While we have soldiers fighting far from home this Memorial Day, it's time to honor their service and that of all servicemen and women in our armed forces who came before them.

I served two combat tours of duty in Vietnam commanding an infantry platoon in the 101st Airborne. Having received the Bronze Star with V Device for Valor, I know that lip service doesn't cut it.

Every day our young men and women in uniform make incredible sacrifices for all of us.

We owe them our allegiance and our respect.

They uphold the principles and beliefs this nation was founded on, principles we too easily forget.

And we do easily forget...

Each of us knows that we have lost almost 2,500 of our nation's finest soldiers in the Iraq war already, but that number doesn't tell us the whole story.

Over 17,000 of our troops have been wounded in action. The good news, if there is any, is many more survive today than in past wars. The bad news is they end up living with sometimes unspeakable injuries. In fact, the number of our soldiers who come home with brain injuries is staggering.

As many of you know I am a totally disabled Army veteran. Yesterday due to the foresight of a friend of the family's, I was taken on a time trip to May 24 1972, the day before my father died, May 25th 1972, I was 16 at the time, soon to turn 17.

My brother joined the Army a week after our father died and wanted to go to Vietnam.Yes, I think he needed a check up from the neck up, he WANTED to go to Vietnam, he had to be crazy. They had decided to wind the war down by the time he finished basic and AIT, so they sent him to the DMZ of South Korea the last other war zone in 1972.

Why was this important, it took me back to the time of "real" anti-war protests, sit-ins, hippies, and Nixon, Watergate and all that was wrong in America, three decades ago.

The letters included the last legible letter my father ever wrote, to see his handwriting again 34 years later, shook me up for a few minutes, kind of like someone talking to you from their grave. He made me remember what a strong man he was, and the respect I had for him, and the lessons of life he taught me.

On Friday afternoon in a small room in Washington DC a Commission that is empaneled as a BI-Partisan Committee voted 11-2 to investigate the effects of totally disabled veterans who receive both VA Compensation and Social Security Disability, some of them receive these payments for the same service connected injuries, and some like myself receive them for totally unrelated reasons.

But the intent of this commission is to find out how much they get and to determine what is "fair". Let's discuss fair, you have 240,000 totally disabled veterans who receive both payments, but remember these are the most disabled of veterans, they can not work at all. Cutting their income will be devastating to the veterans and their families, in some cases probably causing bankruptcy's

This was posted today at Kos, dealing with PTSD and how DOD, the VA and Congress is failing in their obligation to care for the active duty service members and veterans they are creating in the new WW3 as dumya calls it  the rest of us call it PNAC's war.

The Iraq War PTSD Epidemic

The Bush White House and the Rubber-Stamp GOP-controlled Congress have launched so many assaults against the American people that I have lost count. But perhaps the most offensive of these assaults are against the military, military families and veterans.  President Bush saw fit to send our soldiers into an unnecessary war, using misleading intelligence. He then refused to properly protect the them in battle, provide the necessary medical care when they were redeployed homeward, and finally denied them and their families the financial security they have earned fighting for our nation.

What a week. Actually, what a past few months.

There's been a bit of a backstory going on with the fight for the mental healthcare of our troops. I'm not just talking now about the mental care they receive as vets after they return home -- we're talking now about the actual healthcare decisions the DOD is making for our troops on the battlefield.

This week's first strike was the GAO Report [pdf] stating that only 22% (1 out of 5) troops who are at risk for developing combat PTSD -- as determined via a mental health screening form, the PDHA [pdf], administered by the DOD -- are referred for further mental health evaluations. The DOD then released its response following the less-than-flattering media's coverage of the report stating:

"The level of our effort and our outreach is unprecedented," he said. "We have broken new ground."

New ground, indeed. Stunning, unbelievable new ground. Get your steel toe shoes on, folks, and follow me for the full story on what the DOD dustup is all about...

There is a major issue affecting today's service members and of veterans of wars recently fought and wars of our past. PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress disorder as it is known in the DSM-IV, the pyschiactric bible. This is not a subject you will see a lot of major news coverage on, as it is one of the naked ugly truths of war and other traumatic events, People other than veterans have it, war is not the only cause.

The survivors of the WTC and of New York City attacks of 9/11 have a high rate of diagnosis, the Federal Building on Oklahoma City, etc you see the things that can cause, even car accidents, physical attacks, rapes etc. It affects people from all nations, all ethnicities, but soldiers and other service men are more prone to it, than others, due to the images and events they are exposed to in service to this nation.

As a nation we owe these men and women the best care that we can provide them, not the worst, as is being done now. The GAO report issued this week shows that, it shows that DOD is not treating 78% of the people possibly affected by PTSD symptoms, they are just ignoring it.

With Memorial Day coming up fast, I thought that this might be something to think about:

Veterans Day Every Day #7

David T Harris for US Congress TX 06

A FOLLOW ME TO DC community project

For any one that has followed my out-of-the-box campaign thus far, I welcome you to become familiar with our community service efforts.  It is difficult running for office for anyone but I was certain that I would use the public forum, while available, to continue something that our family believes wholeheartedly in our own lives every day.  If everyone volunteered an hour a week or contributed $20 a month to a charity, I am confident it would change the world.  

Newspaper articles across the nation today make it seem as if the VA is doing some of the veterans they screwed over in the past few decades a favor, while increasing their workload and it will hurt the "new vets" because Congress forced this, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Below is a copy of my letter to the Editor of the New Jersey paper. See for yourself if the VA is really helping the veterans or just sticking it to them again.

Letter

Your article on the VA makes it sound as a staff shortage caused the problems of Low pay. The simple fact is that VA Regional Offices have a lot of wiggle room on many of the cases they decide, let's use the big one for the example PTSD. That is in the press a lot, and it is a subject I have personal familiarity with, as I have it.

The shrinks and social workers do the write ups on every visit, they make notes, on things like your wife is wearing a shirt that says F.T .Army or BUCHITS or anything else that they feel like, such as the veteran states that if we don't do this he is going down the hall and call his Congress person or Senator. Stuff that has no place in a medical record. They assign what they call GAF scores, an assessment of how your are functioning at that given hour, to their observations. The score's range from 0-100, most veteran get scores that range from 30 which is not good to scores in the 70's which means yes he has issues, but the veteran is handling it really well.

There are a lot of issues that affect veterans happening in Washington D.C. and elsehwere in the nation. They may affect you, or a family member or a friend. With 26 million veterans in America, the odds are that you know a vet, have a vet in the family or are one yourself, or may become one in the future and these issues will have an impact somewhere in your life.

 cross posted at KOS

 

As we move through National Military Appreciation Month which includes Loyalty Day (1st), VE Day (8th), Military Spouse Day (12th), Armed Forces Day (20th), National Maritime Day (22th) and Memorial Day (29th) -- and actually Mother's Day (14th), too -- I invite you to 'pin a poppy on' in remembrance of our lost veterans.

From the Concord Monitor:

The distribution of the bright red memorial flower is one of the oldest and most widely recognized programs of the [American Legion and] Auxiliary. From the battlefields of World War I, weary soldiers brought home the memory of a barren landscape transformed by wild poppies.

To honor their sacrifice, communities and veterans organizations across the nation (and world) kick up fund drives to help our current crop of veterans and their families. A petal or two of history and poetry below the fold in tribute to those who served in The Great War -- and beyond.

Also see the companion piece, Poppy Days: Dates, Drives, and Donations, at ePluribus Media for creative ways to help our veterans and their dependents this month of remembrance.

Why you should vote anti-republican in 2006 and 2008, I never thought I would be saying those  words myself. I am a military man, thru and thru, I joined the Army at age 18 in 1973, I served this nation from the Vietnam War era, served on the DMZ in South Korea, armed combat patrols, border incidents.I went to Germany and saw the Cold War up close and personal, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the feeling of impending doom from the Soviet Union. I left the Army in 1982 after helping  establish this nation's desert warfare training center at NTC Fort Irwin.

Facts after the fold.......................

This morning I was awake at 0230 hours EST, and found an editorial about the War in Iraq, and how it was wrong. Understandable, what wasn't was the citizens responses to it, the venom they had to the writer. They believe he is a "flaming liberal" he is just like all the other "talking heads" and just does not understand how W is standing alone in trying to "protect" America. http://www.theheraldbulleti n.com/opinion/local_story_0 80233940.html  /....

The responses are an eye opener, and that should say a lot since I spent 14 years in the Army, playing "follow the leader" but there do come times where you say wait, this is wrong and I just can't do it, in my opinion Iraq is one of those times. Afghanistan was the right use of our military forces, and Iraq was an idealogues quest, and the public is paying the price, in blood and deficits. More  Below the fold
 

Todays diary is a fictional "chat" with Rummy and Dr Chu of the DOD and their feelings towards veterans.  I can only imagine this is their responses after seeing them "chat" with the troops, and testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Veterans Affairs Committee.

They need the military to accomplish their missions to form the world into their eyes and minds way of looking at it. Which is my firm belief that it as twisted of some of their other authorized programs from the days gone by.

Military forces are supposed to be used to deter the need for combat, they should be used as a last resort, not as the first choice. If you send men and women into harm's way, then you owe their families the decency of signing the condolence letters by hand and not a machine. And the wounded and injured veterans deserve all their benefits, not be told they are to expensive and a detriment to America's ability to fight future conflicts. If you can't afford the cost of a war, don't throw one. Injured and dead veterans have costs attached to them, besides emotional costs to the family.

Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Fran O'Brien's Stadium Steakhouse, a restaurant beloved by our on-the-mend combat vets at Walter Reed Medical Center, has been refused a lease renewal by landlord Hilton Hotels. The restaurant's basement location in the Capitol Hilton will have to be vacated by May 1, 2006. [See this heart-tugging WUSA Channel 9 video report.]

The decision has created an understandable uproar in the veteran's community: Fran O'Brien's has been treating our severly wounded veterans to complimentary Friday night steak dinners for the past 2 1/2 years. Their generosity has become legendary, and going out for dinner at Fran O'Brien's has become a "rite of passage" after difficult months spent recovering from serious injuries in a sterile hospital bed. Veteran's families have begun asking Hilton Hotels to re-think their decision. To help them to do that, a petition has gone up...

The 3rd anniversary of the Iraq invasion finds an interesting situation brewing: returning veterans coping with posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] are no longer being hidden away from our view. Rather, the media is beginning ever-so-slightly to lift the veil on this nerve disorder affecting at least 16,000+ of our troops who've served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq.

Since we have so very little else to celebrate as another year moves forward with no end in sight to war and its victims, I'm going to focus on the good reporting on this issue that is finally, finally, seeing the light of day. And I celebrate the fact today that rather than using this anniversary to glamorize and glorify the war, the media seem to have decided to use it to introduce this balooning problem at last to the public. This give me soooo much hope...