Bush/Cheney: ‘Most Impeachable’

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Team VCS

January 14, 2009 – House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers says President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney committed impeachment-worthy offenses which must be thoroughly investigated even after the two men leave office as a means of reaffirming U.S. constitutional principles.

“The Bush Administration’s approach to power is, at its core, little more than a restatement of Mr. Nixon’s famous rationalization of presidential misdeeds:  ‘When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal,'” Conyers said in a foreword to a 487-page report entitled “Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush.”

“Under this view, laws that forbid torturing or degrading prisoners cannot constrain the President because, if the President ordered such acts as Commander in Chief, ‘that means it’s not illegal.'” Conyers continued. “Under this view, it is not the courts that decide the reach of the law – it is the President – and neither the Judiciary nor Congress can constrain him.”

Conyers also seemed to acknowledge what many Bush critics had long suspected, that the Michigan Democrat evaded an impeachment battle the past two years out of concern that the political repercussions might have kept the Democrats from winning larger congressional majorities and the White House in Election 2008.

Noting that “some ardent advocates of impeachment have labeled me a traitor – or worse – for declining to begin a formal impeachment inquiry in the House Judiciary Committee,” Conyers said he disagreed with some of their political judgments but concurred with their assessments of the seriousness of Bush-Cheney misconduct.

“Many think these acts rise to the level of impeachable conduct.  I agree,” Conyers said. “I have never wavered in my belief that this President and Vice-President are among the most impeachable officials in our Nation’s history, and the more we learn the truer that becomes.”

Conyers also praised the many citizens who petitioned him for action on impeaching Bush and Cheney.

“I want to make clear how much I respect those who have given so much time and energy to the cause of fighting for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney,” Conyers said. “While we may not agree on the best path forward, I know they are acting on the basis of our shared love of this country.  These citizens are not fringe radicals. –

“They are individuals who care deeply about our Constitution and our Nation, and who have stood up to fight for the democracy they love, often at great personal cost.  However, as I have said, while President Bush and Vice President Cheney have earned the dishonorable eligibility to be impeached, I do not believe that would have been the appropriate step at this time in our history.”

Documenting Abuses

The 487-page report, released  Tuesday, documents what Conyers called Bush’s excessive claims of executive power and illegal acts. It is the clearest sign yet that the 111th Congress plans to probe the depths of the Bush administration’s most controversial policies.

The report contains 47 separate recommendations, including calls for a blue-ribbon commission and independent criminal probes. Conyers said the recommendations are not intended as political “payback or revenge,” rather the goal is to “restore the traditional checks and balances of our constitutional system – and to set an appropriate baseline of conduct for future administrations.”

Conyers noted that earlier investigations failed to get to the bottom of many “questions left in the wake of Bush’s Imperial Presidency,” including allegations of torture, “extraordinary rendition” (shipping prisoners to countries known to torture), warrantless domestic surveillance, leaking the CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, and the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys.

Last week, Conyers proposed legislation to create a blue-ribbon panel of outside experts to probe the “broad range” of policies pursued by the Bush administration “under claims of unreviewable war powers,” including torture and warrantless wiretaps.

Tuesday’s report sought to arm lawmakers with the documentary evidence to support action on the bill, which currently has 10 sponsors

Last year, Conyers called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether the Bush administration committed war crimes, a proposal that Mukasey rebuffed.

Conyers came under criticism from impeachment advocates last year when he refused to allow his committee to vote on articles of impeachment against Bush proposed by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. Instead, Conyers’ committee held an impeachment substitute of sorts; a one-day hearing devoted to testimony by Bush’s critics about the administration’s alleged abuses of power.

The new report suggests that Conyers is not inclined to immediately “move forward” now that Barack Obama has been elected President. In fact, Conyers said he firmly rejects “the notion that we should move on from these matters simply because a new administration is set to take office.”

On Sunday, Obama signaled in an interview on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulus,” that he will not likely recommend that his Justice Department launch a criminal probe into the Bush administration’s past practices, particularly policies that authorized torture.

Obama said prosecution would be possible if someone were found to have “blatantly broken the law,” but the President-elect expressed “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward.”

Also, on Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that the Bush administration must turn over to President-elect Obama’s staff documents Bush has been withholding from Congress related to the White House’s role in the firing of the nine U.S. Attorneys.

Conyers’s committee has been pursuing testimony and documents from White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers about their involvement in the decision to fire the federal prosecutors, a move that a senior Justice Department official said was designed to remove U.S. Attorneys who were deemed not “loyal Bushies.”

President Bush has asserted executive privilege in blocking Bolten and Miers from testifying before Congress. Last week, a new set of House rules was passed reviving subpoenas issued during the 110th Congress. In addition to Miers, Conyers’s committee subpoenaed former White House political adviser Karl Rove.

Conyers also said he wants to find out “to what extent were President Bush and Vice President Cheney involved in the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson and its aftermath.”

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in the Plame case, but his prison sentence was commuted by Bush. “There is considerable evidence that culpability for the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson and subsequent obstruction goes above and beyond Scooter Libby,” Conyers said.

Conyers subpoenaed documents last year related to the Plame leak, including closed-door testimony that Bush and Cheney gave to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. But the Justice Department refused to turn over the materials.
 
“Given that so many significant questions remain unanswered relating to these core constitutional and legal matters, many of which implicate basic premises of our national honor, it seems clear that our country cannot simply move on,” Conyers said.

“As easy or convenient as it would be to turn the page, our Nation’s respect for the rule of law and its role as a moral leader in the world demand that we finally and without obstruction conduct and complete these inquiries. This can and should be done without rancor or partisanship.”

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Is the Army Lying About Friendly Fire Deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan Wars?

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Team VCS

January 15, 2009 – New statistics obtained by Salon depict a spectacularly low number of U.S. Army deaths from friendly fire in the current conflict in Iraq, a mere fraction of historical rates. According to data released to Salon by the Army’s Combat Readiness/Safety Center, only 24 of the 3,059 U.S. Army soldiers killed in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 died by fratricide.

That is a rate of .78 percent, less than one-tenth of almost every estimate from previous conflicts stretching back to World War II, despite six years of combat in Iraq, often in confusing urban terrain, using intense U.S. firepower. Army officials gave Salon similar statistics for Afghanistan: six out of 484 dead, or a rate of 1.24 percent. By comparison, the Army’s own estimates of the friendly fire rates for every war from World War II to Desert Storm are between 10 and 14 percent, except for a low of 6 percent during the invasion of Panama. During the last U.S. conflict in Iraq, 1991’s Operation Desert Storm, fratricide killed 35 of 298 U.S. service members, or a rate of nearly 12 percent, according to a 1992 report by the Center for Army Lessons Learned.

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said improved technology and better leadership and training contributed to the low fratricide rates in the current Iraq war. Some observers, however, called the new data fishy. “That is almost impossible,” said Geoffrey Wawro, director of the University of North Texas’ Military History Center, who closely followed the Army’s coverup of football star Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire in April 2004. Wawro says that technology and training can help minimize the friendly fire rate, but “still, the fog of war is such that it has to be higher than .7 percent.”

The retired Army colonel and West Point graduate Andrew Bacevich, now a history professor at Boston University and a prominent Iraq war critic, was just as emphatic.

“To say we have suddenly stopped all these problems that have been a part of warfare since the beginning of time? I don’t believe it … To claim that this Army is somehow uniquely disciplined in that regard? It is a great army, but they are still human beings. They are still scared shitless.”

Those unusually small numbers, along with anecdotal reports from soldiers and a string of coverup allegations, raise the possibility that the Army has routinely swept fratricide incidents under the rug in Iraq and Afghanistan. Salon detailed just such a case last fall, in which battle video and testimony from soldiers contradicted the official version of events. Army casualty officers, therefore, might have provided incorrect information to an unknown number of parents about the death of their son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Army might also have missed a similar number of opportunities to learn from friendly fire incidents and avoid knocking on more parents’ doors with the same bad news.

As Bacevich notes, many of the problems that create friendly fire incidents have existed “since the beginning of time.” In an e-mail to Salon, the Army’s Paul Boyce listed the “leading causes of fratricide throughout military history”: “chaos and confusion of warfare; inadequate situational awareness; inadequate employment of, and adherence to, fire control measures; and combat identification failures.”

Expressed another way, the fog of war and human error cause soldiers to misidentify friends as foes. A more easily quantifiable factor that Boyce does not cite is the collision between different branches of the military or between different units in the same branch. A 1992 Army study says that fratricide is most likely to occur “along shared unit boundaries,” or when different units fight side by side supporting each other. This can mean, as in Grenada in 1983, a Navy jet mistakenly attacking Army troops, or as in the incident first reported last fall in Salon, members of an Army tank unit in Iraq in 2006 allegedly firing on Army infantry.

The military still employs mixed units, and it cannot eliminate human error or the fog of war. The consistency of the numbers from World War II to Desert Storm 50 years later is remarkable. The Army’s figures for World War II are 12 to 14 percent; for Vietnam, 10 to 14 percent; for Grenada, 13 percent; for Panama, 6 percent; and for Desert Storm, 12 percent. (Figures for Korea were not provided.)

Those numbers are consistent despite leaps in technology. Though Boyce says that “warfighter training and leadership are the principal determinants,” he says that “technology also contributes to the avoidance of fratricide” in the current conflict. “Fire-control systems sights and computers are far more capable than in the past. Weapons and ammunition are able to achieve high probabilities of hits and kills at greater ranges.” Technological improvements since the first Gulf War have greatly improved the Army’s ability to track friendly forces on the battlefield.

Yet Wawro notes that technology can also increase the lethality of friendly fire incidents. The extremely powerful weaponry the United States now brings to the battlefield means that “one tiny mistake results in heavy casualties.”

The Army’s official stats for the current Iraq war suggest that fewer soldiers were killed by fratricide over the past six years than the total number of service members killed by fratricide during Operation Desert Storm, which lasted 42 days. The statistics from Desert Storm come from well-documented events, though it isn’t hard to find Gulf War veterans who claim even those numbers are low.

Why should numbers from the current Iraq conflict be so different from numbers from the last one? Army officials say that Iraq and Desert Storm don’t provide an apples-to-apples comparison. Desert Storm was a brief, extremely violent conflict fought in the open desert and marked by some costly fratricide mistakes. On Feb. 27, 1991, for example, one group of American tanks opened fire on another already firing at an Iraqi unit, killing six U.S. soldiers and wounding 25.

Or there is the possibility that something has changed about the way the military reports such incidents. Studies done by both Congress and the military suggest that officers have an incentive to cover up fratricide, which is particularly corrosive to morale.

According to a study prepared by the Office of Technology Assessment for the House Armed Services Committee in June 1993, after the first Gulf War, a “15 to 20 percent fratricide rate may be the norm, not the exception,” as “past rates of fratricide have been systematically and substantially underestimated.” It notes that the “psychological effects of friendly fire are always greater than from similar, enemy fire.”

A decade earlier, a 1982 report by Army Lt. Col. Charles Shrader called “Amicide: The Problem of Friendly Fire in Modern Warfare,” which put the friendly fire rate far lower – perhaps as 2 percent – had reached the same conclusion about the temptation to hide friendly fire incidents. “Commanders at various levels,” wrote Shrader, “may be reluctant to report instances of casualties due to friendly fire either because they are afraid of damaging unit or personal reputations, because they have a misplaced concern for the morale of surviving troops or the benefits and honors due the dead and wounded, or simply because of a desire to avoid unprofitable conflicts with the personnel of supporting or adjacent units.”

The 1992 report from the Center for Army Lessons Learned, cited earlier, says that friendly fire can be “devastating and spread deeply within a unit.” Friendy fire, it says, also results in “loss of confidence in the unit’s leadership.”

“Nobody wants to talk about this,” says Wawro. “It is a disincentive to recruitment and everything. There is real incentive to cover it up.”

These latest fratricide statistics from the Army already include incidents initially blamed on the enemy. There was Pat Tillman. Another example was Lt. Kenneth Ballard. The Army told his family he died in Najaf from enemy fire in May 2004. By December of that year, the family was asking for more information. The Army admitted to friendly fire as the culprit in September 2005.

On Oct. 14 of last year, Salon began a series of stories about the deaths of two infantry soldiers, Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Roger Suarez-Gonzalez on the rooftop of a building in Ramadi, Iraq on Dec. 4, 2006. Soldiers there said a nearby U.S. tank fired at the building, blowing Suarez off the roof and killing him instantly. Nelson died later that day.

Salon also released footage from a helmet-mounted camera from that day. The video shows an explosion at that building, soldiers claiming they watched the tank shoot at them and a sergeant attempting to report what he though was a friendly fire incident over a radio. A superior officer then apparently overrules the sergeant. The Army says two enemy mortars landed simultaneously on Nelson and Suarez.

During several visits to Nelson and Suarez’s old unit at Fort Carson late last year and in interviews since then, scores of veterans from Iraq have described non-lethal friendly fire incidents as surprisingly routine. In the same neighborhood, tanks blast clean through house walls, the air wobbles with hits from massive 2,000-pound bombs dropped from U.S. aircraft, and infantry shoot from dusty house to dusty house. It gets confusing.

Some soldiers present during the battle on Dec. 4, 2006 say Nelson and Suarez’s death wasn’t the only exchange of friendly fire that day. It was only exceptional because of the firepower involved and the resulting deaths.

Several expressed anger – but also, some understanding – at the tank that allegedly fired on Nelson and Suarez. The resentment toward the chain of command for the alleged cover-up was unmitigated. “A bunch of guys with fucking rags on their heads weren’t good enough to kill those guys,” one soldier in the building with Nelson and Suarez said about the two men. “I lost more respect for (my platoon sergeant) because we knew he knew.”

Late last year, Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Penn.) sent letters to the Pentagon requesting a new investigation into Nelson and Suarez’s deaths. In early December, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) asked his staff to take a new look into the incident.

The Army has so far declined to open a new investigation, offering only to review any “new specific evidence” about the incident, according to Army spokesman Paul Boyce.

The Army did conduct an initial investigation into the deaths. Army officials say it included 170 photographs, dozens of interviews and hundreds of pages of ballistic analysis. Since July, Salon has repeatedly requested this material through the Freedom of Information Act, to no avail. So far, the Army has only released a heavily redacted, 10-page summary of that investigation.

The tragedy of burying friendly fire incidents is that the opportunity to study and prevent future, similar incidents dies along with the truth. The Center for Army Lessons Learned, in fact, studies fratricide events and develops techniques to avoid similar tragedies in the future. “If you make a mistake, you have to learn from it,” explained Ralph Nichols, a senior military analyst at the center who helped craft new Army guidance last September on avoiding fratricide. “If you know what causes it, you can plan and train to avoid it.”

In early 2007, Pvt. Matthew Zeimer, 18 and Spc. Alan McPeek, 20 took cover on a rooftop in Ramadi during a firefight with insurgents. It was Feb. 2, two months after Nelson and Suarez’s death in the same town. During the battle in February, a tank mistakenly fired on Zimmer and McPeek’s position. McPeek died instantly. Zeimer was blown to the other side of the roof. He died a short time later. The families of the two men were originally told their sons were killed by enemy fire.

The Army says Nelson and Suarez did not die from friendly tank fire. If the Army is wrong, there is no way of knowing if admitting it would have saved the next two young men just two months later.

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Jan 14: Shinseki Testifies About Transforming VA; Opening Statement Released

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Team VCS

General Shinseki, Act II, Scene 1 

January 14, 2009 – As Gen. Eric K. Shinseki entered the hushed chamber of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Wednesday, he proved F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong to say that American lives have no second acts.

With his own about to begin, General Shinseki told his confirmation hearing to be head of the Department of Veterans Affairs how he will be dealing with some of the costliest aftermath of a war that he famously predicted, just before the curtain fell on his first act, would bog down hundreds of thousands of troops for years. With the invasion of Iraq looming, his Pentagon bosses rebuked him for saying that, and he retired a few months later as Army Chief of Staff.

So there was great anticipation Wednesday for what would be the general’s longest public discussion in more than five years.

In written answers provided to committee members in advance of the hearing, General Shinseki said his priorities would be post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries suffered by troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as finding jobs for vets, examining and dealing with the problem of homeless vets, and helping all wounded vets make the difficult transition from military health care to VA facilities.

In his written answers to committee members, the general said his that the “over-arching challenge that the VA faces is its own transformation into a 21st century organization.” It was an echo of the transformation theme that dominated his time as the Army’s top general.

This transformation, he wrote, would include streamlining the disability claims system, ensuring adequate resources and facilities to meet the health care needs of all veterans and using new information technologies to improve the delivery of benefits and services.

He pledged to spend his early weeks in office spending significant time visiting VA facilities, and pledged that combating homelessness among veterans will be a priority.

Among those scheduled to introduce the general was Bob Dole, a onetime Senate majority leader and the Republican presidential nominee in 1996, who lost the use of his right arm in World War II. More recently, Mr. Dole served as co-leader of a bipartisan commission that invested problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and throughout the military’s health care system.

When he retired in June 2003 after 38 years as a soldier, General Shinseki was the highest-ranking Asian-American in United States military history. He received two Purple Hearts for life-threatening injuries in Vietnam, one in which he lost so much of his foot that the Army wanted to discharge him.

While he rose through the ranks as a commander of armored units during the cold war era, he was the Army’s expert on peacekeeping operations, leading the first forces that imposed an armistice in Bosnia.

Associates say it was that experience pacifying a bloody Balkan battlefield that led him to electrify Washington less than a month before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he issued a blunt warning during a Senate hearing that securing Iraq would require more troops than were being deployed for the invasion.

“Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required” to stabilize Iraq after an invasion, he said.

“We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems,” he added. “And so it takes a significant ground force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.”

He immediately was scolded by the Pentagon leadership, in particular Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense, and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz. In remarks Mr. Wolfowitz later acknowledged he regretted, the deputy defense secretary dismissed General Shinseki as “wildly off the mark.”

General Shinseki was not fired for his comments, but was marginalized by the Pentagon’s civilian leadership, and his influence as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certainly was never the same. He retired as scheduled in the summer of 2003.

Shinseki Opening Statement:

Opening Statement of
Eric K. Shinseki
Secretary-designate of Veterans Affairs
Before the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs
United States Senate
January 14, 2009

Chairman Akaka, Senator Burr, Distinguished Members of the Committee on Veterans Affairs: Thank you for scheduling this hearing so expeditiously. I am honored to be before you today seeking your endorsement to become the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Over the last several weeks, I have had the opportunity to meet with many of you individually and deeply appreciate the committee’s concern for and unwavering support for our Veterans and for the mission of the Department of Veterans Affairs. I’ve listened carefully to your concerns and advice, and have benefited from your counsel I deeply appreciate the confidence of President-elect Obama in this nomination and am fully committed to fulfilling his charge to me — that is, transform the Department of Veterans Affairs into a 21st Century Organization.

I am acutely aware that transformation is a challenging task — particularly in an organization as complex and as steeped in tradition as is the Department of Veterans Affairs. We faced similar challenges nearly 10 years ago in beginning the transformation of the United States Army. Leadership, commitment and teamwork enable the challenges of transformation to become opportunities to innovate and better serve our Veterans. With your support, I am confident we will succeed.

If confirmed, I will quickly finalize and articulate a concise strategy for pursuing a transformed Department of Veterans Affairs, reflecting the vision of President-elect Obama. I have much to learn about the organization and look forward to gaining valuable input and insights from its civilian workforce as well as from the Veterans Service Organizations. However, three fundamental attributes mark the starting point for framing a 21st Century Organization: people-centric, results-driven, forward-looking.

First, Veterans will be the centerpiece of our organization – our client, as we design, implement, and sustain programs. Our support to veterans and their enrolled family members must go beyond that of servicing customers to a relationship based on trust and positive results over a lifetime. Through their service in uniform, Veterans have sacrificed greatly, investing of themselves in the security, safety, and well-being of our Nation. They are clients, whom we represent and whose best interests are our sole reason for existence. It is our charge to address their changing needs over time and across the full range of support that our Government has committed to provide to them. Equally essential, the Department’s workforce will be leaders and standard-setters in their fields. From delivering cutting-edge medical treatment to answering the most basic inquiries, we will grow and retain a skilled, motivated, and client oriented workforce. Training and development, communications and teambuilding, and continuous learning will be key components of our workforce culture.

Second, at the end of each day, our true measure of success is the timeliness and excellence of services and support provided to Veterans. Thus, we will continuously strive to set and meet sound performance benchmarks in these areas. Workforce leaders and providers alike will know the standards and perform to them. Our processes will remain accessible, responsive, and transparent to ensure that the many needs of a diverse Veterans population are met. An integral part of measuring success includes assessing cost effectiveness. As stewards of taxpayer funds, this issue will be central to our quality and management processes.

Third, to optimize our opportunities for delivering best services with available resources, we must continually challenge ourselves to look for ways to do things smarter and more effectively. We will aggressively leverage the world’s best practices, knowledge, and technology, which are providing ever-increasing capabilities in health care, information management, service delivery, and other areas. We already know that a portion of today’s youth will be tomorrow’s servicemen and women, and the next day’s Veterans. Thus, we will seek to identify and embed transformational initiatives as part of our culture as we care for Veterans, present and future.

While developing a strategy for transforming the VA into a 21st Century Organization, we will address immediately a set of complex, near-term challenges that face us, as well:

1. Successfully implement the New GI Bill (Post 9/11 Veterans’ Educational Assistance Act).

2. Streamline the disability claims system, increase quality, timeliness and consistency of claims processing, and update the Disability Rating Schedule, while maintaining veterans’ rights.

3. Ensure adequate resources and access points to meet the health care needs of all enrolled Veterans, as well as those OEF/OIF Veterans and Priority Group 8 Veterans, who will be joining the system.

4. Leverage the power of Information Technology to accelerate and modernize the delivery of benefits and services.

If confirmed, I will focus on these issues and the development of a credible and adequate 2010 budget request during my first 90 days in office. The overriding challenge, which I will begin to address on my first day in office, will be to make the Department of Veterans Affairs a 21st Century Organization focused on the Nation’s Veterans as its clients.

I thank this committee for its long history of unwavering commitment to Veterans. If confirmed, I look forward to working closely with you in fulfilling that commitment.

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Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton Says She Will Sound Alarm on Darfur Genocide

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Team VCS

January 13, 2009 –  Sen. Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday she would focus on the Darfur crisis as top U.S. diplomat and the Obama administration was looking at options including the creation of no-fly zones.

“There is a great need for us to sound the alarm again about Darfur. It is a terrible humanitarian crisis compounded by a corrupt and very cruel regime in Khartoum,” Clinton said at a Senate hearing to confirm her nomination as secretary of state.

She said the incoming Obama administration was reviewing U.S. policy toward Darfur and the UN/African Union force must be fully deployed.

“We have spoken about other options, no-fly zones, other sanctions and sanctuaries, looking to deploy the UN/AU force to try to protect the refugees but also to repel the militias,” she said.

“There is a lot under consideration,” she added.

Foreign policy experts say 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes in five years of fighting between rebels and the army and government-backed militias. Khartoum accuses the Western media of exaggerating the death toll.

The deployment of a joint UN/AU peacekeeping force is behind schedule and Darfur activists have been pushing the new administration to do more to get those troops on the ground and look at fresh ideas to stop the violence.

Clinton has said on several occasions she wanted to see a NATO “no-fly” zone over Darfur to support peacekeepers against militias.

Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition, an advocacy group, said there was no time to spare in acting to end the violence in western Sudan and facilitate a lasting peace there.

“Secretary-designate Clinton and the new administration must be prepared to lead on ending the genocide starting next Tuesday and not a day later,” said Fowler.

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VA Apologies for Denial of Benefits to Arizona Widow

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Team VCS

January 11, 2009 – Inseparable from the moment they met, Judi Luby of Apache Junction said she and her husband Bob were soul mates.

Click here to watch the video.

“When he died, the last words I heard was, ‘Love you. Perfect.’ Can’t beat that,” Luby said. “46 years, we were still on the honeymoon.”

Bob, an Air Force veteran, died in 2007.

“He suffered and I would not want to see him suffering anymore,” Luby said.

Bob’s battles were done, but Judi’s were just getting started.

She applied to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for survivor death benefits not once, not twice, but four times.

“I’m trying to be very calm and nice about it,” Luby said.

Over and over, Judi said the VA kept asking for copies of her marriage license and death certificate, so she sent them yet again, this time certified mail.

Her envelope was received and signed for at the VA’s Phoenix benefits office, but still she was denied.

“This little old soldier just refuses to go away,” Luby said.

The ABC15 Investigators filed records requests, asking the VA for all similar claims to see how many others were being denied.

The VA claims the records do not exist.

We got Judi in contact with the American Legion.

“The stress level that has been put on me has been tremendous, and this has gone on for 16 months,” Luby told Art Brest, American Legion service officer.

“It causes me grief to think about that,” Brest said.

48 hours later, Judi’s claim was approved.

“Dear Mrs. Luby, we made a decision on your claim for dependency and indemnity compensation,” the paperwork read.

Judi will now receive $1,400 a month plus more than $20,000 in owed back-pay.

“If Channel 15 had not gotten involved, I would have never seen this paperwork, I can guarantee it,” Luby said.

The VA refused to talk on camera, agreeing only to answer questions by phone.

“I would say we have lessons learned,” said VA Phoenix Regional Office Director Sandra Flint. “I apologize to Mrs. Luby for the time that it did take us to process her claim and I appreciate Channel 15’s help in helping us get that done.”

The VA said its staff may have failed to follow proper procedure, resulting in Judi’s case being denied.

Click here to watch the video.

 RESOLVING A BENEFITS CLAIM WITH THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs:
Veterans Benefits Administration
Local Office: 3333 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85012
Phone: 1-800-827-1000

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Shinseki to Enter Veterans Affairs with Daunting Task of Job Creation for Soldiers

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Team VCS

January 13, 2009 – Retired four-star Gen. Eric K. Shinseki will face a daunting task if he is confirmed as the next secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department: getting soldiers returning from war into the workforce in a very troublesome employment climate.

Nearly 900,000 troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they could have a hard time finding or keeping a job. Many have been in and out of the workforce because of multiple deployments, and others face the prospect of being deployed overseas again.

“The unemployment rate among veterans is high and dramatically increasing,” said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war veteran and head of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has consulted informally. “We need to hear about job creation, and how we are going to get veterans out and to work.”

Shinseki, whose confirmation hearing will be held Wednesday before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, will be expected to engage in a government-wide job creation strategy. The challenge will be especially daunting because of the numbers of military members who have returned recently from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the even greater number expected to return as America withdraws its fighting troops from Iraq.

Obama has instructed each of his Cabinet nominees to begin charting out job-creation strategies as part of his overall vision of generating more than 3 million jobs through a proposed $775 billion economic recovery package. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Obama said 90 percent of the jobs would be created in the private sector.

His remarks came one day after the Labor Department announced the nation’s unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent in December, a loss of 524,000 jobs in a month. For all of 2008, the country lost a total of 2.6 million jobs.

Veterans’ advocates like Rieckhoff say recent veterans between 18 and 35 years old — the majority of Iraq and Afghanistan vets — are a distinct disadvantage. Of the 1.6 million men and women who have served since 2001, hundreds of thousands have deployed for more than one tour. Many came from the National Guard and Reserves, and despite laws protecting their jobs when they were deployed, they came back to find their jobs gone, or they were told they could not return to their positions.

Many of these men and women now “have to keep up with their peers, who have been networking (for) years while they’ve been fighting in Fallujah,” Rieckhoff said, explaining that they don’t have the same kind of connections and amount of uninterrupted time in the workforce as their counterparts who didn’t serve.

He said there have been reports that employers are skittish about hiring part-time soldiers who may be sent back overseas, and hesitant to hire veterans, for which a behavioral and mental stigma — however unfounded — exists.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Redeployment Rights Act says that all employers — public and private — must take returning soldiers back to their positions, and at the same pay, as when they left for war.

But, according to reports, thousands of veterans have complained over the last few years that their employers haven’t been adhering to the law. In November, it was reported that over 10 percent of all National Guard and Reservists who came home had encountered problems returning to work, particularly in the corporate sector. Lawsuits have been filed against some of the country’s biggest employers — UPS, American Airlines and Wal-Mart.

Dave Miller, vice president of Con-Way freight, said his trucking company goes “beyond the call of duty” not only by upholding the Uniformed Services employment law but by making sure employees make the same hourly wage even when they are deployed. For example, if a trucker makes $58,000 a year under Con-Way, then only $28,000 under the Guard overseas, Con-way pays the difference.

The company also maintains the employee’s health benefits and health care for his family, Miller said. He said 28 employees were deployed in 2008, costing the company $500,000 for the year. A total of seven are deployed now.

But Miller said Con-Way has been hindered by the ongoing use of National Guard and reservists in multiple deployments abroad. Because they are part-time soldiers, they do not get the job security and benefits given to an active-duty soldier, sailor or Marine.

“So many businesses are retracting — vets have no place to go,” he said. “They’re coming out of a very high energy situation … the worst thing we can do is to have these warriors come home to no job.”

Meanwhile, Shinseki, a popular pick with veterans’ organizations, has vowed to make veteran employment and education a priority. He says he wants to work with the new administration to fast-track the implementation of the new veterans’ GI Bill, passed in 2008 to give returning vets more money for college tuition.

VA officials said they are taking a two-pronged approach — working with the veterans in the VA system to transition into employment through a wide range of vocational and educational support services, as well as reaching out to veterans to place them into VA jobs across the country.

“Not only is it the right thing to do, but we’re taking advantage of these highly skilled, educated folks. It seems like the perfect match,” said Dennis May, director of the Veterans Employment Coordination Service for the VA in Washington. He said his department has reached out to 2,600 “severely injured” veterans to see if they are interested in applying for VA positions.

Veterans are given hiring preferences at both the federal and state levels.

Overall, May’s group has reached out to 28,000 veterans, provided services to 11,000 and placed 64 in VA jobs.

Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, an Iraq war veteran, is also working with the Obama transition team on VA issues. Although he declined to talk specifically about the administration’s plans for the department regarding jobs, he said that officials in his own state have embarked on a multi-level effort to help vets transition back into civilian life, including vocational support.

For example, veterans trained in battlefield trauma and in medical assistance but who are not certified to practice it in civilian life may soon find the hurdles lowered, Brown said.

“Many, when they come home, they want to apply those skills (in the health field) and there are obstacles like licensing and certification. No one is saying there should not be any quality control,” Brown said, but some of the steps are “overly burdensome” and could be relaxed.

Jack Scharrett, an Army reservist who served in Iraq, has launched the Veterans Initiative Center and Research Institute to help entrepreneurial veterans build businesses and create jobs for other veterans across his state of Minnesota.

“It’s been proven year after year that veterans hire other veterans,” Scharrett said. “Being a small business owner — and I’ve been there — can be a very daunting exercise, with everyone constantly telling you ‘no.’ … We’re struggling ourselves to get the capital we need. We are having to look at our strategy hard and be very austere.”

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President-Elect Obama Prepares to Issue Order to Close Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Team VCS

January 12, 2009, Washington – President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to issue an executive order his first week in office — and perhaps his first day — to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, according to two presidential transition team advisers. It’s unlikely the detention facility at the Navy base in Cuba will be closed anytime soon. In an interview last weekend, Obama said it would be “a challenge” to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration.

But the order, which one adviser said could be issued as early as Jan. 20, would start the process of deciding what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held there. Most have not been charged with a crime.

The Guantanamo directive would be one of a series of executive orders Obama is planning to issue shortly after he takes office next Tuesday, according to the two advisers. Also expected is an executive order about certain interrogation methods, but details were not immediately available Monday.

The advisers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the orders that have not yet been finalized.

Obama transition team spokeswoman Brooke Anderson declined comment Monday.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the order an important first step, but demanded details on how Guantanamo will be shuttered.

“What we need are specifics about the timeline for the shuttering of the military commissions and the release or charging of detainees who have been indefinitely held for years,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. “An executive order lacking such detail, especially after the transition team has had months to develop a comprehensive plan on an issue this important, would be insufficient.”

The two advisers said the executive order will direct the new administration to look at each of the cases of the Guantanamo detainees to see whether they can be released or if they should still be held — and if so, where.

Many of the Guantanamo detainees are cleared for release, and others could be sent back to their native countries and held there. But many nations have resisted Bush administration efforts to repatriate the prisoners back home. Both Obama advisers said it’s hoped that nations that had initially resisted taking detainees will be more willing to do so after dealing with the new administration.

What remains the thorniest issue for Obama, the advisers said, is what to do with the rest of the prisoners — including at least 15 so-called “high value detainees” considered among the most dangerous there.

Detainees held on U.S. soil would have certain legal rights that they were not entitled to while imprisoned in Cuba. It’s also not clear if they would face trial through the current military tribunal system, or in federal civilian courts, or though a to-be-developed legal system that would mark a hybrid of the two.

Where to imprison the detainees also is a problem.

Obama promised during the presidential campaign to shut Guantanamo, endearing him to constitutional law experts, civil libertarians and other critics who called the Bush administration detentions a violation of international law.

But he acknowledged in an interview Sunday that the process of closing the prison would be harder and longer than initially thought.

“That’s a challenge,” Obama said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think it’s going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do.

“But I don’t want to be ambiguous about this,” he said. “We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our constitution.”

President George W. Bush established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at Guantanamo. He also supports closing the prison, but strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States.

Lawmakers have moved to block transfer of the detainees to at least two potential and frequently discussed military facilities: an Army prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. A Marine Corps prison at Camp Pendleton in Southern California also is under consideration, a Pentagon official said.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said Monday that “it’s hard to show why terror suspects should be housed in Kansas.”

“If the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay is closed, a new facility should be built, designed specifically to handle detainees,” Brownback said in a statement.

A Pentagon team also has been looking at how to shut Guantanamo and move its detainees, but spokesman Bryan Whitman did not immediately know Monday whether it was completed.

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Editorial Column: Streamline VA Policy for Disabled

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Team VCS

January 13, 2009 – President-elect Barack Obama should make it easier for disabled veterans to get their benefits. The Department of Veterans Affairs routinely delays wounded soldiers’ disability claims for months and years, often shunting them into poverty and homelessness.

Retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, Obama’s pick for Veterans Affairs secretary, is scheduled to testify before the Senate tomorrow. Senators should press him to change this policy.

Former Lance Cpl. Bob O’Daniel’s story is far too common. The proud Navajo has been fighting for more than 17 years to receive the veteran’s benefits he earned.

During the 1991 Gulf War, O’Daniel worked on board the USS Nassau, which was stationed in the Persian Gulf. Even before he came home, O’Daniel knew something wasn’t right. He was always tired, and he couldn’t see or sleep properly. He experienced sexual dysfunction and “just a lot of things that a young man shouldn’t have,” he told me.

Many symptoms
O’Daniel suffers from Gulf War syndrome. This comes with a range of symptoms, including but not limited to rashes, stomach distress, brain lesions, fatigue, severely swollen muscles, and memory loss.

“Memories are what all people cherish,” O’Daniel said. “Good times, bad times – whatever. But I was missing a lot of those things.”

Pentagon doctors now believe Gulf War syndrome affects more than 175,000 veterans of the 1991 conflict. A government report released in November said the condition was most likely due to exposure to toxic pesticides and pills that were given to soldiers to protect them against nerve gas.

But even though O’Daniel’s VA doctors tell him he has the syndrome, department bureaucrats refuse to grant him the benefits he earned in combat. O’Daniel lives in his wife’s parents’ home in North Carolina, subsisting on their charity with his wife and two children while they wait for the VA to begin paying his claim.

Across the country, more than 600,000 wounded veterans find themselves in the same position, twisting in the wind as they wait for the government to keep its promise to care for them.

Descent into poverty
   Many descend into poverty during the months and years of waiting.

Others are simply unable to outlast the bureaucracy. In the six months leading up to March 31 of last year, 1,500 veterans died while they waited for the VA’s response.

There is a better way to handle military disability claims: Trust the vets.

In her exhaustive study of the long-term costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Linda Bilmes, who teaches management, budgeting and public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, notes that almost all veterans tell the truth in their disability claims, with the VA ultimately approving nearly 90 percent of them. Given that reality, Bilmes suggests scrapping the lengthy process described above and replacing it with “something closer to the way the IRS deals with tax returns.” Britain, Australia and New Zealand all use similar systems to compensate their injured veterans.

Obama and Shinseki should streamline the benefits process. Our disabled vets have waited too long already.

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Anti-Stigma News: Army May End Counseling Notifications for Soldiers Seeking Mental Healthcare

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Team VCS

January 11, 2009 – Army leaders are proposing to end a longtime policy that requires a commanding officer be notified when a soldier voluntarily seeks counseling in hopes of encouraging more GIs to seek aid, according to Army Secretary Pete Geren.

The potential move comes as combat deployments have been linked to increased alcohol abuse, and the Army Substance Abuse Program (ASAP) is straining to keep pace.

The proposal being worked out between Army personnel and medical commanders is “an important part of a comprehensive effort to reduce the stigma associated with seeking mental health care and to encourage more soldiers to seek treatment,” Geren said in a statement to USA TODAY on Friday.

Geren’s efforts come as the number of soldiers seeking help for substance abuse has hit record levels. In November, USA TODAY reported that the number of soldiers asking for counseling had increased 25{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} in five years.

The Army, however, can’t meet the growing demand. One-fourth of the 338 Army drug counseling positions are unfilled, spokeswoman Cynthia Vaughan says.

The program’s clinical director, Wanda Kuehr, said soldiers have waited for help for “fairly long periods of time” at Fort Bragg, Fort Hood and other installations. She did not elaborate.

The Army has no residential treatment facility for substance abuse and only 150 beds Armywide for in-patient care, said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatrist.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told Geren in a November letter that current Army policies, such as notifying commanders about soldiers seeking help, “seem oriented to disciplinary concerns,” rather than treatment. Geren told McCaskill on Dec. 22 that he is ordering “an immediate and complete review” of ASAP. Suspending the notification rule, he said, could “assure soldiers the program is not punitive.”

A June 2007 Pentagon report said the policy may leave soldiers with the perception that seeking help “results in permanent damage to one’s military career.”

Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general who urged an end to the policy in October, would not comment. But he is working with Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, deputy chief of staff for Army personnel, to change the policy.

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Editorial Column: We’re Still Not Doing Right by Our Veterans

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Team VCS

January 12, 2009 – The two sides of our nation’s “schizophrenic” approach to recognizing the special needs of military veterans were on display in stories last week in the Star Tribune.

The paper reported on the special courts being established in a number of states for veterans who find themselves charged with crimes before realizing the full extent of the treatment and support they need when returning from war. These courts provide support services, counseling and diversion from the punishment-based criminal prosecution system in recognition of the natural and predictable consequences of combat, which have been present in every war from Revolutionary to Iraq. From debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to substance abuse to feelings of alienation and disconnection that make reintegration difficult, many young men, trained as warriors, naturally find it difficult to admit that they need help.

These courts are a huge step forward from 1981, when PTSD first appeared in diagnostic literature and when otherwise law-abiding Vietnam veterans found themselves charged with serious crimes that actually resulted from their military service. It was the study of PTSD among these veterans that led to the understanding that the disorder can be a consequence of other sorts of trauma, too, such as rape, child abuse and other man-made and natural catastrophes.

On the other hand, almost the same day that we learned about these much-needed and forward-thinking “veteran’s courts,” the Pentagon announced that it would not award Purple Hearts to veterans who suffer from PTSD as a consequence of military service. According to the Pentagon announcement, PTSD injuries do not qualify because “the condition had not been intentionally caused by enemy action – and because it remained difficult to diagnose and quantify.” The Pentagon seems to have decided that physical injuries, whether debilitating or not, are more worthy of recognition than psychological wounds that can destroy lives and families.

The military “warrior culture” makes it hard enough to admit or seek treatment. The failure to recognize predictable, life-threatening psychological wounds resulting from service will only make it more difficult for veterans and their families to seek the services they need.

In the early 1980s, many of us thought the growing understanding that psychological damage would always result from war and that these enormous personal costs were usually borne by veterans and their families would eventually provide another measure to decide whether going to war was worth it. And that, if there ever were a full acknowledgement of the problem, that decision would be much more difficult indeed.

Minnesota’s late Sen. Paul Wellstone campaigned tirelessly to end discriminatory treatment of mental illness, with notable success. He was also a strong advocate for the rights of veterans to proper treatment and the best benefits our society can offer. One can only wonder what Wellstone would say about our society’s continuing “schizophrenia” regarding the consequences of wars.

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