‘Tears of a Warrior’ Offers Hope and Healing to Veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Team VCS

November 5, 2008 – Experts estimate that between 25{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} and 30{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of Vietnam veterans who fought in combat have symptoms of PTSD, and it’s been recently estimated that 30{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of combat soldiers returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan are experiencing similar trauma. “Tears of a Warrior: A Family’s Story of Combat and Living with PTSD” was written to educate families and veterans about the symptoms of PTSD and to offer strategies for living with the disorder. Author Tony Seahorn writes from his experience as a young army officer in Vietnam who was wounded in action and continues to recover from the physical and emotional scars of combat. Janet Seahorn, Tony’s wife and co-author, writes from both the perspective of a wife who has lived for thirty years with a veteran with PTSD, and as a professional who’s research has focused on the effects PTSD has on the brain, body, and spirit.

Returning war veterans may face a multitude of physical and mental challenges. Veterans’ families are often unprepared to deal with a family member who may experience nightmares, feelings of detachment, irritability, trouble concentrating, and sleeplessness. These are some of the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Experts estimate that between 25{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} and 30{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of Vietnam veterans who fought in combat have symptoms of PTSD, and it’s been recently estimated that 30{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of combat soldiers returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan are experiencing similar trauma.

“Tears of a Warrior: A Family’s Story of Combat and Living with PTSD” is a patriotic book written about soldiers who are called to duty in service of their country. It is a story of courage, valor, and life-long sacrifice. Long after the cries of battle have ended, many warriors return home to face a multitude of physical and mental challenges. Author Tony Seahorn writes from his experience as a young army officer in Vietnam who served with the Black Lions of the First Infantry Division, which fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. He was wounded in action and continues to recover from the physical and emotional scars of combat.

Janet Seahorn, Tony’s wife and co-author, writes from both the perspective of a wife who has lived for thirty years with a veteran with PTSD, and as a professional in human development and neuroscience. Dr. Seahorn’s research has focused on the effects PTSD has on the brain, body, and spirit.

“Tears of a Warrior” was written to educate families and veterans about the symptoms of PTSD and to offer strategies for living with the disorder. The book includes over 50 photos integrated into the text which provide the reader with a visual picture of the sequence of events as the storyline moves from the realities of combat, to returning home, to the ultimate impact on family and friends. Families and society in general will better understand the long-term effects of combat. Veterans from all wars, regardless of service branch, will benefit by the authors’ experiences and their message of hope.

“If we send them, then we must mend them.”

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on ‘Tears of a Warrior’ Offers Hope and Healing to Veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Reservists’ Rocky Return to Job Market

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Team VCS

November 2, 2008 – With the Pentagon relying so heavily on the National Guard and Reserve to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan – 650,000 have been called for active duty since 9/11 – the least you’d expect is that after they serve, they get their old civilian jobs back.

There’s a law, called USERRA (Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act), that says their employers have to take them back at the same pay.

But what 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl found is that despite the law, thousands of guards and reservists come home to find themselves demoted or penalized, or out of a job completely.

Army Reservist Joanne Merritt is a nurse who works with wounded soldiers. When she got back to her regular job in 2006 after a two-year deployment, she was told her job was gone since she had been away too long.

“We had to give that to somebody else. So, your job is no more,” she remembers.

Despite the law, she couldn’t have her job back. “Yes. It really hurt. It hurt because I just wasn’t expectin’ this.”

Considering who her employer is, why would she expect it: Merritt works at, of all places, the VA Medical Center in Augusta, Ga.

Asked if the Veterans Administration did not understand this law, Merritt says, “Yes. And I said, ‘You know what? I am not going to accept this.'”

Merritt filed a complaint against the VA, and within a couple of weeks got her old job back, plus the back pay and leave that she was entitled to, which the VA had also denied her.

Asked if she has any sympathy for the VA though, considering she was gone two years, Merritt tells Stahl, “I’ve been in the military for 25 years now. At that point, it was 23. The president writes an order, gives an order, I follow it. What excludes the VA? No, ma’am, I do not have any sympathy. I feel that the laws are there for reasons.”

According to the Pentagon, over 10 percent of guardsmen and reservists report having problems when they return to work; tens of thousands have filed complaints or lawsuits against their employers.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Thomas Hall is the top man at the Pentagon overseeing the Reserves and National Guard. He says he is aware that there are reservists and guardsmen working for the Department of Defense and in the Pentagon who have come home and also encountered problems.

How does he explain that?

“Well, we want the government to be the model employer…,” he says. “What I’m saying is that the federal government’s entire leadership has committed that they will be. Do we need to do better? Yes.”

The federal government is one of the largest employers of guardsmen and reservists, but they also work at over 100,000 private companies. Lawsuits under USERRA have been filed against some of the largest companies, like Wal-Mart, American Airlines, and UPS.

It’s in that private sector where 60 Minutes discovered that a rebellion is brewing.

“The private employers cannot supplement, cannot support the full cost of defending this nation on our balance books,” says Dave Miller, vice president of Con-way freight, a national trucking firm.

After 9/11, he saw it as a patriotic duty to back his guard and reserve employees 1,000 percent.

But now his patience is wearing thin. Not only are the deployments long, his drivers, mechanics and others are being called up for a second and third tour of duty, often on such short notice it’s hard to find a replacement.

He says they typically get about three weeks’ notice – not a lot of time to run an ad, and bring people in for an interview. And he says they never know how long the deployment is going to be.

With over 50 of his workers deployed right now, Miller says the company is spending about $4,000 apiece to train their replacements, and as much as $100,000 if a worker has to be relocated from another state.

Take the case of one of his drivers, Jeff Vineyard. In 2005, Vineyard was sent to Iraq for a year as a member of the Indiana National Guard, where he says he was driving jet fuel.

While he was away, Con-way did more than the law required by continuing his family’s health coverage, and making up the $10,000 difference between his Con-way salary and his lower military wages.

“What if you worked for a company that didn’t have Con-way’s attitude?” Stahl asks.

“I wouldn’t be able to be in the Guard or the Reserves. ‘Cause I wouldn’t be able to take care of my family,” Vineyard says.

In all, Con-way spends at least half a million dollars a year to support its reservists and guardsmen. But it’s not just the financial burden on employers.

Consider what happened in the city of Sherwood, Ore. Its 20-person police department was left without its boss when Police Chief Bill Middleton – an Army reservist – was called up twice in the last six years.

Middleton’s first tour of duty was a year; his second – as an interrogator and investigator in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay – was even longer: 18 months.

Middleton thought back home everything was working fine, and he didn’t have the sense that he was leaving them in the lurch.

But the city manager told 60 Minutes things were not working fine – that the police department was suffering without a chief from morale problems, and rival factions. So he hired someone new and tried to persuade Middleton to sign a contract, demoting him to “deputy chief.”

“He had said it was because I was in the military, and he wanted somebody there who was there all the time,” Middleton tells Stahl.

Asked if he can understand that, Middleton says, “No. I mean, I’ve given that city 12 years.”

“But you were gone a total of two and a half years,” Stahl points out.

“Correct,” Middleton acknowledges.

He felt he had the law on his side, so he refused to sign the contract. And when he returned home, he still had the title of police chief, at the same pay, but he was forced to report to the new “director of public safety,” who had moved into the chief’s office.

“And he’s going to give me guidance on how to run the police department, that I had run for 12 years,” Middleton says.

Asked if he thinks the lack of support for this war has anything to do with it, Middleton tells Stahl, “Sherwood was very supportive of the war, as long as it doesn’t affect their city and how it runs. It’s very easy to say, ‘I support the troops,’ but it’s very hard to be without one of those troops for a long period of time. And there’s a lot of guys over there sacrificing an awful lot, and they really need to feel like they’re being supported, and they have their job when they come back.”

Middleton has filed a lawsuit, claiming his rights under the USERRA law to the same job with the same status were violated. He’s seeking a million dollars in damages.

Asked what she thinks employers are really most worried about, nurse Joanne Merritt says, “About us havin’ to go again. Because that was one of the things I was asked. ‘What are your chances of you leavin’ again?’ And I said, ‘I’m still in the military.'”

“Chances are pretty good,” Stahl comments.

“I mean, we’re at war,” Merritt says. “Chances are great that I would have to leave again”

And that’s what happened: Merritt is now on her second tour, and so is Jeff Vineyard, the Con-way driver. He’s back in Iraq, after less than three years at home in-between.

Employers – both public and private – seemed to accept the arrangement at first. They wanted to “support the troops.” But now with the repeated deployments, the realization that “this isn’t going to stop,” some companies are trying to avoid reservists altogether.

Ted Daywalt, president of VetJobs.com, a site that helps military people find jobs, says he knows companies that simply refuse to hire them. “I had one senior VP of HR tell me that if I had three candidates for a senior position in the company, and one of them mentioned they’re in the Guard or Reserve, he would only have two candidates left. And I said, ‘You know, that’s illegal.’ And his response was, ‘I can always find a reason why not to hire somebody,'” he says.

He thinks that is happening a lot. “You can prove it to a point. There are surveys done that show that upwards of 70 percent of the employers won’t hire a person who’s active in the Guard and Reserve,” Daywalt says.

Dave Miller of Con-way says he wants to continue hiring them: he likes their discipline and willingness to work long hours. But he and other executives are agitating for compensation.

“If the military’s going to take our people 30 percent of the time, let them pay 30 percent of the healthcare cost,” Miller says.

He says the government doesn’t give his company any help, like tax breaks. “Nothing,” he says. “We have gone and petitioned Congress to in fact provide tax incentives for companies to do the right thing for these citizen soldiers.”

Congress’ response? Miller says they are still discussing it.

A tax break to help very small businesses became law in June. But Miller says the costs to all companies will go up since the Pentagon has announced a new policy of calling up the National Guard and Reserves on a regular basis: every five years, even after the current wars are over.

“In using the Guard and the Reservists this way, in other words, for regular deployments, the charge is that you’re just doing it to save money. And you’re doing it on the back of these employers,” Stahl remarks.

“I think it’s the most appropriate use of America’s forces. We have 2.6 million people under arms. 1.4 million are in the active duty. 1.2 are in the Guard and Reserve, 45 percent of the military. And what we do is we save money actually by that because a Guardsman/Reservist doesn’t cost as much, and so I think it’s an appropriate use of the total force,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Hall says.

But Con-way’s Miller says, “If the Department of Defense is going to rely more heavily on reserve and guard, they should take into consideration that all they’re doing is shifting costs at that point in time. And there are those that probably won’t accept that shifting graciously, at least silently. We won’t accept it silently.”

He and his fellow businessmen will have a hard time getting government help in this era of big deficits. The Pentagon is making other concessions, though: they’re reducing the length of each deployment to just one year, and call-up notices are going out anywhere from six to 20 months in advance.

Secretary Hall, who recently visited reservists on duty in Kuwait, says he hears what the companies are saying, but his priority is the troops, and their job security. He expects the USERRA law to be enforced, which is why he made this astonishing offer.

“Let me make this commitment right on the air, if I could just for a moment. If there’s any guardsman or reservist or family member that has a problem, call my office. Call me personally,” he told Stahl. “My number is 703-697-6631. And I will ensure that I put a case worker on it. If necessary, I will call the head of the company or the agency personally. I don’t just make that offer just precipitously. I mean that because we’re concerned about it. My office will react, and I invite people, if they have a problem, tell me.”

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged | Comments Off on Reservists’ Rocky Return to Job Market

Will This Election be Stolen?

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Team VCS

November 3, 2008 – The GOP’s attack on the integrity of voters, carried out by party leaders — a sitting president included — on the eve of an election, is unprecedented.

The day after John McCain charged the community-based organization Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) with planning “one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country,” Sarah Palin told a boisterous crowd in Bangor, Maine: “In this election, it’s a choice between a candidate who won’t disavow a group committing voter fraud, and a leader who won’t tolerate voter fraud.”

Soon George Bush leaped into the furor over “voter fraud,” asking the Department of Justice to determine whether some 200,000 newly registered Ohio voters should have their identities confirmed. (The Supreme Court had refused that measure; and former Justice Department lawyers claim that the probe requested by the president may violate department policy.)

Meanwhile, Ohio congressman John Boehner, House minority leader, wrote Mr. Bush a letter noting “a significant risk, if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted” in his state, where there are now several lawsuits over the apparent threat of Democratic “voter fraud.”

Election fraud in the U.S. traces back to the beginning of elections. There’s a danger now that eligible voters will be disenfranchised by the thousands, because of efforts to prevent a few unlawful votes. Although the GOP’s barrage of charges is unique, the apprehension of “unlawful votes” is hardly new, recalling fears as old as the republic — or, indeed, even older.

The worry that the undeserving may cast votes recalls the major argument that, in the 18th century, was used to justify strict property requirements for all voters in America. As historian Alexander Keyssar points out in his magisterial “The Right to Vote,” those without property were deemed incapable of voting soundly, since their dependency would cause them to defer to those above them. And yet, as Mr. Keyssar notes, those arguing against enfranchising the poor were just as likely to believe not that the poor have no will of their own, but that the poor have too much will. Give such have-nots the vote, believed John Adams, and “an immediate revolution would ensue.”

In the 18th century, such qualms were largely theoretical, as voting was restricted to white male freeholders (or, a little later, taxpayers) in a land of villages and farms. In any case, those contradictory misgivings soon receded, as, at first, the busy young republic was increasingly committed to an optimistic faith in universal suffrage.

In that homogeneous society, the problem of “unlawful votes” was not a pressing concern — as it would be by the middle of the 19th century, when the nation’s rampant industry produced a new crop of cities, filling up with huddled masses that Americans did not want at the polls. There were increasing hordes of Irish Catholics, Jews, Italians, Slavs, Chinese and other foreign workers crowded into slummy neighborhoods, and they were often muttering of explosive creeds — variants of socialism and anarchism — deeply threatening to the peace and order of the U.S.

Worse, such aliens were getting organized politically, and setting up their own political machines, like Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall, that had large ethnic numbers on their side. And then there was the liberated South, where millions of black freedmen suddenly enjoyed the right to vote, and so would shortly rule the roost (or so it seemed to many nervous whites). “We have received an almost unlimited immigration of adult foreigners, largely illiterate, of the lowest class and of other races,” wrote an anonymous contributor to the Atlantic Monthly in 1879. “We have added at one stroke four millions and more of ignorant negroes to our voting population.”

Thus many white Americans, native-born, were primed to buy the tales of massive voter fraud in every ghetto — party hoodlums stuffing ballot boxes, people selling votes, etc. — even though such stories were, as Mr. Keyssar notes, “greatly exaggerated.” Such anecdotes persisted through the decades, ultimately helping to create a sort of counter-narrative against the history of the South, where whites had long suppressed the black vote with appalling ruthlessness.

In tacit contradiction to that story, and especially after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the old myth of the demonic trickiness of urban voters (i.e., Democrats) now began to serve as propaganda for a GOP intent on courting disaffected whites, according to “the Southern strategy” (which started under Richard Nixon). Such lore has taught us all about dead people turning out to vote, secret wads of “walking-around money” and other tricks allegedly played by the Democrats alone.

That propaganda has been most effective — and a lot of it just happens to be true. For example, “Landslide Lyndon” Johnson stole his first election to the Senate in 1948, gaining his minuscule victory margin, 87 votes, through ballot fraud (an act that his biographer Robert Caro called “brazen thievery”). Chicago’s infamous Mayor Richard Daley ran the elections there with both an iron hand and no regard for civic probity. In 1960 he helped steal Illinois for John F. Kennedy by rigging the election in Chicago — where the turnout was an awesome 89{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}.

Such offenses were, however, not exclusively a Democratic specialty. That year in Illinois, while Daley was doing dirty work in Chicago for John Kennedy, the GOP in neighboring DuPage County, the state’s top stronghold of Republicans, went even further in its bid to steal the race for Richard Nixon, since that county’s turnout was a staggering 93{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}. (This comes from county records researched for my book “Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008.”)

The GOP was also using phantom votes and fake addresses. In 1968, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking at voter fraud in Gary, Ind., where Richard Hatcher, a black Democrat, was running for mayor. Agent Robert Craig spent days trying to verify the information written out on scores of voter registration cards filed by Republicans. “Names and addresses of ‘voters’ turned out to be vacant lots where there had never been a house, or the house had been torn down years before the ‘person’ was registered,” Mr. Craig told me in a recent telephone conversation. “The vast majority of the registrations I checked were completely phony.”

While both sides always used such tactics, in this century it is the GOP that’s done most to rig the vote (with little outcry from the Democrats). In 2000, thousands of Floridians were purged illegally from the voter rolls before Election Day, according to the sworn testimony of George Bruder, a vice president of Database Technologies, before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The vote count in Miami-Dade County was shut down by a disturbance variously referred to as a “Brooks Brothers riot” or “bourgeois riot,” where several people were pushed and shoved by staffers working for congressional Republicans.

Four years later, in Ohio, ballots were altered or destroyed on a massive scale, making Mr. Bush’s win there questionable, says researcher Richard Hayes Phillips. (Officially, Bush won the state by some 118,000 votes.) The damage came to light through a three-year audit led by Mr. Phillips of ballots from selected precincts in 18 Ohio counties (the research is available in his book, “Witness to a Crime”).

Recently, Acorn’s alleged “unlawful votes” have caused a major stir. Although resonantly charged with “voter fraud,” the group has actually been accused of voter-registration fraud — i.e., the entry of false information on voter-registration forms. In Acorn’s case, the crime was perpetrated by volunteers who, probably for mercenary reasons, filled out the forms with bogus names like Mickey Mouse. Acorn itself discovered the suspicious forms and turned them in to the authorities.

Meanwhile, the very party that is demonizing Acorn has now disenfranchised countless voters nationwide, through a dizzying range of tactics. Voters have been stricken from the rolls through purges nationwide, carried out since 2004 at the behest of the Department of Justice. (Courtrooms throughout New York State are crammed with people trying to reclaim their right to vote.) Others have been dropped from the electronic voter rolls, as USA Today began reporting months ago.

Further thousands have been sidelined through the tactic known as “voter caging”: the targeting of certain voters for disenfranchisement. This tactic usually entails mailing forms to Democratic voters, in the expectation that the addressees won’t fill them out and send them in (the envelopes are nondescript) — and if they don’t, their names are stricken from the voter rolls. And then there are the e-voting machines. Since early voting started recently, worried voters have reported seeing their votes flipped from Barack Obama to Mr. McCain in West Virginia and Texas.

It is not the failure or success of any candidate or party that most matters but the exercise of voting rights, and, through them, our self-government. If either team prevails despite the disenfranchisement of some Americans, that victory will mean all that much less; and if your favorite wins, and then the U.S. doesn’t do anything to fix its voting system (and otherwise restore this faltering democracy), that victory of his won’t matter much at all, since We the People will have lost control for good.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged | Comments Off on Will This Election be Stolen?

After 15 Months in Iraq, Servicemembers Face an Arduous Process of Returning to ‘Normal’

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Team VCS

November 3, 2008, Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait – It was midnight and home was within grasp, but after 15 months of grueling battle and fleeting sleep, the soldiers of 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment now faced the airport screening from hell.

After carefully packing their bulging bags with clothes, body armor and trinkets picked up in Iraq, 305 soldiers had to empty everything for security officials who picked through shirts, underwear and socks looking for contraband. The check came between two X-ray scans and two metal detectors, a process that took about three hours.

Graffiti on the wall of the screening room summed up the grumbling of many of the bleary-eyed troops.

“The government treats me like I’m the terrorist,” it read.

Staff Sgt. Douglas Reynolds mulled over what he saw as a contradiction.

“People coming from India to the United States can get into the country easier than this,” he said with a resigned smile.

This group of Stryker soldiers, along with most others from the regiment, are now back at their home base in Vilseck, Germany. But, as with most soldiers coming home from war, it took an arduous journey to get there.

Stalled by rain

The soldiers began their trip home at Forward Operating Base Normandy, the dusty outpost in Diyala province where many 2nd Stryker soldiers spent the last months of their tour.

There, they waited for hours next to a darkened airfield, as first sandstorms, then lightning and torrential rain forced flight after flight to be canceled. In an area gripped by a disastrous drought, the timing of the downpour was uncanny.

After two days waiting out the weather outdoors in a leaky tent, the soldiers finally got out on a pre-dawn helicopter ride to Balad, Iraq, where they stayed overnight before hopping onto a quick C-17 flight to Kuwait. Between nerves and constant movement, some soldiers hadn’t slept for two days by the time they arrived at Ali Al Salem Air Base in the wee hours of the morning.

There they stayed for a day, wobbling with bloodshot eyes to fast food joints, a luxurious respite after months of droopy chow hall fare at Normandy. Finally they were close to getting home, but not before their final ordeal that began more than 12 hours before their last flight.

The night before the flight, they loaded their gear onto a semi-truck trailer, then hopped on a bus to the security screening. There were briefings and hours of waiting in between before an 1½-hour bus ride to Kuwait City’s international airport to catch a morning flight after yet another sleepless night.

“This is worse than being (in Iraq) for 15 months,” Sgt. 1st Class Shawn Hodges quipped.

Six days after their first attempt to leave Normandy, the soldiers made it back to Vilseck, greeted by pandemonium at the base gym as family members mobbed the weary troops.

Strict rules

Once back, there was still more to do before getting a break.

After 15 months of an ascetic, tightly controlled existence in Iraq, the temptations of free-wheeling Europe can be difficult to resist, but when the soldiers returned there were strict rules to which they must adhere or risk punishment. For the first eight days back they were limited to three alcoholic drinks per day and could not venture outside a 50-mile radius of their base. Curfew was midnight.

It falls on the leaders to enforce these rules, and writing up a soldier for a misstep after a 15-month deployment is something no officer relishes. A violation of these rules can mean loss of precious leave time.

“I would go down to the bar and carry you on my shoulders myself, rather than give you an Article 15, and I mean that,” Lt. Col. Rod Coffey told soldiers from 2nd Stryker’s 3rd Squadron.

At night, Stryker officers patrolled the bars and clubs of Vilseck and nearby Grafenwöhr, making sure soldiers stayed in control and offering occasional rides home to those who have had a few too many. As 2nd Lt. Chris Montoyo strolled into a Vilseck bar as part of a recent patrol, heads turned and whispers filled the room.

Montoyo said he doesn’t mind the whispers, as long as it reminds his soldiers of the rules.

“Just as long as we’re seen, it makes a difference,” he said.

During the first eight days, known as the “reintegration period,” soldiers must also attend classes intended to alert them to the sometimes difficult adjustments they must make when coming back from war.

The classes deal with issues scores of soldiers face, such as post traumatic stress disorder and marital problems, but many 2nd Squadron troops attending a morning class a day after their return seem to have their minds elsewhere.

During a break in a class for married couples, Spc. Shane Byrne said he and his wife Amanda appreciate the counseling but would have liked more of a break.

“I think everybody’s just wanting to be home,” he said.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on After 15 Months in Iraq, Servicemembers Face an Arduous Process of Returning to ‘Normal’

Tests Start on US-Backed PTSD Drug

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Team VCS

November 4, 2008, Basel, Switzerland – Clinical trials have begun on a new U.S.-backed drug to treat the debilitating feeling of heightened vigilance experienced by veterans with post-traumatic stress, Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Synosia said Nov. 3.

The study is funded with $1.4 million from the U.S. Defense Department and will focus on veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Synosia said.

The company said it hopes the drug, called nepicastat, will help patients who have lost the ability to accurately assess danger, resulting in a constant sense of alertness.

 The condition, known as hyperarousal, is one symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. Others include sleeplessness, anger and withdrawal from friends and family.

Post-traumatic stress disorder affects people from all walks of life, but is particularly common in veterans. Some 40,000 U.S. troops have been diagnosed with the disorder since 2003.

Synosia said the clinical trial will be conducted by researchers at veterans medical centers in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Houston; and Charleston, South Carolina.

Officials at the U.S. Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs could not immediately be reached for comment.

Initial results about the effectiveness and tolerability of nepicastat are expected next spring, said Synosia spokesman Jan Gregor. Synosia is conducting separate trials to test whether nepicastat is effective as a treatment for cocaine abuse.

Nepicastat works by inhibiting the conversion of the brain chemical dopamine into an adrenaline-like compound called norepinephrine.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged | Comments Off on Tests Start on US-Backed PTSD Drug

Helping Hands for Homeless Vets

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Team VCS

November 3, 2008 – Cheryl Beversdorf, RN, MHS, MA, is on a mission. A veteran Army nurse from the Vietnam era, Beversdorf has a passion to serve the country’s veterans who experience a disproportionate rate of homelessness.

While only 9{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the nation’s population serves in the military, 23{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of the homeless are vets, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Beversdorf is concerned about the public’s mistaken image of homeless veterans, which is often of someone holding a cardboard sign and asking for a handout or help. Although those people may or may not be homeless vets, they are more often less visible and can be found sleeping under bridges, in alleys and abandoned buildings, staying with relatives or friends, or living in shelters or other community-based organizations.

Beversdorf is president and CEO of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization with a goal of ending homelessness with dignity among the nation’s veterans. The NCHV (www.nchv.org) is a clearinghouse of resources and services.

These include information about counseling services, homeless veterans service providers and VA medical centers (which all have homeless veteran coordinators), and organizations such as the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Vietnam Veterans of America. The organization welcomes phone calls from veterans (800-VET-HELP).

“So often there is the assumption that the Department of Veterans Affairs will take care of veterans, and that’s not necessarily true,” says Beversdorf.

In fact, the VA reaches only 25{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of homeless veterans, according to NCHV, which also works to shape public policy and promote collaboration that will benefit homeless veterans.

Although there is still a long way to go, this September the VA announced grants to fund community groups to create 1,526 beds for homeless veterans. Monies also will support services such as transportation to training programs and healthcare services.

“Health issues are a primary factor that puts veterans at risk for homelessness,” says Beversdorf. These include disabling injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, 45{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of homeless veterans have mental illness, and half have substance-abuse problems.

“Many among the current homeless veteran population served during the Vietnam era and are aging, suffer from chronic illness and substance abuse, and are unable to work,” says Beversdorf. She adds that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are at risk, too.

Economic issues also take their toll and contribute to homelessness. Unemployment after discharge can be a problem, especially if veterans have not learned work skills in the military that are transferable to civilian life. Military reservists risk losing their full-time jobs because of multiple deployments, and the current mortgage and foreclosure crisis makes it more difficult for veterans to obtain and keep safe, affordable housing.

Beversdorf says nurses can play an important role in improving the health and well-being of homeless veterans:

• Be aware of the issues veterans face.

• Ask patients if they are veterans as a part of their history. Understand anyone who has served in the military is a veteran, not just those who saw combat.

• Refer veterans to the NCHV (www.NCHV.org or 800-VET-HELP) and the VA (www.va.gov).

• Refer homeless or unemployed veterans to a local Stand-Down event (www.nchv.org/page.cfm?id=122). These events are community-based intervention programs that bring together veterans in a single location for one to three days and provide access to resources, such as medical and dental care, employment opportunities, haircuts, shaves, food, and legal assistance.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on Helping Hands for Homeless Vets

Too Many Soldiers in New Care Centers

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Team VCS

November 2, 2008, Fort Cambell, KY – In a rush to correct reports of substandard care for wounded soldiers, the Army flung open the doors of new specialized treatment centers so wide that up to half the soldiers currently enrolled do not have injuries serious enough to justify being there, The Associated Press has learned.

Army leaders are putting in place stricter screening procedures to stem the flood of patients overwhelming the units – a move that eventually will target some for closure.

According to interviews and data provided to the AP, the number of patients admitted to the 36 Warrior Transition Units and nine other community-based units jumped from about 5,000 in June 2007, when they began, to a peak of nearly 12,500 in June 2008.

The units provide coordinated medical and mental health care, track soldiers’ recovery and provide broader legal, financial and other family counseling. They serve Army active duty and reserve soldiers.

Most injuries not severe enough
Just 12 percent of the soldiers in the units had battlefield injuries while thousands of others had minor problems that did not require the complex new network of case managers, nurses and doctors, according to Brig. Gen. Gary H. Cheek, the director of the Army’s warrior care office.

Image: Gary Cheek
Darrell Hudson / AP
Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek says overcrowding was a ‘self-inflicted wound.’
The overcrowding was a “self-inflicted wound,” said Cheek, who also is an assistant surgeon general. “We’re dedicating this kind of oversight and management where, truthfully, only half of those soldiers really needed this.”

Cheek said it is difficult to tell how many patients eventually will be in the units. But he said soldiers currently admitted will not be tossed out if they do not meet the new standards. Instead, the tighter screening will weed out the population over time.

“We’re trying change it back,” to serve patients who have more serious or multiple injuries that require about six months or more of coordinated treatment, he said.

By restricting use of the coordinated care units to soldiers with more complex, long-term ailments, the Army hopes in the long run to close or consolidate as many as 10 of the transition units, Cheek said during an interview in his Virginia office near the Pentagon.

In the past, a soldier with a torn knee ligament would have surgery and then go on light duty, such as answering phones, while getting physical therapy. But last October, the Army began allowing soldiers with less serious injuries such as that bad knee to go to the warrior units.

Expansion came amid Walter Reed problems
The expansion came in the wake of reports about poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., including shoddy housing and bureaucratic delays for outpatients there.

Brigade commanders began shipping to the transition centers anyone in their unit who could not deploy because of an injury of illness. That burdened the system with soldiers who really did not need case managers to set up their appointments, nurses to check their medications and other specialists to provide counseling for issues such as stress disorders.

The Army’s goal now, as spelled out in a recent briefing given to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is to screen out those who do not need the expanded care program, shifting them to regular medical facilities at their military base or near their homes.

Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, said the Pentagon is making a fair argument. He acknowledged that some soldiers with less serious injuries might not need the units’ services.

Commanders need flexibility
But he said commanders need to be able to move their soldiers who cannot deploy due to an injury to the units because that is the only way they can get a replacement before going to war. Otherwise, the brigade goes to battle without the forces needed.

“The larger concern here is that the problem that is driving this is the manpower problem,” said Soltz. “The Army is overextended. We don’t have enough guys.”

It is vital, he said, that the medical system care for all the solders who need help and that any changes should not threaten that care.

Raymond F. DuBois, a former acting undersecretary of the Army and manpower adviser under then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said the units address “a problem that was not made aware at the highest levels” and do it well. But he has worried for months that the units were overstretched.

“Guess what? They did it so well everybody wants in,” said DuBois, now an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cheek stressed that the new more stringent screening process will not deny care to soldiers in need or limit the treatment units to those with battle wounds.

“We don’t really care about the source of the wound, illness or injury. We really care about the severity of the wound, illness or injury,” said Cheek. “So if it’s a severe, very acute condition that needs rehabilitation and a lot of management and oversight, regardless of where it comes form, that soldier needs to be in this program.”

Patient load starting to decline
The latest data shows that it is working: The patient load is starting to inch down, from the peak of 12,478 in June to less than 11,400 in October.

Cheek estimates that the screening process will reduce the number to between 8,000 and 10,000.

As those numbers come down, the Army is also reviewing which units get more use. The list of potential closings include warrior transition units at Fort Rucker and Redstone Arsenal, in Alabama; Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; Fort Dix in New Jersey; and Fort Irwin in California. According to Army data, many of them either have only a dozen or so patients now, or can be combined with another nearby facility.

At Fort Campbell in Kentucky, however, more than 600 soldiers are in the treatment program. Staff there are bracing for a surge of patients when the three 101st Airborne Division brigades start returning home in the coming months.

Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, toured the unit in late October. He gathered more than two dozen staff around a long table to hear their concerns about how the program is operating. Afterward he marveled that they talked not about their own administrative complaints, but about specific problems they were trying to solve for their patients.

In a small office down the hall, Lisa Gaines was blunt about what the unit meant to her.

“It’s done wonders for our family,” said the mother of five.

Healing physical and emotional wounds
Seated next to her, Spc. Sean Gaines nodded quietly as his wife talked about the strains his injury had on the family and how the staff worked to heal all wounds – physical and emotional.

Deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, cavalry scout Gaines was shaken but not bloodied by the blasts of several car bombs and a house explosion. Yet when he returned home, he began having pain and his body went numb. The medical diagnosis was a crushed cervical disc – an injury he got either in Iraq or in training, only to surface later.

After surgery in October 2007, he came to Fort Campbell’s warrior transition unit – but he needed more than physical therapy. He had been told he could no longer serve as a scout.

“He loves the Army, he loves the military. For them to tell him he could no longer be a scout, it was difficult. It was a strain,” recounted Lisa Gaines. He was agitated, angry and withdrawn, she said.

In response, the warrior unit gave him underwater training as therapy for his injury, coupled with family counseling, budget management and career help.

“I realized I had options, I could continue to serve,” said Sean Gaines, who soon will leave the transition unit and take on a new Army job doing transportation management.

The counseling gave him time to figure out his options, come to terms with the change, and understand that he could either “drive on or prepare to exit,” he said.

He decided to go on, saying, “I am not going to be a scout, but I will still be part of a team.”

According to Army data, the key struggle is keeping the transition units fully staffed. In many of the more remote locations, Army leaders have trouble finding enough nurse case managers. As of the end of September, 12 of the units based at military posts were short those case managers.

Other locations, such as Fort Drum, N.Y., do not have enough behavioral health specialists.

Trying to ease shortages
Closing some of the locations may help ease those shortages, Cheek said.

“It shouldn’t be too surprising,” he said. “We’re 18 months old here, so now it’s time for us to relook at how we’re doing this, and where we can gain some efficiencies.”

He added that an order coming out in December will further refine the screening criteria for the transition units. In particular, it will call for the Army to identify other ways to provide care for reservists so they can receive the treatment they need closer to their homes, which often are far from large military bases.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, has made it clear that any soldier who needs the coordinated care must get it, regardless of how many soldiers end up in the program.

Meanwhile, officials are building permanent care centers at the main bases over the next several years, at a cost of more than $1 billion. Annual operating costs are about $270 million, with the staff of about 3,000 consuming most of that expense.

Nearly 40,000 service members have been wounded in action in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as of Friday, although more than 18,000 returned to duty within 72 hours of their injuries, according to Defense Department data.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on Too Many Soldiers in New Care Centers

White House Memos on Wiretapping Sought

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Team VCS

November 2, 2008 – Reporting from Washington — A judge has ordered the Justice Department to produce White House memos that provide the legal basis for the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 warrantless wiretapping program.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. signed an order Friday requiring the department to produce the memos by the White House legal counsel’s office by Nov. 17. He said he would review the memos to determine whether any information could be released publicly without violating attorney-client privilege or jeopardizing national security.

Kennedy issued his order in response to lawsuits by civil liberties groups in 2005 after news reports disclosed the wiretapping program.

The department argued that the memos were protected attorney-client communications and contained classified information. But Kennedy said that the attorney-client argument was “too vague” and that he would have to look at the documents to determine whether that argument was valid and also to see whether there was information that could be released without endangering national security.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said the department was reviewing the opinion and would “respond appropriately in court.”

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on calls between people in the U.S. and suspected terrorists abroad without obtaining court warrants. The administration said that it needed to act more quickly than the court could and that the president had inherent authority under the Constitution to order warrantless domestic spying. After the program was challenged in court, Bush last year put it under the supervision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established in 1978 after the domestic spying scandals of the 1970s.

“We think just as a common-sense matter the legal theories for the president’s wiretap programs cannot be classified and should be available to the public,” said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, one of the groups seeking the memos.

“It’s an important decision because up to this point the judge has relied on the government’s assertion that it has done everything properly under the law and that it has disclosed everything it needs to disclose,” Rotenberg said.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on White House Memos on Wiretapping Sought

Veteran McCain Can’t Bank on U.S. Military Vote

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Team VCS

November 2, 2008, Chicago, IL – War hero John McCain should have been able to count on fellow veterans to back his White House bid, but Democrats have managed to trim the Republican lead by actively courting the military vote.

With the United States engaged in two unpopular wars, the military vote is worth more than the relatively small number of ballots it represents.

Democrats are hoping the visible support of top former commanders and troops on the ground will help overcome a decades-long reputation that they are weak on defense.

Republicans continue to beat the drums of patriotism in an attempt to distract voters from the worsening economic crisis.

McCain meanwhile has built his campaign narrative around his lifelong service to his country and his ability to lead in dangerous times.

The former navy fighter pilot who spent five and a half years in a Vietnamese prison camp pauses every rally and town meeting to thank the “guys in the funny hats” for their military service.

He vows to bring troops home from Iraq “in victory and honor, not in defeat” to chase Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden “to the gates of hell” and to “fight for what’s right for America.”

And the Arizona senator has mounted constant attacks on the judgment and experience of Democratic rival Barack Obama, a 47-year-old first term senator who has never served in the military.

Yet McCain is expected to win the military vote by a narrower margin on November 4 than President George W. Bush did in 2004, even though Bush sat out the Vietnam war in the Texas national guard and was running against decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry.

“The best guess is Bush won (the military vote) 60-40 and I’m guessing it will be lower than that for McCain,” said Peter Feaver, a professor at Duke University who specializes in civil-military relations.

A Gallup survey in early August found 56 percent of veterans supported McCain while only 34 percent planned to vote for Obama.

At the same point in the 2004 presidential race, 55 percent of veterans backed Bush and 39 percent backed Kerry.

Since then, McCain has fallen sharply in the national polls and Obama has expanded his lead from three points to eight in Gallup’s tracking of registered voters.

It is likely that McCain has also lost support among veterans, Feaver said, explaining that while members of the military tend to “skew on the Republican side,” they also tend to track the sentiment of the general population.

Democrats have also “assiduously courted the military” in the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, he added.

They sharply criticized the Bush administration for neglecting returning veterans following the scandal over conditions at the Walter Reed Medical Center and have pushed through legislation which would improve medical benefits and expand college funding for returning veterans.

“Then you have Obama, who has exceptional appeal to three groups over-represented in the military: African Americans, Latinos and young people,” Feaver said in a recent interview.

Obama, who served on the senate’s veterans affairs committee and has been active in expanding benefits and fighting homelessness among veterans, has also tapped into discontent among veterans frustrated with the way the Iraq war has been handled and the strain that multiple deployments has put on families.

He has called for a staged withdraw from Iraq and greater focus on the war in Afghanistan and regularly asks injured veterans to speak on his behalf at rallies and even at the Democratic National Convention.

His highly organized grassroots campaign has set up chapters of Veterans and Military Families for Obama across the country to knock on doors and make calls on his behalf.

And he recently added Colin Powell, Bush’s former secretary of state and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to his tally of endorsements by retired generals.

There are plenty of veterans who believe McCain’s military service is sufficient testament to his character and ability to be commander-in-chief.

“He’s always been a hero of mine,” said Vietnam veteran Mike Lorenzini, 59 who has followed McCain’s career for years and read all his books.

“I might not agree with everything he says but he’s not going to do anything he feels is bad for the country and its people,” Lorenzini said.

“He’s got conviction and character. That’s what draws me to him.”

Retired marine Brady Williams, 55, considers McCain a “good American.”

“I think the world community wouldn’t be as ready to test him as they would Obama,” Williams told AFP at a recent McCain rally in Durango, Colorado.

“He’s got the experience.”

The military vote proved critical in 2000 when absentee ballots helped Bush win Florida. Whether McCain can be helped in the same way remains to be seen.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on Veteran McCain Can’t Bank on U.S. Military Vote

Wounded Troops’ Pay Overhauled

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Team VCS

October 29, 2008 – Wounded servicemembers whose combat-related injuries are diagnosed after they return home can keep their special pays while hospitalized, Defense officials said Tuesday.

The move is one of the major changes that are part of the Pay and Allowance Continuation Program, or PAC, which allows wounded servicemembers to continue to collect special pays after they are hospitalized.

Previously, wounded servicemembers’ injuries had to be diagnosed in the combat zone for them to receive the compensation.

Now servicemembers are eligible for PAC if they for injuries that were not detected in the combat zone, such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“In the event that you return from the combat zone and experience an injury that you were not hospitalized for previously, the PAC is payable,” said Tim Fowlkes, assistant director of military compensation.

In May, PAC replaced an earlier program that paid wounded servicemembers $430 per month to cover their hardship duty pay, hostile fire pay and the incidental expense portion of their temporary duty per diem allowance, officials said.

PAC expands the compensation for wounded servicemembers to include other special pays to which they are entitled, such as jump pay and dive pay, said Virginia Penrod, director of compensation.

The program also covers troops injured by hostile fire in injuries not deemed combat zones, such as South and Central America, officials said.

In another change, wounded servicemembers may receive PAC for up to a year after they are hospitalized, with further extensions possible, Penrod said.

Under the old program, wounded servicemembers lost the extra money as soon as their Traumatic Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance benefits kicked in, prompting some servicemembers to avoid taking TSGLI, she said.

Wounded servicemembers who were compensated under the old program were transitioned to PAC on May 15, Penrod said. The program is not retroactive.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged | Comments Off on Wounded Troops’ Pay Overhauled