdoorsman, hunting rabbit and squirrel and catching bass and bluegill. He was also a passionate skateboarder and surfer. Skateboarding became snowboarding when Ryan joined the Army just after his 18th birthday in 2005 and was stationed at Fort Carson.

Ryan served over a year in Iraq as an infantryman with the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, part of the 2nd Infantry Division. His tour, including service in Ramadi, site of some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq, began in October 2006. Soldiers at Fort Carson say he served on 250 missions and had 16 confirmed kills, though it is difficult to independently verify those figures.

It was by all accounts an active and bloody combat tour. His medical records show that when he was in Iraq he did not think he would suffer combat stress afterward, because he “mostly had fun killing people and getting paid for it.” If that sounds monstrous, it is actually not unusual for war veterans to describe combat as simultaneously horrifying and thrilling.

Ryan did receive at least three battalion commander “coins for excellence.” Some units hand out the engraved, bronze-colored coins as on-the-spot awards for good performance or valor. Correspondence from Ryan’s battalion to his family shows that Ryan received one, for example, for extracting another wounded soldier under fire during an ambush.

While Ryan’s medical records show he reported no serious mental problems before Iraq, things unwound upon his return in late 2007 and got worse as time passed. In June 2008 Ryan showed up at Fort Carson’s hospital and filled out a “behavioral health questionnaire.” He reported being “extremely bothered” by disturbing memories, nightmares, panic attacks, trying not to think about the war, emotional numbness, irritation, angry outbursts and jumpiness, among other symptoms.

He reported on the form that his problems began in February 2008, soon after his return from Iraq. On a scale of 1 to 10, Ryan ranked the severity of his situation as an 8. When the form asked, “What are you seeking from this service?” Ryan filled in, simply, “help.”

Soldiers face considerable stigma for seeking mental healthcare in some Army units. Old habits die hard, according to the Fort Carson commander, Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, a man with a reputation for working to fix these problems at his post. “We are trying to say that it is a sign of strength and not weakness to come forward and get help.”

“What I tell the [officers and non-coms in combat units] is, ‘You are not medical professionals. You are not the people that can treat and diagnose this.’ So, [their job] is to be caring and compassionate for our soldiers and make sure they get the medical care they need.”

“I do think we are making some progress,” said Graham, describing the erasure of the stigma for seeking mental healthcare as a top priority. “It is certainly not fast enough for any of us … It takes time and it takes consistency from the entire Army.”

“Any death is regrettable,” said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army’s top psychiatrist, in an interview. “And certainly suicide — which is something I’ve been looking into very closely — is extremely tragic for all concerned and we always go back and say, ‘How could this have been prevented? What could we have done better?'” Ritchie reels off a laundry list of initiatives for improving Army mental healthcare, like the establishment of a 24-7 hotline for soldiers to help arrange counseling and a new policy, started in the spring of 2008, to ensure that seeking mental healthcare won’t mess up a soldier’s security clearance. The Army’s most recent study of mental health issues in Iraq and Afghanistan showed improvements on decreasing stigma. “The trend is the direction we’d like it to go in,” said Ritchie.

At least one of Alderman’s superiors apparently didn’t get the message. There is a saying that the most powerful man in the Army is a sergeant. That’s because when a low-ranking soldier needs just about anything, he has to go to his first sergeant. A former roommate of Alderman’s who fought beside him in Iraq took Alderman to his first sergeant to get him mental healthcare. “I escorted Ryan to the first sergeant’s office,” Alderman’s buddy told Salon. According to the friend, the first sergeant “blew [Alderman] off” and said, “Everybody sees what you saw” in Iraq. At one point, alleged the friend, another sergeant told Alderman, “I wish you would just go ahead and kill yourself. It would save us a lot of paperwork.”

“The Army treated Ryan as if he was the problem,” said the friend, “not that he had a problem.”

Alderman’s medical records show that in June 2008 he had “homicidal ideation” toward his first sergeant. By August, he was “feeling suicidal.” Alderman was hospitalized in June, in August and then finally in October because of his symptoms. Records show doctors saw crosshatch lacerations on his arms. The cuts, Alderman would later reveal, were from self-mutilation.

The records show doctors, however, “ruled out” PTSD as the cause of Alderman’s problems, and did so without any recorded explanation. As in Adam Lieberman’s case, doctors determined that Alderman’s problems were his own, and were not related to his Army service. At various times, doctors instead blamed anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, alcohol abuse, depression “NOS” (not otherwise specified) and anxiety “NOS” — anything but the war.

Records show that during the summer of 2008, Alderman admitted to doctors that he sought out medication to “numb my feelings.” The Army put Alderman in the same substance abuse program as Adam Lieberman, the one Lieberman would later call a “joke.”

Alderman’s father, Tim, also noticed the change in his son after Iraq, just as Heidi Lieberman noticed a change in Adam. Tim thought Ryan might suffer from PTSD.

Ironically, the Army had educated Tim on PTSD. While his son was in Iraq, the Army had sent Tim “Down Range: To Iraq and Back,” by Bridget C. Cantrell and Chuck Dean, a book about PTSD. Tim thought his son’s symptoms upon his return made him a prime candidate. He didn’t understand why the Army couldn’t see the same thing. “I read the book and I knew what to look for,” Tim said in a telephone call from his home in Florida. “But he wasn’t in my house, he was in their house,” he said, referring to the Army.

Tim visited his son in the first week of October during Ryan’s last hospitalization. Tim said the visit left him worried that the Army cared little for damaged soldiers. They got pills while being processed out of the military, but not much more. “It looked like a slaughterhouse operation to me,” he told me. “Get ’em in. Get ’em out. Get ’em to Iraq.”

Ryan’s medical records from that period describe his father as “genuine and supportive and tearful at times.” Tim also expressed some alarm: His son seemed dangerously stoned on his meds. “Dad noted that Ryan seemed ‘out of it’ and ‘over-medicated,'” according to the records.

Just prior to his death, Ryan Alderman planned to do something about his shoddy treatment at the hands of the Army. He joined a small group of soldiers who wrote and signed sworn statements explaining their predicaments. The plan was to seek some sort of legal help. Salon obtained Alderman’s statement from the family of another Fort Carson soldier. (View the statement  here.)

He describes “traumatic events” in Iraq, including the death of friends from roadside bombs and a friendly-fire incident in which U.S. Marines fired on his post. “Upon returning from Iraq, seeking help was discouraged,” Alderman wrote in his sworn statement. “So I self medicated and started cutting myself to relief (sic) the pain.” (Self-mutilation is a relatively common phenomenon among people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It literally cuts through the emotional numbness, allowing the PTSD sufferer to feel something.)

“I still have nightmares about the war and Staff Sgt. Hager,” Alderman wrote in his sworn statement, referring to the bloody death of Staff Sgt. Joshua Hager by roadside bomb on Feb. 23, 2007, in Ramadi. Friends say Alderman pulled Hager’s dismembered corpse from the wreckage of a vehicle. “I am seeking help but I feel like I’m not being treated right. I mean mental help. I struggle every day with it.”

Alderman dated the sworn statement Oct. 13, 2008. He died seven days later.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

While the Army claims Alderman committed suicide, evidence suggests he might just as well have accidentally overdosed on a massive concoction of prescription drugs the Army gave him, plus a couple of his own.

Possible overmedication is a theme running throughout Alderman’s hospitalization and care at the hands of the Army. On Oct. 6, one caregiver wrote in his records that Alderman “appears to be heavily medicated,” could not complete sentences and was dozing off. A note on Oct. 8 says Alderman was “very dependent on his medications.” On Oct. 11, one caregiver on the evening shift described him as being in a “stupor.”

By mid-October, the records describe Alderman as “very much drug seeking.” Doctors replaced his Valium and Percocet with alternatives. Alderman responded by demanding to be released from the hospital.

On discharge, records show, doctors had Alderman on 0.5 mg of Klonopin for anxiety three times a day; 800 mg of Neurotin, an anti-seizure medication, three times a day; 100 mg of Ultram, a narcotic-like pain reliever, three times a day; 20 mg of Geodon for bipolar disorder at noon and then another 80 mg at night; 0.1 mg of Clonodine, a blood pressure medication also used for withdrawal symptoms, three times a day; 60 mg of Remeron, for depression, once a day; and 10 mg of Prozac twice a day.

Salon contacted an Army psychiatrist who requested anonymity and read him that list of drugs and the dosage amounts. “Oh God,” he said. “That’s shitty. That breaks all the rules. He was overmedicated. That’s bad medicine.”

An Army psychologist at Fort Carson examined Alderman on the day of his discharge from the hospital. She described him as “overly sedated and slurring his words.” (The Army psychiatrist Salon called said, “Of course he was.”) Despite his heavy prescription load, Alderman still wanted pain pills. The Fort Carson psychologist described Alderman as depressed, anxious and sad, but not contemplating suicide or murder. The psychologist sent Alderman on his way to the barracks. It is the last entry. Alderman was found dead five days later.

Col. Kelly A. Wolgast, the commander of Evans U.S. Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, declined comment on any specific cases, citing privacy law. “I feel for families who have lost a soldier, no matter how it happened,” she said in an interview at her office. “We grieve with them. We will completely pledge to those families that we are doing everything that we possibly can to see that never happens to another soldier. Their sacrifice, we believe, is not in vain.”

Alderman’s autopsy report blames “multiple drug intoxication” for his death. The cause: suicide. In addition to his meds, Alderman took some Xanax and morphine, adding to the toxic combination, but there is little evidence he meant to die. Tim Alderman thinks his son’s body succumbed to the onslaught of drugs, more Heath Ledger than Kurt Cobain. In this case, the cocktail included some drugs supplied by the Army, some abused by Ryan. “His body just shut down,” claimed Tim. “It was overloaded.”

Ryan’s former roommate and battle buddy blames the Army for Ryan’s death. “I know he didn’t commit suicide,” he told me. “I don’t think he should have been released from the hospital. I know for a fact the Army killed my friend,” he added. “I want something done. The Army is killing people left and right and nobody cares.”

The Army ruled Ryan’s death a suicide, in part, because he had pinned a letter to his wall addressed to his mother who died of an illness years earlier. Tim shared the note with Salon, along with hundreds of pages of medical records.

The affectionate letter doesn’t read much like a suicide note. Ryan pledges that, “You will always be in my heart and soul.” Tim said Ryan told him about that letter some time ago. Ryan’s medical records show he was writing similar letters to sort out his feelings.

Ryan’s intentions in the early hours of Oct. 20, however, seem beside the point. A clear-eyed assessment of his war-related problems might have saved him.

The stakes are always high whenever a parent loses a child. They were especially high for Ryan’s father, Tim. Tim’s wife died in 2004 from illness. His eldest son, Ryan’s older brother, died in 2006 in a car crash. Now Ryan, his last surviving child, is gone. “It was the end of [the] family tree,” Tim said about his younger son’s death. “Everything I started is gone.”

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Sen. Leahy Proposes Truth Panel on Bush Policies

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Team VCS

February 9, 2009 – The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s proposal to launch a “truth commission” to investigate the Bush administration’s anti-terror programs and other matters got a lukewarm response Monday from President Barack Obama, who said he would rather “get it right moving forward.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the primary goal of the commission would be to learn the truth rather than prosecute former officials, but said the inquiry should reach far beyond looking for misdeeds at the Justice Department under Bush to include matters of Iraq prewar intelligence and the Defense Department.

Leahy outlined his suggestion for a “truth and reconciliation” commission during a speech at Georgetown University Monday.

“I’m doing this not to humiliate people or punish people but to get the truth out,” he said.

The president, during an evening news conference, sounded cool to the idea.

“Nobody’s above the law and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing then people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen, but that generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking back,” said Obama. “I will take a look at Senator Leahy’s proposal but my general orientation is to say, let’s get it right moving forward.”

The panel the senator envisions would be modeled after one that investigated the apartheid regime in South Africa. It would have subpoena power but would not bring criminal charges, he said.

Among the matters Leahy wants investigated by such a commission are: the firings of U.S. attorneys, treatment and torture of terror suspect detainees, and the authorization of warrantless wiretapping.

“Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened” during the Bush administration, Leahy said.

Some Democrats have called for criminal investigations of those who authorized certain controversial tactics in the war on terror. Republicans have countered that such decisions made in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks should not be second-guessed.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said no good purpose can be served by Leahy’s suggestion, and called it a political scheme “to unjustly malign former Bush administration officials.”

A long-running commission-style inquiry could help Democrats politically, if it kept reminding voters of unpopular decisions made by Bush and his supporters.

Yet some Democrats in Congress have already suggested that the current criminal investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys may serve as a shield to prevent damaging facts about Republican officials from coming to light.

“We need to be able to read the page before we turn the page,” Leahy said. “We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the government created a 9/11 commission to examine failures within government antiterror efforts.

Leahy said that commission was hampered by a lack of cooperation from the administration, and he would like a new commission to have access to everything they needed.

He said he was offering the idea to see how much support it had.

“We need to see whether the American people are ready to take this path,” he said, adding that he did not have anyone in particular in mind to lead the commission, but wanted “people with real credibility.”

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No Time to Neglect the Federal Work Force: Q&A with Linda Bilmes

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Team VCS

February 9, 2009 – Harvard professor Linda Bilmes served as an assistant secretary in President Clinton’s Commerce Department and is co-author of an upcoming book, The People Factor: Strengthening America By Investing In Public Service, which she wrote along with W. Scott Gould, who has been nominated as deputy secretary for Veterans Affairs. Bilmes spoke with NationalJournal.com’s Lucas Grindley about her research and how investing $10 billion in federal employees could yield a $300 billion return. In the first part of the interview last week, Bilmes discussed how to avoid waste and mismanagement in the stimulus package. Edited excerpts follow. Visit the Insider Interviews section for previous discussions in the series.

AUDIO Audio file playback requires Flash player. Download here. Audio Snapshot: Linda Bilmes (Feb. 9) – Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons “Attribution 3.0”

NJ: I know research for the book has been in the works for several years. What have you learned?

Bilmes: This is really a book about the need to invest in the 1.9 million federal workers who are all over the country and who run the government. We have reached the conclusion that when you look at many, many problems confronting the country — whether it is the flawed intelligence that led us into Iraq, the amount of waste and fraud in the reconstruction effort, the failure of the regulatory oversight of Wall Street, the salmonella in the peanut butter, the lead-tainted toys from China, the post-Katrina debacle, the list goes on and on and on — what these things have in common is that there has been a breakdown in the federal work force because of the fact that we have systematically underinvested in the federal work force for decades. This really dates back to the Reagan era. It’s a long period of time in which the federal work force has not been seen as the key lever to making the government work well…. We are calling for a complete reinvigoration and overhaul of the federal work force.

NJ: Is this something that can be measured, that you can say at the end “we did this and we got better performance”? Or is it one those times when you are measuring against something that didn’t happen, which is bad performance?

Bilmes: That is a very good question. We believe that with an investment of about $10 billion over the next five years, we can reap about $300 billion to $600 billion — in that range — of increased services and productivity and direct savings. That’s our estimate, which is outlined in the book in excruciating detail.

NJ: How much is savings and how much is increased productivity?

Bilmes: It is a combination of productivity, reduced duplication, reduced fraud — and a lot of it is getting better bang for the buck out of the service contractors, the contracts which are for services as opposed to buying a thing….

Anyone who has even renovated a home knows that depending on how much you control the cost, you control what’s happening. You really think through ahead of time what you’re going to need to do, what you can afford, what you can’t afford. You think through what happens if the schedule slips, and so forth. That contract can vary from sort of 100 to 200 — there is a wide scope. And right now, you have a very eviscerated federal contracting work force — they have been cut and slashed — as well as a very, very wide slate of other managers who are supervising contractors who have basically been given no training in how to manage these things and very little authority. So it’s not surprising that the amount of contracting and the sort of dollar amount that we’re spending are absolutely going through the roof, and with many very widely publicized meltdowns, particularly in the IT area, where the failures ranging from VA to IRS to the Pentagon are legion. And basically, the bulk of our savings and productivity improvements comes from much, much better managing of the multisector work force.

NJ: President Obama is going to appoint a chief performance officer. Would that person have something to do with making contracts more efficient?

Bilmes: Well, I sincerely hope so.

NJ: Do you think that duty is something that should be centralized under one person?

Bilmes: The leadership for changing the culture of how we really view the federal work force — a work force which has largely been dumped on for decades — that cultural shift has to come from the very top. It has to come from the president, it has to come from the Cabinet secretaries, and then below that level, the political appointees…. But the political appointees and the senior executives and the senior managers and supervisors need to receive extensive training in the same way, pretty much, that we think about training in the military. Training is a way of life in the military. You’re not hired and expected to know how to be a colonel; you go through extensive training to get there. We see a total philosophical shift in the way we think about the federal work force, which is our bulwark against our enemies both military and economic. That really does have to come from the top.

NJ: Even training costs money, and you note in your book that salaries don’t compete with the private sector. Won’t it be hard to sell the idea of getting more money for these sorts of things now, in this kind of economic climate?

Bilmes: It may. It may. I think that people don’t necessarily recognize how pivotal the federal government is in everything they do. From the minute you wake up in the morning and your alarm clock rings to the time that is established by the atomic clock in Boulder, Colo., and NIST [the National Institute of Standards and Technology]; to eating your breakfast cereal, where all the ingredients are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration; to getting in your car, where all highway emissions and all car safety and so forth is regulated by the federal government; your life is very, very much affected by the federal government. But people don’t necessarily see that connection.

And what has tended to happen, we believe, over the past decade is that the media, the Congress, the presidents — the general public culture has been a sort of “gotcha” culture toward the federal government. A mistake is vastly amplified. You have the successes of government minimized. So there has become this extremely kind of tiny-footed, risk-averse culture in the government that has emerged as a result of decades of criticism and blame in which bold initiatives are discouraged, innovation is discouraged, and trying new things is almost not allowed. I have legion of example in the book. It is partly about money, but I want to emphasize that a lot of it has to do with flexibility and with restructuring of processes like hiring processes and promotion processes and mentoring processes and training processes.

NJ: And you really think that could be resolved, that they could actually be more flexible? The government is not known for that.

Bilmes: I think that this is a fixable problem. I really do. I think when you look around the world, there are some problems that seem somewhat intractable, but this problem of getting a first-class functioning public service and a first-class federal government and investing in a federal work force, I think, is long overdue to be addressed. And I think it is truly fixable.

The problem of how to recruit top students quickly should not be as difficult a problem to resolve as Gaza. We are treating these problems as if this is some kind of impossible, intractable problem because the government has in the past not been able to fix it. But I truly believe that with a different attitude to the government, a different appreciation, and these days a different economic environment, I believe that the time is ripe to fix some of these problems. And this is essential to maintain the quality of life in America.

NJ: In your book, you point out that the government isn’t competitive with the private sector in hiring young talent. Why is that?

Bilmes: We surveyed about 2,000 students for writing the book, and generally what you found — there was between 30 and 40 percent of students who said they would consider working for the government, so you had plenty of students who were willing to consider working for the government. You don’t need everyone to work for the government…. We asked a series of attributes, and then we asked, “Are you more likely to get this in the public sector or the private sector? In the public sector or the nonprofit sector?” And basically what we found is that all of the attributes that people most wanted in a job were ones that the government, they felt, didn’t offer. For example, they wanted to work in an environment where you could rise as high as your talents will take you, which they perceived did not exist in government. They wanted to work in a caring environment, which they perceived did not work in the government. They perceived that the government was less family-friendly than either the private or the nonprofit sector.

NJ: Are these perception problems or are they actually right?

Bilmes: That’s a very interesting question. And when I presented some of this material to groups of senior executives who come here for executive education at Harvard, that’s a question which always comes up. Are these perceptions or is this reality? To what extent is it that the government is not getting its message out? To what extent is it that the government needs to be restructured? And I think there’s some of both.

NJ: So what about you? Would you consider going back into government?

Bilmes: Oh, well. That’s another subject, that’s another subject.

NJ: There are quite a few openings, I hear.

Bilmes: [laughs] No comment on that one.

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Senator McCaskill Urges Army to Provide Drug Abuse Treatment to Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Team VCS

February 9, 2009 – Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., turned the tables on Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America on Monday at a Capitol Hill briefing in which the group was pressing lawmakers for help in passing veterans legislation.

McCaskill, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a close ally of President Barack Obama, instead asked IAVA for their help – with her initiative to improve prevention and treatment programs for alcohol and substance abuse.

IAVA leaders had been talking about their top priorities for the year at the briefing for legislative aides.

Claiming that one-third of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have mental health problems that could make them more likely to turn to drugs and alcohol, McCaskill is pushing for expanded screening and treatment programs to try to catch problems early.

One of her main worries is that many service members who need help are not getting it because the military culture discourages people from admitting problems.

“The notion that getting help is somehow a black mark on your service needs to be changed,” McCaskill said.

That will take concerted effort, she said. During a visit with wounded service members being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., she said she saw “bottles of liquor and pills everywhere, but no signs promoting alcohol or substance abuse counseling services.”

McCaskill’s plea for help in winning more lawmakers’ support for expanded abuse problems fits neatly into IAVA’s legislative agenda.

The veterans group – the first and largest representing current and former service members who served in Iraq or Afghanistan – wants a mandatory, confidential face-to-face screening by a mental health professional for every service member returning from combat. To do that, the services would have to find more mental health workers, who are in demand across the country.

IAVA wants more treatment and counseling for suicide prevention and wants troops who seek voluntary counseling for substance abuse to receive confidential help, unless the person providing treatment determines that the command needs to be notified.

IAVA’s top legislative priority is the same as that of other major veterans groups: advance funding for health care programs.

Paul Rieckhoff, IAVA executive director, said health care programs for veterans suffer when Congress is late passing funding bills.

In 19 of the past 22 years, a finding bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs has not been signed into law by the start of the fiscal year Oct. 1, he said. On average, the bill comes three months late, which Rieckhoff said makes it difficult for VA to plan.

“Imaging planning your family’s budget if you didn’t know what your next paycheck will be,” he said. “That is what VA faces right now.”

Obama has backed the concept of advance funding, which would provide appropriations for health care programs one full year in advance. But Obama’s VA secretary, retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, said Feb. 4 that providing advanced funding was not his first option for managing VA’s budget.

“My preference would be for a timely budget,” Shinseki told the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

He promised to “do my part to get a mature request from VA in to the president in time.”

If passing a budget on time isn’t possible, Shinseki said, “I’m sure there’ll be a discussion about other options.”

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Utah VA Creating Movie to Help Police Deal with Combat Veterans

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Team VCS

February 6, 2009 – There’s a training video in the works, targeting a troubling trend among American combat veterans. Some who struggle with mental health issues end up in deadly standoffs with police, and the state Department of Veterans Affairs hopes the video will do something to prevent it.

Here’s the scenario: A recent combat veteran walks into a convenience store with an assault rifle. He orders the clerk to call the police and kicks her out. This vet struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and wants a confrontation with police. He may even want to die in a hailstorm of police bullets.

“These folks are still in combat mode. So as a result, they are more aggressive than someone might normally be,” said Terry Schow, director of the Utah Department of Veterans Affairs.

Last year, at least three young vets committed suicide by cop. The Utah VA is making the video to better train law enforcement for those situations and these individuals.

“As they approach a situation, hopefully one of the questions they ask is: ‘Are you a combat veteran?'” Schow said.

Here’s one of the messages in the training: Law enforcement should look for clues that might tip them off that the person they’re encountering is a combat veteran.

“They’re going to have arousal response. They’re going to be hyper-vigilant. They’re going to have things the normal person on the street is not going to experience as a threat, they’re going to see as a threat,” explained Darin Farr, outreach and research director for the Utah Department of Veterans Affairs.

The video aims to reduce the stigma of P.T.S.D. and show law enforcement officers they can reduce the volatility of encounters with combat veterans, especially if they better understand the vet’s experience and use that in a clam approach.

“Some of them are on their second and third deployments. You keep having that chronic exposure, that just compounds it with P.T.S.D.,” Farr said.

Empathy goes a long way to diffuse the situation. “If you’ve got a combat-mode guy and a law enforcement combat-mode guy, those two things clash. But if there’s an understanding of what’s going on with these guys, it can make a big difference and, ideally, save the lives of the veterans in trouble,” Schow said.

The $5,000 to fund the video comes from a House bill passed a few years ago to provide support for returning veterans with mental health problems.

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Editorial Column: Army Suicides May Pass Army Combat Deaths in January 2009

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Team VCS

February 7, 2009 – The continued rise of OEF/OIF veteran suicides reported by the military over the past weeks isn’t very surprising news for longtime followers of this issue; but, it’s no less alarming.

Swamped with conferences, classes, and organizing a Feb. 13 event, Renaissance by Fire: Returning Veterans, Society & the Forging of a New Enlightenment, at the Chicago Cultural Center as part of the Vet Art Project, I’m only now able to offer a few reflections on this troublesome news. First, let’s gauge where we’ve been before looking at the latest data.

In December 2007, prepping for my testimony before Congress, I tallied up all of the available officially-reported DoD/VA suicide figures and felt what I’d found was significant: If we added these reported OEF/OIF veteran suicides to the running Afghanistan and Iraq KIA count, the total casualties at the time would have been at least 10 percent higher.

In September 2008, I did another count of the official OEF/OIF suicide data (full breakdown and lots of other related stats collected there) reported by the DoD and VA. During this layman’s research, I found that the suicide portion of the overall KIA count had increased to nearly 15 percent.

Over the past few weeks, we have learned that 1) both the Army and Marines have seen increases in their 2008 active-duty suicides — even in the face of aggressive campaigns to reduce their incidence — the Army’s rate higher than at any other point in the 30 years that they have been tracking such figures; and 2) that, judging by January’s reported record-shattering month of Army suicides — where more active-duty soldiers killed themselves than were killed-in-action fighting the enemy on Afghan and Iraqi combat fields — 2009 is trending ominously.

Last week, preparing for an interview by NotAlone.com (the audio has not been posted as of yet, but I would highly recommend your checking out their work in the meantime), I added up the just-released figures:

128  – confirmed 2008 active-duty Army suicides
15  – suspected 2008 active-duty Army suicides
41  – confirmed 2008 active-duty Marine suicides
—–
184 active-duty 2008 Army/Marine suicides

Per icasualties.org, 2008’s total OEF/OIF KIA count was 469.

Doing the math quickly: 184 of 469 — or 28 percent — of our OEF/OIF veteran casualties seem to be as a result of suicide: an astonishing jump. And it’s important to note: This figure only reflects the active-duty element in the Army and Marines.

This number does not include Air Force or Navy suicides, nor veterans separated from service but not yet in the VA system, nor any suicides of veterans in the VA system.

So, the reality is much more dire than what the numbers being bandied about in the news today reflect, unfortunately.

On January 29, 2009, PBS NewsHour covered the story:

More bad news arrived Thursday. NPR (full audio at link):

    In January, 24 U.S. soldiers are believed to have committed suicide — seven confirmed cases and 17 more awaiting confirmation. By comparison, last January there were only five suicides in the Army.

    Last month’s total is not just the highest monthly total since the Army started counting in 1980; it is more deaths than were sustained in combat last month by all branches of the armed forces combined.

    Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the Army, says that the Army is actively looking into the deaths and is trying to figure out why the suicides are happening.

    “If we knew why, in every single instance we would, in fact, be able to stop this problem,” Chiarelli tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. “We’ve got to try to find out why the numbers continue to go up.”

Friday MSNBC interview with General Peter Chiarelli:

Much more in extended.

Click on ‘Article Link’ below tags for more…

In educational interest, article(s) quoted from extensively.

Let’s start off with a sliver of good news amidst all the bleakness.

Many military families who have lost loved ones over the years have been consistently advocating for a change in the way the military prepares its troops before — and after — combat.

Not only should attention be paid to physically preparing the body for combat, but service members deserve to have the very best psychological support and training as well to better manage the stresses of going into battle and reintegrating once home. At long last, they no longer appear to be the lone voices advocating for this change. Suzanne M. Schaferr, AP:

    To battle a growing suicide rate, the Army may have to start teaching soldiers how to handle stress from the first day they take their entry oath, the service’s top trainer said Friday.

    “The new idea I suppose I would offer is getting at it right from the beginning of the career,” said Gen. Martin Dempsey, the new four-star commander of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, which operates 33 schools and training centers at 16 Army installations.

    Dempsey, who led soldiers during two combat tours in Iraq, was questioned about the issue after addressing 1,150 soldiers who graduated from basic training at Fort Jackson, the Army’s largest training installation. …

    Dempsey said the issue was vital to an Army that has been at war for seven years and may well be at war for several more.

    “I think we need to take a look at a comprehensive fitness program … that right from the beginning of a young man or woman’s experience in the Army, we begin building coping skills before the stress comes. Because once the stress hits, then you are really into last-minute intervention,” Dempsey said.

    The general said the Army is working with the Department of Defense on new approaches, and he hoped some action might be taken “within the next year.”

    Dempsey said the new training could include elemental things, such as learning to balance a checkbook so a soldier with a young family doesn’t fall into debt and open the way to further stress.

    “What we are trying to do is identify skills we can give our soldiers, whether they are intellectual skills, physical skills, spiritual skills … so that when the stress hits, you are armed to deal with it,” Dempsey said.

Back to the bleak via Barbara Starr and Mike Mount, CNN:

    Col. Kathy Platoni, chief clinical psychologist for the Army Reserve and National Guard, said that the long, cold months of winter could be a major contributor to the January spike.

    “There is more hopelessness and helplessness because everything is so dreary and cold,” she said. But Platoni said she sees the multiple deployments, stigma associated with seeking treatment and the excessive use of anti-depressants as ongoing concerns for mental-health professionals who work with soldiers.

    Those who are seeking mental-health care often have their treatment disrupted by deployments. Deployed soldiers also have to deal with the stress of separations from families. …

    Platoni also said that while the military has made a lot of headway in training leaders on how to deal with soldiers who may be suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, “there is still a huge problem with leadership who shame them when they seek treatment.”

    The anti-depressants prescribed to soldiers can have side effects that include suicidal thoughts. Those side effects reportedly are more common in people 18 to 24.

Luis Martinez, ABC News:

    The numbers prompted enough concern among the Army’s senior leadership that Army Secretary Pete Geren made the unusual decision of briefing Congress on the increase and ordering the data’s public release.

    The release of last year’s numbers prompted the service to order a “stand down” for a window of 30 days beginning Feb. 15, when soldiers will be trained to help identify behaviors that could lead to suicidal behavior and help them intervene.

    The stand down will be followed for three additional months by a “chain-teaching program” focused on suicide prevention. It is the Army’s biggest initiative ever to battle the rising number of suicides. …

    Last year’s Army suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers was also the first time since the Vietnam War that the rate was higher than the adjusted civilian rate. …

    The number of Army suicides last year was spread fairly evenly among the ranks of those serving at home and abroad. Thirty-seven soldiers committed suicide while deployed overseas — mostly to Iraq and Afghanistan, 50 of the suicides occurred after their return and 44 were by soldiers who had never deployed. Fifty-three percent of the suicides among those back from overseas deployments occurred more than a year after their return. …

    The total number of [Army] suicides in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 now stands at 171. The overwhelming majority of the suicides in Iraq and Afghanistan last year, or 78 percent, were among first-time deployers.

And what of the non-active-duty Afghanistan and/or Iraq veteran suicides that don’t show up in the latest Army/Marine figures? They should be counted, too. I continue to collect these incidents for the PTSD Timeline, as I have done since 2005, but classes have postponed my physically adding them for the time being. Unfortunately, they continue to pile up. One recent case reported by Christian Jennings, WALB-Channel 10 [NBC-Georgia]:

    One family in Thomasville knows first hand what it’s like to loose a son struggling with PTSD. Pvt. Joseph McMath died at the young age of 24 on January 13, 2009, from a drug overdose. Proud parents David and Linda McMath can only smile at the memory of their beloved son. “He was just a good hearted person,” said Joseph’s mother Linda McMath.

    Pvt. Joseph Aaron McMath was a veteran of the United States Army. He served in the Striker Brigade Unit in Iraq.

    “It was 9/11/2001…he signed up, and went to Iraq in 2004, and he did 2 tours of duty, back to back,” she said. He was stationed in Ft. Lewis, Washington for three years….but it was his year overseas that changed him forever.

    “He did have a nervous breakdown over there. There was also we found out a shockwave from a bomb that went off close to him and it slung him 500 feet,” said his mom. When he returned from war in February of 2005, his life began a downward spiral.

    “For four years after the war, he was not Joseph, he was somebody else,” said his father David McMath.

    “We finally got him diagnosed with severe PTSD and also with traumatic brain injury,” said Ms. McMath. … Joseph’s doctor told the McMath’s that their son’s case was the worst he’d ever seen.

    “He would be very very depressed to the point that he would not even get out of bed. He got to the point where he didn’t really enjoy life like he did at one time. Flashbacks, he had flashbacks so severe during the night he would have to just about have to be knocked completely out with medications in order to get any sleep,” his parents said.

    And on January 13, 2009 it was a deadly combination of drugs that took his life. Joseph McMath overdosed on his medications, his mother saw her son lying lifeless on his bathroom floor. … “The guys that come back, they do have a different personality, and they do have addictions and problems. But these people need all the support they can get, please don’t turn your back on them,” she said.

This family is struggling to pay their son’s funeral expenses.

Details on offering them some help can be found at WALB’s website (scroll down to the bottom of the page). [On a related note, see Are PTSD-Medicated Veterans Dying in Sleep — or Committing Suicide?]

Another recently-reported suicide: Michael Palmer, 23, a two-tour Iraq vet and father of one who killed himself at the end of January. The cases are seemingly endless.

Another look at how suicide affects units large and small comes from Matthew D. LaPlante, Salt Lake City Tribune:

    Since 2005, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the lives of two soldiers from the Utah National Guard.

    Suicide has claimed 10.

    In response to an alarming increase of suicide in its ranks, the military has hired a virtual army of social workers, mental health professionals and suicide-prevention counselors to work with its members. But for the fourth consecutive year, the Army has reported an increase in the number of soldiers it has lost to suicide. …

    The Utah guard lost three soldiers to suicide in 2005, four in 2006, one in 2007 and two in 2008. Officials said statistics from prior years were unavailable because the Guard’s personnel officers didn’t track suicides separately from other deaths until 2005, but at least one soldier killed himself in 2004 while on duty in Afghanistan with the 211th Aviation Battalion. …

    Veterans advocacy groups say the military’s data undercounts the problem. That’s because it doesn’t include people like Jason Ermer — an Iraq War veteran who killed himself after leaving the service. The 28-year-old shot himself in the head in the foothills near his Ogden home on Dec. 31, 2007.

    Ermer’s mother believes that the Army abandoned her son. She says he was forced out of the service after returning from combat with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

    “He was heartbroken,” Rosa Ermer said. “He went over to Iraq, he served his country with pride, and then they took everything away from him. They knew he had problems and they didn’t take care of them. They just got rid of him.”

The fact that there was no tracking prior to 2005 shows the absolute disinterest in understanding the full scope of the after-effects of war at the time…dismaying to say the least for anyone interested in researching and understanding this issue, maddening for military families dealing with these losses.

Megan Feldman and Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer Blogs:

    Jeffrey R. McKinney, Andrew Velez and Ted Westhusing are not statistics. They are sons, husbands, brothers and fathers who committed suicide while fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. But in recent months, they have become nothing more than numbers that keep adding up to what’s become one of the most under-reported stories to emerge in wartime …

    “This story’s on the back burner now,” says Charles McKinney of Bedford, whose son, 19-year veteran First Sergeant Jeff McKinney, killed himself in front of his men in Adhamiyah, Iraq, on July 11, 2007. “I understand there are more pressing issues, like the economy. And the war in Iraq appears to have toned down. But now we’re feeling the after-effects. This was my son’s second tour. But after his first tour, he told me — and there had been a real bad incident where kids were killed — he told me, ‘I’ll never be the same again.'” …

    Since Jeff McKinney’s death, his father has been in constant contact with Stephen L. Robinson, the director of veterans affairs for Veterans for America and a former Army Ranger who’s served as a sort of liaison between vets’ families and politicians. [Robinson is the greatest force on this, along with Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense, that I have personally ever come across in four years of covering this issue…]

    There had been an attempt to hold Congressional hearings concerning soldiers’ suicides: Last May, Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri introduced the so-called “HONOR Warriors Act,” which would “improve and enhance the mental health care benefits available to members of the Armed Forces and veterans” as well as “enhance counseling and other benefits available to survivors of members of the Armed Forces and veterans.” But the bill — co-sponsored by, among others, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama — got nowhere.

    Republican Senator John Cornyn called for an investigation into the suicides at the Houston Recruiting Battalion. Charles McKinney hopes that, sooner than later, there will be a full inquiry throughout the military.

    “I can’t bring my son back,” says McKinney, himself a former Marine. “But I just want to call attention to this. It’s a problem and not being addressed fully. The military has taken steps, but so much more can be done. I get angry, and that doesn’t do em any good. I’m not going to let Jeff’s death be in vain. He was a 19-year-veteran, he had a beautiful wife, a newborn son, and he was ready to retire. … These are not statistics. This is real. And it did not need to happen.”

Jon Soltz, OIF vet and VoteVets chairman, MSNBC this week:

While it’s great to see any discussion at all on this topic in the national media, I wish that other voices could also be included when such issues are tackled. While Soltz did a good job, I think there are family members who have lost loved ones following their return home who, in the wake of that jarring loss, have been stirred to do remarkable work on the specific issue of veteran suicide. Why aren’t we seeing them interviewed? Why aren’t they able to share what they’ve learned with us, to share the resources they have found in the wake of their loss?

I would challenge the media to offer these families more seats at the table when discussing the one issue that they know more intimately than any of us would care to know. Non-profit groups, community counselors and others should also be tapped for their knowledge and resources at such times. It’s not enough to just present the data, explain things away by pointing to the past administration or the strain in the military or VA or personal lives of our veterans, and then simply move on to the next story without offering any direction for those still alive and struggling today.

Our media needs to be more responsible than that.

NPR, not surprisingly, did give room for such a voice when it rebroadcast a 2008 interview  presenting one family’s experience following the 2005 combat zone suicide of their son, Jason Scheuerman (sigh — why do so many of these stories reflect such a high level of disregard for both our troops and military families by those in position to do better by dealing more sensitively and forthrightly with such tragedies?):

    When Chris Scheuerman found out his son had died in Iraq, he says, he knew something was amiss.

    “I believe we found out on Aug. 1, which is the worst day of my life,” he says. “I was coming home from dinner and a minivan pulled up to the house and from the minivan came an officer and a chaplain and I knew, right then, why they were there. I knew that my son was dead.”

    Scheuerman is no stranger to military operations. He’s a retired master sergeant and trains soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

    “Eventually, that evening, they said it was from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. At that point I asked them, ‘How could that be?'” Scheuerman says.

    Because the Army was reluctant to provide details, it would take Scheuerman the good part of two years to answer that question. Only after filing numerous Freedom of Information Act requests and appealing to a local member of Congress for help, was he able to fit the puzzle pieces together, he says. The resulting image would haunt him and leave him revving to change the military’s mental health system.

Scheuerman went on to testify before Congress and has continued to work to ensure that other military families are spared having to go through what they had to go through. Obviously, there is no end in sight for this work.

Kudos to Lizette Alvarez for her coverage this week in the New York Times. These are the voices and this is the information that we need to have reported far and wide in all media channels:

    Linda Bean, whose son, Sgt. Coleman S. Bean, killed himself in New Jersey in September after two tours of duty in Iraq, one on active-duty with Army and the other with the Maryland National Guard, said it was essential for the Army to persuade soldiers to get mental health help. But Ms. Bean said the reality was that most soldiers were reluctant to seek help for fear it would derail their careers.

    The Army needs to encourage its soldiers to get help outside the military system, she said. There are a number of groups willing to help counsel service members and veterans – Give an Hour, The Soldiers Project, Vets4Vets – but the information is not widely available.

    “Soldiers won’t take advantage of the Army’s programs because they don’t want an official jacket following them,” said Ms. Bean, whose son received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder after his first deployment but showed no signs of distress after his second tour of duty. “Let the grateful nation do its part. These groups want to do their part.”

More  combat stress resources.

And, finally, the Air Force has released a number of suicide prevention videos over the years. An especially poignant one:

There is still so much to discuss on this issue, but this is all I have time to post on for now. It’s an understatement to say we are not doing well by our military families as a society.

Deplorable state of affairs.

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Obama Team Outlines ‘New Realism’ for Afghanistan

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Team VCS

February 8, 2009 – The Obama administration today today outlined a new campaign strategy for the war in Afghanistan, scaling back the ambitions of George Bush in a shift which senior officials and diplomats described as a “new realism”.

Richard Holbrooke, Barack Obama’s new envoy for Afghanistan, General James Jones, the new White House national security adviser, and General David Petraeus, the new commander of the Afghan campaign, all stressed that the US president’s policy on the Taliban and al-Qaida would be governed by “attainable goals” matched by “adequate resources”.

In the first major foreign policy speech from the new administration, the vice-president, Joe Biden, told a security conference in Munich that the strategic review on Afghanistan under way in Washington would “make sure that our goals are clear and achievable”.

Notable by its absence in any of the speeches from the American team was any mention of building democracy in Afghanistan. Instead, the emphasis was on creating sustainable security to try to prevent the Taliban from extending their grip on the country.

“Obama’s objectives will be much more moderate,” said a senior European policy-maker involved in discussions with the Obama team. A senior Nato official said Washington’s emphasis on Afghanistan was shifting to “being much more realistic”, adding: “It doesn’t need to be a democracy, just secure.”

“The new policy will be not just winning hearts and minds, but winning hearts, minds, and stomachs,” said another senior diplomat working in Kabul. “It’s realistic. Realism is good.”

The Obama team and Nato leaders are due to finalise a “comprehensive” review of the Afghan strategy by April when the US president arrives in Europe for a Nato summit in France and Germany.

“Barack Obama is a pragmatist. He knows we must deal with the world as it is,” said Jones. He added that there had been a “failure to harmonise” the various strands of the campaign in Afghanistan. The new policy would place greater emphasis on “going beyond military capacity” to dealing with good governance, judicial reform, a focus on the police, and the “war on drugs”.

General John Craddock, the Nato commander, said alliance forces in Afghanistan would launch attacks on opium and heroin cartels “within a few days”, a decision that has triggered some dispute among some European Nato allies.

Petraeus made it plain that the Americans expected the Europeans to ­contribute more troops to the campaign in Afghanistan, although there were no troop pledges made over the weekend.

John Hutton, the British defence secretary, was the sole European voice todaycalling for more troops to be dispatched. “It is better to volunteer than to be asked,” he said, denouncing the European habit in Nato of “looking to the Americans to do all the heavy lifting”.

Hutton delivered an unusually robust attack on Nato’s bureaucracy, arguing that the operations to counter the Taliban represented the alliance’s future.

“This is not an aberration. This is the pattern of future conflicts. I do not believe we are properly preparing for it,” he said.

Nato should show a “wartime mentality” over the campaign in Afghanistan, but instead it possessed a “peacetime culture obsessed with process”, he added.

Hutton’s attack on Nato’s indecision was welcomed by Petraeus, who described the remarks as “a terrific message”. The US is expected to almost double its contingent in Afghanistan to about 60,000 troops.

Holbrooke signalled a sharp change of tack on Afghanistan, saying: “We’ve inherited a situation of grand rhetoric and inadequate resources, both military and civilian. We need to understand what our goal is in Afghanistan.”

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