Veterans issues

Joe Nelson (WEAU -- link is text and video) reports that "women veterans from World War II through the Iraq war" gathered in Wisconsin yesterday to share their experiences at the American Legion Auxiliary.  WWII veteran Lorraine Beaudin states, "Now they're going overseas, and we weren't allowed to go overseas."  And Army National Guard Sgt Beth Hanaman continues, "Everyone keeps moving forward and opening up more doors for women and I'm glad we're a part of that."

Meanwhile David Brown (Washington Post) reports veterans of today's war "have a 75 percent higher rate of fatal motor vehicle accidents than do civilians.  Troops still in uniform have a higher risk of crashing their cars in the months immediately after returning from deployment than in the months immediately before. People who have had multiple tours in combat zones are at highest risk for traffic accidents."  Bill Briggs (NBC News) notes another reality many veterans are facing, "A debt crater that's sucking in entire military families and could be helping to fuel the veteran suicide crisis."  VeteransPlus' Christopher Fitzpatrick floats that this may be impacting rates of suicide, "No one wants to talk about the fact that there are other reasons, besides PTSD, for suicide at 2 in the morning. You know how we know? We have an online form people use to contact us, and we get those emails — they’re sent at 1, 2, 3, 4 in the morning. People are reaching out, literally: 'Can you please help me? I’m losing everything.'

Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury are considered the signature wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.  There are many ways to treat Post-Traumatic Stress.  DL Cade (Peta Pixel -- link is text and video) reports:


VA nurse Susan Quaglietti co-founded a six-week workshop program at the VA in Palo Alto that puts cameras in the hands of veterans and gives them “a new focus in their recovery.” Speaking with a local CBS station in SF, she explains that the program is based on “the idea [that] sometimes it’s easier to communicate with a camera than speak face to face with a therapist."

Cooper is a Labrador retriever that assists veteran Jesse Bier with his Post-Traumatic Stress.  Bier took part in a new veterans program Walk Off The War.   Morgan Simmons (Scripps Howard News Service) reports:

The thru-hikers are taking part in a new program called Walk Off The War that provides military servicemen and women returning from tours of combat duty to hike the trail -- at 2,180 miles, the world's longest hiking-only footpath -- as a means of alleviating the negative effects of war.
Walk Off The War provides the veterans full scholarships to cover their expenses. The program was launched this year by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Operation Military Embrace, the Military Family Lifestyle Charitable Foundation, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association.

Along with hiking and photography, some veterans find relief in clay.  Emily Burnham (Bangor Daily News) reports:

When her hands are in clay, Shawna Mayo forgets about everything else. The trauma of war, the mysterious neurological problems plaguing the lower half of her body, the stresses of daily life.
For the past year, Mayo has been creating an array of ceramic mugs, plates, home decor items, ornamental sculptures and jewelry from her studio, JSB Arts, in the Aroostook County town of Wallagrass. It’s not just a business venture for her — it’s therapy.
“It all just melts away,” said Mayo, 29, a disabled Iraq War veteran and a Monmouth native. “I feel able-bodied again. The demons go away. I feel calm.”


For many veterans, the biggest obstacle they face is the Department of Veterans Affairs. Last month, US House Rep Tom Graves wrote a column where he stated, "Despite having their budget increased by over 40 percent since 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs has left hundreds of thousands of our veterans waiting for the care and services they have earned and deserve. Pending claims for benefits with the VA have increased from 391,000 to 890,000 under the Obama Administration. About 70 percent of the claims have been pending for at least four months, if not for years. San Francisco’s Bay Citizen reported that 19,500 veterans died while waiting for their claims to be processed in fiscal year 2012. Making matters worse, the VA is still operating in the last century as it struggles to transition from paper files to an electronic system. This backlog -- leaving hundreds of thousands of veterans waiting in line for payments and services -- is simply immoral." 



James Warren (New York Daily News) notes:

 
The Veterans Administration is a mess, with more than 600,000 veterans caught in the bureaucracy awaiting first-time claims adjudications. In a rare act of bipartisanship frustration, 67 senators wrote to President Obama and implored him to "take direct action and involvement in ending" the sky-high backlog.
The average wait in New York for resolving first time claims is 642 days, say the senators, which would be worst in the nation were it not for Reno, Nev., where the average is 681 days. The average time for response to first time claims now ranges between 316 and 327 days nationally, depending on whether the number of issues a claimant presents is between one and seven or eight and higher.
The letter to Obama, whose signers included New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, notes both that there's been a 40% increase in the V.A. budget the past four years and a 2,000% hike in those claims pending for more than a year.


Bill Heltzel (PublicSource) reports on Philadelphia where nearly 4,000 veterans have been waiting over a year for the VA to rule on their claims.  Heltzel notes a March 13th Senate hearing.

"Many of us have serious doubts" about eliminating the backlog by 2015, said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

The VA had previously predicted that the backlog would begin to narrow in 2012, but now expects the gap to widen into 2014, noted Sen. Richard Burr, R-NC.

"The VA claims process has been plagued by errors, delays and backlogs for many years," Burr said. "In the latest attempt to fix this system, VA hired thousands of claims processing staff, spent millions developing new IT solutions, and rolled out dozens of other initiatives. But this has yet to translate into better service for veterans, their families and their survivors."

Three times during the hearing, Burr asked Allison Hickey, undersecretary for benefits, to provide performance metrics that had not been given to the committee.

Three times Hickey evaded the request.

Burr threatened to fence off money unless the VA provided the numbers.

"I would like to be more optimistic that VA can meet this deadline," Burr said in an email to PublicSource, "but their reluctance to release information related to the initiative, in addition to a poor track record thus far, missed milestones, and shifting timelines make me skeptical that they will be able to achieve this goal by 2015."

That's typical Hickey.  I wasn't at the hearing, we didn't cover it here.  (When that hearing was taking place, I was at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.)


The San Francisco chapter of IVAW sent the following to the public e-mail account:

**MEDIA ADVISORY **
Iraq Veterans Against the War and Civilian Soldier Alliance respond to SF Pride's Rebuff of Bradley Manning: Grand Marshal NOT Court Martial!  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Adele Carpenter +503-860-5168, yesyesready@gmail.com
Josh Shepherd, +415-819-1045, josh.l.shepherd@gmail.com
Becca vonBehren,+518-222-3834, bvonbehren@stp-sf.org
Michael Thurman, +916-202-6060, michael@couragetoresist.org 



San Francisco, CA – San Francisco

Iraq Veterans Against the War/Civilian-Soldier Alliance, SF Chapters

Respond to SF Pride’s Rebuff of Bradley Manning: Grand Marshall NOT Court Martial!

The beginnings of San Francisco’s gay liberation movement were deeply tied up with mass mobilizations against the Vietnam war, alongside thousands of GI resisters, like B. Manning. Iraq Veterans Against the War San Francisco is disappointed that the board of SF Pride has betrayed the strong anti-war roots of San Francisco’s LGBT community by deciding to unseat B. Manning as 2013 grand marshall, and to further publicly malign Manning.

SF Pride has broken with its own tradition of appointing controversial community leaders and freedom fighters as grand marshalls, and has instead capitulated to the interests of its funders and lowest common denominator politics by making the profoundly undemocratic decision to reverse Manning’s election. SF Pride’s recent statement also makes several false assertions about the nature and effects of Manning’s actions.

As veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (both queers and allies), we strongly object to the hyberbolic assertion made by Lisa Williams, president of SF Pride’s Board of Directors, that Manning’s election as grand marshall is an “insult to every one, gay and straight, who has ever served in the military of this country,” or that Manning committed “actions which placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform.”

Indeed, US servicemembers are placed in harm’s way--not by whistleblowers and human rights defenders--but by the policies carried out by the Bush and Obama administrations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the broken veteran care system we return to. As veterans, we have witnessed the effects of U.S. occupations on civilian populations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As violence racks communities throughout Iraq this month, we note with sadness that today’s Iraq is less safe for gay men--as well as women of all sexual orientations--than it was a decade ago when the U.S. invaded.

Like us, Manning saw the effects of years of U.S. occupation in Iraq. PFC Manning has been homophobically maligned by the mainstream press as having impulsively leaked documents in an attempt to “get back at” the Army following relentless homophobic harassment. In fact, Manning’s statements reveal an extremely sophisticated analysis of military racism and the U.S. military’s role in undermining democracy in Iraq and around the globe. If Manning is guilty of releasing wires to Wikileaks, then Manning is guilty of actions that have played a role in catalyzing some of the largest democratic uprisings in recent history. Meanwhile, these “crimes” pale in comparison to the laundry list of unethical and illegal activities perpetrated by a number of SF Pride’s funders, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and AT&T.

B. Manning is currently languishing in a military prison in conditions that the UN and Amnesty International have described as torturous. After nearly three years, Manning is facing a trial without basic tenets of due process. B. Manning has risked a great deal on account of the belief that information mattered--that we, as a public, would do something if we knew the truth about actions being taken by the U.S. government. Now, it is up to us to prove Manning right.

Publicly maligning Manning one month before what could be the biggest court martial proceeding our country has ever seen has broad negative implications for the future of truth-telling from within the military ranks, and accordingly for the US population to be informed on the actions of our nation.

We would like to respectfully call on members of the wider LGBT community to demand Bradley Manning’s reinstatement as a 2013 SF Pride Grand Marshall [info@sfpride.org], to take this time to renew commitments to anti-war politics and solidarity with political prisoners, and to visibly support B. Manning throughout the ensuing court martial, as well as the upcoming Pride season.

Sincerely,

San Francisco Chapter of

Iraq Veterans Against the War and

Civilian-Soldier Alliance

 With 54 days until the SF Pride events, there is still time for you to weigh in.




Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Pigs Guarding The Pen" went up last night.   On this week's Law and Disorder Radio,  an hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI and around the country throughout the week, hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) topics addressed include the IRS allowing private prison corporations to skip out on federal taxes (guest is New School professor Max Wolff) and the Bully Boy Bush Library and other topics (including Lynne Stewart) with guest Laurie Arbieter.





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