As Iraq and Afghan wars end, costs rival Viet Nam; VA not prepared

December 5, 2011 by Leave a comment

Once again, our leaders fail to account for the true cost of war, and this is where it hurts the most: not enough care for our wounded veterans. McClatchy Newspaper’s Chris Adams:

WASHINGTON — The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may be winding down, but the long-term costs of caring for those wounded in battle is on path to rival the costs of the Vietnam War.

While Vietnam extracted a far higher death toll — 58,000 compared with 6,300 so far in the war on terror — the number of documented disabilities from recent veterans is approaching the size of that earlier conflict, according to a McClatchy analysis of Department of Veterans Affairs data.

The data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and detailing all disability payments to veterans of all wars, show that veterans leaving the military in recent years are filing for and receiving compensation for more injuries than did their fathers and grandfathers.

At the same time, McClatchy found, the VA is losing ground in efforts to provide fast, efficient and accurate disability decisions. And the agency has yet to get control of a problem that has vexed it for years: The wide variation in disability payments by state and region, even for veterans with the same ailments.

The VA doesn’t actually specify whether somebody was in Iraq or Afghanistan, instead lumping all veterans from the first Iraq war in 1990 into a “Gulf War” category. McClatchy zeroed in on veterans who left active duty in 2003 or later, an approximate cohort of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Among the findings:

    • Recent veterans are filing claims at a far higher rate than veterans from previous wars or generations. That could make the eventual payout for the VA far higher than it has been for previous wars.
    • The VA’s disability payments are still wildly uneven, despite years of attempts to improve consistency to the regional offices that process veterans’ claims. It means, for example, that a veteran who lives in Kentucky is likely to have a higher disability payment than one who lives in South Dakota, often for the same ailment.
    • The speed at which the VA processes disability applications has gotten worse, and the percentage of claims with an error in them has worsened as well. In fiscal 2011, 16 percent of VA disability decisions contained an error, the VA’s own review shows, far higher than the 2 percent error rate the VA is aiming for.

The VA said that it is working to do better and that it has hired 2,700 new workers. “We think we’ve got the problem identified and we think we have the right disciplines in place,” said Thomas Murphy, who directs the VA’s compensation program.

The true cost of war can’t be known for years and decades after the last bullet has been fired and the final base torn down. A disability tied to military service might take years to emerge and or might steadily worsen after it does.

Read more: As Iraq and Afghan wars end, costs mount on pace to rival Vietnam | McClatchy.

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Serve Your Country, Get Killed At Home: SWAT team’s shooting of Marine causes outrage

November 30, 2011 by Leave a comment

If you are a veteran, and have a legal firearm at home, it could get you killed if the police ever come calling. And after they kill you, if they find “military gear”, they will use that as their excuse. Shameful.

From the AP:

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Jose Guerena Ortiz was sleeping after an exhausting 12-hour night shift at a copper mine. His wife, Vanessa, had begun breakfast. Their 4-year-old son, Joel, asked to watch cartoons.

An ordinary morning was unfolding in the middle-class Tucson neighborhood — until an armored vehicle pulled into the family’s driveway and men wearing heavy body armor and helmets climbed out, weapons ready.

They were a sheriff’s department SWAT team who had come to execute a search warrant. But Vanessa Guerena insisted she had no idea, when she heard a “boom” and saw a dark-suited man pass by a window, that it was police outside her home. She shook her husband awake and told him someone was firing a gun outside.

A U.S. Marine veteran of the Iraq war, he was only trying to defend his family, she said, when he grabbed his own gun — an AR-15 assault rifle.

What happened next was captured on video after a member of the SWAT team activated a helmet-mounted camera.

The officers — four of whom carried .40-caliber handguns while another had an AR-15 — moved to the door, briefly sounding a siren, then shouting “Police!” in English and Spanish. With a thrust of a battering ram, they broke the door open. Eight seconds passed before they opened fire into the house.

And 10 seconds later, Guerena lay dying in a hallway 20-feet from the front door. The SWAT team fired 71 rounds, riddling his body 22 times, while his wife and child cowered in a closet.

“Hurry up, he’s bleeding,” Vanessa Guerena pleaded with a 911 operator. “I don’t know why they shoot him. They open the door and shoot him. Please get me an ambulance.”

When she emerged from the home minutes later, officers hustled her to a police van, even as she cried that her husband was unresponsive and bleeding, and that her young son was still inside. She begged them to get Joel out of the house before he saw his father in a puddle of blood on the floor.

But soon afterward, the boy appeared in the front doorway in Spider-Man pajamas, crying.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said its SWAT team was at the home because Guerena was suspected of being involved in a drug-trafficking organization and that the shooting happened because he arrived at the door brandishing a gun. The county prosecutor’s office says the shooting was justified.

But six months after the May 5 police gunfire shattered a peaceful morning and a family’s life, investigators have made no arrests in the case that led to the raid. Outraged friends, co-workers and fellow Marines have called the shooting an injustice and demanded further investigation. A family lawyer has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the sheriff’s office. And amid the outcry in online forums and social media outlets, the sheriff’s 54-second video, which found its way to YouTube, has drawn more than 275,000 views.

The many questions swirling around the incident all boil down to one, repeated by Vanessa Guerena, as quoted in the 1,000-page police report on the case:

“Why, why, why was he killed?”

Read the rest: The Associated Press: SWAT team’s shooting of Marine causes outrage.

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Colbert: Super Congress saying ‘Semper F.U.’ to Veterans

November 20, 2011 by Leave a comment

Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert says that there are 1 percent of Americans that the congressional Super Committee wants to make pay — and it’s not the rich.

The Super Committee has five days left to find a compromise to reduce the nation’s deficit by $1.2 trillion or there will be automatic deep cuts to military spending and Medicare. To prevent those cuts in military spending, some members of Congress are looking at a reduction in benefits for the 1 percent of Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan — and the rest of the veterans for that matter.

The leaders of the House and Senate veterans’ affairs committees recently sent a letter to the Super Committee volunteering veterans for a cut in their health care programs.

“We believe no constituency better understands the challenge America faces, and no constituency is better suited to, again, lead by example by putting country first,” the letter, signed by both Republicans and Democrats, said.

“And with this letter, Congress is sending our troops a clear message. (Semper F.U),” Colbert observed. “That message, that we can take for granted that servicemembers are willing to give up more than the rest of us.”

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Serve Your Country, Get Screwed: Super Committee Targets Veterans Health Benefits

November 17, 2011 by 2 Comments

Well, it’s a few days past Veterans Day, and guess what the Super Committee – apparently both sides can agree on this – wants to cut the VA budget. We can’t squeeze another dime from the super-rich in this country, but we can cut health care benefits from our veterans. Hey, freedom isn’t free, right? Just because you defended it doesn’t mean you should get a free ride for your prosthetic leg.

Even Fox News is telling the truth on this one:

The government’s promise of lifetime health care for the military’s men and women is suddenly a little less sacrosanct as Congress looks to slash trillion-dollar-plus deficits.

Republicans and Democrats alike are signaling a willingness — unheard of at the height of two post-Sept. 11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — to make military retirees pay more for coverage.

It’s a reflection of Washington’s newfound embrace of fiscal austerity and the Pentagon’s push to cut health care costs that have skyrocketed from $19 billion in 2001 to $53 billion.

The numbers are daunting for a military focused on building and arming an all-volunteer force for war. The Pentagon is providing health care coverage for 3.3 million active duty personnel and their dependents and 5.5 million retirees, eligible dependents and surviving spouses.

Retirees outnumber the active duty, 2.3 million to 1.4 million.

Combined with the billions in retirement pay, it’s no surprise that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said personnel costs have put the Pentagon “on an unsustainable course.”

via Veterans Groups Object To Cuts In Health Care As Super Committee Targets Benefits | Fox News.

So we’ve sunk to this. This is such a mockery of everything this country is supposed to stand for. I hope the next revolt is started by veterans: I’m not taking this lying down.

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This Veterans Day, Give More Than Lip Service

November 11, 2011 by Leave a comment

Veterans Day is always conflicting for me. I’m glad to see the nation give thanks for our veterans, especially while we are still at war on so many fronts. As a vet myself, I empathize with the sacrifice so many have made for our country. And at the same time, I am also painfully aware how little support veterans get when they return. As a patriot, I am loathe to jump on the flag-waving, ”Merica, Love It Or Leave It’ jingoistic tributes that are so common around this day. My experience has been that the support of most of the flag-wavers, like the folks slapping the Support Our Troops ribbons on their car bumpers, was actually about as strong as the magnet that held it on. They couldn’t understand my stance: “Support our troops, bring them home.”

Too many Fox News watchers care a lot  - for one day a year; they  haven’t a clue how little support the troops get once they separate from the service. Which brings me to V.A. MD Ami Bera’s  impassioned plea for more support:

This Veterans Day, I call on Congress to pay a great deal more than lip service to treating America’s service men and women — those who sacrifice their own safety for the love and protection of our great country — with the respect they deserve. Over the coming years more than one million military personnel will return from Iraq and Afghanistan. They did not hesitate when asked to answer the call to duty, and it is now our obligation to answer that same call of duty to welcome them, honor their service, and ensure they succeed back here at home. To do anything less is simply un-­patriotic and un-­American.

To do that, we have some significant trends of neglect to reverse. Today, over 850,000 veterans are unemployed — a jobless rate dramatically higher than the national average. It is estimated that over 100,000 veterans are homeless, with hundreds of thousands more at risk of homelessness. The Rand Corporation estimates that over 18% of returning veterans will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or severe depression, and the rate of suicide for returning veterans is twice the national average.

As a nation, we can and must do better in honoring the men and women who have sacrificed so much. I call on Congress and the president to begin this Veterans Day by agreeing on four core patriotic policies to support America’s veterans:

  • First, make sure that every returning veteran has the ability to find a job, or has the ability to pursue and complete their education in order to find that job. The president’s recent Jobs Act allocates tax credits to companies that hire veterans and provides even greater incentives for companies that employ disabled veterans. Congress needs to pass this portion of the bill immediately and in a bi-­partisan manner.
  • Begin to address the number of homeless and at-­risk veterans and promote greater economic security. The administration and Congress must immediately write and pass laws to provide veterans and their families with assistance in refinancing their homes, or in obtaining access to low-­interest loans with which to purchase foreclosed or vacant homes.
  • As a doctor who has worked in the VA system, I know we must fully fund the VA’s medical programs, so that we can provide the medical and rehabilitative services necessary to help our veterans return to a full and productive life. It is not only unpatriotic but immoral to consider cutting these critical services, while Congress continues unnecessary things like oil subsidies.
  • With the dramatic increase in PTSD and suicide, health services for veterans must include necessary mental health and counseling care — both for our troops and their families. Congress should vote immediately to fund mental health services at a level that adequately addresses the recent increase in PTSD and suicide.

Americans understand and wish to fulfill our moral obligation to those who have risked life and limb for our country. Yet legislation that would put these values into action languishes in Congress, stalled by petty bickering and gridlock. On this Veterans Day, I call on our representatives in Congress to immediately set aside partisanship and demonstrate to our troops that America will act as honorably toward them as they have toward us.

via Ami Bera, MD: This Veterans Day.

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WHY CAN’T WE HAVE DEMOCRACY IN OUR OWN COUNTRY? Oakland Police Critically Injure Iraq War Vet During Occupy March

October 26, 2011 by Leave a comment

We knew it would happen, but it doesn’t make it any less odious:

The local police’s use of force seriously injured an Occupy activist and Iraq War veteran.

Scott Olsen, 24, remains sedated on a respirator, in stable but critical condition at Oakland’s Highland Hospital after being hit in the head with a police projectile.

Olsen’s roommate, Keith Shannon, 24, told The Huffington Post that Olsen is still in the emergency room.

“Right now, he’s under sedation,” Shannon said. “He walked into the hospital.” But soon after his arrival, Shannon said, doctors found that there was swelling in Olsen’s brain and put him under. He did not get a chance to talk to his friend. “They are waiting for a neurosurgeon to examine him to see if he needs surgery or not,” Shannon said. If he doesn’t need an operation, he’ll be moved to the intensive care unit.

If the government that is currently in power doesn’t act to stem the tide of violence against these protests, they will be out of office next year. You hear me, Obama? I’m talking to YOU. Either you get out in front of this thing and let the 99% have it’s say, or you have sided with the 1% – yet again.

Read the whole article on the wounded vet here: Oakland Police Critically Injure Iraq War Vet During Occupy March.

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