Incremental Change: Fighting For PTSD War Casualties

Two items in the media caught my attention this week that I believe are worth noting. First, Army Times republished an article by Gregg Zoroya in USA TODAY under the headline "Army may stop notifying COs of counseling". In the article, Zoroya reports:

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

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

Possibly spurring Secretary Geren and the Army along may have been Senator Claire McCaskill:

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

It is heartening to learn that Senator McCaskill (the first woman freely elected a senator in Missouri, thus a "ground-breaker"), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee is taking up this issue. It is also encouraging that Secretary Geren has been receptive. But these are just small, incremental steps in the overal process that needs to be pursued in terms of changing the perceptions of and treatment of our PTSD and TBI war casualties. Evidence the fact that in the same article, the Army's surgeon general, Lt. General Eric Schoomaker has witheld comment:

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

Absent a strong endorsement from General Schoomaker, and absent any evidence of a strong endorsement by other principals in the Army's command staff, common sense and logic will tell us that without a strong message being driven from the top command level down through the chain of command, little will change. If General Schoomaker is serious about this, he needs to act sooner, rather than later, and decisively.


The second media item that caught my attention this week was the New York Times editorial on January 12, titled "PTSD and the Purple Heart". In their editorial the Times took the position of supporting the recent decision by the Pentagon to withhold awarding of the Purple Heart to PTSD war casualties. In terms of their position backing the decision by the Pentagon to not recognize PTSD war casualties with the Purple Heart, it seems to me that it is a decision that may be debated and possibly modified as time passes, but not the most urgent issue. The most urgent issue, and which was the most significant point of their editorial was to shed light on the plight of our country's PTSD war casualties. This is one of the issues with the greatest impact facing military families today, gaining acceptance and recognition, and then appropriate care for our military PTSD war casualties.

Service members who have displayed the symptoms of PTSD are true war casualties, and in other wars and other eras this condition was also present, albeit labeled "battle fatigue" or "shell shock." Only relatively recently have health care professionals, law makers, and the general public begun to recognize that PTSD is a "real" combat injury, many times catastropic, in both civilian and military life. Unfortunately, it seems that the military services, as institutions, have not yet fully understood this.

Despite growing recognition in the media over the past few years, grass roots efforts lobbying our law makers and military command, PTSD injuries continue to go untreated. Instead, advocates are witnessing careers in which service members have made a lifetime commitment being nullified and families devastated because military commanders frequently choose to kick out PTSD sufferers (for post-deployment misconduct--the very behavior that the Department of Defense's Mental Health Task Force has identified as being evidence of PTSD is the evidence that commanders use to administratively discharge service members), without benefits of any sort including mental health care, VA administered health care or retirement benefits or any rehabilitative care. In some cases requiring the return of enlistment bonuses.

Untreated PTSD has a societal ripple effect by putting the service member at an increased risk for substance abuse, unemployment, homelessness, criminal activity, partner violence, incarceration, and physical violence--against themselves or others. Appropriate, adequate treatment and rehabilitation for our service members who have suffered PTSD war injuries must be a priority of our military services, the Veterans Administration, our government, our country men and women.

Much more work needs to be done in terms of educating the public at large, our military establishment and our government officials about this issue, and it falls upon all of us, military families, cognizant military and government officials, and cognizant members of the general American public to do this work. No one who is aware of this issue and who wants to see the status quo changed should expect someone else to take up the issue on their behalf. We all have skin in this game as our military family is our last and strongest line of defense to our freedom, and our existence as a sovreign nation.

What members of the active duty military family can do is to spread the word. Educate and advocate with your extended family members, friends, and business associates, ask them to take up this advocacy. Active duty military and their family members also have the right to contact their members of Congress, to raise the Congress' awareness of this issue, and to put pressure on our elected officials to respond adequately.

The same can be said for the general public, as beneficiaries of the service of our active duty military personnel and their families, it is our moral duty to educate and advocate on their behalf with our own family members, our friends and associates. It is our duty to lobby our members of Congress hard for this issue. It is also only our (members of the American public who are not active duty military personnel and do not have members of our nuclear family serving on active duty) to lobby directly with our military command structure. This is something that military personnel cannot do, for obvious reasons, so this is where we, who may have served in the past, we who are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, can speak for our country men and women who are serving us.

All of this represents incremental efforts, which will all lead to incremental change, which as a strategy, I believe has a better chance of being effective than undertaking any effort to demand immediate change. Like water dripping upon a rock, our individual efforts, over time, will break down the current structure, through incremental change.

To find out who your representatives in Congress are (your member of the House of Representatives and your two Senators) visit Congress.org where you can plug in your address and get the contact information, including telephone numbers and addresses for your Congress persons. You can also write and send emails or letters directly from Congress.org to your Congress persons. You can also find the names and addresses of all of the top Pentagon officials at the Defense Department web site.

To learn more about how lives have been impacted by PTSD war casualties please visit Military Spouse Press to read in their own words what military family members have faced. Military Spouses for Change (MSC) is an advocacy organization and that are providing pro bono case management services to active duty military personnel and veterans who are PTSD war casualties and they are fighting for their rightful benefits and appropriate care. To learn more about MSC or to give them a heping hand, please visit their website.

There's more: "Incremental Change: Fighting For PTSD War Casualties" >>

CHANTIX POISONING OF VETERANS TO CONTINUE

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BUSH VA SEES NO PROBLEMS WITH INDUCED SUICIDE OF TERROR-WAR VETS

OBAMA CRITICIZES VETERANS AFFAIRS CHIEF;
MCCAIN SAYS NOTHING

Medical Ethicists & Vets Advocates Horrified: "No Informed Consent"


"'Disposable Heroes': Veterans Used To Test Suicide-Linked Drugs"

" Dr. McFall says the VA decided to continue the Chantix study because 'it would be depriving our veterans of an effective method of treatment to help them stop smoking.' "

In all fairness, suicide would help our veterans stop smoking. It would also trim the rolls of those requesting financial benefits, or health care. That would save the Republican government money it needs for Halliburton in Iraq (only a few months left to cash in). It might also lead to closing, or privatizing the VA medical system. Pretty much of a four-bagger, this Chantix.
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No matter who reported this, or why, the facts remain:

1. No informed consent. Even in the 3-months-too-late notice sent to Vets in the study, there was no mention of suicide.
2. VA doctors continued to use a drug on suicidally-inclined patients after they knew it could lead to suicide.
3. The drug is STILL being given to veterans with PTSD.
4. Veterans groups, Democratic & Republican Congressmen and Barack Obama have expressed outrage and demanded answers, and an end to this experiment.

ABC NEWS
"32,000 Vets To Be Warned About Suicide-Linked Drug Chantix"

" Chantix has been linked to at least 40 suicides and 400 attempted suicides in the population at large, according to the FDA which published its first alert Nov. 20, 2007.

The FDA issued a second warning, and there was an alert from the drug's maker, Pfizer, before the VA finally began to warn veterans in the study on Feb. 29, 2008.

But even then, the VA omitted the word 'suicide' from the cover letter sent to veterans.

Secretary Peake said the new VA warning letter he is sending will specify that suicide is one of the possible side-effects of Chantix.

'I have no problem putting suicide in there, myself,' said Peake.

He said the VA would not hesitate to stop the study if needed, as some in Congress have demanded.

'We're not enrolling new people in this study,' he said, but there are no plans to stop the current project.

'Chantix is an FDA-approved drug,' Peake said, 'and we're trying to find the best way to support smoking cessation.'

But Peake said there was no evidence to suggest the study should be stopped. "

NO EVIDENCE???!!! Exactly how many suicides would be considered "evidence," Doc? One Vet down, and how many to go? I'll keep count for ya.

PFIZER STATEMENT ON CHANTIX & PTSD:

" Based upon post-marketing reports first reflected in a November 2007 labeling update, Pfizer today updated the CHANTIX label in the U.S. to include a warning that patients who are attempting to quit smoking with CHANTIX should be observed for serious neuropsychiatric symptoms, including changes in behavior, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior.

... Patients with serious psychiatric illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder did not participate in the controlled clinical trial program. "

Pfizer came out with this in NOVEMBER 2007. The VA took out the words "suicide" & "suicidal," and passed it along in MARCH 2008.

UPI
"VA using PTSD sufferers in drug testing"

" A medical ethicist said the VA's behavior in the Chantix study violated protections in medical experiments.

'When you're taking advantage of a very vulnerable population, people who have served the country, and the agency that's responsible for their welfare isn't putting their welfare first, that's a pretty serious breach of ethics,' said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at University of Pennsylvania. "

Dubya: "Ethics?" McCain: "What?"

ABC NEWS
"32,000 Vets To Be Warned About Suicide-Linked Drug Chantix"

" 'Our first responsibility is to our veterans,' said Peake, who said he has asked VA doctors to review 'the communications process' involving all VA studies using veterans who are suffering from PTSD. Some 400,000 veterans are being treated for PTSD.

The Bush White House had initially defended the VA's handling of the Chantix experiment. "

But, hey, it's only 32,000 disabled Afghan & Iraq war heroes, right? Oh, wait: There's actually 400,000 of these McBushwar survivors with PTSD. So far.

THINK PROGRESS
"White House Derides Investigation That Exposed Drug Testing On Vets As ‘Irresponsible Reporting,’ ‘Awful’"

Now, think it's time for a change?

MEDPAGE TODAY
"VA Denies Ethical Lapse in Smoking-Cessation Trial"

" The media report prompted presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to write to the VA's chief, expressing outrage 'that our government would irresponsibly endanger veterans who have already sacrificed so much for our country. ... It is distressing that our government could once again let down our veterans and their families.' "

Don't forget this in November, when it comes time to vote. Support the troops AFTER they get home, too!

PUBLIC CITIZEN
"New Study Highlights Dangers of Anti-Smoking Drug Chantix"

VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS
"VFW Demands Accountability Over Chantix"

VETERANS FOR COMMON SENSE
"June 18 VCS in the News: Congress and VCS Demand a Stop to Experimental Drug Testing on Veterans with PTSD"

INSTITUTE FOR SAFE MEDICATION PRACTISES
"Strong Safety Signal Seen for New Varenicline Risks"

Previous post on this subject:

"REPUBLICANS USING DISABLED VETS AS GUINEA PIGS"


[Cross-posted at blog me no blogs.]
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There's more: "CHANTIX POISONING OF VETERANS TO CONTINUE" >>

REPUBLICANS USING DISABLED VETS AS GUINEA PIGS

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PTSD PLUS ANTI-SMOKING DRUG EQUALS 41 SUICIDES

McBUSH VA KNEW DRUG WAS LINKED TO SUICIDE

Veterans Administration Never Told Test Subjects Drug Might Cause Suicide

ABC NEWS
"Congressman: Stop Drug Testing on Vets Now and Investigate"

" 'Nearly 40 suicides and more than 400 incidents of suicidal behavior have been linked to Chantix, yet the VA has chosen to continue the study and administer Chantix to veterans with PTSD,' said Congressman Bob Filner (D-CA).

Yesterday, a report on Good Morning America revealed that mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects. The report was the result of a joint investigation by ABC News and The Washington Times.

In one of the human experiments, involving the anti-smoking drug Chantix, Veterans Administration doctors waited more than three months before warning veterans about the possible serious side effects of Chantix, including suicide and neuropsychiatric behavior.

'Lab rat, guinea pig, disposable hero,' said former US Army sniper James Elliott in describing how he felt he was betrayed by the Veterans Administration. "

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continued

Just when you think George "Dubya" Bush couldn't possibly sink any lower, you read this. Your tax dollars are being used by your government to experiment on soldiers who came home from Iraq and Afghanistan with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, formerly known as Combat Fatigue, previously called Shell-Shock.

PTSD, or Delayed Stress Syndrome, causes night sweats, insomnia, bad dreams, flashbacks, paranoia, anxiety, constant fear, panic attacks, hallucinations, agoraphobia, depression, hostility, nervousness, inability to relate to friends, family and coworkers, inability to sustain careers, marriages, family relationships, homelessness, violent behavior and suicide. Like Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome before it, the VA under-recognizes and tries to avoid paying for PTSD, denying the validity of many cases. But you can see it on many street corners where homeless vets end up, abandoned by the government, the VA and the military that sent them into Hell again and again and again. You can hear them screaming.

World War I lasted four years, but the US was only involved for the last year or so. WWII lasted almost four years for the United States. Vietnam dragged on for nine years, but most soldiers and Marines were only "in-country" for one tour, usually twelve months, unless they re-enlisted or volunteered for more. We had a universal draft for all three of those wars. There is no draft now. Every man and woman over there now is a volunteer. But they didn't volunteer for this.

Thanks to new military enlistment contracts and the so-called "Stop-Loss" program today, troops are now contractually obligated for seven or more years of active duty. Most Marines and soldiers in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been back there in combat at least twice, some as many as seven times, usually for ten months or more each time. There is no real R&R (rest and recuperation time) in the Middle East: Alcohol and friendly local "company" are not readily available in town in the Mid-East, but terror attacks are plentiful. Imagine escaping alive from Hell, and knowing you would have to go back to Hell several times, perhaps. And there is no end in sight, no "light at the end of the tunnel" if John McCain is elected: Not for a hundred years.

Every deployment means new danger, and more exposure to horror-movie conditions which continue to haunt even those who survive physically intact, for the rest of their lives. Stimulants like amphetamines, and depressants like barbiturates are given to many troops, to keep them awake for days at a time, and then knock them out afterwards. The effects can be devastating. Many of these men and women (yes, women are driving trucks and flying helicopters in combat zones) are teenagers, or in their early twenties. Just kids, really, fresh from some safe suburb or small town, with no experience of anything. Many of the Guard and Reserve troops are in their thirties, forties and fifties, with kids of their own back home to worry about. They go from their quiet lives in cities and towns all over America to the worst Hell-holes on Earth. They serve their country bravely there year in and year out. But when they come home, George W. Bush and John S. McCain are there at the airport to spit in their faces, figuratively. They don't care enough to spit literally, at least not in person. They do their spitting behind our veterans' backs.

If this bothers you, please write your representatives in the House and Senate, and let them know how you feel about this being done in your name. Tell them you want our boys and girls, our men and women brought home right now. Warn them that if our veterans are not honored and cared for, respected and treated with the best possible medical and psychological care, you will vote your representatives out of office this November. That's all we can do. Please do it. Congressional email information is listed here:

US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES BY ZIP CODE

US SENATE BY ZIP CODE



Follow-up post on this subject:
"CHANTIX POISONING OF VETERANS TO CONTINUE"


[Cross-posted at blog me no blogs]
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There's more: "REPUBLICANS USING DISABLED VETS AS GUINEA PIGS" >>

Advocacy From The Ground Up: Military Spouses for Change

(Author's note: This is cross posted from BFD Blog!, while it is an advocacy piece on behalf of our active duty military and veterans who have served all of us, it brings home some of the true costs of our unwarranted war in Iraq.)

Military Spouses for Change (MSC) was founded by Carissa Picard who, after finishing college and law school, starting a career in law, then beginning a marriage and raising children found her true calling, other than as a wife and mother, in her advocacy of active duty military personnel, veterans and their families. Her biography states, in part:

Carissa created Military Spouses for Change ("MSC") in May of 2007 when she realized that military spouses were a powerful but untapped resource for positive change (there are more than 700,000 active duty spouses alone). The past five years revealed that our governmental institutions were neither prepared nor capable of properly responding to the increasingly complex needs of our military and veteran families. While our service members cannot be advocates, our military spouses can. Consequently, MSC tries to show military spouses how acts of social and/or political awareness can improve their lives, protect their loved ones, and strengthen their country.

Picard has created a web site and organized a cadre of volunteers and they have stated that they currently are focusing on three major areas of advocacy:

Case Management: MSC acts as a conduit between service members, veterans, and/or families and organizations (both public and private) that may be able to help them in times of crisis or need. If we cannot find an organization that can meaningfully assist them or resolve the matter, we will intervene and advocate for them, ourselves.

Public Policy: MSC monitors Congressional and Executive policy-making and implementation. We collect information and data from official and unofficial sources in order to provide feedback to members of Congress as well as military officials regarding the efficacy of their policies. Further, we are developing and promoting policy changes that we believe would significantly improve the quality of life and quality of care for our service members, veterans, and families.

Education, Outreach, and Empowerment: MSC seeks to educate and empower the spouses of service members and veterans, believing they are an untapped resource for ensuring that the needs of our communities are appropriately identified and effectively met.

Picard and her cohorts have recognized, correctly in our opinion, that the military services and our government, left to their own devices, are not doing an adequate job of providing for the rehabilitation and welfare of those men and women who have volunteered their service to our country, nor to their families, which have all been impacted by their individual family members' military service.

MSC will be featured on the PBS program "NOW" this Friday evening, June 13 in a segment hosted by Maria Hinojosa. "NOW" will be addressing the question: "Is the military wrongfully discharging soldiers in order to deny them benefits?" The fact is, in our opinion at BFD Blog!, that the military has been railroading war casualties out of the service, and thrown them on to the street without adequate care or rehabilitation as we have previously blogged about: "The Shafting Of Our Career Soldiers: Continues Unabated". It is also abundantly clear to us that absent any interest from the Executive branch of our government or adequate concern by the Legislative branch of our government, that it falls to the American people, to as we have demonstrated for time immemorial, step up and lend our own helping hands to our neighbors in need.

Please check your local TV listings for the exact time that the PBS "NOW" program will be broadcast in your area on Friday, and pass the information about it to family, friends and colleagues. Please also pay a visit to the MSC web site and learn what some of your fellow Americans, members of families that are making the ultimate sacrifice for our country, are doing to help themselves and others.

Related articles

• Sean Gilfillan: Do We Value Service to Our Country? Why We MUST Support the 2008 GI Bill [via Zemanta]


• Taking care of vets [via Zemanta]


• VA denies trying to cut costs by reducing PTSD diagnoses. [via Zemanta]


• Jonathan Powers: Honoring the Price of Freedom [via Zemanta]


• VA Lying About Number Of Veteran Suicides, Senator Charges [via Zemanta]


• Many Frontline Troops Turn To Meds To Cope [via Zemanta]


• Lawsuit: V.A. Failed To Prevent Suicides [via Zemanta]


• The Military's Showdown Over PTSD [via Zemanta]

There's more: "Advocacy From The Ground Up: Military Spouses for Change" >>

PTSD...

...is a bitch.

I haven't been officially diagnosed (that will have to wait until I get back stateside, in August) but the signs are all there: obsessive thoughts about horrific scenes I witnessed in Iraq, anxiety at the mere mention of anything having to do with that war, extreme guilt at having willingly participated in such a colossally wicked venture, sleepless nights, mood swings, constant fidgeting, and the strong proclivity to self-medicate by any means necessary. I have good days and bad days, but they've been mostly bad, and certainly worse than they were when I blogged about them before.

The worst for me is the guilt and the anger. Guilt for what I was a part of and anger that such a war could happen, or that people could still believe there is anything remotely positive about our military presence in Mesopotamia. As Thoreau put it so ably at Unqualified Offerings:

It outrages me more than I can describe that there are still apologists for this. It outrages me more than I can describe that there are people who can look at this and say "Yep, we sure made the right choice there!" And it outrages me more than I can describe that the people who look at this and see no evil are actually taken seriously. They are invited to speak and write in serious venues. They are warmly thanked for offering their amoral apologies. They are allowed to remain in power rather than impeached, convicted, removed, and stripped of privilege. They are able to walk down the street undisturbed when they should be cursed and pelted with trash. They should be sprawled on a sidewalk next the McPherson Square Metro Station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt they own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize them beneath the matted beard and tangled hair.

In a real republic Bush would have been drummed out of office by now and the last thing any major candidate for the Presidency would say is that we might be in Iraq for another 100 years. Just thinking about it makes me so... anxious. Every time I hear a war apologist speak I am overcome with grief and it's a good hour before my mind's back on track. This is my war casualty: a complete inability to escape from that place for longer than a couple of hours.

Seeking mindless distraction, I went to see Ironman the other day, and boy was that a mistake. The predictably evil defense contractor (played by Jeff Bridges, who always looks like Jeff Lebowski to me, which is a bit disconcerting) reminded me so much of my old boss in the war-profiteering biz--warm and friendly on the outside, cold and heartless on the inside--that I spent half the movie trying to will away my flashbacks, then spent the next several hours after the movie drinking alone in my apartment. Such an innocuous reference from such a banal movie shouldn't produce such a powerful reaction, but such is life after war, for me at least. Suffice it to say I won't be watching Rendition or In the Valley of Elah any time soon.

So there it is: I'm pretty messed up in the head right now, and there's not a lot I can do but try to work through it. It's not like there are VA programs for DoD Contractors with PTSD. That's why the federal government loves contractors so much: there's no long-term commitment. A servicemember has all those whiny legislators demanding benefits (and overriding Bush's veto... we hope) for the troops, but us temps, we're on our own. Now that I'm not working for the company that paid me to go to Iraq, I'm nobody's problem but my own. Hell, I don't even have medical insurance any more. I swear to FSM I'm moving to Canada or Denmark some day.

Discovering that your soul has a price isn't a pleasant experience, but I'm the guy who signed on the dotted line, so it's my cross to bear. I wish I had read the fine print.

Cross-posted at Decline and Fall.

There's more: "PTSD..." >>

Iraq: The Needle And The Damage Done

Sgt. Merlin German poses with actress Elizabeth Rohm

Neil Young wrote a song with that title, about what junk was doing to great musicians as he watched them get hooked and OD before his eyes.

We were thinking about that yesterday as we trawled the intarwebs looking for information about Iraq. And the damage done. And damage aplenty it is. From being the nation that stood for economic achievement, honour, dignity, the enshrining of human rights in the very foundation of our existence, we have become a universal pariah, despised, pitied, and shunned. We're like the mad aunt in the attic, fouling ourselves, locked away out of the sight of the children because we're so unpredictable, so damaged, so pitiable.

Our currency has sunk to unheard of lows. Our economy writhes and flails pathetically struggling to rise like a wounded Leviathan even as it bleeds jobs in the tens of thousands, as homes go into foreclosure and families are forced out onto the street, as suburbs and subdivisions lie abandoned, rotting, damaged by those who once lived there or by casual thieves looking for an easy mark. Our infrastructure rots before our eyes, and we have no money to fix our sewage systems, our water systems, our dams and bridges and roads, even as we bleed billions of dollars into a war without a foreseeable end.

Today's reminder of the ongoing multiple wars in which the Bush regime has entangled us, and the continuing damage. Click the preceding link to read the story of Marine Sergeant Merlin German, who died April 11 as the result of injuries sustained from a roadside bomb blast in Iraq. Sgt. German was 22 years old.

He suffered damage to 97 per cent of his body from the bomb. It took him a little over three agonizing years of multiple surgeries and therapies to die. Sgt. German was a saxophonist. The bomb blew off his fingers. He would never be able to play his favourite instrument again. The article talks about how this poor man was "an emblem of resolve." Well, fuck your resolve. Tell us how it took him one and a half agonizing years to learn how to walk again. As a gimp, we can totally understand the torture of having a body that does not like to obey one's wishes and responds with agonizing pain when one does something it doesn't care for.

Tell us how it feels to have 40 surgeries. Each time someone cuts your body open, your chances of infection, fatal complications like clots in your veins and lungs, and, of course, the never-ending pain, increase. And sometimes pains create more, unexplained and inexplicable pains. So that when someone operates on your right knee, two years later you can suffer agonizing pains in your left toe.

They give you gabapentin for that. It's medication for epileptics, but apparently works off-label to cope with nerve-related pain. Unfortunately, it causes your wrist and forearm muscles to behave strangely, and can result in carpal tunnel syndrome.

In related news, a New York state appeals court has held that the New York/New Jersey Port Authority is liable for damages caused by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, because it knew about but chose to ignore “an extreme and potentially catastrophic vulnerability that would have been open and obvious to any terrorist who cared to investigate and exploit it.”

We can't help but wonder if this means Gee Dumbya and his criminal cronies can be held liable for the deaths of the 3,000 who died in the attack on the Twin Towers? Personally liable? For damages? And the 4,000-plus troops who have died so far. And the 620,000 suffering from PTSD and TBI. And the 30-50,000 maimed and wounded?

After all, there's plenty of evidence that Bush and his stooges knew about 9/11 nearly a year before it happened.


Meanwhile, Reuters tells us that on April 19th, "Iraqi government troops" swept into the oil-rich southern Iraqi city of Basra and took the bastions of Hojatoleslam Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, at whose hands they had suffered such a humiliating defeat in the first weeks of April.

Of course, the article fails to mention that the "Iraqi government troops" are, for all intents and purposes, the military arm of puppet prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, a man with so little support among his own people that defections among "his" police troops and "his" army forces number in the thousands. In the event, he required massive air support from British and American forces. Caveat: Registration (free) required.

And if you don't know what happens to "collaborators," consider what you would do assuming your country was invaded by some other occupying power. What would you do to Americans who aided the enemy? Jeez, let some politician make a speech about how things are totally fucked in Iraq and every frothing rightwinger is simultaneously wanking their dicks off while screaming "Treason! Aiding and Abetting! Giving comfort to the enemy! Hang them!"

As far as the rest of Iraq, Sunni and Shi'a, religious or secular, are concerned, al-Maliki's "troops" are collaborators, calling in American and British air power to bomb the living fuck out of their own countrymen and women and children.

So we had to bomb hundreds to death, destroying their homes and hospitals and streets and towns, in order for al-Maliki's so-called "army" to succeed against al-Sadr's militiamen. Remember, if you will, that al-Maliki's "army" gets its uniforms, salaries, training, equipment, and ammunition from our treasury, while al-Sadr's militia, if they're lucky, get an inferior grade of weaponry if they can pay for it either from the black market or from our soldiers and their proxies, the Iraqi army.

Damn, if we're paying them, training them, and giving them top-notch guns and ammo, and they still can't beat a rag-tag bunch of untrained fucking desert dwellers, what the fuck does that say about this "war"? Incidentally, both al-Sadr's and al-Maliki's followers are Shi'a muslims. In other words, this is a civil war. Moreover, many people are saying that this is simply an attempt by al-Maliki's Dawa party to ensure that no other Shi'a politicians can possibly win the coming elections.

Does anyone else get the feeling that this is just a sham, set up for a gullible American electorate that doesn't bother to inform itself? Does anyone want to take a bet that the Iraqi "elections" will be held not too distant from the American elections and steps will be taken by the CheneyBush Misadministration to ensure that they can proclaim a victory, success, a drawdown?

Of course, they'd better pray that the Iraqi units don't flee their posts, as this one did. Caveat: Registration (free) required.

A pertinent snippet:

A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing.

This occurred in Baghdad around April 16th. Commanders in Iraq are, to the extreme frustration and resentment of their troops, doing their best to paint any success as being led by Iraqi troops when in fact, it is American troops that are doing the dirty work, reaping the death toll, and receiving none of the credit.

Meanwhile, the Sons of Iraq, or the Sons of the Awakening, or the Awakening Council, or whatever they're calling themselves this week &mdash the number, out of the approximately 40 per cent of Iraq's population that is Sunni Muslim, who have decided to cooperate with the U.S. in attempting to expel from Iraq the al-Qaeda in Iraq "turrrrists" who are blowing up people and things &mdash have degenerated into an internecine conflict, the likes of which make the al-Sadr/al-Maliki conflict pale in comparison.

Patrick Cockburn, writing for The Independent, tells us that aQI, as al-Qaeda in Iraq is referred to, is targeting the al-Sahwa, that is, the Awakening Council, or Sunni Awakening, or, as we've been reduced to calling it of late, the Sunni Whatever. Christ. And this, hard on the heels of news that the U.S. has not provided agreed-upon amounts of arms and money to these poor sods who are in the frontline of this battle.

Is it any surprise, then, that U.S. troop deaths are currently at their highest for the past seven months? According to AP, 50 U.S. soldiers died in the month of April. Iraqi civilian deaths are also at a high. 36 people per day.

So, close to 40 people are dying every day, and what exactly are we supposed to be doing there? Preventing civil war? Too late, it's raging as we speak. Bringing democracy to the nation? How can there be democracy in a nation at war? The conditions don't exist for people to use the ballot box when they have to kill or be killed each day. We can't even successfully steal their fucking oil, which is, let's face it, the real reason that we attacked a small, poor nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. If this was about 9/11, we would have invaded Saudi Arabia which has lots of oil and, apparently, lots of terrorists, having supplied some 15 or so to the effort to bomb the fuck out of the Twin Towers.

Whoever tells us that our effort in Iraq is succeeding is lying through their teeth. This is not success. Watching 22-year-old boys get blown to smithereens is not success. Fomenting civil war in a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on us is not success. Building a mercenary army is not success.

Fuck, we can't even build a mercenary army properly. Incompetence, dishonesty, and outright idiocy resulting from greed and short-sightedness are the hallmark of what Maru likes to call the Cheney Menstruation. Here, for example, we have a wonderful incident in which mercenaries, most of whom are former military personnel, often U.S. military personnel, get killed because some senior manager used the armored vehicle in which these poor sods were supposed to travel, to &mdash no, really &mdash transport hookers.

Meanwhile, arms and equipment that we, the taxpayers, are paying through the arse for, are showing up for sale on ebay.

And little schoolgirls in Iraq are weeping while celebrating Saddam Hussein's birthday. So much for being greeted with flowers as liberators.

As we used to say when we was a yoof, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth &mdash bugger me blind. What the fuck? Is there anything we're doing that's remotely likely of success? Fuck, no. We keep propping first one, then another foot up while we take potshots at each, each time with a weapon of a greater caliber. Call us when they trundle out the cannon.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross is reporting that health care and clean drinking water in Iraq is less available to the populace, after five fucking years of our presence. The city of Baghdad has overflowing sewers that are visible from Google Earth.

There is no doubt, as Rep. Ike Skelton of MO says, that our continuing engagement in Iraq is preventing us from anticipating and preparing for future acts of terror. We're bogged down, boys 'n girls. Plain and simple.

The Pentagon is claiming that it is cutting funding for the Iraq war even as the Idiot-in-Chief is trying to force through a $70 billion dollar request for funding in Iraq. This is called, "The right hand knoweth not in whose underpants the left hand is sticking a finger." So you cut a twenty-cent purchase out while slipping a two-thousand dollar purchase in. Veddy clever.

And the Senate's Armed Services Committee is asking the GAO to find out where billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue have gone. Admittedly, the previous, Republican, congress didn't even bother to find out if the taxpayer was being screwed without lube. But, gentlemen, isn't this a bit like closing the barn door long after the horse has embarked on a trip to a different fucking continent?

In other news, the Iraqis prove that they, at least, are not as stupid and befuddled as the American electorate-cum-taxpayer. Even as John McInsane was tootling around those parts, our erstwhile bosom friends and financial dependents of the Iraqi power structure were chortling with glee. Pertinent excerpt:

Many Iraqi politicians are closely monitoring the American presidential race, and some said the visit bolstered their belief that if Mr. McCain, of Arizona, succeeded President Bush in the November election, the American military would have a large presence in Iraq for a very long time.

“This visit confirms that the Republicans believe that the Iraqi war is very important in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East,” said Wael Abdul Latif, an independent Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament. “It’s a message to Iran that the United States will never leave, even after Bush is gone.”

Never leave? Hah! Why don't we just line up every single American man, woman, and child who has less than one million dollars to their name (which would be most of us, don't kid yourself), and remove half their blood, or half their limbs?

Those of you planning to vote for McInsane? Just join the military already. Take your spouse and sprogs with you. Don't plan on coming back. They'll just foreclose on your home while you're gone, anyway, and if McInsane's in charge, your kid won't be able to afford health care or college, and there won't be any jobs left after you've served. At least in the military they often give you food, plus your housing and clothing and health care is all paid for. Sure, you risk ending up like Marine Sgt. German. But that's a small price to pay to see McInsane in charge, innit?

Meanwhile, since we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, the following has occurred:

• The real, genuine, original al-Qaeda (the one in Iraq has the same name but no links to these big daddies) just tried to kill Afghani President Hamid Karzai;
  
  Bush's old oil buddy Karzai must be wondering how long he can hold on to power.
  
  
• Our own intelligence guys are reporting that al-Qaida is doing just ducky, over in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they started out and continue to grow and thrive;
  
  
• We still don't have the first fucking clue where Osama bin Laden is, but we're willing to bet he's laughing his ass off, even if it's in some cave;
  
  Note to our so-called allies: If you see an ass wandering around sans legs, torso, or any other identifiable part, please turn it over to the U.S. military.
  
  
• No matter how much we grovel and beg, nobody wants to give us more pennies or bodies for our war in Afghanistan.

So what do we do about this? Do we keep making "support the troops" noises and buying flag pins made in China while leaving the men and women who do our dirty deeds for us to rot and die in body, mind, and soul?

Libby, over at TheImpolitic, tells us about some of the horrifying things our troops have gone through. Jesus, we're fucking outraged and disgusted.

One soldier's father was so disgusted by the treatment of his son's comrades, he videotaped it and posted it on YouTube. All on a sudden, the brass are putting away their balls which they've been playing with for ages, and leaping up to "address the issue" of the appalling conditions at Fort Bragg.

The good folk of Vermont continue to protest the war with all their might and main. Thanks, people! You give us hope!

Meanwhile, we ask, when are the Young Republicans going to step up and volunteer in droves? Because they're sitting around in school leeching off the taxpayer teat or the parental teat, the military has had to lower its standards to the point where people such as this eminent worthy get to disgrace the service.

And, to leave you all with something other than the bitter taste of ashes, here's a sweet story about service members who have to leave their four-footed friends behind, and the kind folks who help them out by taking their little beastlies in.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

There's more: "Iraq: The Needle And The Damage Done" >>

Of necessity, the Pentagon strikes "Question 21" from the Security Clearance questionaire

[This post is a collaboration between myself and Pale Rider, my partner in thought crime at my home blog, Blue Girl, Red State]


As the war in Afghanistan grinds on toward the seven-year mark, and the war in Iraq is almost two months into the sixth year, the effects on our military forces have been overwhelming. Last month the RAND corporation released a study that pulled the curtain back on the horrors of what our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines are being forced to deal with and should have served as a wake-up call for the homefront - and the Pentagon. It also compliments and confirms an Army study on mental health that was released by the Joint Chiefs earlier this month that pegged the number of soldiers suffering from PTSD after one deployment at 12%, after two deployments at 18.5% and after three deployments at 28%.

Many units have deployed multiple times, and as the studies showed, the members of those units are suffering horribly. The more times they deploy, the worse they suffer.

Until yesterday, many of those who are suffering the effects of repeated combat rotations suffered in silence...because of "Question 21."

Anyone wo has ever gone through the process of getting a security clearance knows what it is..."Have you consulted a mental health professional in the past seven years for issues other than martial problems or grief?" A "yes" required excruciating details of the reason treatment was sought, and the treatment method(s) employed. This usually raised other questions and led to closer scrutiny.

John E. Fortunato, chief of Fort Bliss' Restoration and Resilience Center, which treats soldiers returning from combat with post-traumatic stress disorder, called Thursday's announcement an important first step.

Fortunato, who has treated 37 soldiers since his center opened nearly a year ago, said commanders have taunted troops and told them to "soldier on" when they complained of combat stress.

Soldiers have "paid such a high price for PTSD," Fortunato said.

The cost of treating a soldier is far less than pushing him or her out of the Army, Fortunato added. He estimated it costs his center roughly $20,000 to treat someone with post-traumatic stress disorder, compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars the military would have to spend to replace the discharged soldier.

"The measure (of mental health treatment) success is retention," he said.

During his visit, Gates said the military must lift the stigma on mental health care and encourage troops to see it as equal to physical care.

"The most important thing for us now is to get the word out as far as we can to every man and woman in uniform to let them know about this change, to let them know the efforts that are under way to remove the stigma and to encourage them to seek help when they are in the theater or when they return from the theater," Gates told reporters here as he announced the change.

"The department considers it a mark of strength and maturity to seek appropriate health care, whenever required," James Clapper, the undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and David Chu, the undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, wrote in a letter announcing the change.

It is a welcome change that is long overdue, but truly - it's better late than never.

more after the jump...

PALE RIDER ADDS...

It's a welcome step--but will they really strike the question and not hold that against someone when they are adjudicating a clearance renewal? Because that's what this essentially affects. A soldier who reclasses into an MOS or job specialty that requires a clearance after an initial tour shouldn't be penalized, and those who already had clearances shouldn't be penalized for getting PTSD counseling. So you need to strike that question for the FIRST application for a clearance and then for the 5 year periodic updates.

MORE IMPORTANTLY--they strike Question 21, but did you know--Questions 27, 28, and 29 are about ANY kind of "illegal drug use" and the number one item detailed is marijuana? Did you know that Question 30 asks about alcohol and whether or not use of alcohol led to any kind of counseling?

Seems to me, they can strike Question 21, confident they will catch anyone who has PTSD who "self-medicates" with marijuana or alcohol, and as we know from the data, sufferers of PTSD have to self-medicate with whatever they can find while they await treatment in a very slow system and while they go through a phase of getting their various life issues under some kind of control.

The medications that go with that treatment have always been of interest on the clearance paperwork as well--meaning, if you were prescribed valium or some other form of legitimate drug for treatment, you had to disclose that in detail as well. So I hope they end the scrutiny of counseling AND they end the scrutiny of asking what medications were used to treat the PTSD.

As it sits right now, forget about medical marijuana for an active duty soldier. If an active duty soldier legitimately needs it to calm down, the tests hot on a urinalysis, their career is essentially over if they've been in longer than 36 months. This reform is welcome, but the treatment of PTSD often conflicts with what they allow, culturally, in the military, and that's a nearly zero level of tolerance for anything relating to marijuana. If a person who has separated from service needs it, that is less complicated. And if someone is a reservist or guardsman, their testing regime might be less often than for the active duty, but they're in jeopardy of testing positive and facing UCMJ.

A mature and considered debate awaits--do we treat these men and women with medical marijuana or not? And if we do, then THAT should not endanger their clearances nor should it end their careers. So, it's all well and good to strike Question 21 if they then know they can turn around at get someone on the other questions, which ask about use at any time since the age of 16, use while holding a clearance, manufacturing and distribution, and whether use of alcohol led to ANY kind of counseling or treatment. Those questions would surely catch quite a few people who might have answered in the affirmative on Question 21.

Blue Girl adds -

Pale Rider raises a damned good issue. Medical marijuana would, in my (medical) opinion, be preferable to long-term use of any of the anti-anxiety drugs in the benzodiazapine family. They are highly addictive, and highly intoxicating. They also have a long half-life, which means that the drug builds up in the system, and tolerance from intoxication takes a long, long time to kick in. Frequently, by the time it does, an addiction has set in, and abuse soon follows. Benzos should only be used for short periods of time for this reason. But PTSD is not a short-term disorder. It takes a long time to treat.

Marijuana, too, has a long half life, but it stores in the fat cells and doesn't have an amplified intoxication effect.

And by the way, it's bullshit to say it can't be regulated and dosed, because it sure as hell can. By one of the oldest and most effective methods of extracting active ingredients from medicinal herbs...tincturing. Tinctures can be tested for efficacy by batch via chemical assay, and graded by a system something akin to proofing of alcohol. We don't have to distribute two-finger bags and rolling papers at sick call.

And we might need to have a serious discussion about what is best for those in need and forget what gets the authoritarians, hippie-haters and conservatards in a lather. Stop even paying attention to those whack-jobs. They have been wrong about everything and that is never going to change, it's a hallmark of the species. The sooner we get past trying to placate those implacable mouth-breathers and marginalize them to the degree they so richly deserve, the better off we'll be as a society.

There's more: "Of necessity, the Pentagon strikes "Question 21" from the Security Clearance questionaire" >>

Human beings have limits

And those boundaries have been breached where about 20% of our defensive forces are concerned. A new study by the RAND Corporation, released just today, pegs the number of veterans suffering from PTSD and depression at about 300,000 and the number of veterans who sustained brain injuries at about 320,000. With only one direction for those numbers to go, we are facing an immediate future where we have somewhere in the neighborhood of a million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan needing care that the VA is ill-equipped to handle - they are overstretched now, and only half of the soldiers struggling with depression, PTSD and TBI have sought treatment.

The new study gives us a glimpse at a cringe-worthy future if we don't get our collective act together and deal with the issues facing these good men and women who stepped up and served. It also compliments and confirms an Army study on mental health that was released by the Joint Chiefs earlier this month that pegged the number of soldiers suffering from PTSD after one deployment at 12%, after two deployments at 18.5% and after three deployments at 28%.

Here is the cold hard truth that these studies tell - if the US Army was a distance runner, it would be hitting the wall about now, unable to go on one more step.

The Rand study, completed in January, put the percentage of PTSD and depression at 18.5 percent, calculating that approximately 300,000 current and former service members were suffering from those problems at the time of its survey, which was completed in January.

The figure is based on Pentagon data showing over 1.6 million military personnel have deployed to the conflicts since the war in Afghanistan began in late 2001.

RAND researchers also found:

_About 19 percent — or some 320,000 services members — reported that they experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed. In wars where blasts from roadside bombs are prevalent, the injuries can range from mild concussions to severe head wounds.

_About 7 percent reported both a probable brain injury and current PTSD or major depression.

_Only 43 percent reported ever being evaluated by a physician for their head injuries.

_Only 53 percent of service members with PTSD or depression sought help over the past year.

_They gave various reasons for not getting help, including that they worried about the side effects of medication; believe family and friends could help them with the problem, or that they feared seeking care might damage their careers.

_Rates of PTSD and major depression were highest among women and reservists.

The report is titled "Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery." It was sponsored by a grant from the California Community Foundation and done by 25 researchers from RAND Health and the RAND National Security Research Division, which also has done does work under contracts with the Pentagon and other defense agencies as well as allied foreign governments and foundations.

This war is going to end. It has to. We can't keep fighting it, no matter what the keyboard kommandos fighting the War of the Words™ in their jammies think (I'm using 'think' loosely here).

They aren't doing the hard work of service, and have no idea what it entails. But those soldiers they simultaneously lionize and abuse are human beings. They are sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors...human beings.

And they deserve to be treated as such. And that is going to require that society start stepping up now - because 'late' is at least a little bit better than 'never.'

From the L.A. Times:

Thousands more mental health professionals -- both in government hospitals and the civilian healthcare systems -- are needed to meet the need of troops and veterans, and new training is needed for current medical professionals, according to the report.

"Since the dramatic increase in the need for services exists now, the required expansion in trained providers is already several years overdue," the report said.

The study recommends finding ways to help Iraq and Afghanistan veterans get access to the civilian mental health providers.

Mental healthcare also needs to be standardized and improved, and only a little more than half of the service members being treated for stress disorders and depressions received adequate care, according to the survey.

"The prevalence of PTSD and major depression will likely remain high unless greater efforts are made to enhance systems of care for these individuals," the report said.

Stress disorders and other combat-related mental ailments can lead to suicide, homelessness and physical health problems. But more mundane problems caused by stress disorders and depression can have long-term social consequences.

"These conditions can impair relationships, disrupt marriages, aggravate the difficulties of parenting, and cause problems in children that may extend the consequences of combat trauma across generations," the study says.

The failure to adequately treat depression and stress disorders can cost the United States up to $6.2 billion, said Lisa H. Jaycox, another of the study's authors.
"While the existing therapies do not guarantee recovery in 100% of people," Jaycox said, "we make the case that investing in treatment early would prevent some of the negative consequences from unfolding and save money."

We are blessed as a nation to have a core of good, decent men and women who are willing to serve and sacrifice for this country. When we abuse them and violate the pact that America makes with her Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines we abdicate our honor as a nation. And I, for one, refuse to be a party to treason - which, as far as I am concerned, is what it boils down to when we shit on those who serve.

There's more: "Human beings have limits" >>

The Invisible Cost of War

It appears, according to a RAND study as reported in Raw Story, that we can look forward to over 600,000 military personnel suffering TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) or PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) or both, as a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to the article, fewer than half have ever had head injuries evaluated by a doctor, and only slightly more than half have sought help for PTSD.

Of course, the TBI numbers (currently 300,000) might be much lower if the Bush Misadministration hadn't sourced inferior helmets to protect the brains of the people it sent into harm's way. Caveat: Requires login.

The article states, regarding the study:

The report is titled "Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery." It was sponsored by a grant from the California Community Foundation and done by 25 researchers from RAND Health and the RAND National Security Research Division, which also has done does work under contracts with the Pentagon and other defense agencies as well as allied foreign governments and foundations.

Over a year ago, we noticed that the TBI numbers were high, and blogged it. As most people know, TBI comes in two flavours, mild and severe, and both have serious long-term implications and painful costs. Here, a description of mild TBI:

the individual has cognitive problems such as headache, difficulty thinking, memory problems, attention deficits, mood swings and frustration. These injuries are commonly overlooked. Even though this type of TBI is called "mild", the effect on the family and the injured person can be devastating.

Symptoms include:

* Fatigue
* Headaches
* Visual disturbances
* Memory loss
* Poor attention/concentration
* Sleep disturbances
* Dizziness/loss of balance
* Irritability-emotional disturbances
* Feelings of depression
* Seizures
* Nausea
* Loss of smell
* Sensitivity to light and sounds
* Mood changes
* Getting lost or confused
* Slowness in thinking

These symptoms may not be present or noticed at the time of injury. They may be delayed days or weeks before they appear. The symptoms are often subtle and are often missed by the injured person, family and doctors.

The person looks normal and often moves normal in spite of not feeling or thinking normal. This makes the diagnosis easy to miss. Family and friends often notice changes in behavior before the injured person realizes there is a problem. Frustration at work or when performing household tasks may bring the person to seek medical care.

For symptoms of severe TBI, look here.

These symptoms do not bode well for the 300,000 or so Americans who are suffering them. Especially as Boy George continues to gut the VA. When you have a significant number of people in the population who are trained to view problems as amenable to the application of force, and these people are suffering symptoms that include irritability, inability to concentrate, memory loss, and the like, their prospects for long-term gainful employment are, necessarily, small. Their ability to provide for themselves, whether in the sense of basic necessities such as grocery shopping, cooking, making and keeping medical appointments, and the like, or in more sophisticated ways such as undertaking job training or further education, meeting goals, career planning, are affected.

Goodness knows there have been many days over the past eight years when those of us with uninjured brains and untraumatized spirits have wanted to choke the living shit out of all and sundry as we watch our jobs disappear, our wages fall, our homes foreclosed, our bank and retirement accounts and benefits shrink, and the dollar sink to new and terrifying lows.

Imagine you're a newly returned injured and traumatized veteran of a war you still can't figure out, except that you know it was based on lies. And all these things that are happening to the general populace are also happening to you, except thanks to your newly damaged bits, they're harder for you to deal with. And you have no job or no job prospects, and the VA denies your health care and contests your disability. And you don't want to tell anyone that you're having all these problems because you might not be able to get a job, which you need in order to stay alive. And you probably don't want to tell the military about your problems because what if you can't get a job and have to re-enlist?

There's a light at the end of the tunnel, folks. Unfortunately, it's starting to look like a speeding train. And it's headed for us.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

There's more: "The Invisible Cost of War" >>

The Shafting Of Our Patriots In Military Service - Part IV

(Time for me to put my money where my mouth is, dive in with me, the water is fine. Cross posted from BFD Blog!)

As I discussed in my last postilng I had reached a point of outrage over the fact that the Army Medical Corps is systematically mis-diagnosing PTSD war casualties as having a Personality Disorder, which then requires that these solders be given Chapter 5-13 discharges, which in turn disqualifies them from receiving any military medical or retirement benefits and which places them outside of the umbrella of Veterans Administration services.

Well it is time to put my money where my mouth is. It gives me no great pleasure in the fact that this has to be done, but it does give me some pleasure in the fact that I have figured out a way that I, and all of you can do something to help re mediate the dire situation faced by our disabled patriots. I have launched a new web site and an advocacy campaign for active duty military personnel and veterans who are PTSD casualties.

Please visit my new web site FIGHT-PTSD.ORG.

Please pass this link along to family, friends, fellow bloggers, colleagues and acquaintances. Please join me in my Army Campaign which has two immediate goals:

1. To lobby Congress to pass two bills which would temporarily freeze all Chapter 5-13 discharges.

2. Through a grass roots campaign, pressure the Surgeon General of the Army and the Army as an institution to cease the misdiagnosing and railroading of PTSD casualties.

There's more: "The Shafting Of Our Patriots In Military Service - Part IV" >>

The Shafting Of Our Patriots In Military Service - Part III

(In Part III of this series I note that the shafting of our military personnel continues unabated, I become more and more outraged thinking about how people as young as I was when I enlisted, who are just starting out in the world, are having their lives mangled and are then tossed away, like some used trash. All while the Blackwaters of the Disaster Capitalism Military/Industrial Complex commit crimes in the name of the American people and plunder our treasury. This is the first time, in the life of BFD Blog! that I take my voice from the third person (the editorial "we") and write in the first person, a turning point for me. While I cannot stand in the boots of our current military personnel, I feel such a strong affinity to them as my brothers and sisters, who proudly and courageously serve our country, and who deserve so much in return from us. -Big Fella)

I was outraged when I wrote the previous postings and my outrage continued when I read the article "Specialist Town Takes His Case to Washington" by Joshua Kors in the October 15 issue of The Nation.

To briefly recap the story about Specialist Jon Town, and the other patriots in our military services that are in the same predicament:

Soldiers who passed all of the rigorous medical and psychological screening prior to induction in to the Army, who had no previous history of any psychological problems, or what the Army would term "personality disorder", were accepted in to the United States Army, trained and deployed to the theater of war in Iraq. These soldiers subsequently become casualties, suffering traumatic injuries to their bodies, including their limbs, external musculature, internal organs and to their brains. Injuries manifest in the physical scarring, and partial physical dysfunction or disintegration of their bodies and in the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome that they chronically suffer. They return to the safety of our home shores and to the care of the Army Medical Corps with the expectation that in exchange for their service and sacrifices that they will receive the best medical, and rehabilitative care available in the most technologically and economically advantaged nation in the world. Instead, they are mis-categorized in a seeming widespread institutional standard operating procedure, as having "personality disorder", and thus are ineligible for benefits, and are "kicked to the curb" by the United States Army, with no further medical care, no rehabilitation, no partial or total disability benefits. Just used, abused and thrown away.

That was the story earlier this year, before Kors and The Nation and the wider media at large picked it up. Subsequently Jon Town was invited to testify before Congress, and as described in Kors' most recent story, while Town himself has finally been the beneficiary of the publicity surrounding his case, as reported by Kors (and no thanks to the U.S. Army, but rather the Department of Veterans Affairs):

Strangely enough, Town's big break came not from Matthews, NBC or even Senator Bond but from Lou Wilin, a reporter at the Findlay Courier, Town's hometown paper (circulation 23,000). After reading Town's story in The Nation, Wilin wrote a profile of the soldier, which ran in the newspaper's April 16 edition. The article caught the eye of an admiral in the VA who happens to live a few miles east of Findlay. The admiral flagged Town's case, kicked it to the Cleveland VA, which passed it to the Dayton VA, where case manager Janine Wert was ready to take action. Wert received Town's case the morning of April 19 and had the soldier in her office before the end of lunch. She listened to his story and cried.

"His childhood, high school and military history--none of it supports a personality disorder. When you're a teenager, there are certain things that pop up that are vividly obvious, red flags for personality disorder. Those aren't present in Jon's history," says Wert, a social worker with a master's degree in mental health. Wert says Town's PTSD and TBI symptoms were obvious from their first meeting. She was struck by the absurdity of the Army's diagnosis. "I have never in my life heard of personality disorder causing deafness," says the counselor.

Wert arranged an immediate doctor's appointment for Town and scheduled an evaluation by a VA medical board. On June 11 the VA ruled that Town was in fact wounded in combat. The agency declared him 100 percent disabled.

Town's VA rating guaranteed him disability and medical benefits for the rest of his life. The VA also provided the disability pay that Town should have received in the months following his discharge. On June 25, just weeks after his family's phone had been shut off, the specialist received a check for $20,000.

There may still be as many as 22,000 other soldiers in the same predicament as Town was. Put in their predicament by the United States Army, and then swept under the carpet as outlined by Kors:

Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, acting surgeon general of the Army, was briefed on the problems with the Army's personality disorder discharges. Instead of correcting cases like Town's, she buried them. The surgeon general released a series of memos filled with fabrications. Pollock then informed wounded soldiers that their cases had been thoroughly reviewed by an independent panel of health experts when in fact no such review was conducted...

Andrew Pogany, an investigator for the soldiers' rights group Veterans for America, has been looking into personality disorder discharges for two years. The discharge, officially known as Regulation 635-200, Chapter 5-13, is simply a loophole, he says, to dismiss wounded soldiers without providing them benefits. Pogany says Town's case is a textbook example of how Chapter 5-13 is being applied. Town had no history of psychological problems and had served seven years, winning a dozen medals, before being discharged with a personality disorder.

The investigator was so disturbed by the Army's use of 5-13 discharges that he brought his research to Pollock. In late October 2006, he and Steve Robinson, Veterans for America's director of veterans affairs, met with Pollock and presented her with a stack of personality disorder cases, including Town's. The surgeon general promised a thorough review.

On March 23, five months after her meeting with Pogany, Pollock released her findings. Her office had "thoughtfully and thoroughly" reviewed the personality disorder cases and determined that all of the soldiers, including Town, had been properly diagnosed. Pollock commended the doctors who diagnosed personality disorder for their excellent work.

Four days later the military followed up with a press release, this one signed by Lieut. Col. Bob Tallman, the Army's chief of public affairs. Tallman's memo provided further detail on Pollock's review. A panel of behavioral health experts had reviewed the personality disorder cases, Tallman wrote, and they didn't stop at the stack of cases presented to the surgeon general. They "thoroughly evaluated and reviewed" all the Chapter 5-13s from the past four years at Fort Carson, where Specialist Town had been based, and determined that all of those cases had been properly diagnosed as well.

There was a glaring problem with Pollock's review. In the five months she spent "thoughtfully and thoroughly" reviewing the cases, her office did not interview anyone, not even the soldiers whose cases they were reviewing.

Asked how he could call the surgeon general's review "thorough" when no soldiers were interviewed, Tallman said he could not. "Let me be honest with you," he said. "I know nothing about this memo and little to nothing about the review." Tallman said the memo bearing his name was actually ghostwritten by Pollock's office. The lieutenant colonel added that as far as he knew, Pollock conducted no review at all.

Pollock's office quickly admitted that it had ghostwritten the Tallman memo but assured veterans' groups that the surgeon general had indeed conducted a review. In an e-mail Pollock's chief spokeswoman, Cynthia Vaughan, explained that the surgeon general did not want to interview soldiers because she felt they had no medically valid information to share. "Calling a soldier who underwent a 5-13 Chapter in 2003 and asking him (in 2007) to recall his mental condition in 2003 does not hold medical validity," Vaughan wrote...

The surgeon general tried to quell veterans' groups by emphasizing that, as stated in the March memos, the comprehensive review was conducted by a panel of health experts and that those experts "did not provide the initial evaluations." This wasn't a case of one doctor reviewing his own work, the surgeon general said.

Both of those assurances crumbled on May 4, when Army Times reporter Kelly Kennedy revealed that in fact there was only one reviewer: Col. Steven Knorr. Knorr was a strange choice to be the sole reviewer. He was far from an objective observer. As chief of Fort Carson's Behavioral Health unit, Knorr had overseen all the original diagnoses and, in his capacity as a psychiatrist, also diagnosed several soldiers with personality disorder.

Months earlier Knorr had spoken out in defense of the Army's practice of not interviewing soldiers' family or friends before labeling their condition "pre-existing." Unlike his staff, he said, family members are not trained to recognize signs of personality disorder, so speaking to them would be of limited value. "The soldier's perception and their parents' perception is that they were fine. But maybe they didn't or weren't able to see that wasn't the case..."

In the same interview, published in The Nation, Knorr said there was a simple reason why in so many cases the lifelong condition of personality disorder isn't apparent until after troops serve in Iraq. Traumatic experiences, he said, can trigger a condition that has lain dormant for years. "[Troops] may have done fine in high school and before, but it comes out during the stress of service," he said. Knorr's assertion was a sharp break from the accepted medical understanding of personality disorder and provoked a flood of angry letters from psychiatrists and veterans' leaders.

Veterans were further agitated by a vivid profile of Knorr, by NPR's Daniel Zwerdling broadcast in late May. Zwerdling details a memo written by Knorr in which he advises his doctors that trying to save every soldier is a "mistake." "We can't fix every Soldier," the memo states. "We have to hold Soldiers accountable for their behavior. Everyone in life beyond babies, the insane, and the demented and mentally retarded have to be held accountable for what they do in life."

Knorr's memo, which he posted on his office's bulletin board, warns his doctors not to take soldiers' descriptions of their ailments at face value. "We're not naïve, and shouldn't automatically believe everything Soldiers tell us," the colonel writes. Knorr also urges his doctors to discharge troubled soldiers quickly--as he puts it, "Get rid of dead wood."

If I understand what I have read, and it is accurate, then as an institution the United States Army Medical Corps has ignored all of the pre-qualifying screening that was conducted upon military recruits prior to induction, it has ignored the anecdotal reports coming from these soldiers, ignored the symptoms displayed by those same former recruits, subsequent to their deployment and experiences in the war zone in Iraq, ignored any available pre-induction history from family and associates of the former recruits, and ignored the prevailing findings and opinions of the medical profession as a whole, so that the Army Medical Corps and the Army as a whole, can just use, abuse and then wash their hands of any further responsibility for those patriotic sons and daughters of America, and those willing non-American citizens who have all volunteered to serve the United States.

I have been stewing over this since the last article by Joshua Kors appeared in The Nation, feeling anger, and disgust with our government and its institutions, and trying to think what I and other Americans who are outraged about this situation might be able to do to help turn things around for our wounded military personnel. I recently contacted Joshua Kors, and asked him if he had seen any progress with this issue since his last article was published in The Nation a month ago. Kors told me:

Not much in the power structure has changed since my articles. Nobody has yet to be held responsible, and the pre-existing Personality Disorder discharge system is still fully in place. That goes not only for soldiers who came back with psychological wounds, like PTSD, but also physical wounds, like the deafness and leg injuries discussed in my series.

Somehow, the fact that nothing has changed between Kors' first article and the intervening time after his second article is not surprising. Maybe it should also not be surprising that the situation for our soliders may be even worse. On November 15, Jason Knobloch, reporting via the Veterans For America web site wrote:

In today’s news, a soldier who had gone AWOL from Fort Drum, NY, because he wasn’t getting adequate treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was apprehended as his lawyer was negotiating his surrender to Army authorities. According to the report, Sgt. Brad Gaskins’ mental health began to deteriorate during his second tour in Iraq after he saw an improvised explosive device (IED) slaughter a family of four, and it only got worse from there. When he returned, he was diagnosed with PTSD in an outside facility, treated, and then returned to his unit. When he got back, the trouble began again, and when Gaskin asked to receive more treatment at the same hospital, he was told more time off would jeopardize his chances of receiving a medical release, and later almost stabbed his wife, after which he went AWOL. Fort Drum’s mental health facility currently has a staff of 31, with plans to add seventeen more, to serve 17,000 soldiers.

Also on November 15, AFP (Agence France-Presse) reported:

The US military is experiencing a "suicide epidemic" with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS.

At least 6,256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 -- an average of 17 a day -- the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.

While the suicide rate among the general population was 8.9 per 100,000, the level among veterans was between 18.7 and 20.8 per 100,000.

That figure rose to 22.9 to 31.9 suicides per 100,000 among veterans aged 20 to 24 -- almost four times the non-veteran average for the age group.

It seems that the Army is doing too little, and too late. It seems that a major obstacle to turning this situation around is General Pollock, the army's Acting Surgeon General, who may have forgotten her original medical training and lost any compassion she might have once had as she became a professional military bureaucrat. It seems this is what happens when a renegade administration, thinks that it can build an empire in the name of "democracy" by waging a phony war "on the cheap", when in fact, it has become quite an expensive war in terms of selling billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury securities to foreign governments (as of September 2007 mainland China held $396.7 billion in U.S. Treasury securities) and then turns around and disburses much of those borrowed funds to its partners in the private sector. Helping those private sector businesses leverage massive profits off the backs of current and future tax payers as they pursue the Bushliburton administration's Disaster Capitalism agenda (as laid out by Naomi Klein in "The Shock Doctrine-The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism").

The current treatment, or lack of appropriate treatment by the United States Army Medical Corps and the army as an institution of our government, toward the men and women in service to our people, is not acceptable to this veteran, and should not be acceptable to any veteran or any American citizens for that matter.
-Big Fella

(Coming In The Next Posting: What We All Can Do To Change This)

There's more: "The Shafting Of Our Patriots In Military Service - Part III" >>