This is a potential wave of change that can sweep the nation, and it would not be possible on this scale without the two movements scratching each other’s backs. However, because both movements are roaring, we stand at the brink of a transformational moment in American politics. -Chris Bowers
Today at OpenLeft Chris Bowers has a very good post. It’s about what happened yesterday and what it could mean for the progressive movement and America. Yesterday progressive champion Donna Edwards defeated corrupt incumbent Al Wynn in the Democratic primary for Maryland’s fourth congressional district and Barack Obama rode a wave of new voters to overwhelming victories in Maryland, Virgina and DC.
First of all if you don’t know about the Edwards vs Wynn race read up about it here.
But back to the post Chris made.
turnout was significantly higher than in September 2006. Seventeen months ago, when Donna Edwards lost by 3%, there were about 77,000 voters in the primary. Last night, turnout seems to have been about 113,000, an increase of about 47%. Despite the large increase in turnout, Wynn’s overall numbers did not change much. Seventeen months ago, he received about 38-39,000 votes. This year, it looks like Wynn will receive about 40-41,000 votes.
There is not enough data to prove this exactly but here are the basics. 47% more people voted and mostly because of the presidential primary. A large majority of those voters voted in the presidential primary because of Barack Obama. Those new voters also overwhelmingly voted for Donna Edwards. The end result? Not only does Barack Obama win but his victory helps bring about the the first progressive primary victory against an incumbent U.S. House Democrat in a decade. Two movements. Working side by side.
In the end, the two movements supplemented each other quite nicely. Now, we not only have a wave of new voters, but we have a wave of new progressive voters that sent a powerful message of change to Democrats, corporations, and basically everyone in Washington, D.C. That strikes me as exactly the message that both movements hoped to send.
Ladies and gentleman. You’ve just seen the first result of the Obama Effect. Even Howie Klein sees it:
The new voters who were so motivated by Obama also voted overwhelmingly for Donna. Basically with voter participation skyrocketing in Maryland, Wynn’s numbers are pretty much the same as what he got in 2006. Most of those extra voters went for Donna and her message of real change.
To be blunt. We won big last night. This is could be the beginning of a real transformation. Essentially Barack Obama ,who would probably be the most progressive president since the 60’s, is bringing thousands of new voters to the polls. Those voters are sweeping progressive down ballot candidates into office. In the general election we are talking about a huge effect that has the potential to make the difference in a lot of close races and sweep in new majorities in the house and senate.
In short there is potential for a real transformation.
But change never comes easy. And transformation certainly does not.
So let’s get active. On Sunday I wrote a diary about 5 easy ways to get active. Check it out. Also one more thing. My fellow blogger snout launched the Obama Action Network today, it is a group for all Obama supporters who are taking action. It will be a great resource to help you take action and have fun while you’re doing it. Action, fun and transformation. Does it get better?
Matt Taibbi reminds me of that yappy friend who could get you into trouble at a bar. he is one of the reasons I still subscribe to Rolling Stone. Although we often bemoan the lack of critical coverage in the MSM of our political authority figures, he has consistently swiped, barked, spit and frothed at the Bush administration. In the latest issue, he venomously roasts the Dems as posers and collaborators. The whole article is worth a read. He introduces his tasty vitriol by arguing that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi has orchestrated the one of the ” most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain“, they have consciously and purposefully betrayed ardent anti war believers. Indeed after reading the article, it clarifies for me why I think current leadership cannot be trusted to advance any progressive ideals even with a change in presidency.
Because. They. Don’t. Want. To.
If Reid and Pelosi were your lawyers in court and decided not to mount a defense because the “timing was wrong”, wouldn’t you fire them? If Reid and Pelosi drove your taxi to a location to one other than what you requested because you didn’t actually understand where you wanted to go, wouldn’t you refuse to pay them? If Reid and Pelosi were your surgeons and decided the life saving procedure you needed just wasn’t worth doing because they had other priorities, wouldn’t you….. probably be dead?
Yeah, this feels good, baby….
After all we aren’t sophisticated practitioners backed by years of training and indoctrination into the political process. We are just the great semi unwashed….
I have a fuzzy memory of my introductory political science professor, Victor Fic, telling us in his booming Czech inflected accent that politics was the art of the possible which in my youth I took to mean, silly goose that I am, that it was the realm in which nothing was impossible.
Taibbi asserts that the notion that the Democratic party in this current congress truly wants to end the war is laughable and while nobody would go on record, most congressional aides see the anti war efforts emitting from Dem leadership and the party by extension as a lame dog and pony show with no serious effort intended. Naturally, one has to take Tiabbi on faith when he makes that claim. Certainly nothing leadership has done undercuts that. Heroic efforts, risky gestures, and the like seem to be missing in action. Limp and lifeless has now become an actual style of leadership. Wonder how they will teach that in B school?
Her lament was that perhaps the Democrats should have been bold. Wow. Radical. Act. Bold.
Finally, Tiabbi accuses the current Democratic leadership and to some extent the party of inhaling some elements of the anti-war movement itself and using it specifically for the purposes of electing Democrats. He suggests that the Democrats infiltrated peace groups and filled them with party hacks. Not much proof is offered of this, and given the de-centralization of the anti Iraq war movement itself, it might simply be a Washington phenomenon. There are too many pissed off anti war activists still reminding us of work to be done.
Ultimately, says Tiabbi, the Democrats strategy is to assume voters see them as the anti-war, despite doing much to the contrary. Tiabbi doesn’t ask it but I will: can this negatively impact the upcoming presidential election. Although many are basking in optimism and occasional glee about the prospects for a Democratic president, if the voters want change, the problem is almost anybody represents change ( even McCain because he actually wants all conflict all the time which might be good for the economy who knows it worked before) and the Pelosi/Reed duet is both tone deaf and short on snappy new tunes to pipe into the muzak making machine. We want a grand rock opera and we’re getting the wheezing of a lone accordion. We want a buffet of tasty, colorful, delights for the palate and we’re getting gruel with a few worms tossed in. It isn’t enough to get a new president, Pelosi and Reed are so used to sleeping with the enemy, that they will need intensive de-programming therapy just to come to grips with the idea that if we do end up with a Democratic president, it means the public might expect some legislation that does not originate from Republican ideals.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, Senator Schumer. I lived in New York for the first 35 years of my live before moving to New Jersey in 2006. You were my Senator for a good number of years and you were a damn fine Senator. As are a good number of your colleagues.
You are absolutely right that winning the Presidency isn’t enough. And you make mention Jon Tester, Jim Webb and Sherrod Brown – three people who we are (by and large) very proud to call our Senators. Three people that we here in the netroots put a large portion of our time, energy and money towards helping win very important seats in the Senate – replacing three very odious republican Senators.
We worked so very hard in November 2006 to help elect Democrats. To get BOTH houses of Congress to Democratic majorities for the first time in well over a decade. And promises were made to us by yourself, by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and many others in leadership positions.
Even you, Senator, must have known about the dangerous precedent that you helped set when you allowed Michael Mukasey to be appointed as Attorney Generaldespite his disgusting stance on torture. Quite ironic how far the bar has moved since Kimba Wood and Zoe Baird’s nominations were withdrawn over household employment taxes.
And now, we have a precedent of torturing individuals with no accountability, as well as the ability for evidence obtained via torture to be admissible for a death penalty sentence. Granted, if Khalid Sheik Mohammed is responsible for masterminding the 9/11 attacks, then he should get whatever justice is due. But to have this tainted by allowing for torture, let alone evidence obtained through torture is something that your decision to let Mukasey’s nomination through to the Senate floor helped accomplish.
So, I do apologize, Senator, if I am a bit disturbed by your post, even as I do give you major credit for coming here and asking our opinion. Your diary says the following:
Whether it’s President Obama or President Clinton, they are going to need a Democratic Senate that can pass, instead of obstruct, a progressive agenda.
This is a two way street. We will continue to support your efforts to recruit more progressives for the Senate, just as we will continue efforts to recruit more progressives for the House. But we expect something in return – after all, you are supposed to be elected by US to serve US.
Allowing for retroactive immunity in a FISA bill that had no business even being brought to the floor is not progressive. Folding to Mister Bush on Iraq over and over and over when the vast majority of the country is on your side is not progressive. Sending a big “F-You” to MoveOn.org on the Senate floor is not progressive. Allowing extremist appointment after extremist appointment by Bush is not progressive. Caving to an unpopular President and an even less popular Congressional minority is not progressive. Allowing non-progressives to continuously set the tone of the debate is not progressive.
I, personally, will be working my butt off to get my Representative, Scott Garrett, out of Congress. I will donate my time, effort and money to the Democratic challenger. Scott Garrett is one of the worst enemies of the progressive movement, yet I don’t know that your counterpart in the House has any intent of helping to remove this ultra right wing extremist.
And I sincerely hope that we can recruit more progressives for the Senate, and win more seats. However, we also expect more from the lion’s share of the current Democratic Senators – on the very issues that we were promised results on. Blaming republican obstruction is part of it – but we know better. There is much more that you and your colleagues could have (and still can) accomplish if you were to keep your promises made to us back in 2006.
You can do better. We did our part for you. Now it is time that you and your colleagues really do what you promised us. If I can’t trust the DSCC and who it represents to keep up your end of the deal, then you’ll have to excuse me while I work for and donate money to true progressives.
According to a new article by Steve Bloomfield in the UK Independent, the U.S. policy of advising Ethiopia in its war with neighboring Somalia has failed. Not surprisingly for the Bush team, it has achieved results entirely the opposite of what it intended. The outcome? UN officials describe it as the “the largest concentration of displaced people anywhere in the world…. the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Africa, eclipsing even Darfur in its sheer horror.”
According to Bloomfield, the U.S. believed that Al Qaida had established a presence in the “failed state” that was Somalia at the beginning of this century. The U.S. wanted to strike at the Union of Islamic Courts, a fundamentalist coalition that was ruling over much of central and southern Somalia.
On Christmas Day 2006, Ethiopia invaded its neighbour, Somalia. The aim: to drive out a coalition of Islamists ruling the capital, Mogadishu, and install a fragile interim government that had been confined to a small town in the west. But Ethiopia was not acting alone. The US had given its approval for the operation and provided key intelligence and technical support. CIA agents travelled with the Ethiopian troops, helping to direct operations.
But things didn’t turn out as the administration experts had hoped. Of course, they tried to play the same old colonial card, turning one sordid group against another.
The CIA’s desperation to root out the men on their list saw them turn to some old enemies for help. CIA agents landed at tiny airstrips outside Mogadishu and handed briefcases full of crisp new $100 notes over to the same warlords who had chased the US out of Somalia in 1993. The warlords took the money and used it to take on the Courts. They formed themselves into the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism – before proceeding to do very little to find the supposed terrorists the CIA wanted caught.
The strategy backfired. The leaders of the courts united their militias and defeated the US-backed warlords.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian troops occupied much of Somalia, and like the U.S. and its faux-coalition forces in Iraq, ran smack into an authentic insurgency, complete with hardline Islamic leadership — just the opposite of what the administration said they wanted in Somalia. Now there are daily gunfights and violence in Mogadishu, leading Ethiopia to plan its own “surge” in Somalia. It’s estimated there are 15,000 Ethiopian troops there right now.
The number of armed soldiers may seem smaller than in Iraq, but the refugee problem resembles that created by the U.S. invasion to the north.
More than 600,000 people fled Mogadishu last year. Around 200,000 are now living in squalid impromptu refugee camps along a 15km-stretch of road outside the capital. According to UN officials it is the largest concentration of displaced people anywhere in the world. Those same officials now consider Somalia to be the worst humanitarian catastrophe in Africa, eclipsing even Darfur in its sheer horror.
Bush’s Talk of Democracy = Endless War, Millions of Refugees, Untold Dead
Pondering the ruins of Bush’s “war on terror” policy from afar, one wonders what the hell Bush, Cheney, and the Pentagon tops were trying to accomplish in their “regime change” wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
Chris Floyd, who has been covering the Somalia crisis for some time, has his own take:
Each [“regime change” war ] has radicalized vast swathes of the populations under attack, while driving out moderates, technocrats, professionals: anyone who cannot easily be bought or manipulated – or provoked into some violent action that will “justify” American domination. Indeed, this profitable and politically expedient exacerbation of terror and extremism is such a deep-rooted characteristic of the “regime change” wars that it would take a mighty act of will to believe that it is not deliberate.
It will take a victorious populace, forcing open the secret archives of this country to know just what the rulers of this country is really trying to accomplish. (Somalia’s strategic location on the horn of Africa, and proximity to oil reserves may have something important to do with U.S. intentions.) One thing is for certain, Bush and his team have created a greater load of refugees than anyone in this world has seen since at least the great Indian partition of the late 1940s.
I would like to see whether either Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton, one of whom seems certain to become the next U.S. president (and my money’s on Obama), have any policy statements to make on Somalia. Thus far, I don’t know of any. Obama’s stance against the Iraq War is a step in the right direction, but at times he has fed into Bush’s fake war on terror rhetoric, and that’s a step directly into the maw of the Pentagon’s war machine.
Meanwhile, as Somali refugees fan out all over the world, they are having a particularly difficult time, as this report from Norway suggests:
According to most indicators of living standards, Somalis are the refugee group that has poorest ratings. They are more often unemployed than any other groups of first-generation immigrants in Norway . In 2001, 25.8 per cent of Somalis in Norway were employed, as against 38.3 per cent of first-generation Pakistanis and 64.8 per cent of persons without immigrant background. Nineteen per cent of Somali women had work, whereas 31.1 per cent of the men were working…. Many Somalis have great difficulty in finding accommodation; landlords are often reluctant to let to Somali families with many children. In a study of living conditions among immigrants in 1996, half of the Somalis reported that they definitely had been discriminated against when trying to rent or buy an apartment….
Indicators of mental health also point to a worse position for Somalis. In a study of different immigrant groups in Norway, more Somalis than most other refugee groups reported that they had nervous symptoms…. Literature from other Western countries, such as Australia, the UK, Canada and Finland, reveals very much the same picture of the situation for Somali refugees…. Chronic unemployment, poor housing, illiteracy and consequent problems in accessing mainstream social and educational services are typical for Somalis both in the UK and in Norway….
A study of Somali refugees in Canada shows that they encounter considerable difficulties during the initial stages of resettlement. They face social exclusion and multiple forms of disadvantages including high unemployment, underemployment, and overcrowding, as well as frustrations and despair that sometimes result in suicidal behaviour, particularly among the young males…. In a Finnish study, Somalis faced more negative attitudes and experienced more racist crimes than any other immigrant groups Somalis in Norway have been stigmatized by both media and officials as the worst case group of refugees.
While the U.S. cannot be held responsible for every case of civil war and unrest in the world, this government seems to have done its best to worsen matters, and in some very extreme, cynical ways.
The UN World Food Program is trying to help by sending food to over 2 million Somalis. They explain:
Somalia remains in a precarious food security situation, the result of more than 15 years of civil conflict, recurrent drought, crop failures and severe floods. Chronic food shortages and malnutrition persist.
Global acute malnutrition rates are above the emergency level. Poor road conditions and insecurity pose a major challenge in food aid delivery in the south, especially during the rainy season.
If any readers have any good links for donations to refugees in Somalia, please leave them in the comments section. Otherwise, you can go to the UN World Food Program website and make a contribution.
The word “change” is being bandied about in political circles alot these days. We hear it from candidates constantly. But we also talk about it alot ourselves here at Docudharma. We want to change the country, don’t we? But I’ve been thinking about how little we seem to focus on how change happens. I’m sure many of us have experience with change in our own personal lives. What can we learn from our own experiences that might inform us as we work together to effect change in our country?
One of the most important lessons I learned along the way is that “willpower” is not enough of a force to ever be able to change me or to motivate me to become who it is I want to be in life. This lesson came in two arenas that defined my early years.
When I was 13 years old, I gained 30 pounds in just a few months – probably because I had to start taking “the pill” to regulate my periods and just imagine the dosage I got back in 1967 when that medication was first on the market. Very quickly, being fat became my identity. That’s a pretty heavy load in this culture – especially for teenage girls. For the next 30 years my main task in life was to develop the willpower to diet and loose weight. I love the words of Marge Piercy from a poem titled “Beauty I would suffer for.” She describes dieting this way: “the scorched wire, burnt rubber smell of willpower, living with the brakes on.” I remember a doctor I saw when I was 15 telling me that I would have to watch what I ate for the rest of my life. Something inside me knew what this meant and that it was not something I could do, even at that young age. Can you imagine living your whole life “with the brakes on.” Can’t do it!!
The other arena in my life where this struggle was even more central was in the fundamentalist christianity in which I was raised. I’ve written here before that one of the main tenants of that belief system is the doctrine of original sin. At my core, I was told that I was sinful and evil. It was only by using my willpower to adhere to the dogma or rules about life that I could become a worthy human being. As a young person, I remember responding to “alter calls” regularly where I would go forward during a church service and cry – promising god and the pastor that I would – this time – be a “good girl” and do all the things I was supposed to – only to fail yet again and start the whole process over again.
Using willpower to become what I wanted to be always set up a battle inside of me. On the one side, there was the thing I was supposed to do – because I thought I should do it. On the other side, there was the ever present rebel that was saying “NO, I don’t want to do that!!!” These battles defined much of my life for too many years. Willpower could maybe get me to do what I thought I should do initially. But eventually, I’d give in. Then the guilt of feeling defeated would immobilize me for long periods of time, not to mention the shame of not having enough willpower to carry it off.
It wasn’t until I abandoned willpower as a means that I ever found any contentment in life. As a very wise person once told me, “Willpower is good for the sprint – but not for the distance.” Overall, I had to learn two things:
1. Recognizing that what’s inside of me is wisdom and that what I WANT is good for me, if I can dig deep enough and find it. After years of glossing over all of that with what I thought I was supposed to be and do, it is still sometimes hard to find. But its there – and waiting.
2. Embracing my failures and short-comings. I remember at one point in my life while I was working as a Family Therapist, I would drive home at night and literally comb through my day looking for places where I had failed so that I could beat myself up over it all. It was hard to stop that thought pattern. Eventually, I did have to look those failures in the eye though. At that moment, I had a decision to make. Did these failures mean I should write myself off as a looser? Would I allow them to paralyze me or hook me into an attempt to live by the rules again in order to avoid failure? Or were they just part of the “me” I was growing to love and trust. Eventually I had to embrace myself, failures and all.
These two things released a ME that was always there on the inside – but that I had no idea existed. I’m still working on trying to recognize her. A lot of my current failings come as the person I had learned to be early in life gets mixed up with the person I’m becoming. I give off mixed signals to people, loose my integrity and create distance from others in the process. But I know I’m on the right path for me – and even in the struggles, I now find a sense of peace.
Seems as these reports keep coming they all can be considered ‘followups’, one after the other after the other after the other….., building to what is actually happing to our Military, but Especially the Military Personal that serve, so it seems, not the Country but the whims of the Civilian and some Military Leadership as well as Ideologies not followed by the Majority, as the Nation of Apathy tunes out to their Service and the Care given for same!
WATERTOWN, N.Y. – The four tours in Iraq served by the Second Brigade at Fort Drum here have created an unusual level of stress, especially after the standard Iraq tour was increased to 15 months from 12. Yet according to a new report on the shortcomings of mental health care at the base, a soldier’s wait to be seen for psychological help can take more than a month.
More than half of all veterans who took their own lives after returning from Iraq or Afghanistan were members of the National Guard or Reserves, according to new government data that prompted activists on Tuesday to call for a closer examination of the problem.
The research, conducted by the department’s Office of Environmental Epidemiology, provides the first demographic look at suicides among veterans from those wars who left the military.
I could give a number of reason, speculative, on the why of these suicides, but the reasons are very obvious and should be recognizable to everyone, think Regular Military leading to what the Reserves and National Guard are normally used for, especially as to the National Guard. Than think what this Country has been using them for these last five years! And Think War!
Received this head’s up on two important upcoming House Veterans Affairs Committee hearings from Mike and Kim Bowman. In December as you may recall, they offered Chairman Bob Filner and the committee heartrending testimony on their son Tim’s suicide. Tim was an Illinois National Guard member, one of the OEF/OIF veterans’ groups most at risk for taking their own lives after returning home.
For those Really Interested in what is Actually Going On, outside of cult worshipping individuals running in the Presidential Race, can visit Ilona’s site to take note of the dates of these Important Hearings and her added comments as well as all the Important information she passes on to the rest of us, and her Dedication!
I could add a number of links to past reports on Military and Veteran Health Care, especially as to the Mental Health conditions of many returning Military Personal, at other Bases and Veterans facilities but just have a few more I would like to note.
Like this one from another well known base, and recently reported on, Fort Carson:
Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, was outraged. “If he’s an inpatient in a hospital, they should have never taken him out. The chain of command needs to be held accountable for this. Washington needs to get involved at the Pentagon to make sure this doesn’t happen again. “First, we had the planeload of wounded, injured and ill being forced back to the war zone. And now we have soldiers forcibly removed from mental hospitals. The level of outrage is off the Richter scale.”
Paul has the article, at above, along with the link back to the original at the Denver Post.
The NY Times report, at the top, comes on the heals of a Tragic Incident that happened last weekend and I posted about Drum Soldier Killed by Police 2-09-08at my site as well as at ePluribus Media and Vet Voice, where I stayed with the report, from right after it broke, updating as new information came in.
I have the statement, given by the Fort Drum Military Spokesperson, from Sunday morning, at either of the above links.
In the statement we have this:
To our knowledge he had not been referred nor sought counseling for any battle-related illnesses or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Apparently there were no reported signs this Iraq Veteran was suffering from PTSD, but if you read the initial, than followup reports, on how an initial 911 call and hangup, about an apparent domestic disbute, turned into a mutiple shooting and death something more than what was known was happening to Staff Sgt. Dustin J. McMillen age 29.
My thoughts, as this all unfolded, led me to think two things, he either was having a dramatic flashback or was experiancing unseen depression and opted for Suicide By Police, a tragic event that seems to be growing in our society!
In the post, at my site, a comment was left that was signed as the sister of Dustin. I can’t verify that is the case, but I don’t believe it was just some random person commenting:
I am actually Staff Sgt. McMillens sister. He was the best soilder out there a wonderful husband father and brother. The lack of interest in helping these soilders get help when they get back from a war zone is what killed my brother yesterday. Someone needs to realize they are killing soilders not only in the war but at home afterwards. Its tragic and my brother will be terribly missed.
Rebecka McMillen
Dustin McMillen
February 11, 2008
FORT DRUM, N.Y. – Funeral services and burial for Staff Sgt. Dustin J. McMillen will be held at a later date at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Calling hours are 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday and 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at the Reed & Benoit Funeral Home, 632 State St., Watertown.
Mr. McMillen, 29, of Saratoga Ave., died Saturday at his home.
Born June 20, 1978, in Klammath Falls, Ore., a son of Kenneth and Vickie Crowder McMillen, he joined the Army in 1998.
He married Alexis Fellerman September 23, 1998.
Besides his wife and parents of Oregon, he is survived by a daughter, Sydney Rose; two stepsons, Sean and Zachery, all of Fort Drum; a brother, Patrick Casey, Pa.; a sister Rebecca Crowder, Ore.; a niece and a nephew.
Information provided by Reed and Benoit Funeral Home and Newzjunky, Watertown, N.Y.
We had a wild time at New Year’s. Olivia’s parents had made the glaringly obvious mistake of leaving their seventeen-year-old daughter home alone while they rang it in from Tahoe. When Nadia and I arrived at around ten, we discovered exactly how much she had taken advantage of the situation. Something like sixty people, most underage and many half-naked in swimsuits, had jammed themselves inside, behind fake crime scene tape and multi-hued streamers.
Our hostess was also selectively clothed in a bikini top and towel, and welcomed us with a peck each and a “Happy New Year” for dessert. She led a circuitous path through the living room, stopping frequently to introduce Nadia and I to people I’d forgotten from high school. Names and greetings were lost amid the ubiquitous G-funk booming from the stereo, so I played dumb and passively absorbed the wealth and variety of surrounding nubility.
“The booze is out back,” said Olivia eventually, taking my hand, “and you two are at least an hour behind everyone else with less than two hours to go, so get your shit together.” Olivia’s thick black hair whipped around, she let me go, and as we walked toward the sliding door she began to catalogue her devious brilliance. I followed both pairs of hips outside, one mechanically precise, the other sauntering with regal authority.
“I pulled it off!” she said as she plucked us two blue plastic cups out of thin air. “No parents, no siblings, no shit from the neighbors, and if everyone stays cool, probably no cops. Took some work- I cleaned, like, everything, and even moved the Christmas tree into my dad’s office!” The backyard air was welcoming and cool after the hormonal press inside. The spa burbled away, immersing a few bodies in warmth, and the dim porch light barely defined any shadows.
“Roy, where’s your trunks, sweetie?” Olivia asked imperiously, but I wasn’t really inclined to join the undressed, so I ducked the question. “Nadia didn’t say it would be that kind of party.”
“Yes, that,” said Nadia curtly over her shoulder, “and the fact that I don’t wish to destroy everyone’s self-esteem with my own radiant perfection.” She winked theatrically at Olivia and didn’t seem to care when I swallowed my drink immediately. She turned back, saw the empty cup, and shrugged ‘why not?’
“Of course,” said Olivia. Her green eyes sparkled beneath damp dark hair. “Those of us who are not limber little gymnasts should remember our place.” Nadia smirked, but Olivia smiled wide and turned back to me. “Things have been so boring since you ran away to college, Roy.” We returned inside and she scanned the room. “Oh, looks like my cousin brought his cards.”
That sounded good, so we settled at a coffee table in the den that was encircled by a dozen people playing drinking games. Olivia maneuvered to the least-populated side and introduced me to more people I promptly forgot, except for her cousin Chris Addison, who looked vaguely familar. Apparently he was twenty-two and the father of tonight’s liquid feast. His eyes glowed with the manic energy of artificial stimulants as he gave me a quick shake.
“What’s up, man,” he said, now scanning the mess of cards covering the tabletop. “It’s Kings- want in?” All three of us sat down to watch a few rounds, Olivia with her eye down the hall on traffic around the front door. Chris held court like Caligula, tyrannically ripping random kids apart as they tried and failed to keep up with the game’s constantly rotating rules. Periodically I’d shoot a look at Olivia to see if she’d stop him from, say, viciously forcing someone to drink for swearing or for using his name. There was even a rule that mandated everyone speak in a Scottish accent (“He loves Braveheart,” Olivia whispered indulgently). She never interfered, though, instead joining Nadia and everyone else in busting the balls of whomever Chris decided to torment. Inevitably he turned to me. “Okay dude,” he sneered, “you’re in. Liv, get Reed here another beer and let’s see how much he’s really learned after three months in Isla Vista.”
Olivia didn’t seem to like being ordered around, but she suddenly giggled, said “About time,” and was off. Nadia’s eyes followed her pensively, but my girlfriend quickly prodded me into the hot seat. “Come on,” she smiled at me, “show the guy form Scummy Thrills what you can do, Roy.”
“Sunny Hills, babe,” Chris shot back, leering with glee. “Class of ’92 and proud of it. So Roy, ready to take it like a man?”
Shit, I thought. I didn’t feel like doing the alpha-male thing with some asshole from Fullerton, especially since I was now off the wagon again. As Olivia returned with my cup, I said “Just make sure he plays nice,” and everyone laughed. I took a quick swig and braced myself, but I shouldn’t have worried; within three rounds I was running the table with those lightweight teenagers, mostly thanks to a previously useless command of trivia.
All those nights reading the Britannica as a kid finally paid off as I became a wasted Moses, laying down law after law requiring everyone to drink if they couldn’t answer random geography questions faster than I could. Bored indifference gave way to grumbling frustration around the table as I dragged everybody through five continents worth of national capitals, plus half the U.S., before any of those sloshed dolts knew what hit them. In no time they were all hanging on for dear life, with only Chris refusing to give up. “You fucker,” he snarled, “we’ve blown through half the shit here on this game and it’s already too late to go out for any more.”
“Hey man,” I said, cracking my knuckles pompously, “it’s not my fault if everybody’s as dumb as you look.” Nadia stiffened, Olivia groaned, and all eyes swiveled toward me, but Chris kept his cool like a pro. “Okay Roy,” he said smoothly, “then answer this one, genius. What’s the capital of whatever chickenshit commie backwater tossed your girlfriend out on her bony ass?”
It happened so fast that even I was surprised. Within seconds Chris was pinned to the wall, his silk shirt crumpling in my fists. He didn’t even fight back; he was petrified, and now much closer to sober than I was. Everything was gloriously silent. Taking advantage of the best timing I’d ever had in my life, I gently pushed Christian’s face to my right. His right ear was in chomping range, but all I did was simply whisper “Kiev” into it and then let him go. He stayed still as I wobbled back to my seat. I expected, wanted retaliation, but Olivia destroyed any further escalation with a compound seizure of raucous laughter.
“Oh Chris, I’m so sorry,” she tittered, “but I think things are getting messy enough without more booze, and as for this one,” she continued, flagrantly ruffling my hair, “you’re lucky it wasn’t worse.” Christian slumped back into his chair, ignored me, and composed himself. “What do you mean by that, Cuz?” He stared at Olivia intently, but she stayed calm, deliberately willing the universe to stabilize. “Well, generally speaking, my parents’ house is slowly being taken apart tonight, which will ultimately be my fault, but I think you’re better off without more Jeopardy-on-crack from Roy.” She pointed at me with her free hand, but didn’t stop at that; her fingernail quickly dug itself into my shoulder.
“Whatever,” grunted Christian, non-plussed. “But hey, if you don’t mind running out of alcohol on New Year’s fucking Eve, Liv, I can take my legal drinking age somewhere else. You all can watch Roy here go crazy all night. I don’t really care.” Olivia smirked again and Nadia grimaced. I was a few fathoms down by now, but I could tell she had been getting over this party even before I got violent, and I decided to defend myself. “It’s too bad your cousin’s not here,” I blurted at Chris. “She’d definitely appreciate my freaky shit.” Olivia raised one of her perfect eyebrows at me.
“Not you,” I explained. “I meant Lisa. Your sister was a senior in Trig with me my junior year, and I was in way over my head and barely paid attention, so I doodled all over my notebook and shit, drawing all these lame maps and stuff- they weren’t to scale or anything and so kinda sucked- I filled almost the whole damn book with ’em, and she sat next to me, see, and every once in a while she’d look over and say, ‘so Roy, where’re you at right now?’ and I’d say, um, ‘India’ or whatever country I was doodling. I totally bombed that class, too- got a D and couldn’t get into Calculus as a senior with everyone else, so I ended up in remedial math. Woulda totally been wasting my time if Lisa hadn’t liked it. Hey, where is she tonight? How’s she doing these days, I haven’t heard any-”
“Roy,” Olivia interrupted me. I blinked, coming back to myself, and noticed everyone had shut up again. The first pair of eyes I saw, however, was not Olivia’s, but her cousin’s. Christian’s gaze on me was absolute, and his flushed face was set. “Lisa’s sick,” he said. “You didn’t know that?” PJ Harvey’s voice floated in from the living room stereo, singing that one about drowning her baby. “She’s been in rehab since August, dude- she went nuts up at school.” I gaped like an idiot, but Olivia rescued me again. “Lisa didn’t go crazy at all,” she said repressively. “She just made a…a few bad decisions, okay? Now she’s dealing with them.”
“Bad decisions?” I asked. “Like what?” Nadia squeezed my hand. I thought maybe she wanted to leave, but I was drunk and curious despite blundering into a minefield, so I squeezed back and looked up at Olivia expectantly, but Chris answered first. “Ask your buddy Derek, man.” Chris’ tone was angry but he smiled menacingly. “Heard from his ass lately, Reed?” I almost said “no,” but Olivia interrupted again. “No one knows that for sure, Chris,” she said quietly. “Lisa wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Oh bull fucking shit!” exploded Christian. The speeding bastard had gone from zero to nuclear in a split second, and no one but Olivia seemed to have any idea why. Conversations in adjoining rooms ceased as unseen partiers strained to hear. “It was Haynes, it was totally fucking Haynes, Liv- who the fuck else could it be?”
“Anyone,” she began, but he cut her off again.
“No,” he said, a little calmer now; maybe like me he sensed things lurching off the rails again. “No, Liv, it was Derek. Had to be- remember how he fucking called her and harassed her all summer? She even moved in with me and Justin for a while to keep that guy off her back. Hell, my ex-girlfriend fucking loves everybody, but even she couldn’t stand Lisa. Why do you think Haynes hasn’t showed up around here for months, huh? Where the fuck has he been?”
Olivia said nothing, but threw a balefully stentorian stare at her cousin. For an eternity of seconds the silence was almost unbearable. Dropping poor Lisa like a cluster bomb into an already-volatile situation was a new personal record- to my knowledge I’d ruined a party once, but never twice. Luckily most people ended up too drunk, bored, or tired to stay interested. Chris cooled off a little more, ditching his own drinking game to jump in the pool and then the spa, while everyone else slowly brought things back up to speed.
By then it was around 11:30, and though Olivia tried her best to get Nadia and I to stick around, my girlfriend was playing all her jealousy cards, and became less and less patient with my intoxication, which she seemed to now regret abetting. I felt stupid, blaming myself for spreading bad vibes and killing everybody’s buzz, just like I ended up doing at all those UCSB parties last quarter. I used similar social ineptitude to make excuses for Nadia and myself, and was eventually able to stumble out to meet her in the car. I smiled weakly, but she only rolled her eyes, shifted the Altima into drive, and slid us into the night.
It’s about a study about kissing and why it is an adaptive human trait. (Hughes, S.M., Harrison, M.A., and Gallup, G.G. Jr. Sex Differences in Romantic Kissing Among College Students: An Evolutionary Perspective.Evolutionary Psychology 5(3): 612-631, 2007). PDF
Kissing was examined as a mate assessment device, a means of promoting pair bonds, and a means of inducing sexual arousal and receptivity. A total 1,041 college students completed one of three questionnaires measuring kissing preferences, attitudes, styles, and behaviors.
Hypotheses:
You can get information about a person by their breath and the taste of their saliva.
Kissing promotes bonding.
Kissing is a way of inducing sexual arousal.
Main finding:
Big surprise …. Kissing is involved in choosing a mate.
The gender differences were the most interesting results.
Women placed more emphasis on taste and smell.
Women were more likely to refuse to have sex with a partner unless they kissed first. More than half of the men said they would have sex without kissing first, but fewer than 15 percent of the women said the same. Women were also more likely to refuse sex from a bad kisser.
Men were more likely to expect kissing to lead to sex. More than half the men thought kissing was foreplay – only one third of the women thought so.
Men were more likely to want to exchange saliva during kissing.
“Males like the very moist, wet open-mouth kisses,” Hughes said. “We didn’t expect that.”
Men were more likely to think that kissing is a good way to end a fight.
Hmmmm …..
Okay then! This is an Open Thread. Don’t rec the Pony Party.
Sitting in a secure vault deep inside the Pentagon, Marc Garlasco cheered when the laser-guided bombs he had helped target slammed to Earth, striking Iraqi soil. As a body flew like a rag doll across the video screen, framed in a bright flash and a cloud of dust, Garlasco and his fellow intelligence analysts thought they had taken out one of the U.S. military’s top targets during the early days of the Iraq war.
But even as he reveled in the April 2003 airstrike, Garlasco was thinking ahead to his next job, which would take him to the edges of the very crater he had just helped create. Just two weeks after the failed attack targeting Iraq’s notorious Ali Hassan Majeed, known as Chemical Ali, Garlasco left the Defense Intelligence Agency and traveled worldwide as a human rights activist seeking to determine the civilian toll of his previous work.
“I found myself standing at that crater, talking to a man about how his family was destroyed, how children were killed, and there was this bunny-rabbit toy covered in dust nearby, and it tore me in two,” Garlasco said. “I had been a part of it, so it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It really dawned on me that these aren’t just nameless, faceless targets. This is a place where people are going to feel ramifications for a long time.“
The New York Times reports GAO Report warns of threat to campus nuclear reactors. “The risks of a terrorist attack on a nuclear reactor on a college campus, and the potential consequences, have been underestimated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Congressional auditors say in a report. The report, by the Government Accountability Office, said the commission had overruled expert contractors who thought differently, and misrepresented what the contractors had said. Security requirements at the reactors have changed little since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to the auditors, even though many of the reactors still run on enriched uranium, which terrorists could convert into an atomic bomb.”
According to the report, “There are 37 research reactors in the United States, mostly located on college campuses. Of these, 33 reactors are licensed and regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Four are operated by the Department of Energy (DOE) and are located at three national laboratories… DOE also has concluded that the consequences of an attack at some of its research reactors could be severe, causing radioactivity to be dispersed over many square miles and requiring the evacuation of nearby areas. As a result, all facilities where DOE reactors are located have extensive plans and procedures for responding to security incidents. NRC based its security and emergency response requirements largely on the regulations it had in place before September 2001. NRC decided that the security assessment it conducted between 2003 and 2006 showed that these requirements were sufficient.”
The Guardian reports the True scale of C02 emissions from shipping is revealed. “The true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed, according to a leaked UN study… It calculates that annual emissions from the world’s merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO2, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas.
“The report suggests that shipping emissions… will become one of the largest single sources of manmade CO2 after cars, housing, agriculture and industry. By comparison, the aviation industry, which has been under heavy pressure to clean up, is responsible for about 650m tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, just over half that from shipping.” Makes all that ‘cheap stuff’ from overseas seem not so cheap.
From the Wall Street Journal news that a New era dawns for rail building. “America is back to working on the railroads… For decades, railroads spent little on expansion, even tore up surplus track and shrank routes. But since 2000 they’ve spent $10 billion to expand tracks, build freight yards and buy locomotives, and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned. The buildout comes as the industry transitions away from its chief role in recent decades of hauling coal, timber and other raw materials in manufacturing regions. Now, increasingly, railroads are moving finished consumer goods, often made in Asia, from ports to major cities…
“Railroad operators are pressing for advantage over their main competitor, long-haul trucking, which has struggled with rising fuel prices, driver shortages and highway congestion. Railroads say a load can be moved by rail using about a third as much fuel as it takes to haul it by truck… Demand for rail service increased sharply when the U.S. economy and Asian imports surged starting in 2003.” Of course, this rail renaissance is being driven by ‘cheap stuff’ from overseas… and no sign of passengers.
We have a presidential election race going on. We are going to have one of the most important elections in our lifetime in ten months. We have many other major issues including ending the Iraq war. Our economy is a mess. We have 47 million uninsured Americans. SCHIP didn’t get through. We have 2 million homeless in our nation. We have a President and Vice President that should be impeached.
With all of this and more, I keep reading about veterans having problems here and there, things like malpractice suits for inadequate medical care and suing because of hearing loss due to defective 3m earplugs, and a bunch of their advocates complaining about every little thing. There is even a web site completely dedicated to bitching about problems the veterans have. http://sanchopress.com/
I have compiled a list of their complaints for comparison to all the major issues going on in our country. Take a look and this and see if these people should quit there gripping and help with the big issues. I have numbered each supposed problem and you don’t even have to read the whole issue, you can just scroll down and read the main title of what they think is a big problem.
The silent epidemic & “signature” injury of the Iraq war
A traumatic brain injury is usually the result of a sudden, violent blow to the head. Such a blow can launch the brain on a collision course with the inside of the skull. The skull itself can often withstand a forceful external impact without fracturing. The result ia an injured brain inside an intact skull is known as a closed-head injury.
Laymans terms for TBI in Iraq. TBI can be caused by the concussion from several forces. It can be from an actual object. In Iraq, most TBI’s are from the immense force of air exiting an explosion & it hits our Vets so hard, their brain collides with their skull. IED’s are the cause of TBI to Vets of Iraq. Many in the blast raidius of an IED receive no physical injury but still have TBI. The symptoms vary greatly. It is similiar to what happens to a boxer over a long career but is usually not as obvious as it is when you hear a long time boxer speak in his later years, but it can be. TBI from an explosion concussion is similiar to what happens in shaken baby syndrome.
House Addresses Traumatic Brain Injury, Week of July 23, 2007
Members of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee met recently discuss ways to provide treatment for traumatic brain injury (TBI), which is considered by many to be the signature injury of the war in Iraq. Among veterans and servicemembers from Iraq and Afghanistan treated at Walter Reed for injuries of any type, approximately 65 percent have TBI as a primary diagnosis or simultaneous injury. Medical doctors, neuropsychologists, researchers and family members attended the symposium to discuss the health care needs of our returning servicemembers. This symposium continues the series of roundtable discussions that the Committee will hold throughout the 110th Congress.
3) Care at VA facilities poor, inadequte, understaffed and long waits and often for vets who are sucidal. FAR FAR underfunded.
HAMILTON – U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., told veterans Friday that while some good work has been accomplished, much improvement is still needed in the way this country treats those who’ve served.
As a member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Tester also pushed for legislation that added $6.6 billion to the VA budget.
“It was the largest increase in the history of the VA,” Skinner said. “It’s still about $12 billion short of what we need.”
$12 billion short of what they need? Then why didn’t they fund it fully? What is wrong with these people?
Feb. 7 Update: VCS Testimony – President Bush Slashes VA Spending as VA Expects 333,000 New Iraq and Afghanistan War Veteran Patients to Flood into VA Hospitals
VA’s budget does not address what we believe are VA’s four highest current priorities for veterans: ending homelessness, reducing suicide, providing free medical care to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, and eliminating VA’s claims backlog.
NPR.org, January 28, 2008 · Investigators say the surgical unit at a southern Illinois veterans’ hospital was in such disarray that doctors were allowed to perform operations they weren’t qualified to perform and that hospital administrators were too slow to respond once problems surfaced, leading directly to the deaths of at least nine surgical patients and as many as 19.
Veterans have no legal right to specific types of medical care, the Bush administration argues in a lawsuit accusing the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to some troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. (redacted) The plaintiffs say that the department has a backlog of more than 600,000 disability claims and that 120 veterans a week commit suicide.
Clearly, VA’s troubling court filings are an admission by the Administration that VA lacks the funds or veterans debt relief to provide care for our newest war veterans, including those who are suicidal. This Thursday, Feb. 7, VCS will be testifying before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee and expressing our outrage that VA would rather fight against veterans than ask for more money to treat our veterans
4) Tremdous backlog of diability claims and wait times. Having to go through two processes for filiing disability, both with the DOD and the VA.
over the past four years, many returning
Soldiers and Marines-a good number having lost arms
or legs or suffered from traumatic brain injury (TBI)
or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-have run
into a bureaucratic nightmare. Confusing regulations
have mandated separate physical examinations by the
Department of Defense (DOD) and the VA, often with
differing outcomes involving a servicemember’s disability
rating. The waiting time for VA compensation
checks and other benefits frequently has ranged from
six months to two years-and appeals can prolong the
process even more. The VA’s own rulings have sometimes
been inaccurate or inconsistent. And veterans, some of them unable to battle the bureaucratic dragons, have often come out the losers. Not surprisingly, the “seamless transition” problem, as it has come to be known, has exploded into a major controversy
VA struggling to reduce backlogs in disability claims from Iraq war veterans. by Hope Yen
WASHINGTON – Outgoing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson acknowledged Tuesday that he’s struggling to reduce backlogs in disability claims from Iraq war veterans, saying current efforts won’t be enough to cut down waits that take months.
Nicholson, who took office in early 2005, said the department has hired 1,100 new processors to reduce delays of up to 177 days in processing disability payments. But he predicted another rise in compensation and pension claims this year, citing the additional applications pouring in during “the midst of war.”
Even with new staff, the VA can only hope to reduce delays to about 145-150 days – assuming that the current level of claims don’t spike higher.
5) Soldier who attempted suicide on the battlefront faces Court Marshall.
Washington, DC, January 30, 2008 – (CBS) CBS News broke the story of the epidemic of suicides and attempted suicides among veterans in November.
And tonight, new Army figures illustrate how serious the problem has become among active military servicemembers. It’s part of an exclusive report that will appear in Thursday’s Washington Post and on washingtonpost.com.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin has one soldier’s harrowing story – and her struggle to get help.
Lieutenant Elizabeth Whiteside was admitted to the psychiatric lockdown ward at Walter Reed Army Medical center after trying to kill herself earlier this week, Martin reports.
“She took two weeks worth of medicines – four different medications… and she took them all at once,” her father, Tom Whiteside, said.
He holds a note she left, reading in part: “I’m very disappointed with the Army.”
He says her suicide attempt was brought on by the stress of waiting to find out if she would be court-martialed for an earlier attempt to kill herself.
“It became so distressing to my daughter, it just drove her over the edge and, um, she attempted to take her own life,” Whiteside said.
Lt. Whiteside is the latest in the epidemic of attempted suicides and self-injuries by soldiers.
According to internal Army documents, the number has gone from less than 500 in 2002 to more than 2,000 last year. The number of actual suicides is also climbing, and the Army’s suicide rate is higher than at any time in the past 25 years.
But Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside is more than just a number. Hers is a shocking story of how the Army dealt with one case of mental illness.
She first tried to kill herself a year ago while serving in Iraq.
“I had a psychotic break and shot myself,” she said. “I also … discharged my weapon twice and put two bullets in the ceiling.”
She told her story to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, who was the first to report that the Army wanted to courtmarshall Whiteside for brandishing her weapon.
Said Priest: “Her commander said in the charges that he brought, ‘I realize that people have said that you were mentally ill, but this is an excuse for your actions.'”
The hearing officer dismissed the charges, but that ruling had to be approved up the chain of command, and the Whitesides were left dangling.
“I want them to make a decision,” Tom Whiteside said. “They have driven my daughter into suicide. I would like to get this issue resolved.”
Minutes after the interview ended, Whiteside received a call telling him the charges against his daughter have been dropped.”
“But what a God damn shame that we had to go to this extent,” he said into the telephone.
He left immediately for the hospital to give his daughter the news – although he won’t be able to see her because she’s still in lockdown
“The individual has got to take personal responsibility. They have got to take responsibility for themselves and realize that they can save their own lives. It comes back to the individual.”
-Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, Commanding General at Fort Campbell.
February 4, 2008: The stress of repeated trips to combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan is having an effect on the troops. This can be seen by the increase in U.S. Army suicides. The rate in 2007 was 17.5 per 100,000 troops. The rate in 2006 was 12.8, and for the last decade, has fluctuated between 10-13 per 100,000. The suicide rate for troops in Iraq has always been about 40-50 percent higher than for soldiers stationed elsewhere. The suicide rate for the entire U.S. population is about 11 per 100,000.
6) Inferior equipment provided for soldiers and manufacturers not properly vetted and often rewarded after poor performance.
Deficient Kevlar in Military Helmets
Twelve days before the settlement {note:$2mil} with the Justice Department was announced, the company, Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, was given a new contract of up to $74 million to make more armor for helmets to replace the old ones, which were made from the late 1980s to last year.
With a $400 billion defense budget you might think U.S. troops have everything they need to fight the war, but that’s not always the case.
Correspondent Steve Kroft talks to a general, soldiers in Iraq, and their families at home about a lack of armored vehicles, field radios, night vision goggles, and even ammunition – especially for the National Guard and reserve units that now make up more than 40 percent of U.S. troops.
CBS News’ investigative unit wanted the numbers, so it submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense asking for the numbers of suicides among all service members for the past 12 years.
Four months later, they sent CBS News a document, showing that between 1995 and 2007, there were almost 2,200 suicides. That’s 188 last year alone. But these numbers included only “active duty” soldiers.
CBS News went to the Department of Veterans Affairs, where Dr. Ira Katz is head of mental health.
“There is no epidemic in suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem,” he said.
Why hasn’t the VA done a national study seeking national data on how many veterans have committed suicide in this country?
“That research is ongoing,” he said.
So CBS News did an investigation – asking all 50 states for their suicide data, based on death records, for veterans and non-veterans, dating back to 1995. Forty-five states sent what turned out to be a mountain of information.
And what it revealed was stunning.
In 2005, for example, in just those 45 states, there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That’s 120 each and every week, in just one year.
That is 17 veterans committing suicide EVERY day. 17 lives lost EVERY day from war but not counted in the toll of war. 17 families shattered and broken EVERY day. Probably 50, 75, 100 or maybe more human beings EVERY day that will live with the torture of “why didn’t I see it”, “why didn’t they talk to me”. It would have been easier on those people around the 17 that committ suicide EVERY day if they had been killed in actual military combat rather than the combat of the mind.
8) Difficulty in getting employment often taking years to find a job after getting out of the military. On average when they do find jobs they pay far less than the national average and not enough to survive on.
WASHINGTON – Strained by war, recently discharged veterans are having a harder time finding civilian jobs and are more likely to earn lower wages for years, partly because of employer concerns about their mental health and overall skills, a government study says.
The 2007 study by the consulting firm Abt Associates Inc. found that 18 percent of the veterans who sought jobs within one to three years of discharge were unemployed, while one out of four who did find jobs earned less than $21,840 a year.
9) Military officials ORDERING VA personnel NOT to assist troops/veterans with the filing of disability paperwork. Part of the VA’s job is to HELP troops/veterans.
Morning Edition, January 29, 2008 · Army officials in upstate New York instructed representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork last year. That paperwork can be crucial because it helps determine whether soldiers will get annual disability payments and health care after they’re discharged.
(redacted)
The official said the VA used to help soldiers with the paperwork, but Army officials saw soldiers from Fort Drum getting higher disability ratings with the VA’s help than soldiers from other bases. The Army told the VA to stop helping Fort Drum soldiers describe their army injuries, and the VA did as it was told.
(redacted)
She says the officers who asked the VA to stop helping Fort Drum’s soldiers were part of what the Army calls a “Tiger Team”- an ad-hoc group assigned to investigate, in this case, medical disability benefits.
According to Army spokesman George Wright, the Tiger Team thought the VA should not be helping soldiers with their medical documents. The Army delivered that message to VA officials in Buffalo, N.Y., who went along with the request, even though the VA’s assistance complied with Army policy.
The Army declined to provide any information about the Tiger Team members’ identities or their motivations in asking the VA to stop reviewing the soldiers’ paperwork. However, private attorney Mara Hurwitt points out that the Army has a financial incentive to keep soldiers’ disability ratings low.
10) Military returning from combat being told to vacate housing so new soldiers can take it.
Schweinfurt soldiers back from Iraq are facing eviction
By Mark St.Clair, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Thursday, January 24, 2008
SCHWEINFURT, Germany – They just got back from Iraq, and now they’re being evicted from their homes.
Seventeen infantrymen from Company B, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment who returned from Ramadi, Iraq, in November have been living in barracks normally occupied by soldiers who are currently deployed in Afghanistan.
All of the soldiers, who are scheduled to leave Germany next month, said the Army told them they had until Feb. 1 to vacate the barracks.
But they found out Tuesday they had have to move out of the rooms Thursday afternoon, according to Sgt. Joseph Walker, 23.
11) Va collects money from DEAD soldiers families.
VA COLLECTED OVER $56,000 FROM DEAD SOLDIERS FAMILIES
First they charge wounded soldiers for their meals in the hospital. They charge them for any equipment they dare to get wounded with and not return. They charge them if they are wounded and do not live up to the time they promise to stay in when they get a bonus. Now this!
Hutchison is asking Senate leaders for quick passage of the bill, hoping to bypass the normal process in which new bills are sent to committee for consideration.
She could get high-level support. VA Secretary Dr. James Peake is expected to write a letter to the Senate endorsing her call for expedited passage of the bill, according to Senate sources.
VA officials said they supported the bill but did not confirm that Peake would write a letter.
Waiving normal procedures would require the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, on which Hutchison serves, to allow the bill to proceed without its involvement. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the veterans’ affairs committee chairman, would have to approve the move. Akaka aides said the committee staff would study the measure first.
Few people die owing VA money, but Hutchison aides found that VA has collected more than $56,000 from the families of 22 deceased soldiers, mostly National Guard and reserve members called to active duty who received overpayments of GI Bill education benefits.
12) Charities intended to help veterans are being bilked, used for organizers & “celebrities” “freebees” and ridiculous “consulting” and advertising.
Greed, Arrogance and War Profitteering are Not Charities
There have always been Con men and women who have started, what they term, Charities. Ripping off donors and targeted recipients/causes to only enrich themselves!
Charities started to help the Nations Veterans have always been around, many running on the legit, while many fall under the ease of the Profits Wars Generate, especially Wars Of Choice, they join their breathern the War Profitteers, with No Shame!
On Thursday, the Committee held a hearing to examine whether all the charitable groups raising money for the purpose of helping our nation’s veterans are genuinely serving that need. Concerns have been raised that some charities are conducting high volume mail and telemarketing campaigns that enrich the organizations and fundraisers but fail to provide meaningful assistance to veterans. The hearing will include a discussion of what Americans can do to ensure that their contributions to veterans’ causes are being responsibly used.
on the same day another House Committee held hearings for further Investigation into Veterans’ Charities Continues
The Committee held a hearing entitled “Assessing Veteran’s Charities – Part Two.” This hearing focused on charities operated by Roger Chapin, who failed to comply with a subpoena compelling his testimony at the December 13 hearing. Over the past 40 years, Mr. Chapin has established and operated more than 20 charitable organizations, including a number of veterans’ and military-oriented charities. Questions have been raised about the practices of his current charitable organizations.
Charity groups claim to support troops but don’t fully deliver on promises.
Gen. Tommy Franks Paid $100,000 To Endorse ‘F’ Veterans Charity
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was paid $100,000 to endorse a veterans charity that watchdog groups say is ripping off donors and wounded veterans by using only a small portion of the money raised for veterans services, according to testimony in Congress today.
Now in all fairness to Gen. Franks:
Chapin testified he approached Gen. Franks in 2005, and he agreed to let his signature be used on mass mailings seeking contributions to his charities.
“He helped us raise millions and millions of dollars more than we would have,” Chapin told the hearing, chaired by Congressman Henry Waxman, D- Calif.
Congressman Waxman said Gen. Franks had since disassociated himself from Chapin’s charities and asked that his name be removed from the solicitation.
“General Franks was paid $100,000 to lend his name. We understand he developed misgivings and asked that his name be taken off,” Congressman Waxman said.
But one wonders, where did the 100grand go, back to this charity?, to another Charity, that is legit, or was it ever even given up!
Chapin also revealed that his charity paid $5,000 a month for the endorsement of retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur “Chip” Diehl.
Contacted by ABCNews.com, Gen. Diehl said he had “no comment.”
Luxury for Charity Officials, Budget Cuts for Wounded Vets
Black-Tie Dinners and Luxury Suites at Football Games for Company Officials Top Charity Foundation’s Agenda
Entrepreneur Accused Of Mismanaging Charities He Started For Vets And Enriching Himself
The head of a California-based veterans charity rebuffed accusations of mismanagement and self-dealing at a raucous congressional hearing Thursday, shouting over lawmakers to declare himself “the most honest person in this room
13) Troops being infected by “resistant” bacteria with little being said or done about it.
Acinetobacter baumannii brought back from Iraq and Afghanistan
New Bacterial Infection Linked to Military
Report: Troops Transmitted Mysterious Bacteria That Has Killed 7 And Affected Military And Civilians Alike
By JOHN HENDREN
Feb. 8, 2008
Troops arriving home from Iraq and Afghanistan have been carrying a mysterious, deadly bacteria, according to a new magazine report.
Doctors have linked the bacterium acinetobacter baumannii to at least seven deaths, as well as to loss of limbs and other severe ailments, according to the report, which found the bacterium has spread quickly since the war in Afghanistan began in the fall of 2001
Acinetobacter baumannii has been found in military hospitals in Germany, the Washington, D.C., area and Texas — the primary destinations of wounded service members from the two war zones. And it has now spread to civilians, according to the report.
“The outbreak began traveling with patients or nonpatients from Iraq all the way back to Walter Reed,” said Dr. Rox Anderson at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Timothy Endy, a retired Army colonel now teaching infectious disease medicine at the Upstate Medical University of the State University of New York, said the outbreak might be the largest of its kind to spread through hospitals in history.
Doctors quoted in the magazine article agreed. “Of the infectious disease problems that come out of the conflict, it is the most important complication we’ve seen,” Dr. Glenn Wortmann, acting chief of infectious disease at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said in the February issue of Proceedings, published by the U.S. Naval Institute, a professional organization focused on naval issues. The report was released to subscribers of the magazine this week.
I’ve been posting on this for a couple of years now but it all gets ignored. When I posted this recent report, one of my readers, Marcie Hascall Clark, who has been working on this since the beginning left this message. (NamGuardianAngel)
Marcie Hascall Clark said…
Thanks Kathy for keeping tabs on this bug!
Acinetobacter baumannii is neither new or mysterious. This ABC story is a cut and paste from a real story by Chas Henry for a naval publication, which is a pretty move for them considering the extent to which the DoD has tried to keep this under the wire.
The real story can be read at www.chashenry.com along with some television work his has produced on Ab.
Since we last spoke Acinetobacter baumannii strains from the military evacuation system have spread to hospitals all across our country and have killed many people.
14) Female soldiers being harrassed, violated and raped.
When reports came out about women being raped by Halliburton/KBR employees, which is a crime, being treated as an arbitration dispute, you would have thought the women in this nation would be screaming so loudly the government wouldn’t dare ignore them. You’d also be wrong. It happens to women in the military all the time. Here is another report I posted today.
Sen. Patty Murray Seeks Help For Survivors Of Military Sexual Trauma
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., says women in the military return home traumatized because, in addition to the pressures of living in a war zone, they have been living in close quarters with men and, in many cases, report that they had been sexually harassed, assaulted or raped.
Senator Seeks Help For Survivors Of Military Sexual Trauma
Published on 2/10/2008
Washington – Scurrying back to her Army barracks in the dark after her shift at the hospital, Sally, a 21-year-old medic, was grabbed by a man who dragged her to the woods and raped her at knifepoint.
When she reported the attack, Sally, of Kirkland, Wash., who asks that her full name not be used, was brushed off by her superior officer at Fort Belvoir, Va., who dismissed the rape as a spat with a boyfriend.
Her story is alarmingly like that of hundreds of other veterans who have suffered sexual harassment, assault and rape in the military, according to Susan Avila-Smith, a Seattle-based advocate who has helped hundreds of women veterans get VA benefits and treatment for military sexual trauma (MST).
Avila-Smith says she also was a victim when she served in the Army, having been sexually assaulted in a hospital recovery room after sinus surgery at Fort Hood, Texas.
The pressures on women service members, who now comprise about 7 percent of all veterans, are escalating:
• According to the Veterans Administration, 19 percent of women who have sought health care in the VA were diagnosed as victims of military sexual trauma.
• Cases of military sexual trauma increased from 1,700 in 2004 to 2,374 in 2005, according to the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention Response Program.
What kind of a nation are we now? Are we a nation of laws or have we become a fraud? Women in the military raped, yet it is passed off and ignored, or worse, the women who report it face harassment instead of justice. Hallibuton/KBR employees are raped and yet when they report it they face retribution. Instead of turning it over to law enforcement, they only allow the victim to be heard in arbitration. What are we now?
15) 23 military bases with tainted and unsafe water.
While searching I also came across a reminder of news that never really got much attention at all. There are 23 military bases with contaminated water, more with contaminated soil and a long list of them with depleted uranium contamination.
23 military bases have tainted water
Lejeune, Barstow on contamination list
By Kimberly Johnson – Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jun 18, 2007 21:53:40 EDT
Congressional lawmakers who were examining extensive drinking water contamination from the 1960s through the 1980s at Camp Lejeune, N.C., now say that the problem extends to 22 other bases throughout the country, to varying degrees.
In 1980, military officials at Lejeune discovered the presence of trichloroethylene (TCE), a volatile organic compound used by the military and by civilian businesses, such as dry cleaners, said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on oversights and investigations. As a result, 10 wells at the base were shut down by 1987 after their TCE contamination was found to be 1,400 parts per billion, well above the government’s maximum level of 5 ppb.
“TCE is the most widespread water contaminant in the nation, and almost every major military base has a Superfund site with TCE contamination,” Stupak said.
At least 850 former residents of the base have filed administrative claims, seeking nearly $4 billion, for exposure to the industrial solvents
How none of this makes any of the 24 hour cable news stations is very telling. They used to say that “if it bleeds, it leads” but now it has to involved someone sexy to get any attention at all. You would think that since we claim to be so gratful of the service the troops do for us, we would give them at least a fraction of the attention we give Britney Spears.
17) Veterans for Common Sense realeses DOD Fact Sheet released with disturbing figures.
This week Veterans for Common Sense releases updated versions of our popular VA and DoD Fact Sheets. The statistics are very disturbing.
The Pentagon officially reported 72,043 battlefield casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan through Jan. 5, 2008
VA hospitals and clinics have already treated 263,909 unplanned patients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – PDF. On top of that, VA reported 245,034 unanticipated disability claims from veterans of the two wars.
VCS issued warnings about this growing problem. On Veterans Day in 2007, VCS posted an editorial about how we believe VA and DoD mask the true costs of the two wars.
To assist you with making sense of the new Fact Sheets, a VCS analysis shows that between June 2007 and November 2007:
* The number of PTSD claims approved rose 80 percent (from 19,015 to 34,138), while the veteran population rose only 16 percent. The incidence of PTSD is dramatically rising, or VA is finally starting to take this problem more seriously, or both.
* 100 PTSD claims were approved every day. VA can expect tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands more PTSD claims from our new war veterans as more service members deploy to the war zone and then begin to return home.
* Veterans who served in the National Guard or Reserves were nearly three times as likely to have their VA disability compensation claim rejected (14% compared to 5%). VCS remains concerned about the apparent unequal treatment faced by our veterans who were ordered to active duty in the war zone from the National Guard and Reserves. If this is something that has happened to you, then it might be a good idea to check out these va lawyers who should be able to help you.
While the PTSD claims situation may be improving slightly due to intense pressure brought about by the VCS and Veterans United for Truth lawsuit against VA, there are still nearly 18,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans diagnosed by VA with PTSD who are not yet receiving VA disability payments.
VCS believes that VA is still not properly reviewing and approving PTSD claims for veterans already diagnosed with PTSD by VA doctors. This means VA continues to deny and delay essential disability payments for our veterans that could be the difference between paying the rent or becoming homeless.
Wounded Warrior Update: Last week, the House voted to include the “Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act” (formerly S 1606 and then HR 1585), in the new Defense Bill, HR 4986. Now we are waiting on the Senate to approve the bill. Sadly, the provision allowing our Gulf War veterans tortured by Iraq to sue the new Iraqi government was watered down.
Please share the critical information in your VCS Update with your friends, reporters, and elected officials so that they know the facts about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Please donate generously to VCS so we can keep reporting the accurate and complete facts about the human consequences of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We appreciate your support so we can provide the policy advocacy that all our veterans need.
18) Soldier pulled from hospital to be sent back to front lines.
Fort Carson Soldier Pulled Out Of Hospital To Redeploy
Fort Carson Forcibly Removed Soldier from Mental Hospital and Deployed Him to Iraq War
Erin Emery
Denver Post
Feb 10, 2008
Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, was outraged. “If he’s an inpatient in a hospital, they should have never taken him out. The chain of command needs to be held accountable for this. Washington needs to get involved at the Pentagon to make sure this doesn’t happen again. “First, we had the planeload of wounded, injured and ill being forced back to the war zone. And now we have soldiers forcibly removed from mental hospitals. The level of outrage is off the Richter scale.”
Ill GI says he was deployed from hospital
Februray 10, 2008 – A Fort Carson soldier who says he was in treatment at Cedar Springs Hospital for bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse was released early and ordered to deploy to the Middle East with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.
The 28-year-old specialist spent 31 days in Kuwait and was returned to Fort Carson on Dec. 31 after health care professionals in Kuwait concurred that his symptoms met criteria for bipolar disorder and “some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies,” according to e-mails obtained by The Denver Post.
The soldier, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma surrounding mental illness and because he will seek employment when he leaves the Army, said he checked himself into Cedar Springs on Nov. 9 or Nov. 10 after he attempted suicide while under the influence of alcohol. He said his treatment was supposed to end Dec. 10 but his commanding officers showed up at the hospital Nov. 29 and ordered him to leave.
“I was pulled out to deploy,” said the soldier, who has three years in the Army and has served a tour in Iraq.
Soldiers from Fort Carson and across the country have complained they were sent to combat zones despite medical conditions that should have prevented their deployment.
Late last year, Fort Carson said it sent 79 soldiers who were considered medical “no-gos” overseas. Officials said the soldiers were placed in light-duty jobs and are receiving treatment there. So far, at least six soldiers have been returned.
19) Soldiers who were medically unfit or considered borderline have been sent to the Middle East to meet Army goals for “deployable strength.
Report: Troops to war despite broken leg, torn rotator cuffs.
DENVER – Soldiers who were medically unfit or considered borderline have been sent to the Middle East to meet Army goals for “deployable strength,” The Denver Post.
Quoting internal Army e-mails and a Fort Carson soldier, the newspaper said that more than 50 troops were deployed to Kuwait en route to Iraq while they were still getting medical treatment for various conditions. At least two have been sent home.
Capt. Scot Tebo, the surgeon for Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, wrote in an e-mail obtained by the newspaper that “We have been having issues reaching deployable strength, and thus have been taking along some borderline soldiers who we would otherwise have left behind for continued treatment.”
Master Sgt. Denny Nelson said he was sent to Kuwait last month despite a severe foot injury. He was sent back to Fort Carson after a military doctor in Kuwait wrote that he never should have been shipped out.
Maj. Harvinder Singh, the 3rd Brigade Combat Team’s rear detachment commander, said he did not believe medically unfit soldiers have been sent to Iraq. He said soldiers with medical problems are deployed only if they can be assigned to light-duty jobs and if medical services are available at their destinations.
Fort Carson spokeswoman Dee McNutt said she knew of no Army policy defining “deployable strength” levels that Army commanders must meet.
20) Infectious Bacteria rampant at Walter Reed. This issue and numerous others reported by Lt Doug Connor. Instead of problems being fixe Lt Connor has since been harrassed.
Encouraged by the firings of top military officials as a result of the problems at Walter Reed, Connor spoke out about the dilapidated conditions at Walter Reed. He sent a letter to Gen. Gregory A. Schumacher with recommendations for improving conditions in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where there were equipment shortages and outbreaks of infectious bacteria, including extremely dangerous drug-resistant forms of Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacterium that has been ravaging injured soldiers in Iraq and in domestic military hospitals.
The infection problems caused other units within the hospital to lose faith in the ICU’s ability to care for surgical patients. Because of the infections, “the kidney transplant team will not recover their patients in the surgical ICU anymore.”
“Nothing has changed [at Walter Reed]. Same facility. None of the recommendations that I made have been implemented and to my knowledge they really aren’t working on it.
“I thought he would thank me for letting him know where there were areas that needed to be fixed …I have been retaliated against because of the letters that I have sent out. It is pretty transparent… Everyone that has seen what happened around me is just like ‘yeah, they’re going after you.'”
21) Soldiers medicated with sleeping pills and other meds to mask mental/emotional problems on the front.
Ambien links need to be investigated
The Iraq War: On Drugs. Soldiers in Iraq routinely given various narcotic and addictive sleeping medications by medical staff
“Soldiers I talked to were receiving bags of antidepressants and sleeping meds in Iraq, but not the trauma care they needed,” says Steve Robinson, a Defense Department intelligence analyst during the Clinton administration.
Sometimes sleeping pills, antidepressants and tranquilizers are prescribed by qualified personnel. Sometimes not. Sgt. Georg Anderas Pogany told Salon that after he broke down in Iraq, his team sergeant told him “to pull himself together, gave him two Ambien, a prescription sleep aid, and ordered him to sleep.”
Other soldiers self-medicate.
“We were so junked out on Valium, we had no emotions anymore,” Iraq vet John Crawford told “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross. He and others in his unit in Iraq became addicted to Valium.
“It concerns us when we hear military doctors say, ‘It’s wonderful that we have these drugs available to cope with second or third deployments,'” Joyce Raezer of the National Military Family Association told In These Times.
“But that statement makes military spouses cringe,” she continues, “Soldiers are saying ‘we don’t have time to recover.'”
Marine psychiatrist Cmdr. Paul S. Hammer confirmed to San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Rick Rogers that Marines with PTSD are returning to Iraq.
In many cases, their problem is labeled stress. “Army docs have told me that commanders pressured them not to diagnose PTSD because it would cut into combat power: the ability to project men and women into war,” says Robinson. “The docs admit that the decision is unethical, but are unwilling to take the huge career risk of becoming a whistleblower.
When you look at the non-combat deaths with vehicles, there are many of them. The question is, how many were given Ambien before they happened? Is anyone looking into any of this?
22) Less Doctors and Nurses in the field than during Desert Storm with far more wounded.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
More wounded, less doctors and nurses than during Desert Storm
Shortages could be hurting Army health care
By Laura Ungar – Gannett News Service
Posted : Saturday Jan 12, 2008 7:52:09 EST
Injured in a roadside blast in Iraq, Sgt. was assigned to a new medical unit at Fort Knox, Ky., devoted to healing the wounds of war.
But instead of getting better, the brain-injured soldier from Westfield, Ind., was found dead in his barracks on Sept. 21. Preliminary reports show he may have been unconscious for days and dead for hours before someone checked on him.
Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., linked his death in part to inadequate staffing at the medical unit. Only about half of the positions in the unit were filled when Cassidy died. The Army is investigating the death and its cause, and three people have lost their jobs.
“By all indications, the enemy could not kill him, but our own government did,” Bayh told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Not intentionally, to be sure, but the end result apparently was the same.”
As more wounded soldiers return from war, critics say staff shortages and turnover have affected the quality of health care at Army posts across the nation.
Overall, the Army’s Medical Corps has downsized significantly since the Persian Gulf War in the 1990s, dropping from 5,400 to 4,300 physicians and from 4,600 to 3,400 nurses.
According to the Department of Defense, more than 29,000 service members have been wounded in action in Iraq or Afghanistan in the last six years, compared with fewer than 500 in Operation Desert Storm.
go here for the rest
This is what I’ve been screaming about since before the invasion of Iraq. No one was ready for any of them and they started to care too late for too many. I often wonder what would have been happening if the media didn’t report on any of this. Then I wonder what could have been done if they reported on all of this sooner.
23) Millions of dollars being spent on public relations firms to “spin” the war.
Report: DOD may award PR contract for America Supports You
By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, February 10, 2008
ARLINGTON, Va. – The Defense Department could award a contract of up to $6.5 million for a public relations firm to promote America Supports You, according to the magazine PR Week.
The move comes as the Defense Department Inspector General’s Office is conducting an audit looking at how Stars and Stripes was used as a conduit to transfer money from American Forces Information Service to a public relations firm hired to promote the newspaper and America Supports You.
American Forces Information Service and Stars and Stripes fall under the purview of Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for internal communications and public liaison.
Barber also runs America Supports You, a Defense Department Program that gives publicity to nonprofit groups that support U.S. troops.
Do you think that kind of money would be better spent maybe opening some veteran’s centers across the country TO GIVE THE WOUNDED SOLDIERS WHAT THEY NEED TO REALLY BE SUPPORTED? $6.5 MILLION AND HOW MANY LIVE IN AREAS WITH NO MENTAL HEALTH HELP AT ALL? HOW MANY HOMELESS VETERANS WITH NO PLACE TO SLEEP? $6.5 MILLION FOR PR WORK? ARE THEY NUTS?
24) 22,000 troops diagnosed with personality disorder (PD) instead of PTSD. PTSD entitles them to benefits, PD does not. Those 22,000 were often told to vacate the base within 10 days. They were also given less than honorable discharges.
Thousands of military personnel have been dismissed for “personality disorders” since the war in Iraq began.
The military says the soldiers had pre-existing mental conditions that it is not responsible for treating. But soldiers, their families and veterans’ groups counter that the mental condition is post-traumatic stress disorder caused by their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Daniel Zwerdling says if a soldier’s medical unit diagnoses him with PTSD, the treatment could last months and make the military liable for the soldier’s disability benefits. But if the soldier is diagnosed with a personality disorder – a condition that predates his military service – then the treatment would only last a couple weeks and the military would not be liable for the disability benefits.
25) Base housing has been outsourced (like many things). It makes it more difficult to get problems fixed. Example; Family of four in Texas who had a mold problem so bad that they were all getting illness’. It took six months to finally get temporary quarters while their housing was fixed.
26)All in the combat areas have been ordered not to blog.
Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death
Noah Shachtman 05.02.07 | 2:00 AM
The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops’ online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.
28) After returning and while filling out required “exit” paperwork, families are waiting across the gymnasium. It clearly states on the paperwork that if you believe you have PTSD, TBI or a mental health issue you will be immediately taken to an inpatient facility. Go home with your wife and kids who you have not seen in a year or 18 months or go to an inpatient facility??? Tough decison.
29) Taliban forces do a “bait and switch” to get our troops to call in air strikes which result in many of the civilian casualties you read about. They shoot from houses and areas with civilians and then leave knowing American troops will call in an air strike with the coordinates.
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. military on Wednesday defended an airstrike earlier this week on a southern Afghan village that killed at least 16 civilians, saying its troops had the right to defend themselves against incoming fire. Meanwhile, a new fire fight in southern Afghanistan, also involving coalition airstrikes, killed at least 24 Taliban militants and five Afghan soldiers Tuesday evening, officials said.
U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins apologized to the families of the civilians killed late Sunday and early Monday, saying “we never wanted this to happen.” He said the coalition has offered assistance but didn’t disclose any details.
“The ultimate cause of why civilians were injured and killed is because the Taliban knowingly, willfully chose to occupy homes of these people. We do everything we can to prevent killing civilians,” he told reporters in Kabul.
30) Some wounded and disabled troops were asked for their signing bonus’ back because they did not finish their tour of duty.
Army Spc. Tyson Johnson III of Mobile, Ala., who lost a kidney in a mortar attack last year in Iraq, was still recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center when he received notice from the Pentagon’s own collection agency that he owed more than $2,700 because he could not fulfill his full 36-month tour of duty.
Johnson said the Pentagon listed the bonus on his credit report as an unpaid government loan, making it impossible for him to rent an apartment or obtain credit cards.
“Oh man, I felt betrayed,” Johnson said. “I felt, like, oh, my heart dropped.”
Pentagon officials said they were unaware of the case until it was brought to their attention by ABC News. “Some faceless bureaucrat” was responsible for Johnson’s predicament, said Gen. Franklin “Buster” Hagenbeck, a three-star general and the Army’s deputy chief of staff for personnel.
“It’s absolutely unacceptable. It’s intolerable,” said Hagenbeck. “I mean, I’m incredulous when I hear those kinds of things. I just can’t believe that we allow that to happen. And we’re not going to let it happen.”
The Department of Defense and the Army intervened to have the collection action against Johnson stopped, said Hagenbeck.
“I was told today he’s not going to have a nickel taken from him,” he said. “And I will tell you that we’ll keep a microscope on this one to see the outcome.”
‘Not So Good’
Hagenbeck also pledged look into the cases of the other soldiers ABC News brought to the military’s attention, including men who lost limbs and their former livelihoods after serving in Iraq. (My Note; But he dropped the ball! What a shame we have such incompetent officers in the service today!)
“When you’re in the military, they take good care of you,” said the 23-year-old Johnson. “But now that I’m a vet, and, you know, I’m out of the military – not so good. Not so good.”
Johnson had been flying high last September, after being promoted from Army private first class to specialist in a field ceremony in Iraq. Inspired by his father’s naval background to join the military after high school, Tyson planned a career in the military and the promotion was just the first step. But only a week after the ceremony took place, a mortar round exploding outside his tent brought him quickly back to Earth.
“It was like warm water running down my arms,” he said. “But it was warm blood.”
In addition to the lost kidney, shrapnel damaged Johnson’s lung and heart, and entered the back of his head. Field medical reports said he was not expected to live more than 72 hours.
With the help of exceptional Army surgeons, Johnson survived. As he recuperated, however, Johnson faced perhaps an even greater obstacle than physical pain or injuries – the military bureaucracy.
Part of the warrior ethos, the soldier’s creed of the U.S. Army, is to “never leave a fallen comrade.”
“And it doesn’t just pertain to the battlefield,” Hagenbeck said. “It means, when we get them home they’re a part of the Army family forever.”
But Johnson now lives in his car. It is where he spends most of his days, all of his nights, in constant pain from his injuries and unwilling to burden his family.
31) Austin VA researcher alleges mismanagement: Van Boven says superiors have hindered research into traumatic brain injury.
February 11, 2008 – When the Department of Veterans Affairs announced last year that it was starting a brain injury research program at the University of Texas, Dr. Robert Van Boven predicted that his program would become “the birthplace for new standards of treatment” for wounded troops.
Now, seven months after he was hired, Van Boven said his VA bosses are responsible for “gross mismanagement, waste and possible fraud” concerning the program. Van Boven said program money is being used for research unrelated to brain injuries and that peer reviewers found that the work had no merit. After raising complaints, Van Boven said, his bosses threatened to further cut his research time. He filed official grievances with his Central Texas bosses on Feb. 1 and with the VA’s Office of the Inspector General on Tuesday.
32) DoD Report – 1,000 Battlefield Casualties Per Month Flood Into Military Hospitals
February 11, 2008 – When Pentagon planners first proposed consolidating military hospitals in the Washington region, it was aging infrastructure, not casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan, that drove the decision.
But the outcry last year over conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has forced the Pentagon to rethink how it will care for troops in the Washington region, the hub for wounded service members returning to the United States.
33) G I Bill falling short of college tuition costs.
February 10, 2008 – WASHINGTON – Halsey Bernard made it through a tour in Iraq as a machine gunner. The question for him now is will he make it through the University of Massachusetts.
It isn’t a question of academics for the 24-year-old Boston resident. It’s about money – and about the obligation of a nation to its fighting men and women. Bernard, who served with the Second Battalion Eighth Marines in Nasariyah, Iraq, in 2003, is one of thousands of veterans who have returned from combat service only to find that their GI Bill college benefits fall far short of actual costs
Now tell me, do these people really have a bitch? Are there really that many “big” problems listed here? They need to quit whining and man up and deal with it.
(FACT)
If you don’t agree with the above paragraph then come join Sancho Press and help us solve these massive problems.
SANCHO PRESS
“Citizens and military combine forces to advocate for better care for troops and vets, for responsive government and for the Constitution.”
Genocide denial is part of the steel that drills the oil in “Custer’s Pipeline,” is part of what moves the pens making lying papers that are stealing and have stolen the promised sovereignty of American Indians, and what makes the modern day Custers feel joy when they succeed and rage when they fail.
Looks like the modern- day Custers are feeling a little joy lately.
TransCanada has decided to go ahead with its application for approval of a jumbo 42″ gas pipeline cut right through the middle of Lubicon land, without consultation and despite Lubicon objections. They have refused to answer even the most basic safety questions.
The Lubicon Nation needs help now! TransCanada is taking actions that not only open unceded Lubicon territory to even more ruthless and destructive “development”, but enable the huge expansion of toxic tarsands operations and so affect all of us.
Four of the committee members, Representatives Ahlers, Engels, Street, and Nygaard, are to be praised for their extreme patience in sitting in a meeting in which their colleagues exhibited such disrespect to their efforts to submit additional amendments to the Bill. Toward the end of the hearing, Rep. Ahlers finally asked the other committee members to accept only one-half mile from the top of the sacred mountain stating, “This is only a sign of respect” as the land would bealmost entirely public land. The other nine loudly hollered, “No!” as they had done time and time again to previous offers of amendments. After shouting their loud, disrespectful “Nos,”… then they would laugh.
Of course, there was racism present during this, imagine that.
To conclude this entire topic, unless something is said other that it’s “out of our hands” in the future, I’ll just state the obvious and conclude with Fool’s Crow’s words once more.
Manifest Destiny is alive and flourishing, and even though I’ve written about this here,here,here, and included it in several other diaries; it just wasn’t enough to add to what was/is already out there to make the difference that was needed.
Kola (friends). I am Frank Fools Crow, Chief of the Lakota and I am here today with Frank Kills Enemy, one of the most respected headmen and also an expert on Indian treaty rights. Before we begin, I would like to ask you why when we speak you do not listen, and when you listen, you do not hear, and when you hear us, you do not choose to understand what we say. This is one time that I ask you to listen carefully and understand what we have to say.
The people unanimously reaffirmed our long-standing position that the Black Hills are not for sale under any circumstances. We are therefore standing behind the resolution we passed at Ft. Yates in February of this year. That resolution, my friends, reads:
The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota people. Both the sacred pipe and the Black Hills go hand and hand in our religion. The Black Hills is our church, the place where we worship. The Black Hills is our burial grounds. The Bones of our grandfathers lie buried in those hills. How can you expect us to sell our church and our cemeteries for a few token whiteman dollars. We will never sell.
I’m sorry grandpa Fools Crow,
“We continue to believe that someone important someplace cares and will do something before our situation becomes impossible.”
Fools Crow from “Fools Crow,” by Thomas E. Mails. p. 217
I tried and contributed my best, but you taught us there are some things there aren’t cures for. I guess Manifest Destiny is one of them, but I’ll never stop hoping and praying about it.
WATERTOWN, N.Y. – The four tours in Iraq served by the Second Brigade at Fort Drum here have created an unusual level of stress, especially after the standard Iraq tour was increased to 15 months from 12. Yet according to a new report on the shortcomings of mental health care at the base, a soldier’s wait to be seen for psychological help can take more than a month.
More than half of all veterans who took their own lives after returning from Iraq or Afghanistan were members of the National Guard or Reserves, according to new government data that prompted activists on Tuesday to call for a closer examination of the problem.
I visited 
The NY Times report, at the top, comes on the heals of a Tragic Incident that happened last weekend and I posted about Drum Soldier Killed by Police 2-09-08 
The New York Times reports 
The Guardian reports the 
But since 2000 they’ve spent $10 billion to expand tracks, build freight yards and buy locomotives, and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned. The buildout comes as the industry transitions away from its chief role in recent decades of hauling coal, timber and other raw materials in manufacturing regions. Now, increasingly, railroads are moving finished consumer goods, often made in Asia, from ports to major cities…