tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59465741923562375182024-03-14T00:22:53.821-07:00Military & Veterans: Politics for the deservingMike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comBlogger2054125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-75390485500027699332012-10-15T01:40:00.000-07:002012-10-15T01:42:04.734-07:00<a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/10/10/2404391/nc-veterans-questions-lead-to.html">http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/10/10/2404391/nc-veterans-questions-lead-to.html</a><br />
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N.C. veteran's questions lead to class-action lawsuit against government<br />
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Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/10/10/2404391/nc-veterans-questions-lead-to.html#storylink=cpy<br />
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By Martha Quillin - mquillin@newsobserver.com<br />
By Martha Quillin The News and Observer<br />
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A North Carolina man’s quest to learn how the military experimented on him in the 1960s has turned into a class-action lawsuit for as many as 100,000 veterans the government used to test hundreds of drugs, chemicals and biological agents over more than 50 years.<br />
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U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in the Northern District of California last week said the case could go ahead on behalf of any current or former service members who were subjected to chemical or biological testing without their informed consent. The government has said as many as 100,000 people were used for such testing between 1922 and 1975, when the military says it halted human experimentation.<br />
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The suit seeks to lift the oath of secrecy soldiers say they swore about what they went through, and asks the court to compel the government to provide the health care it promised subjects when they participated in the tests. It does not ask for monetary damages because the government is immune from most damage claims brought by military personnel.<br />
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Defendants in the case are the Department of Defense, the Army, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the CIA, which worked together to plan and conduct the tests. Representatives of the VA and the Defense Department each said they could not comment on ongoing litigation.<br />
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In the 1980s, the National Academies of Science determined that the tests caused no significant long-term physical harm, except in veterans exposed to larger doses of mustard gas, according to VA. In 2004, the NAS followed up and said veterans could suffer post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of “perceived exposure to biochemical warfare agents.” The VA advises any veterans concerned about exposures during testing to contact their health care provider or local VA Environmental Health coordinator.<br />
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The plaintiffs in the case have uncovered documents that indicate veterans were exposed to mustard gas, Sarin, phosgene gas, Thorazine, LSD, amphetamines, barbiturates and other agents – sometimes at 10 or more times known tolerances. In response to the lawsuit, the government says the experiments did not cause long-term problems. The judge in the case said the government’s own documents indicate otherwise.<br />
Subjects volunteered for the tests, but most weren’t told what they were exposed to, or what the risks were, according to the lawsuit.<br />
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“This action chronicles a chilling tale of human experimentation, covert military operations, and heretofore unchecked abuses of power by our own government,” the suit says.<br />
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“These people were used as cannon fodder, as guinea pigs,” said Gordon Erspamer of Morrison & Foerster, a San Francisco law firm that brought the suit in January 2009 on behalf of several veterans and two organizations: Vietnam Veterans of America and Swords to Plowshares. Since the testing ended, Erspamer says, the agencies involved have resisted Congressional instructions to find the people it tested and notify them that they may have ongoing problems associated with the tests.<br />
“The government looks at them this way: ‘It’s not in our interest to try to find them; it’s not in our interest to treat them. It’s just going to cost us money,’ ” Erspamer said.<br />
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Erspamer also has represented soldiers injured by exposure to Agent Orange and has worked on behalf of veterans who were exposed to radiation during atomic testing. He agreed to take the case of the test vets after talking to Frank D. Rochelle of Jacksonville.<br />
Rochelle grew up in Onslow County and was drafted into the Army in 1968 at age 20. He went through boot camp at Fort Bragg and was assigned to Fort Lee in Virginia, where he soon saw notices asking for volunteers to test new military uniforms and equipment. The young private, enticed by the promise of no kitchen or guard duty for the duration of the tests, volunteered and was sent to what was then called the Edgewood Arsenal, north of Baltimore.<br />
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Once at Edgewood, Rochelle says, he was told some servicemen might be given the chance to test therapeutic drugs and those who did would be given Fridays off and a medal. He says they were promised they wouldn’t be harmed, that the drugs were risk-free and would be given at normal doses. Rochelle signed up. In one experiment, he says, he got one breath of an aerosol chemical so potent that he immediately had trouble breathing and seeing. He felt dizzy and nauseous, he says, and felt as if his legs were “falling through the floor.” He recalls being carried out of the room, and said, “I stayed high for two days.”<br />
During that episode, Rochelle hallucinated that animals were coming out of the walls. He thought his freckles were bugs moving under his skin and used a razor to try to cut them out.<br />
Before Rochelle left Edgewood, he says, he was told never to discuss his experiences there with anyone. He returned to Fort Lee and later served in Vietnam before getting out of the Army in 1970.<br />
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Confusing health issues<br />
A few years ago, Rochelle was having some health and psychological problems he couldn’t explain, including high blood pressure, memory loss, eye problems and PTSD-type symptoms including nervousness, sudden bursts of anger, and problems sleeping. At the time, Rochelle was still working in a civilian job at Camp Lejeune. He has since retired.<br />
“I started thinking, ‘What has happened in my life that could be causing this?’ ” Rochelle said. “I started thinking about those tests and I realized I knew nothing about the types of drugs I had taken.”<br />
Eventually, Rochelle, now 64, got his military medical records, which included information about his time at Edgewood. He now believes some of his current problems are related to a high dose of a drug he was given with properties similar to atropine, which works on the nervous system, and another drug, a powerful synthetic analogue of THC, the active component of cannabis.<br />
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Some 7,600 service members were used in experiments at Edgewood, and thousands more in testing done elsewhere, according to the lawsuit.<br />
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Erspamer says Rochelle is one of a rare few who have been able to get the VA to treat him for problems he believes are related to his time at Edgewood. Most are turned down because of the government’s position that the substances given in the experiments had no harmful effects.<br />
The whole purpose of many of the tests, Erspamer says, was to determine what doses of different drugs, chemicals or biological agents could be administered without causing death. During the Cold War years, especially, the government was searching for substances that could be used to get spies to talk during interrogations, that could incapacitate large numbers of people without killing them, allow them to be hypnotized, confuse them, lower their productivity, paralyze them or have other effects.<br />
Like other veterans, Erspamer says, Rochelle was reluctant to tell even his own doctor that he had been involved in the tests because he had been instructed never to discuss them. Some wouldn’t even tell the VA.<br />
The case is scheduled to go to trial in San Francisco next summer.<br />
Quillin: 919-829-8989<br />
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Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/10/10/2404391/nc-veterans-questions-lead-to.html#storylink=cpyMike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-85464158426426628072012-07-25T10:50:00.002-07:002012-07-25T10:50:40.284-07:00Remarks by Secretary Eric K. Shinseki at VFW Convention Reno Nevada 24 July 2012Remarks by Secretary Eric K. Shinseki<br />
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VFW Annual Convention<br />
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Senior Vice Commander-In-Chief [John] Hamilton, thank you for that kind introduction, and congratulations on your election as the next Commander-in-Chief. I look forward to working with you on making things better for Veterans.<br />
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Commander-in-Chief [Richard] DeNoyer, thank you for your many years of devotion to Veterans, and for your significant leadership of the VFW this past year. Godspeed to you and your family as you turn over leadership to John.<br />
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Let me also acknowledge National Adjutant "Gunner" Kent, National Executive Director Bob Wallace, National Service Director Bill Bradshaw, and other members of your leadership.<br />
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To Gwen Rankin, President of your VFW National Ladies Auxiliary, let me offer my thanks for the unwavering support the Auxiliary has provided to Veterans and their families for 100 years now. Congratulations to you and your members—past and present—on reaching such a distinguished milestone of service on behalf of America's Veterans!<br />
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Other members of the VFW, fellow Veterans, VA colleagues, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:<br />
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I am greatly honored to be addressing an organization that has been, for well over a century now, a powerfully important voice for Veterans' rights in the halls of Congress, in the Oval Office, and across the country. Bob Wallace has been your diligent representative and our reliable partner in doing what's needed.<br />
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I am especially honored to be following President Obama, who addressed you yesterday, to thank you and your families for your patriotism and service to the Nation. The President's commitment to Veterans was clear from our first meeting. It is genuine, it runs deep, and it is unwavering. His vision to transform VA resonated with me when we first met in November of 2008. His initiatives to provide Veterans and families better transitions from the military; better healthcare—especially mental health; faster and more accurate processing of compensation claims; better educational opportunities, jobs counseling, employment opportunities—that's why I am proud to be here today to report to you on the state of your VA.<br />
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Let me review how things looked three and a half years ago, what changes we have put into motion since, and where we are headed in the future.<br />
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Three and a half years ago, the country was heavily engaged in two operations—the first major war of the 21st century being fought by a smaller, all-volunteer force. Repeated deployments of that force have created issues that don't show up until later deployments. It takes a superb, disciplined fighting force to handle this kind of strain. The men and women who wear our Nation's uniforms today are magnificent. More of them are surviving catastrophic injuries because of improved body armor, better combat lifesaving skills, and rapid medical evacuation from battle zone to state-side hospitals.<br />
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But higher battlefield survival rates also mean more complex casualties—the compounding effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and multiple amputations—five quadruple amputees from this war—with complications of blindness and deafness and genitourinary injuries. We had to create a word for this—polytrauma—and we have since built five polytrauma centers of excellence, the best in the world, and an entire system of polytrauma care to treat these patients and enable them to go home.<br />
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Three and a half years ago, we were also still grappling with unresolved issues from two past wars—the Gulf War, over 20 years ago, and the Vietnam War, nearly 50 years ago now. We didn't take care of business back then, when we should have, and some Veterans were dying without benefits.<br />
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Three and a half years ago, 107,000 Veterans were estimated to be homeless in this rich and powerful country. The President has said, "[We won't] be satisfied until every Veteran who has fought for America has a home in America." But this rich and powerful country had suffered an economic downturn the likes of which we had not seen since the Great Depression—certainly, not in my lifetime. In spite of a collapsing economy, the President was determined not to let Veterans homelessness spiral out of control.<br />
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In 2009, there were over 23 million living Veterans in this country, but only 7.4 million of them were enrolled in VA healthcare and only 3 million were receiving compensation and pension benefits from VA. With less than a third of the Veteran population enrolled in VA, we had an outreach problem: Many didn't know about VA or their possible benefits. We had an access problem: Even if they knew about us, they had difficulty getting the services they needed. And we had, even then, a backlog in disability claims, one which had been there for decades.<br />
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Well, that was the landscape in 2009, and we needed to put things into motion. We immediately focused on three key priorities that came out of my talks with a variety of stakeholders. Bob Wallace and I, and the executive directors of the five other major VSO's, still meet near monthly today. Those priorities are unchanged:<br />
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•Increase Veteran access to VA benefits and services—one-third market penetration is not good enough;<br />
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•Eliminate the backlog in disability claims in 2015;<br />
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•And end Veterans homelessness in 2015.<br />
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Folks tighten up whenever you tag dates to goals, meaning the sense of urgency is probably about right.<br />
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The first order of business was to establish closer, more collaborative working relationships with DoD. As I often remind folks, very little of what we do in VA originates in VA—most originates in DoD. It takes both departments to create a seamless transition for separating Servicemembers to return home "career ready" to live, work, raise children, and contribute to restoring the strength of our economy.<br />
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The Secretaries of Defense—Bob Gates and Leon Panetta—and I have personally met nine times in the past 17 months. Leon Panetta is a dedicated public servant, who has been insightful, decisive, and a good friend to me and to Veterans, as is Bob Gates. Tomorrow, Secretary Panetta and I will testify together before a joint hearing of the house Armed Services and Veterans Affairs Committees—perhaps for the first time.<br />
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Our second priority was to fix VA's budget process. You can't create change without resources, and money is firepower. For the past three and a half years, VA has presented compelling arguments for strengthening VA's budget, and the President has been stalwart in his support.<br />
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In 2009, VA inherited a budget totaling $99.8 billion—a good budget, not spectacular, but a good one. In 2010, the President increased our budget to $127.2 billion—a near 30 percent increase in a single year. The President's 2013 budget request, currently before the Congress, is for $140.3 billion—a 40 percent increase since 2009.<br />
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During this period of economic downturn, few private-sector businesses and federal departments have sustained this kind of budget growth. In a discussion about values, I was once lectured, "Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value." Now, by that standard, there is no question where the President stands. He gets it—he understands our obligation to Veterans. He's provided VA the budgets that allow for meaningful change.<br />
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So, what have we put into motion these past three and a half years? First, we took care of some long overdue business:<br />
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•For you Vietnam Veterans, we granted presumption of service connection for three new Agent-Orange–related conditions: Parkinson's disease, hairy cell and other chronic b-cell leukemias, and ischemic heart disease.<br />
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•For you Gulf War Veterans, we granted presumption of service connection for nine diseases associated with Gulf War illness for Veterans of Desert Storm and Afghanistan. While we must continue to research what might have caused this illness, our responsibility is to diagnose and treat symptoms of these verifiable diseases.<br />
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•And for all combat Veterans with verifiable PTSD—World War II, Korea, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Operation Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan, and others—we granted the presumption of service connection.<br />
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These three decisions alone have dramatically expanded access to VA medical care for hundreds of thousands of Veterans. In addition, we have mounted an aggressive outreach campaign to educate Servicemembers and Veterans about VA's capabilities and their benefits. Since January 2009, enrollment in VA healthcare is up by nearly 800,000—a 10 percent increase. That's great news—we are expanding access.<br />
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And in expanding outreach and increasing access to VA healthcare, we also, understandably, increased the number of compensation claims—also good news. Veterans who previously had no access are now enrolling and submitting claims.<br />
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Three and a half years ago, the total claims inventory was roughly 400,000. Today, it's approximately 880,000. The backlog—the number of claims older than 125 days—was about 135,000 in 2009 and is roughly 580,000 today. Growth in these numbers—total and backlogged claims—is what happens when we increase access. But it was the right thing to do—for Vietnam Veterans, for Gulf War Veterans, and for combat Veterans of all wars.<br />
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One last snapshot of the claims backlog. In 2009, we completed 900,000 claims decisions—but took in one million claims in return. In 2010, we completed, for the first time, one million claims decisions—and took in 1.2 million claims. In 2011, we again produced a million claims decisions, but took in 1.3 million claims in return. Now look, if the total number of claims in our inventory today is 880,000 and we generated nearly three million claims decisions over the past three years, you know that today's inventory and backlog are not the same claims that were there three years ago, two years ago—not even a year ago. Now, there are sure to be a handful of exceptionally complex cases, but the process is dynamic.<br />
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It's also a big numbers process, and we do most all of it on paper. Paper is what we receive from DoD. With the planned draw-down of up to a million troops over the next five years, the number of new claims will continue to grow. It will take both departments for VA to go paperless. Hence, my close working relationship with Secretary Panetta—he and I are pulling our departments into the future.<br />
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You heard the President yesterday—solve the backlog! We are working hard and smart to solve this correctly. We already have a new automation tool called VBMS—the Veterans Benefits Management System—being piloted at two regional offices for over a year now. We'll have it up and running at 16 regional offices by the end of this year, and at all 56 regional offices by the end of 2013. We are also re-directing 1,200 of our most senior claims adjudicators—37 percent of our experienced staff—to the backlog, which ballooned while I asked them to focus on the 250,000 Agent Orange claims they just completed.<br />
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I have committed to ending the claims backlog in 2015, by putting in place a system that processes all claims within 125 days at a 98 percent accuracy level. With the President's strong support, we have the resources we need, and we are on track to do it.<br />
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To further increase access, we have added 57 new community-based outpatient clinics, 20 more mobile health clinics, and our fifth polytrauma center, opened in San Antonio last year. We have four new hospitals under construction—in Denver, Orlando, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. We will open Las Vegas on 6 August—the first new VA hospital opened in 17 years—and provide Veterans and Servicemembers stationed nearby the state of the art facility they need and deserve. As the President said yesterday, we keep our promises.<br />
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We have also invested heavily in new telehealth-telemedicine technologies to overcome the tyranny of distance and extend our reach into the most remote rural areas where Veterans live. Enhanced IT technologies are also making it easier for Veterans to make appointments, access their medical records, and find out about available benefits and services.<br />
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We have placed full-time women Veterans' program managers at 144 medical centers to advocate for women Veterans, and named women Veterans coordinators at all 56 regional offices to assist women with their claims. Since 2009, we've opened 19 clinics designed specifically to serve women, and provided training in women's health to more than 1,200 healthcare providers.<br />
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We've also increased access to our national cemeteries, opening three new national cemeteries and 14 new state cemeteries. Additionally, five more national cemeteries are planned, as well as five columbaria-only cemeteries in urban areas, and eight burial grounds in rural areas, owned and managed by VA but collocated with non-VA cemeteries. As some of you know, for the past 10 years, NCA has been the top-rated public or private customer service organization in the country, according to the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index—outperforming Google, Lexus, Apple, all the others—not a surprise when nearly three-quarters of NCA employees are Veterans.<br />
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In 2009, I told you that Veterans lead the Nation in homelessness, depression, substance abuse, suicides, and they rank right up there in joblessness, as well. As I mentioned earlier, 107,000 Veterans were estimated to be homeless in 2009. By January 2011, that estimate was down to 67,500. We believe that when the Department of Housing and Urban Development announces its 2012 estimate before the end of the year, that the estimated number of homeless Veterans will be below 60,000, keeping us on track to break 35,000 in 2013 and moving to end the rescue phase of Veterans' homelessness in 2015.<br />
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The prevention phase of defeating Veterans homelessness is ongoing and requires VA to focus all our capabilities to keep an invisible "at risk" population of Veterans and families from slipping into that downward spiral that ends up in homelessness. We have over 900,000 Veterans and eligible family members in training and education today—universities, colleges, community colleges, tech schools, and in the trades. Part of our prevention mission is to see them all graduate. Every one who flunks out in this economy is at high risk of homelessness. So my one-word speech to any student Veteran audience is "Graduate!" If I sound like your dad, I am. I'm paying most of your bills. So, graduate!<br />
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In 2005, at the height of operations in Iraq, we had 13,000 mental health professionals handling the healthcare needs of our Veterans. Today, we have over 20,000. We recently announced that we are hiring another 1,600 to increase our ability to address the growth in mental health requirements spawned by a decade of repetitive deployments.<br />
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We know that when we diagnose and treat, people usually get better, and the long-term trends of our treatment efforts are good. Among the 8.6 million Veterans enrolled in VA healthcare, the number receiving mental health treatment is up. At the same time, for Veterans who receive treatment, our suicide rates are down—an indication that treatment, including evidence-based therapies, works.<br />
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However, too many Veterans still leave the military with mental health issues we never find out about—because the issues weren't noted in their DoD records or because Veterans never enrolled in VA's healthcare system. Most Veterans who commit suicide—perhaps as many as two out of three—were never enrolled in VA. As good as we think our programs are, we can't help those we don't treat—another reason two secretaries meet regularly, and another reason increasing access is so important.<br />
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One of our most successful outreach efforts is our Veterans Crisis Line. DoD knows it as the Military Crisis Line—same number, same trained VA mental health professionals answering the phone, no cost to DoD. Since start-up in 2007, over 640,000 people have called in, including over 8,000 active-duty service members. We've made over 99,000 referrals for care and rescued over 23,000 from potential suicide. Some younger Veterans are more comfortable with chatting and texting, so in 2009 we added an on-line chat service and in 2011 a texting service.<br />
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We have worked to ensure greater collaboration between VA and DoD, especially in that critical phase before Servicemembers leave the military. We simply must transition them better. We do this best with warm handoffs between the departments—that is key to preventing the downward spiral that often leads to homelessness and sometimes to suicide. Last year we completed expansion of our joint DoD/VA Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES) from the original 27 sites to 139 sites—a major improvement towards a seamless transition to Veteran status. But there's still more VA and DoD can do together.<br />
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Secretary Gates and I worked these initiatives hard, and Secretary Panetta and I have worked them even harder. We are both committed to a fully operational integrated electronic health record (IEHR) by 2017.<br />
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Good jobs are essential for Veterans, and we are proud to have partnered with the First Lady's Joining Forces initiative and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Hiring Our Heroes campaign. The President, the First Lady, Dr. Biden have provided strong leadership in increasing employment opportunities for Veterans and spouses of military members. The President challenged private companies to hire or train 100,000 Veterans and spouses by the end of 2013. They have already received commitments from 2,100 companies for 175,000 hires—and 90,000 Veterans and spouses have already been hired.<br />
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VA has also joined private companies and other departments, like Defense, Homeland Security, and Transportation, in efforts to hire Veterans and assist others in hiring them.<br />
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In January, our hiring fair in Washington, DC, attracted over 4,100 Veterans, resulted in over 2,600 on-the-spot interviews, and more than 500 job offers on one day. We followed that success with an even bigger hiring fair last month in Detroit—in conjunction with our national Veterans small-business exposition. Over 8,000 Veterans participated, more than 5,700 were interviewed, and over 1,200 received job offers on the spot.<br />
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Simultaneously, 3,500 people participated in the Veteran small-business training exposition—it was our opportunity to bring Veteran small business owners into direct contact with our acquisition decision makers so they could better understand our procurement requirements, demonstrate their capabilities, and improve their ability to prepare competitive proposals for government contracts. It also increased the opportunity to hire unemployed Veterans—because Veterans hire Veterans.<br />
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So, where are we headed? I intend to be here to update you again next summer, and here's what I intend to report:<br />
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•We will have increased spinal chord injury funding by 28 percent between 2009-2013. By 2014, that increase will likely be 36 percent.<br />
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•We will have increased TBI funding by 38 percent between 2009-2013. By 2014, that increase will likely be 51 percent.<br />
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•We will have increased mental health funding by 39 percent between 2009-2013. By 2014, that increase will likely be 45 percent.<br />
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•We will have increased long-term care funding by 39 percent between 2009-2013. By 2014, that increase will likely be 50 percent.<br />
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•We will have increased prosthetics funding by 58 percent between 2009-2013. By 2014, that increase will likely be 75 percent.<br />
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•We will have increased women Veterans funding by 123 percent between 2009-2013. By 2014, that increase will likely be 158 percent.<br />
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•We will have increased OEF/OIF/OND funding by 124 percent between 2009-2013. By 2014, that increase will likely be 161 percent.<br />
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•Our Veterans Benefit Management System will be fully operational at most regional offices, and just 40 percent of claims will be older than 125 days.<br />
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Now, who doesn't think the President gets it down deep where it counts? "Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value." There is no question that our President highly values what Veterans, their families, and our survivors have meant to this country.<br />
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God bless our country. God bless our President. And may God continue to bless the men and women who serve and have served our Nation in uniform.<br />
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Thank you.<br />
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<strong>"Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value." </strong><br />
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<strong>There are many people who blame Gen Shinseki for not getting all the homeless vets off the street fast enough, or cleaning up the back log of compensation claims, instead he made the problem worse, he added three new presumptive medical issues for Vietnam veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and it added hundreds of thousands veterans entitled to service connection for Parkinson's disease, hairy cell and other chronic b-cell leukemias, and ischemic heart disease.</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>For the tens of thousands who died before these conditions were granted presumptive status, they were denied service connection for a medical problem that should have been SC and their families were denied compensation, CHAMPVA coverage and DIC benefits hopefully the ones that did file claims and were denied will be found and will be paid under the Nehmer decision.</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>Benefits delayed is benefits denied, it does not help the veteran if he dies before they are granted.</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>Previous VA Secretaries have gone on to positions with medical companies that do a lot of business with the VA thru private contracts, now while this is all legal is sure does appear strange to the average veteran. </strong><br />
<br />
<strong>Myself I hope we keep the President that has shown us how he values our service and has proved it from his request for funding for the VA, approved the VA to grant the 3 medical issues related to AO, that will cost billions of dollars, but was the right decision, and did not wait for Congress to play games with it, they tried to stop it once they heard about it, but General Shinseki had the law and the Oval Office on his side of the fight and Congress backed down.</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>4 more years</strong><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-68968949093707588242012-07-20T09:26:00.002-07:002012-07-20T09:26:38.004-07:00The results of FRAUD in govt documents<a href="http://www.justice.gov/usao/tnm/pressReleases/2012/7-16-12.html">DOJ Press Release</a><br />
<br />
Smithville Man Sentenced to Three Years in Prison for the Internet Sale of Phony Military Documents<br />
<br />
<br />
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEJuly 16, 2012 Robert E. Neener, 65, of Smithville, Tenn., was sentenced in federal court on July 13, 2012, to three years in prison for possessing and selling documents bearing counterfeit federal agency seals, and pretending to be a federal officer or employee, announced Jerry E. Martin, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Todd Campbell also ordered Neener to pay more than $43,000 in restitution to over 600 victims who had purchased documents from Neener through his Internet website, believing that the documents he sold were authentic and genuine.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“The results of this case should send a strong message to those who are either engaged in similar fraudulent activity, or are thinking about it,” said Jerry Martin, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. “Such persons should know that if evidence demonstrates that you have used the Internet to commit wire or mail fraud, you will be investigated, prosecuted and sentenced accordingly.” <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Neener pleaded guilty in March 2012 and admitted that from January 2007 through December 2008 he operated a document vending business from his residence in Smithville, Tenn., which he advertised via the Internet. In these advertisements, Neener falsely represented that he could provide customers with “authentic” military replacement documents which were “exact reproductions” of those originally issued and that he had contracts with military branches of the government. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Neener obtained more than $200,000 from customers who ordered thousands of<br />
<br />
documents, which included honorable discharges and military awards. Neener had no authorization from any federal agency to either make or sell these documents. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Neener also used the official seals of various federal agencies on most of these documents, including the Air Force; the Army; the Navy; the Department of Defense; Homeland Security; the Department of Justice; Veterans Affairs; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Coast Guard; and the Marine Corps, without authorization to do so. He also either signed or copied signatures of various federal officials on these documents, which made it appear that the various awards or certificates were endorsed and authorized by such officials. On some documents Neener fabricated the names and official positions of federal officials and on others, he forged the signatures of real persons, identifying them by the federal positions they actually occupied, including a former Secretary of the Navy and a former President of the United States. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Quentin G. Aucoin, Special Agent- in- Charge of the VA Office of Inspector General- Southeast Field Office, stated, “the VA Office of Inspector General is committed to aggressively investigating unauthorized use of the official VA seal for personal gain.” <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The case was jointly investigated by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Postal Inspection Service, with assistance from the U.S. Secret Service, the Tennessee Highway Patrol- Criminal Investigations Division, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The United States was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Hilliard Hester.<br />
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<br />
<br />
I am glad this scumbag was prosecuted, but I am kind of curious as to why he got only 3 years, the forgery he was doing made it possible for people to make claims, and who knows what the people were doing with the documents he was selling them. The sums make it sound like they were a lot more than 19.95.<br />
<br />
<br /><br />
<br />
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<br />Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-10769766801322689102012-07-14T08:23:00.001-07:002012-07-14T08:26:01.900-07:00<a href="http://www.census.gov/how/infographics/veterans.html"><img alt="A Snapshot of Our Nation's Veterans infographic image" height="4243" src="http://www.census.gov/how/img/census_veterans_580.png" title="A Snapshot of Our Nation's Veterans infographic image" width="580" /></a> [Source: <a href="http://www.census.gov/">U.S. Census Bureau</a>]<br />
<br />
click on the image to see in full window to read all infoMike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-53912747636543685382012-07-02T06:27:00.001-07:002012-07-02T06:29:38.703-07:00HARP 3.0 reducing the monthly mortgage payment<a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/home-front/2012/05/10/harp-30-rumor-mill-what-a-possible-extension-means-for-homeowners">http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/home-front/2012/05/10/harp-30-rumor-mill-what-a-possible-extension-means-for-homeowners</a><br />
<br />
Since I am on a fixed income due to medical disability and rely on Social Security Disability and VA compensation, I have to watch where I spend the dollars and pennies. Like most Americans the home we bought in 2006 at the height of the market has since lost value, not as bad as some areas like Las Vegas or Southern California where the values have dropped as much as 50%.<br />
<br />
But our home is underwater and we checked into the HARP program thru our bank who handles the mortgage, like most banks our mortgage was sold to Freddie Mac. Last week the mortgage department of our bank called and is ready to process the HARP paperwork, it seems to have been done with a few phone calls for information, they e mailed my wife the estimates of the new data to see if this is what she wanted to do.<br />
<br />
It will reduce our interest rate from 6.5% to 4.25 amd our payments from 1200 a month to 870.00, now that is a pay raise we can appreciate. It seems as if everyone else has not heard of the recession, SCE&G has filed for nearly a 7% increase in electric rates, I have never received a 7% increase in income.<br />
<br />
So while I may be able to "save" some major money on the mortgage, other people seem to be determined to get it back in some other form, the sad part of it is, even if I was not able to utilize the HARP program, corporations like SCE&G will still be seeking large rate increases.<br />
<br />
What makes me shake my head over the reasoning for the rate increase is that they seem to be shocked to learn they have thousands of miles of lines, poles and substations etc, that need maintenance, replacement etc, this is 2012, they have been putting this equipment in the ground for decades, and they just now realize it cost money to repair or replace these items, I would have assumed these costs would have been built into the rates long before this. Why go for 7% all at once, why couldn't this have been phased in over years at one half percent or one percent a year, this proposal is harmful to the elderly and disabled, some people will either have to turn off the air conditioners or start buying more Ramen noodles so they can keep the lights on.<br />
<br />
I am grateful to President Obama and his team that have made HARP available to my family and millions of others that need the ability to refinance underwater mortgages, that would not normally be able to. This will also help to stabilize the national housing market which benefits us all.Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-2376770846198110462012-06-25T23:47:00.000-07:002012-06-25T23:49:59.964-07:00MKULTRA LEGACY: the Stain of Dishonor and the Prerequisites for Redemption<br />
<br />
MKULTRA LEGACY: the Stain of Dishonor and<br />
<br />
the Prerequisites for Redemption<br />
<br />
by Gordon P. Erspamer<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Despite the passage of four decades, America, and its military, has never come to grips<br />
with its own ghastly programs of using soldiers as guinea pigs to test chemical or biological<br />
weapons such as LSD, sarin, nerve gases, plague, mescaline, anthrax, and hundreds of others. At the same time, they also conducted mind control experiments, as soldiers and others were administered drugs, and septal implants were inserted in the sinus cavities ala The Manchurian Candidate. The secret research programs, originally code-named MKULTRA, but continued under a long succession of other code names, were conducted mainly by the US Army from 1943 until at least 1975. However, the CIA provided planning, financial support, and field testing.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The participants in the experiments were recruited by the U.S. Army and lured by promises of no KP duty, a four-day work week, the promise of medals and special recognition. At the same time, they were sworn to secrecy and forced to sign a general consent form without informed consent or even knowing the nature of the toxic substances that were sprayed in their faces, applied to their skin or injected into their veins. And the government continues to try to hide the fact that Nazi members were recruited to help devise these experiments as part of Operation Paperclip, and that many of the biological experiments were modeled after those conducted by the notorious Colonel Shiro Ishi in Manchuria and Japan.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
When word of these programs leaked out in the mid-1970s, the CIA Director, Admiral<br />
<br />
Stansfield Turner, promised Congress that they would notify and provide medical treatment to the affected veterans. See Final Report of the Senate Select Committee (Church) on Intelligence Activities, 94th Cong. (1976), Book I: XVII (“Foreign and Military Intelligence: Testing and Use of Chemical and Biological Agents by the Intelligence Communities”), at<br />
<br />
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book1/html/ChurchB1_0197a.htm. See also Project MKULTRA, The CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification: Joint Hearing. Before the Senate Select Committees on Intelligence and Human Resources, 95th Cong. (1977), Testimony of CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner at<br />
<br />
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/e1950/mkultra/Hearing03.htm.<br />
<br />
However, that promise was more observed in the breach, as the process of notifying and<br />
<br />
treating the victims of human experimentation has barely scratched the surface of their acts of treachery. And now we learn that the DOD will not even compile an initial roster of affected veterans until 2012. Unlike Britain, which long-ago compensated its veteran participants in a parallel group of tests at Porton Down, America is waiting patiently for these veterans to die, and it is one of the greatest injustices of our time.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Yet, despite the long passage of time, the agents responsible for this program continue to<br />
<br />
offer rationalizations to justify their own acts or those of their predecessors. They cite the fears engendered by the Cold War, real or imagined, and raise the chance that our enemies might beat us to the punch. You hear a lot of denial or outright lies, and the trail of documents suddenly disappeared in a document purging ordered by the CIA Director, Richard Helms. And they speak of sacrifices for the common good (not their own, but of those men exposed). The doctors<br />
<br />
among them don't like to talk about the Hippocratic Oath or basic principles of morality. Rather, they talk a lot about science, advances in learning, and the thrills of discovery. They forget that “Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession” (Julia Ward Howe). And you hear nothing or very little about the long-term health effects of their programs, and their failure to notify, monitor or treat the victims, who have experienced a panoply of adverse health effects such as PTSD, breathing and lung problems, problems with internal organs, and countless others.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Walter Lippman once said that a man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct<br />
<br />
though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so. The perpetrators of these<br />
<br />
programs have stained their honor. In a time of admitted polarization and confrontation, they<br />
<br />
sacrificed their scruples, and victimized their fellow man. Their honor will never be restored<br />
<br />
unless they candidly admit their complicity and fault, and do everything in their power to help<br />
<br />
restore the health and well-being of their victims. With each death, their debt swells, and the<br />
<br />
possibilities of redemption become more distant and unlikely. And a miasma of shame, as toxic as the clouds created by biological weapons, continues to hang over this great nation.<br />
<br />
And when the last man standing succumbs, a pall of infamy and shame will become<br />
<br />
indelible, and choke the last glimmer of redemption, and history will justly record another<br />
<br />
chapter in the annals of infamy.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the<br />
<br />
views of any institution or person to whom he is affiliated. Gordon P. Erspamer is the lead<br />
<br />
counsel in the class action compliant which is pending in San Francisco Federal District Court,<br />
<br />
Vietnam Veterans of America, et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, et al., Case No. 09-0037 CW<br />
<br />
(ND Cal. 2009). More information regarding this lawsuit can be found at<br />
<br />
www.edgewoodtestvets.org. See the following links for the complaint in this action and its<br />
<br />
exhibits. VVA, et al. v. CIA, et al. First Amended Complaint, First Amended Complaint Exhibit<br />
<br />
A, First Amended Complaint Exhibit B, First Amended Complaint Exhibit C<br />
<br />
sf-2742291<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.leighday.co.uk/News/2008/January-2008/Porton-Down-test-veterans-settle-claim-for-3m">http://www.leighday.co.uk/News/2008/January-2008/Porton-Down-test-veterans-settle-claim-for-3m</a> <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
31 January 2008 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Today, 31st January, the lawyers representing 359 of the Porton Down Test Veterans and the Ministry of Defence announced that a settlement had been reached for the claims of the Veterans for the sum of £3m to be split between the veterans. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Further, an apology has today been given by Derek Twigg Under Secretary of State for Defence and Veterans Minister in the House of Commons. The wording of the apology is: <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
‘The Government has in the past made clear the debt owed by the nation to those who took part in the trials at Porton Down designed to ensure that the United Kingdom had the defensive and deterrent capabilities to counter the very real and horrific threat that chemical weapons would be used against our Armed Forces or civilian population as they had against others; the security of the country rested on the contribution of those people who took part in these trials. <br />
<br />
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The trials which were carried out in the period of the Cold War were in many cases undertaken under considerable pressures of time as new threats emerged. The Government accepts that there were aspects of the trials where there may have been short-comings and where, in particular, the life or health of participants may have been put at risk. The Government would wish sincerely to apologise to those affected.’ <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Then there was the settlement by the Canadian Government for the similar tests that were being done at the same time as Porton Downs and Edgewood Arsenal. These were compensations outside of the normal VA compensation, the Canadian and British soldiers still receive disability compensation and medical care, none of the soldiers or veterans or their dependents were made "wealthy" by the settlements, it was just more of an apology and a small financial stipend. In other words an apology with meaning.</blockquote>Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-47405242705867310662012-06-14T16:22:00.001-07:002012-06-14T16:22:55.512-07:00THE CHOICE IN THIS ELECTIONTHE CHOICE IN THIS ELECTION<br />
<br />
<br />
This election offers the American people a chance to break the stalemate between two fundamentally different visions of how to<br />
<br />
grow the economy, create middle-class jobs, and pay down the debt.<br />
<br />
President Obama believes the economy grows not from the top down, but from the middle class out. His economic plan does<br />
<br />
that by investing in education, energy, innovation and infrastructure, and by reforming the tax code—each of which will create<br />
<br />
American jobs—and paying down our debt in a balanced way that ensures everyone pays their fair share.<br />
<br />
Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe that if you take away protections for consumers and workers and cut taxes<br />
<br />
even more for the wealthiest Americans, the market will solve all our problems on its own. Their refusal to ask the wealthiest<br />
<br />
Americans to pay even a nickel more in taxes is the biggest source of gridlock in Washington, and the reason we haven’t reached<br />
<br />
a grand bargain to bring down our deficit and Congress hasn’t passed a jobs plan that would put a million people back to work.<br />
<br />
President Obama’s Vision to Create an Eco nomy Built to Last<br />
<br />
To create jobs, reduce our deficit, and build a stronger economy from the middle class out,<br />
<br />
President Obama believes we need to:<br />
<br />
• Invest in education to make sure we have the best-educated, best-trained workers in the world<br />
<br />
• Control our energy future by ending taxpayer subsidies to oil companies and use the savings to become the global<br />
<br />
leader in clean energy technology, including wind, solar, biofuels, clean coal, nuclear, and natural gas<br />
<br />
• Invest in our most promising scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs so the greatest innovations of this century<br />
<br />
are made in America<br />
<br />
• Rebuild our infrastructure to attract businesses to America and move our goods and information all over the world<br />
<br />
• Reform our tax code to create jobs in America, pay down our deficit in a balanced way, and ensure everyone from<br />
<br />
Wall Street to Main Street plays by the same rules and does their fair share<br />
<br />
Mitt Romney Would Return to Failed Policies that<br />
<br />
Crashed our Eco nomy and Hurt the Middle Class<br />
<br />
Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down—the same<br />
<br />
approach that benefited a few but crashed the economy and hurt the middle class.<br />
<br />
According to independent economists, Romney’s economic plan would increase the deficit, fail to create new jobs in the<br />
<br />
short term, and even make our economy worse. His plan would:<br />
<br />
• Roll back financial reform and let Wall Street write its own rules again<br />
<br />
• Repeal health reform, costing tens of millions of Americans their health coverage and allowing insurance companies<br />
<br />
to discriminate based on preexisting conditions<br />
<br />
• Provide a $5 trillion tax cut weighted to millionaires and billionaires, blowing a hole in the deficitMike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-30922251981846110412012-06-11T13:50:00.002-07:002012-06-11T13:50:58.155-07:00VA Announces Aggressive National Recruitment Effort to Hire Mental Health ProfessionalsFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
June 11, 2012 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
VA Announces Aggressive National Recruitment Effort to Hire Mental Health Professionals<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
WASHINGTON (June 11, 2012)- Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki recently announced the department would add approximately 1,600 mental health clinicians as well as nearly 300 support staff to its existing workforce to help meet the increased demand for mental health services. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has developed an aggressive national recruitment program to implement the hiring process quickly and efficiently.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“The mental health and well-being of our brave men and women who have served the Nation is the highest priority for this department,” said Secretary Shinseki. “We must ensure that all Veterans seeking mental health care have access to timely, responsive and high-quality care.” <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
VA has developed an aggressive national mental health hiring initiative to improve recruitment and hiring, marketing, education and training programs, and retention efforts for mental health professionals, to include targeted recruitment in rural and highly-rural markets. This will help VA to meet existing and future demands of mental health care services in an integrated collaborative team environment and continue to position VA as an exemplary workplace for mental health care professionals. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It is critical for VA to proactively engage psychiatrists and other mental health care providers about the vital mission to deliver high-quality mental health services, especially for returning combat Veterans.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“The VA mental health community is aggressively transforming the way mental health care services are provided to the Veteran population. As the mental health care workforce continues to increase, VA is committed to improving Veterans’ access to services, especially for at-risk Veterans,” said VA’s Under Secretary for Health Dr. Robert Petzel. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The national recruitment program provides VHA with an in-house team of highly skilled professional recruiters employing private sector best practices to fill the agency’s most mission critical clinical and executive positions. The recruitment team consists of 21 national, dedicated health care recruiters targeting physician and specialty health care occupations. These recruiters also understand the needs of Veterans because each member is a Veteran. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
VHA has also established a hiring and tracking task force to provide oversight for this initiative to move the process forward expeditiously in a focused manner to ensure challenges, issues, or concerns are addressed and resolved. This task force is accountable for reporting progress in hiring of mental health professionals in these occupations: psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers, mental health technicians, marriage and family therapists and licensed professional counselors. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
VHA anticipates the majority of hires will be selected within approximately six months and the most “hard-to-fill” positions filled by the end of the second quarter of FY 2013. VA has an existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff that includes nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Interested mental health care providers can find additional information about VA careers and apply for jobs online at www.vacareers.va.gov. To locate the nearest VA facility or Vet Center for enrollment and to get scheduled for care, Veterans can visit VA’s website at www.va.gov. Immediate help is available at www.VeteransCrisisLine.net or by calling the Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 (push 1) or texting 838255.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-3101224646067097192012-06-07T14:12:00.001-07:002012-06-07T14:12:07.548-07:00<object height="281" width="500"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5bUM6jgRUUA?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0">
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<br />
<br />For Immediate Release April 26, 2012 <br />
<br />
<br />
41,<br />
<br />
AN INTIMATE LOOK AT THE LIFE AND CAREER OF GEORGE H.W. BUSH,<br />
<br />
DEBUTS JUNE 14, EXCLUSIVELY ON HBO<br />
<br />
--------<br />
<br />
A Film By Jeffrey Roth;<br />
<br />
Executive Produced By Jerry Weintraub<br />
<br />
--------<br />
<br />
The first documentary to tell George Herbert Walker Bush’s story in his own words, the exclusive HBO presentation 41 is a rare, intimate glimpse at the life and times of the 41st president of the United States. Featuring unprecedented access to Bush as he reflects on the highs and lows of his life from his beloved summer home in Kennebunkport, Me. and presidential library in Texas, 41 debuts THURSDAY, JUNE 14 (9:00-10:45 p.m. ET/PT), commemorating the president’s 88th birthday on June 12.<br />
<br />
Other HBO playdates: June 14 (3:50 a.m.), 17 (noon), 18 (9:00 a.m.), 20 (12:45 p.m. 12:30 a.m.), 23 (2:00 p.m.) and 29 (6:15 p.m.)<br />
<br />
HBO2 playdates: June 20 (9:15 p.m.), 25 (2:15 p.m., 11:15 p.m.) and 30 (noon)<br />
<br />
One of the most experienced politicians ever to achieve the presidency, George H.W. Bush shares anecdotes from his childhood, family, service in World War II and political career, including his roles as U.S. envoy to China, director of the CIA and vice president of the United States in the Reagan administration, as well as his term as president.<br />
<br />
Written and directed by Jeffrey Roth, 41 was filmed over a 17-month period, from Sept. 2009 to Feb. 2011. The film is executive produced by Jerry Weintraub, a long-time personal friend of the Bushes, and himself the focus of “His Way,” an acclaimed HBO documentary.<br />
<br />
41 – 2<br />
<br />
“I am so proud to be a friend of George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara Bush,” comments Weintraub. “And so proud that our friendship includes this wonderful film about two wonderful people.”<br />
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41 captures the personal side of a very public figure who cherishes his family life, in particular wife Barbara, his spouse for 67 years, a record among presidential marriages. President from 1989 to 1993 and father of the 43rd president, George W. Bush, the elder Bush continues to make public appearances today and spends much of his time on his boat or with children and grandchildren. An avid fisherman, Bush last parachuted on his 85th birthday and swears he will do it again on his 90th, which he says proves that “old guys can still do fun things.”<br />
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Born June 12, 1924, George H.W. Bush spent much of his childhood at his family’s summer home, built by his grandfather in 1902, at Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport, Me. His close-knit family was fortunate to avoid the hard times of the Great Depression, with George attending boarding schools, where he excelled in sports, serving as captain of the soccer and baseball teams and playing basketball. At 17, he met 16-year-old Barbara Pierce at a Christmas dance. “We fell in love. Old fashioned, falling in love,” he recalls.<br />
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After Pearl Harbor was bombed, the 18-year-old Bush became a naval aviator. He describes the events of Sept. 2, 1944, when his plane was shot down by anti-aircraft fire; he ejected and parachuted into the sea, and was rescued by a sub. Bush went home and married Barbara, and when the war ended a short time later, like many G.I.s, he entered college – at Yale – where they had a son, George Walker.<br />
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Following the advice of a family friend, he went to work in the oil fields of West Texas. Their family continued to grow with the birth of daughter Robin, who died of leukemia at age three. Robin’s death remains an emotional subject for Bush. Though they had three more sons and another daughter, he admits he couldn’t talk about losing her for years.<br />
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41 – 3<br />
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In Texas, despite the fact that the state at the time was overwhelmingly Democratic, Bush decided to run for Senate. He lost, but rebounded by running for the House of Representatives and won, becoming a rising star in Washington. President Nixon subsequently appointed Bush ambassador to the U.N. and later, chairman of the Republican National Committee.<br />
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Then came Watergate. “I wanted to believe Nixon as long as I possibly could,” he notes, but with evidence mounting that the White House lied, he wrote a memo suggesting the president resign. In hindsight, Bush has mixed emotions about Nixon, reflecting, “On the one hand you can never get over the lie. On the other, in many ways, he was a very good president.”<br />
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After serving as U.S. envoy to China and director of the CIA, Bush ran for president unsuccessfully, but became Ronald Reagan’s vice president. Ascending to the presidency in 1989, his years in office were marked by numerous historic events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War and the protests in Tiananmen Square.<br />
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When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bush says he knew America would have to act. He considered Iraq’s invasion an “overt, crystal-clear wrong,” and despite opposition, felt the war was just. Bush was heartened when Saddam Hussein was driven out of Kuwait.<br />
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After losing his bid for reelection to Bill Clinton, George returned with Barbara to a “normal” life in Houston and Kennebunkport. He calls his beloved summer home the “anchor” to his “windward.” It’s where the memories are, where his family comes to visit and where he’s been coming his whole life. “And where,” he says, “I will remain until my last days.”<br />
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The president, who to this day has not written a memoir telling his life story, agreed to participate in the documentary after meeting Roth and seeing his first film, “The Wonder of It All,” a documentary about the Apollo moon walkers. 41 is Roth’s second documentary film.<br />
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41 – 4<br />
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41 is produced and directed by Jeffrey Roth; executive produced by Jerry Weintraub and Stephen Beck; written by Stephen Beck and Jeffrey Roth; edited by Janice Hampton.<br />
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<br />Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-70147898049932950182012-06-06T16:44:00.002-07:002012-06-06T16:44:21.908-07:00documents-show-cia-stockpiled-antimalaria-drugs-as-incapacitating-agentsBy: EdwardPerello<br />
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On: 06.06.12 23:09<br />
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http://truth-out.org/news/item/9601-a-guantanamo-connection-documents-show-cia-stockpiled-antimalaria-drugs-as-incapacitating-agents<br />
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A Truthout analysis of historical records concerning government research and nonmedical use of antimalarial medications has revealed that such drugs were the objects of experimental research under the CIA's MKULTRA program. Even more, one of these drugs, cinchonine, was illegally stockpiled by the CIA as an "incapacitating agent." <br />
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Antimalarial drugs were studied as part of the CIA's mind control program MKULTRA. Cinchonine, an antimalarial drug derived from chichona bark, was one of the drugs used by the operational components of MKULTRA, code-named MKNAOMI and MKDELTA. The CIA worked with researchers for the Army's Special Operations Division, a secret component of the US Army Chemical Corps based at Fort Detrick, to develop delivery systems for the drugs.<br />
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Revelations concerning CIA interest in use of antimalarial drugs would be of historical interest, as it has never been written about before. But such interest gains contemporary significance in the light of actions taken by the Department of Defense (DoD) in the "war on terror," and the fact that a key DoD expert on antimalarial drugs was a psychiatrist involved in training personnel for Guantanamo interrogations.<br />
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In January 2002, the DoD deliberately decided that all incoming detainees at Guantanamo would be given a full treatment dose of the controversial antimalarial drug mefloquine, also known as Lariam. The purpose was supposedly to control for a possible malaria outbreak, in deference to concerns from Cuban officials.<br />
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But specialists in malaria prevention have said they have never heard of such presumptive treatment for malaria by mefloquine in this type of situation. Furthermore, a summary of antimalarial measures at Guantanamo given to Army and Center for Disease Control (CDC) medical officials at a February 19, 2002, meeting of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board failed to describe the mefloquine procedure approved a month earlier.<br />
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Was mefloquine used at Guantanamo to help produce a state of "learned helplessness" in detainees? Were experiments conducted on adverse side effects of mefloquine on the prisoners held there?<br />
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Some years ago, this might have been considered a crazy scenario to even consider. While there is no smoking gun that can prove mefloquine was used for nefarious purposes, a strong case can be made that use of the drug at Guantanamo was not related to malaria control.<br />
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Antimalaria Drugs and MKULTRA<br />
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The revelation concerning cinchonine came from hearings the Senate's Church Committee held in September 1975 on CIA "Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents." The agency's illegal stockpile of chemicals and drugs, which included the antimalarial drug cinchonine, was supposed to have been destroyed by order of President Nixon in December 1969.<br />
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At the time of the president's order, the US had also signed an international agreement that such chemical and biological weapons would be destroyed, so the revelation of the CIA's stockpiling of such substances was highly embarrassing to the US government at the time.<br />
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At the behest of Congressional investigators, the CIA provided an inventory of all "lethal" and "incapacitating agents" they had kept contrary to presidential order. On this list, the CIA indicated it held two grams of cinchonine, stored as an incapacitating agent, that is, a substance meant to temporarily disable an individual. Temporary incapacitant or not, the CIA inventory listing for cinchonine states, "Overdose leads to severe cardiac convulsions, nausea and vomiting."<br />
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In separate testimony from another Senate investigation, a CIA-linked researcher, Dr. Charles F. Geschickter, told Sen. Edward Kennedy in 1977 hearings that the CIA was interested in antimalarial drugs that "had some, shall I say, disturbing effects on the nervous system of the patients." Geschickter's CIA researchers became interested in these antimalarial drugs as part of the work they were doing in the CIA's MKULTRA program. Dr. Geschickter ran the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research, and the Kennedy hearings also revealed how the fund laundered money for MKULTRA projects.<br />
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According to MKULTRA documents released as part of a related Senate investigation in 1977, research into quinolines, the class of drugs that include cinchonine, quinine and the modern antimalarial drug mefloquine (Lariam), was part of MKULTRA subprojects 43 and 45.<br />
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The CIA prior to the Congressional investigations destroyed most records concerning MKULTRA and chemical, biological and bacteriological research. Moreover, according to Senate testimony by former CIA Director William Colby, many of the organizational directions concerning both research and operationalization of such weapons were never written down.<br />
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An Antimalarial "Incapacitant"<br />
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Cinchonine is a quinine-derived drug and similar in some ways to the artificial quinine derivative antimalarial drug mefloequine, also known as Lariam. Mefloquine, a product of Army research, has been the subject of numerous controversies over its side-effect profile, and as recently as 2009, the DoD significantly cut back on its use for the military.<br />
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The stockpiling of cinchonine as an "incapacitating" agent was directly contrary to Nixon's order that all such toxic and bacteriological stockpiles held by the DoD and the CIA be destroyed. Other incapacitating agents held by the CIA for years after the disposal order included the powerful hallucinogen BZ; the anticholinergic drug Cogentin; digitoxin; and Phencyclidine HCL, commonly known as "Angel Dust"; among other drugs.<br />
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The CIA's stockpile of dangerous substances also included numerous "lethal agents," including shellfish toxin; cobra venom; fish toxin; and numerous substances only known by their code names ("E-4640," "F-270" etc.). It is not known if any of the lethal or incapacitating agents were ever used, or if so, by whom or where. (The one exception the CIA admitted to was the use of an arsenic suicide pill provided to Francis Gary Powers, a U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. Powers did not use the pill.)<br />
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According to Senate testimony, the stockpile was discovered after a review of secret programs ordered by Colby. Originally, the various drugs and weaponized biological substances were kept at the Army's Fort Detrick compound and were apparently moved later to a CIA storage facility.<br />
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The neurological side-effects of mefloquine are similar to the side effects of cinchonine. Cinchonism (or quinism) includes such side-effects as blurred vision, tinnitus, skin rashes, vertigo, nausea, headaches and other even life-threatening serious health problems. Mefloquine has been cited for neurological, but also psychological side-effects, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, confusion, hallucinations, bizarre dreams and suicidal and homicidal behavior. The effects can be long or short-term.<br />
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But even the "short-term" effects can be debilitating, as one military doctor, Captain Monica Parise, told a group of other physicians at a government meeting in May 2003. Parise told the meeting of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB) that "there are a host of other more acute less severe neuropsychiatric issues that occur short-term [with mefloquine], such as insomnia, strange dreams, fatigue, lack of energy, inability to concentrate and some people have reported that those effects have lasted a very long time."<br />
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Parise noted that it takes "three, four, or five months to really wash the drug out of your system," and that she'd "heard that there might be some data in DoD ... that might shed light" on how the drug had "ruined people's lives." As we shall see, a psychiatrist present at this same meeting was also involved in training other psychiatrists to assist Guantanamo interrogators.<br />
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Administering Mefloquine to All the Guantanamo Detainees<br />
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In December 2010, Truthout and Seton Hall School of Law's Center for Policy and Research revealed that it was medical standard operating procedure (SOP) to give all arriving detainees full treatment doses of the antimalarial drug mefloquine upon arrival at the US prison camp. The military's own newspaper, Stars and Stripes, followed up with their own story a few weeks later.<br />
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A treatment dose of mefloquine is five times the amount taken weekly by those who use the drug for prophylactic purposes. Larger doses are associated with a higher percentage of side effects.<br />
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The Truthout investigation showed that at the time the SOP was put in place, internal discussions within the DoD and an Interagency Malaria Working Group were expressing strong doubts about the serious neuropsychiatric side effects of the drug. Despite this, the surgeon general of the JTF-160 Task Force at Guantanamo signed off on the unprecedented mefloquine protocol.<br />
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The chief surgeon, who also served as commander of the Navy Hospital at the base, was Capt. Albert Shimkus. Shimkus told Truthout in late 2010 that he had first sought consult regarding the use of malaria drugs from an assortment of agencies, including officials from the CDC, the Navy Environmental Health Center (NEHC) and the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center at Fort Detrick, Maryland. All three agencies have told Truthout they were not involved in this decision or had no documents related to such consultation.<br />
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Shimkus told Truthout in a phone interview last October that the US State Department "would have been involved" in discussions about malaria concerns at Guantanamo, though he maintained no State Department officials were directly involved in the "clinical decision making."<br />
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In June 2004, the CDC announced, "'presumptive treatment' without the benefit of laboratory confirmation should be reserved for extreme circumstances (strong clinical suspicion, severe disease, impossibility of obtaining prompt laboratory confirmation)." Hence, "presumptive treatment" - the mass administration of a drug without knowing whether or not it is actually necessary - is reserved for situations when there is no possibility of laboratory confirmation of malaria, but that was not the case at Guantanamo.<br />
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Yet, even a year later, the mefloquine SOP was renewed at Guantanamo.<br />
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DoD spokeswoman Maj. Tanya Bradsher told Truthout, "A decision was made to presumptively treat each arriving Guantanamo detainee for malaria to prevent the possibility of having mosquito-borne [sic] spread from an infected individual to uninfected individuals in the Guantanamo population, the guard force, the population at the Naval base, or the broader Cuban population."<br />
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According to Bradsher, "The mefloquine dosage was entirely for public health purposes to prevent the introduction of malaria to the Guantanamo area and not for any other purpose." Nevertheless, when hundreds of contract workers from malaria-endemic countries such as India and the Philippines were brought by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) to build the new Guantanamo Delta Block in 2002, there was no DoD scrutiny of any exposure by these workers to malaria.<br />
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According to Bradsher, KBR alone was responsible for its own workers, belying a concern over possible reintroduction of malaria to Cuba, which, according to Captain Shimkus, had produced State Department concerns when it came to the arriving detainees.<br />
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In his October 2011 interview, Shimkus also said he sent "pretty detailed reports" regarding the mefloquine decision to JTF-160's Commanding Officer, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Michael R. Lehnert. He had nothing further to say about a statement made to Truthout a year earlier in which he stated that he had been told not to talk about the mefloquine decision.<br />
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When Shimkus was asked if he was aware of any detainees who had suffered psychiatric problems because of drugs administered to them, he said, "Maybe. That's confidential," adding a moment later, "No for that."<br />
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He also rejected the opinions of two medical researchers who wrote in PLoS Medicine in April 2011 that "medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the DoD neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm" to detainees. "They have an opinion and it should be out there," Shimkus said.<br />
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Army Mefloquine "Specialist" Trained Psychiatrists for Interrogations<br />
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A top psychiatrist working for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (OASD-HA), Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, traveled to Guantanamo in October 2002, purportedly to investigate a spurt of suicide attempts among the detainees. Within weeks, according to the AFEB minutes cited earlier, she attended an "experts" meeting on "Malaria Chemoprophylaxis" at the CDC in January 2003 that considered problems with the "neuropsychiatric adverse drug reactions" of mefloquine. Indeed, according to the AFEB speaker, Captain Parise, they specifically included a psychiatrist - presumably Ritchie - in their discussions.<br />
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Did Colonel Ritchie bring knowledge of the effects of mass mefloquine administration at Guantanamo to this meeting? We don't know and Colonel Ritchie, now retired from the military and chief clinical officer for the District of Columbia's Department of Mental Health, would not return a request for comment. A public spokesperson for OASD-HA told Truthout it had no connection with any decision to use mefloquine at Guantanamo.<br />
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It would be strange, if not highly unlikely that, given the widespread interest in mefloquine adverse reactions at the DoD and contemporaneous statements that the DoD was conducting research on this, that the effects of the Guantanamo mefloquine SOP were never examined.<br />
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Ritchie's involvement in mefloquine issues can also be ascertained by the fact that, in 2004, Ritchie, by then "Psychiatry Consultant" to Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley, gave a presentation to the DoD's Deployment Health Clinical Center on the "Neuropsychiatric Side-Effects of Mefloquine."<br />
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Of convergent interest is the fact that, according to Dr. Ritchie, she taught psychiatrists slotted for assignment to the military's Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) working at Guantanamo and possibly elsewhere. She is, at this point, the only known person potentially linking military activities surrounding both mefloquine and interrogations or torture.<br />
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According to an Army surgeon general description of BSCT training during the period Colonel Ritchie was involved, such training included instruction in methods of inducing "learned helplessness."<br />
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"Learned helplessness" is a condition of near-total psychological breakdown produced by inability to escape an extreme set of stressors. Its study is associated with the work of psychologist Martin Seligman, who did research on the subject as far back as the 1960s. In the 1990s, all the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape schools except the Navy school discontinued the use of the waterboard in their training program precisely because it tended to produce "learned helplessness" in its students, the opposite of the kind of effect they were seeking.<br />
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A Guantanamo Autopsy Tests for Mefloquine<br />
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The months-long period of time it takes for mefloquine to leave the system may have been involved with a decision to test a detainee at Guantanamo who had committed suicide for the presence of mefloquine in his bloodstream. But the detainee, whose autopsy report included toxicology results that show he was tested specially for mefloquine, had been at Guantanamo for five years at the time of his death.<br />
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Abdul Rahman Al Amri entered Guantanamo in February 2002 and would have been given a treatment dose of mefloquine at that time. We do not know why he would have been tested for its presence over five years later. All but one of the other detainees for whom we have autopsy reports due to purported suicides were not tested for mefloquine, showing such testing was not standard procedure.<br />
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Al Amri was also found dead with his hands bound behind his back, and his death as well as that of 2009 suicide Mohamed Salih Al Hanashi are under investigation by the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Executions, primarily because of Truthout's coverage of these events.<br />
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A Plausible Hypothesis<br />
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The discovery that the CIA researched antimalarial drugs as part of its mind control program and, moreover, operationalized at least one of these drugs as an "incapacitating agent" means that the hypothesis that mefloquine was used for similar purposes at Guantanamo is not inconsistent with a known pattern of governmental behavior.<br />
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There are many reasons to question the supposed use of mefloquine at Guantanamo for purely public health purposes. Consider the following:<br />
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The mass use of treatment levels of mefloquine at Guantanamo was unprecedented.<br />
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The drug was limited to only one group of potential malaria carriers.<br />
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Use of mefloquine for presumptive treatment continued for years past the point when the DoD was already manifestly aware of the drug's dangers.<br />
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The mefloquine SOP was hidden from medical authorities at the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board.<br />
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Finally, there is the fact no government agency will admit to advising use of the drug, even when a Guantanamo medical officer states they were involved. <br />
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As a result of all the above, it appears highly possible that the motive for the drug's use was to psychologically disorient and physically debilitate all or some portion of incoming prisoners.<br />
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sad to see some of the past may be showing it's ugliness again. I had hoped that MKULTRA and everything related to Edgewood Arsenal and the illegal experiments were a closed door.<br />
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<br />Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-25133493116924652882012-06-06T10:24:00.001-07:002012-06-06T10:24:12.014-07:00Litttle Rock Veterans Home a messLITTLE ROCK - In less than three months three top ranked administrators have left the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs, and they each have left scandals behind them.<br />
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On Friday, Deputy Director Lawrence Pickard was fired because the VA says he collected almost $600,000 in illegal maintenance fees from veterans at the Little Rock Veterans Home.<br />
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Newly-appointed Director Cissy Rucker fired Pickard after he admitted to knowing he was collecting excess fees since December 2010.<br />
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"Because he did not take immediate action he was terminated," said VA spokesperson Kendall Thornton.<br />
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Former Director David Fletcher resigned last month after an audit revealed $200,000 in funds that were improperly logged. Janet Levine, a former VA Home administrator, was fired in April for misappropriating nearly $600,000 at the Little Rock Veterans Home, according to the Arkansas VA.<br />
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"We're going through transitions and we have a new state director that's been in place to correct these issues and to make sure that it does not happen again," said Thornton.<br />
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At the center of it all is the Little Rock Veterans Home, where the VA claims Levine and Pickard have collected a combined $1.1 million in illegal fees to veterans living there.<br />
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"The Little Rock Veterans Home was collecting fees from residents who had a disability rating of 70 percent or above after a federal rule change ended that practice in 2009," said Thornton.<br />
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She says the affected veterans will receive their money back over a period of time that has not yet been determined.<br />
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Still, one advocacy group isn't satisfied and they're letting the department know.<br />
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They recently created a YouTube video entitled "Swindling Arkansas Veterans" that blasts the troubled the state Department of Veterans Affairs for its recent money mismanagement.<br />
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"Our goal was to create a higher level of accountability and transparency," said Teresa Oelke, State Director of Americans for Prosperity - Arkansas Chapter. "Hard-working Arkansas taxpayers and especially our v eterans deserve better," said Teresa Oelke<br />
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The VA believes its new director will restore credibility to the department.<br />
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"We are working every single day hard to make sure that this does not happen again and that we are going to rebuild the trust of the veterans of Arkansas," said Thornton.<br />
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Criminal charges against Pickard are unlikely, according to the VA.<br />
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Why are charges unlikely? Where is the Attorney General or the States Attorney General, if veterans were stealing the money they would be prosecuted, so why are not officials who used their position to steal money not being prosecuted? Send them to jail and demand restitution, the same that would happen to a veteran or their spouse or child who stole from the government, in this case these were government employees stealing from disabled veterans, by the power of their position, there is nothing lower in my opinion. Then to tell us the veterans community that they won't even be charged is a double whammy, hold them accountable.<br />
<br />Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-91188572708921419222012-06-01T12:27:00.001-07:002012-06-01T12:27:43.947-07:00VA Outreach for Veterans Retraining Assistance Program Garners Over 12,000 Applicants since May 15<br />
New Education Benefit for Unemployed Veterans Has Strong Response<br />
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VA Outreach for Veterans Retraining Assistance Program Garners Over 12,000 Applicants since May 15<br />
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WASHINGTON (May 31, 2012) – Within two weeks of being announced, a program to give skills training to some unemployed Veterans has garnered over 12,000 online applications, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. <br />
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“VA is committed to supporting Veterans as they seek employment. This initiative will help provide education and training so that Veterans have an opportunity to find meaningful employment in a high-demand field,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “We will continue to build on the success of our initial outreach efforts to Veterans.”<br />
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Called the Veteran Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP), the program allows qualifying Veterans between the ages of 35 and 60 to receive up to 12 months of education assistance. Maximum payments are equal to the full-time rate for the Montgomery GI Bill – Active Duty, currently $1,473 monthly. <br />
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Under VRAP, Veterans apply on a first-come, first-served basis for programs that begin on or after July 1. VA began accepting applications on May 15. Forty-five thousand Veterans can participate during the current fiscal year, and up to 54,000 may participate during the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2012.<br />
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The goal of the program is to train 99,000 Veterans for high-demand jobs over the next two years. <br />
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To qualify Veterans must:<br />
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Be 35 to 60 years old, unemployed on the day of application, and have been issued discharges under conditions other than dishonorable;<br />
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Be enrolled in education or training after July 1, 2012, in a VA-approved program of education offered by a community college or technical school leading to an associate degree, non-college degree or a certificate for a high-demand occupation as defined by the Department of Labor; <br />
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Not be eligible for any other VA education benefit, such as the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the Montgomery GI Bill, or Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment;<br />
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Not have participated in a federal or state job training program within the last 180 days; and <br />
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Not receive VA compensation at the 100 percent rate due to individual unemployability.<br />
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While the initial response has been encouraging, VA officials stress the need for a sustained effort to reach potential VRAP applicants. <br />
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“Besides the Veterans themselves, we are asking anyone who knows of an unemployed Veteran to help us get the word out so everyone can take advantage of this new benefit,” said Curtis Coy, VA’s deputy undersecretary for economic opportunity. “With the help of our Veterans community and our partners in the Department of Labor, we hope to reach as many eligible Veterans as possible.” <br />
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In addition to its national outreach campaign, VA will seek out potential VRAP-qualified Veterans through online applications and at the National Veterans Small Business Conference being held in Detroit June 26-28. During 2012, VA representatives will also provide VRAP information and assistance at hiring fairs sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce through the Hiring Our Heroes campaign. <br />
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For more information on the Veterans Opportunity to Work (VOW) program, the Hire Heroes Act of 2011, VRAP, high demand occupations, and application procedures, visit the website at www.benefits.va.gov/VOW, or call VA National Call Center toll free at 1-800-827-1000. <br />
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Veterans may also access the VRAP application online at https://www.ebenefits.va.gov through eBenefits, a joint project between VA and the Department of Defense.<br />
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Veterans are also encouraged to visit the nearly 3,000 One-Stop Career Centers across the nation for assistance from staff, Local Veterans’ Employment Representatives (LVERS), and Disabled Veterans’ Outreach Program (DVOP) specialists. Center locations are listed at www.servicelocator.org. <br />
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<br />Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-66418285020118960432012-01-05T17:39:00.001-08:002012-01-05T17:39:58.767-08:00First meeting of IOM SHAD II Committee January 19 in Washington, DCFirst meeting of IOM SHAD II Committee January 19 in Washington, DC<br /> <br />***We invite you to share this announcement with other interested individuals or organizations***<br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />In response to the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010 and an ensuing request from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the IOM has assembled a committee of experts to conduct an epidemiological study comparing the health status of the SHAD veterans with a comparison population. This study will build on knowledge gained from a prior study conducted by IOM between 2003 and 2007. <br /><br /> <br /><br />As part of the data collection process, the committee will plan and conduct meetings to receive suggestions and input from SHAD veterans about their experiences so that the study can be informed by the insights of these veterans.<br /><br /> <br /><br />The first meeting of the Committee on Shipboard Hazard and Defense will take place on January 19-20, 2012, at the Keck Center of the National Academies, 500 Fifth St. NW , Washington , DC. An agenda for the open session of the meeting on January 19th is available at http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=IOM-BSP-10-08 and at an IOM study site: http://www.iom.edu/Activities/Veterans/SHADII.aspx A second committee meeting will be held February 23-24, 2012, in Sacramento, California.<br /><br /> <br /><br />If you would be interested in providing brief comments at the meeting on January 19 in Washington , DC or on February 23 at the meeting in Sacramento , CA , please contact Jon Sanders at jsanders@nas.edu. On January 19, public comments will be heard during the late afternoon. Time constraints may limit the number of speakers who can be accommodated, but all written submissions will be welcome.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Written materials can be submitted to the committee through the IOM staff at the e-mail or postal addresses shown below. Please note that any comments or materials submitted to the committee in paper or electronic form will normally become part of the study’s public record. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Committee on Shipboard Hazard and Defense II<br /><br />Institute of Medicine, Keck 775<br /><br />500 Fifth Street, NW<br /><br />Washington, DC 20001<br /><br />SHADStudyII@nas.edu<br /><br /> <br /><br />Background<br /><br />From 1962 to 1973, more than 5,800 military personnel, mostly Navy personnel and Marines, participated in Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense) -- a series of tests of U.S. warship vulnerability to biological and chemical warfare agents. Only some of the involved military personnel were aware of these tests at the time. Many of these tests used simulants, which are substances with the physical properties of chemical or biological warfare agents, that were thought at the time to be harmless. The existence of these tests came to light many decades later.<br /><br /> <br /><br />In 2007, the Institute of Medicine ’s Medical Follow-up Agency (MFUA) published a report on the long term health effects of participation in Project SHAD, based on the results of a health survey (the report is available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11900). In the new study, an expert committee will work in conjunction with IOM's MFUA and build on knowledge gained from the previous IOM study. The SHAD II study will use the established list of SHAD participants and the comparison population determined from the prior study.<br /><br />The results of the study will be provided in a brief IOM report by the study committee and an analytic paper for publication.<br /><br />Questions about the study or providing materials for the committee’s consideration should be directed to study director Lois Joellenbeck (ljoellen@nas.edu) or program associate Jon Sanders (jsanders@nas.edu).<br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />Lois Joellenbeck, Dr.P.H.<br /><br />Study Director<br /><br />Institute of Medicine<br /><br />The National Academies<br /><br />500 Fifth St. N.W.<br /><br />Washington, DC 20001<br /><br />202-334-1715<br /><br />ljoellen@nas.edu<br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br />Lois Joellenbeck, Dr.P.H.<br /><br />Study Director<br /><br />Institute of Medicine<br /><br />The National Academies<br /><br />500 Fifth St. N.W.<br /><br />Washington, DC 20001<br /><br />202-334-1715<br /><br />ljoellen@nas.eduMike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-69591598962436223532011-12-16T10:44:00.000-08:002011-12-16T10:45:22.265-08:00Drawing Down Troops from Iraq Infographic<img src="http://msw.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/Troop-Withdrawl-MSWatUSC-Infographic.jpg" alt="Drawing Down Troops from Iraq Infographic - MSW@USC" width="700" border="0" /><br />Brought to you by USC: MSW ProgramsMike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-56159679187879575192011-11-03T21:55:00.001-07:002011-11-03T21:55:33.975-07:00Gulf War Syndrome: A lot of questions, few answersGulf War Syndrome: A lot of questions, few answers<br /><br />By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 1:36 pm Thursday, Nov 3<br /><br />Twenty years ago, the United States sent almost 700,000 soldiers to Kuwait and Iraq as part of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. The war was quick. Bombing began on January 17th and the whole thing was officially over by February 28th. If you started a semester of school just before the first Gulf War began, the conflict would have ended before you even took your midterm exams.<br /><br />But this short war left a long tail of consequences.<br /><br />Shortly after the War ended, people who’d served in the Gulf began to turn up in Veterans Hospitals, complaining of a range of symptoms: Fatigue, unexplained pain in their joints and muscles, memory problems and cognitive impairment, malfunctioning digestive systems, and more. There wasn’t a clear pattern—different soldiers reported different clusters of symptoms, some of the people who had symptoms had arrived in the Gulf after the fighting ended, other soldiers had boots on the ground from the beginning but no symptoms. As the years went by, epidemiological studies showed no increase in cancers or other deaths in Gulf War veterans, aside from suicides and accidents. Yet, the symptoms were quite clearly linked to service in the Gulf. The same symptoms occur among other groups of military veterans, but are significantly less common. Today, more than 250,000 U.S. veterans report suffering from one or more unexplained symptoms that have, together, come to be known as Gulf War Syndrome. Scientists are still debating the cause, or even if there is one cause.<br /><br />In the October 2011 issue of the journal Radiology, Dr. Robert Haley and his colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center published research that identified a nervous system abnormality that exists in some Gulf War Syndrome patients, but not in the healthy veterans who served with them. Haley says it’s evidence that the Syndrome is actually the result of exposure to a miasma of toxins, particularly low doses of sarin nerve gas, extremely high doses of various pesticides, and a drug meant to protect users from the effects of nerve gas.<br /><br />But, while everybody agrees veterans are suffering, not everyone agrees with Haley’s conclusions, or his evidence. In fact, some big reviews have discounted it completely. There’s a lot we don’t know, but the stakes aren’t just academic. Research on the cause of Gulf War Syndrome affects the funding, benefits, and well-being of the veterans. Ultimately, this Syndrome represents a big, fat example of what happens when the timetables of good science don’t match up with the timetables of individual health needs.<br /><br />New Pieces<br /><br />It all began at Khamisiyah. This town in Iraq was the site of a storage center, filled with munitions, including warheads loaded with two different nerve agents, sarin and cyclosarin. In March of 1991, American soldiers blew up the Khamisiyah storage depot, not realizing that there were chemical weapons inside. The diluted chemicals fell on thousands of soldiers who were downwind of the explosion. Nobody was monitoring the air for chemical weapons at the time, and no one reported or was treated for symptoms consistent with nerve gas exposure. But in very low levels, the chemicals were there.<br /><br />It doesn’t take much sarin or cyclosarin to cause noticeable symptoms. And we know what those symptoms are. As the chemicals attack the central nervous system, victims first get runny noses, watery eyes, and feel a tightness in their chests. As the poisoning progresses, they lose control of bodily functions, twitch and jerk uncontrollably, and finally lose consciousness. That’s all well documented.<br /><br />But we don’t really know what happens to people exposed to minute amounts of sarin. If the chemical is there, but the dose is so low there’s no symptoms, can it still have an effect on your body years later? That’s where sarin and Gulf War Syndrome cross paths.<br /><br />Robert Haley thinks he’s found a way to prove that the poison and the illness are more than just passing strangers. His study focused on a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Sarin (and certain pesticides that work through a similar mechanism) attack the enzymes that break down acetylcholine. The rhythym of a burst of acetylcholine, followed by breakdown of acetylcholine, followed by a new burst is what allows information to be sent from one neuron to another. If the breakdown doesn’t happen reliably, the message disappears, like an image on a black and white TV suddenly going all white. Haley hypothesized that soldiers who suffered from symptoms associated with Gulf War Syndrome would also have suffered long-term damage to this system.<br /><br />To test that, Haley measured blood flow in soldiers’ brains. Anything that inhibits the enzymes that break acetylcholine down should also slow blood flow to certain parts of the brain, including the hippocampus. If previous exposure to sarin had damaged those systems, Haley thought, then the brain might not respond in a normal way when the acetylcholine system was put to the test. He took 57 soldiers from a single battalion, some who had symptoms associated with Gulf War Syndrome and some who didn’t. The soldiers were assigned, at random, to get either an injection of a saline placebo, or an injection of a drug that would inhibit acetylcholine breakdown. Then Haley looked at how the different brains responded.<br /><br />He saw a clear difference. Both healthy soldiers and those with symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome showed normal blood flow to the hippocampus under normal conditions, and with the saline injection. With the injection of the inhibiting drug, however, the picture changed. The healthy soldiers’ brains responded exactly as expected: Blood flow to the hippocampus slowed, and the people got tired. Some of the sick soldiers, however, had a very different experience. When exposed to the drug, their brains didn’t seem to know how to respond. In some, blood flow to the hippocampus actually increased, in others it decreased far more than was normal, and for some blood flow stayed exactly the same. Haley says this is evidence of damage. Those soldiers’ acetylcholine systems no longer functioned as they should.<br /><br />Old Puzzle<br /><br />That seems pretty damning, but Haley’s new study has its faults. While it does mark a replication of results from one of his own earlier studies, Haley’s research has focused exclusively on small sample sizes within a single unit—the 24th Reserve Naval Construction Battalion. When the Khamisiyah storage depot was demolished, that unit wasn’t in a location where they would have been likely to receive even a small dose of the sarin. Haley believes they may still have been exposed to sarin gas from another source, or that the damage is due to exposure to the high levels of pesticides that Gulf War veterans remember applying directly to their clothing and skin.<br /><br />Haley has also chosen to define Gulf War Syndrome differently than most other researchers. The Centers for Disease Control defines it as, “as the presence, for 6 months or longer, of one or more symptoms from at least two of the following clusters: general fatigue, mood and cognitive abnormalities, and musculoskeletal pain.”<br /><br />Instead, Haley has used surveys of the 24th Reserve Naval Construction Battalion to split the Syndrome into Syndromes, based on clusters of symptoms. In a 1997 paper, he identified six different syndromes. This new paper focused on three of those: Veterans who reported problems with attention, memory, and reasoning; those who reported far more serious cognitive problems with disorientation, confusion, and balance; and veterans whose symptoms clustered around joint and muscle pain and fatigue.<br /><br />That makes it difficult to directly compare Haley’s results to those of other scientists. It also muddies the results of his own work. The veterans with confusion and muscular-skeletal symptoms showed damage to their acetylcholine systems, just as I told you before. But the veterans with memory and attention problems didn’t. Their brains seemed to be functioning normally, and it’s hard to say what, if anything, that means.<br /><br />Haley’s work hasn’t been replicated by others, says Simon Wessely, head of the department of psychological medicine at King’s College, London. Using larger samples, drawn from multiple British military units, Wessely found no neurological differences between people experiencing symptoms of Gulf War Illness, and those who were not. A 2004 American study turned up similar results. All of this suggests to Wessely, and other researchers, that Gulf War Syndrome is psychological in nature—not that soldiers are making up their symptoms, or that they really aren’t impaired, but that the symptoms stem from legitimate psychological causes, like post-traumatic stress disorder.<br /><br />There could be more to it than that, however. Other researchers have found neurological differences between Gulf War veterans who were likely to be downwind of Khamisiyah and those who weren’t.<br /><br />Roberta White, professor of environmental health at Boston University, found that the volume of white matter in veterans’ brains varied with their exposure to Khamisiyah—those who likely had high exposures had lower volumes of white matter. In a separate study, White’s team found that likely higher exposure to sarin from Khamisiyah also correlated with poor performance on cognitive tests.<br /><br />The confusing part is that results like these doesn’t necessarily tell you much about Gulf War Syndrome. Linda Chao, with the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease and and the department of radiology at the University of California San Francisco, has run a couple of studies looking for neurological differences in a group of more than 400 Gulf War Veterans. She found that neurological damage didn't correlate with people who experienced Haley’s definition of Gulf War Syndrome, nor with people who experienced the Syndrome the way the CDC defines it. But she did find that neurological damage correlated with likely exposure to sarin from Khamisiyah.<br /><br />In other words, the people with neurological damage were exposed to sarin, and some of them show observable evidence of that damage, but those people aren’t necessarily ones reporting symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome.<br /><br />Right now, Gulf War Syndrome is like a puzzle with pieces missing. The theory linking it to toxin exposure makes sense in a lot of ways, but doesn’t line up with all the evidence. Studies are often contradictory, seldom replicated by independent researchers, and frequently use small sample sizes. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people are receiving treatment and benefits (or not, as the case may be) based on an incomplete picture. Haley’s new, small study presents some important questions, but doesn’t do much to help clarify the situation.<br /><br />Instead, if we really want to understand Gulf War Syndrome we need two things: More studies using large sample sizes drawn from a wide swath of Gulf War veterans (something Haley says he’s turning his research towards next), and more attempts to replicate the findings of other researchers. Without that, all we have is a lot of important questions, and no answers.<br /><br />Find Out More:<br /><br />• The Gulf War and Health — National Academies summary of research, published in 2010.<br /><br />• Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors and Gulf War Illness — a 2008 research paper by Beatrice Golomb of the University of California San Diego. It looks at epidemiological evidence of whether sarin and pesticides can damage the acetylcholine system in the way Haley has proposed, and what the symptoms of that damage would likely be.<br /><br />• GulfLink — The primary Department of Defense website for Gulf War Illness information.Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-48020716361108180582011-09-06T05:17:00.000-07:002011-09-06T05:23:27.078-07:00Panel Hears Grim Details of Venereal Disease TestsPanel Hears Grim Details of Venereal Disease Tests<br /><br />August 30, 2011<br />By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.<br /><br /><br />Gruesome details of American-run venereal disease experiments on Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers and mental patients in the years after World War II were revealed this week during hearings before a White House bioethics panel investigating the study’s sordid history.<br /><br />From 1946 to 1948, American taxpayers, through the Public Health Service, paid for syphilis-infected Guatemalan prostitutes to have sex with prisoners. When some of the men failed to become infected through sex, the bacteria were poured into scrapes made on the penises or faces, or even injected by spinal puncture.<br /><br />About 5,500 Guatemalans were enrolled, about 1,300 of whom were deliberately infected with syphilis, gonorrhea or chancroid. At least 83 died, but it was not clear if the experiments killed them. About 700 were treated with antibiotics, records showed; it was not clear if some were never treated.<br /><br />The stated aim of the study was to see if penicillin could prevent infection after exposure. But the study’s leaders changed explanations several times.<br /><br />“This was a very dark chapter in the history of medical research sponsored by the U.S. government,” Amy Gutmann, the chairwoman of the bioethics panel and the president of the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview.<br /><br />President Obama apologized to President Álvaro Colom of Guatemala for the experiments last year, after they were discovered.<br /><br />Since then, the panel, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, has studied 125,000 pages of documents and has sent investigators to Guatemala. While the panel will not make its final report until next month, details emerged in hearings on Monday and Tuesday.<br /><br />The most offensive case, said John Arras, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia and a panelist, was that of a mental patient named Berta.<br /><br />She was first deliberately infected with syphilis and, months later, given penicillin. After that, Dr. John C. Cutler of the Public Health Service, who led the experiments, described her as so unwell that she “appeared she was going to die.” Nonetheless, he inserted pus from a male gonorrhea victim into her eyes, urethra and rectum. Four days later, infected in both eyes and bleeding from the urethra, she died.<br /><br />“I really do believe that a very rigorous judgment of moral blame can be lodged against some of these people,” Dr. Arras said.<br /><br />Also, several epileptic women at a Guatemalan home for the insane were injected with syphilis below the base of their skull. One was left paralyzed for two months by meningitis.<br /><br />Dr. Cutler said he was testing a theory that the injections could cure epilepsy.<br /><br />Poor, handicapped or imprisoned Guatemalans were chosen because they were “available and powerless,” said Anita L. Allen, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school and a panelist.<br /><br />The panel’s hearings also brought to light that a local doctor had invited the American researchers, and that Guatemalan military and health officials had initially approved the work. In 1947, an international conference on venereal diseases — based on the experiments — was held in Guatemala City, according to Dr. Rafael Espada, the vice president of Guatemala, in remarks quoted by the Guatemalan news media.<br /><br />Dr. Espada, a physician, is leading his country’s inquiry into the matter and is expected to deliver his report in October. On Monday, he told Guatemalan reporters that five survivors, all in their 80s, had been found and would receive medical tests.<br /><br />Dr. Cutler’s team took pains to keep its activities hidden from what one of the researchers described as “goody organizations that might raise a lot of smoke.”<br /><br />Members of the bioethics commission recalled Nazi experiments on Jews and said that Dr. Cutler, who died in 2003, must have known from the Nuremberg doctors’ trials under way by 1946 that his work was unethical.<br /><br />Also, according to Dr. Gutmann, Dr. Cutler had read a brief article in The New York Times on April 27, 1947, about other syphilis researchers — one of them from his own agency — doing tests like his on rabbits. The article stated that it was “ethically impossible” for scientists to “shoot living syphilis germs into human bodies.” His response, Dr. Gutmann said, was to order stricter secrecy about his work.<br /><br />Also, one commission member added, “Regardless what you think of the ethical issues, it was just bad science.”<br /><br />The results were never published in medical journals, note-keeping was “haphazard at best” and routine protocols were not done.<br /><br />The Guatemala experiments came to light only last year when a medical historian found descriptive notes in the archives of the University of Pittsburgh. The historian, Susan M. Reverby of Wellesley College, was researching the infamous Tuskegee study, in which Alabama sharecroppers infected with syphilis were left untreated from 1932 to 1972. Dr. Cutler oversaw the Tuskegee study after his Guatemala work finished; he was also an acting dean at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1960s.<br /><br />Dr. Cutler sent his Guatemala reports to only one supervisor, but Dr. Gutmann said they went up the chain to Surgeon General Thomas Parran Jr., a favorite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to a government biography, Dr. Parran was famous for his long campaign against syphilis, which was then a major public health problem but could not even be mentioned on the radio.<br /><br />In 1943, Dr. Cutler’s team had tried to infect 241 inmates of a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., with gonorrhea. But that time they adhered to ethical protocols, using only volunteers, explaining the risks and offering cash or help getting reduced sentences in return for participating.<br /><br />Dr. Nelson L. Michael, an AIDS researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and a panelist, speculated that the research was rushed and badly done because it had started under intense pressure to help the war effort. Curing troops’ venereal diseases was a major goal of military medicine.<br /><br />The panelists generally agreed that the ethical review boards now mandated by the American government, universities, foundations and medical journals would prevent similar abuses today by anyone spending taxpayer or foundation money.<br /><br />Pharmaceutical and medical device companies also do research in poor countries and still need watching, panel members said. But large companies say publicly that they adhere to ethical principles.<br /><br />“The problem in 1946,” Dr. Gutmann said, “was that ethical rules were treated as obstacles to overcome, not as fundamental bedrock of human dignity. That can still apply today. That’s why our panel is doing our report.”<br /><br />Panel members endorsed the idea of creating compensation funds for subjects who are harmed in the future, or requiring researchers to buy insurance for that purpose. Some countries require these steps; the United States does not.<br /><br />Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href=" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/world/americas/31syphilis.html?tntemail1=y&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print">NY Times page </a><br /><br />I follow these type of reports due to my own use in human experiments that were done by the military, and were done with consent which is a far cry from "informed consent" then to be told 40 years later in a letter from the Veteran Affairs that we are not allowed to talk to anyone other than the doctors at the VA about our experiiments issues, excuse me, I don't know any of the data about lethal doses, delivery systems or any other information that would be needed to make these substances into weapons let alone know how to re-create them.<br /><br />http://edgewoodtestvets.org/ this is about the current active lawsuit over thisMike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-53212222691951203752011-05-10T11:30:00.000-07:002011-05-10T11:38:31.767-07:00Life goes onI haven't been posting anything lately as I have been in the hospital and recuperating from my last heart attack I spent almost 3 weeks between Lexington Medical Center and the MUSC in Charleston, it was severe enough they called in family members from all over the country, I got to see my son Kevin before he left for South Korea and a years duty there<br /><br />I will be back and posting more often now.Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-70642220607141663812011-05-10T11:29:00.000-07:002011-05-10T11:30:14.932-07:00Survivor: War hero reaches out to help SoldiersSurvivor: War hero reaches out to help Soldiers<br />Apr 28, 2011<br /><br />By Dave Larsen, III Corps and Fort Hood Public Affairs<br /><br /><br />Story Highlights<br />"Depression, suicidal ideation, alcoholism - they can all be beaten ... as long as you find something to live for." <br />"I didn't consider myself an alcoholic." <br />"I sat in our home in Temple with a loaded pistol in my hand." <br />"I like to say that I finally made it back from Vietnam in 1987." <br /><br />Related Links<br />Army Substance Abuse Program <br />Suicide prevention tools, resources <br />III Corps and Fort Hood <br />Fort Hood Press Center <br />Follow Fort Hood on Facebook <br />Fort Hood on YouTube <br />Army.mil: Human Interest News <br /><br /><br />FORT HOOD, Texas -- John McCormick is a survivor. He survived two combat tours in Vietnam and came out a hero. He survived deep depression and suicidal ideations and came out addicted to alcohol. He survived his substance abuse and came out with a message for today's troops who face the same fight he fought himself: You can conquer it all, but you don't have to go it alone. <br /><br />The 72-year-old retired Army officer, a graduate of West Point's class of 1961 and Corpus Christi resident, visited Fort Hood in March 2011, when national media outlets were reporting a spike in suicides among Soldiers in February. <br /><br />Later that month, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli held a press conference at the headquarters of the 1st Cavalry Division here. With national Alcohol Awareness Month observed in April, the general discussed the correlation between substance abuse and suicide. <br /><br />"There's no doubt in my mind that there is a correlation between substance abuse, both alcohol and prescription drugs, and suicide," Chiarelli, who has spearheaded the Army's suicide prevention efforts, said March 28. "Suicide is a compulsive act, and when you mix alcohol or some other form of medication with individuals who may have ready access to a firearm you have a lethal combination." <br /><br />McCormick is living proof of that correlation. <br /><br />"It really means a lot to me," he said, "if I can help one Soldier by telling my story." <br /><br /><br />WAR HERO <br /><br />The armor officer's DD 214 (record of service) reflects uncommon heroism: Legion of Merit, Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and "V" device for valor, Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Air Medal (ten, two for valor), Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Silver Star, Vietnamese Staff Services Honor Medal 1st Class, Vietnam Service Medal with one Silver Star and one Bronze Star, Vietnam Campaign Medal with "60" device, Ranger Tab, Parachutist Badge and four overseas bars. <br /><br />During his first tour to Vietnam, 1966-67, he served with the 25th Infantry Division's 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, commanding Headquarters Troop. His exploits, and those of his men, are recalled by correspondent David Reed in his 1967 book, "Up Front in Vietnam." <br /><br />Reed discussed "McCormick's Raiders," a group of combat support Soldiers - cooks and clerks, mostly - who then-Capt. McCormick organized into a fighting force to ambush enemy infiltrators at his squadron's base camp in Cu Chi. He led his raiders several times each week over a five month period. He never lost a man. <br /><br />McCormick returned in '67 a hero, and a bit of a celebrity, as McCormick's Raiders were also featured on NBC and "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite." <br /><br />"I use the word euphoric. I'm going home. My wife was there. My kid was there, and there were going to be demonstrators. I didn't care. They didn't spit on me or anything like that. I didn't care," McCormick recalled. "I brought a sword home from McCormick's Raiders. It's still hanging in my house (today)." <br /><br />McCormick believed he was destined for great things in the Army: high rank, senior command. He was promoted to major June 17, 1968. He was what the Army calls a "fast-tracker." <br /><br />For the next four years, academics, in particular the French language, dominated McCormick's life: a year to study in Paris to receive three French diplomas, followed by a Master's Degree at Columbia University and three years teaching French at West Point. <br /><br />But the war beckoned. <br /><br />His second tour to Vietnam was very different from his first. This time, now a major, McCormick served as an operations officer for a Special Operations unit operating on the Vietnam border with Cambodia and in Cambodia itself. He flew in more than 250 combat missions. Two aircraft were shot out from under him, but he survived the hard landings unscathed. Operations he planned accounted for more than 1,200 confirmed enemy killed in action. He received a plaque noting the exact figure: 1,269. <br /><br />But something was very different when it was time to return home. <br /><br />"I slept on the plane almost all the way home. I was sitting next to a colonel, and we talked about family, the war, while drinking scotch and water. We got off together in San Francisco and I went on to Corpus Christi," McCormick recalled. "I was just emotionally spent. I had no great feelings about meeting the family or not, it just wasn't there. The sense of responsibility was so intense, that when it was lifted from me, I just collapsed. I didn't want to do it anymore." <br /><br />When he arrived home, that lack of emotion followed him. <br /><br />"I'm sure I smiled and hugged everyone," McCormick said, "but it didn't feel the same." <br /><br />NIGHTMARES <br /><br />After returning from that second tour to Vietnam, McCormick was assigned as the operations officer for a tank battalion at Fort Hood. Nightmares began to assault him. He couldn't concentrate. He couldn't function properly. He nearly lost hope. <br /><br />"I sat in our home in Temple with a loaded pistol in my hand," McCormick recalled. He said he was prepared to end his own life that night in 1972. What stayed his hand was his concern that he'd somehow botch the job and leave himself a vegetable, a burden on his family. <br /><br />He checked himself into Fort Hood's Army hospital the next day. He was sent to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. <br /><br />"They didn't have all the programs they have now," McCormick said. "I didn't have much choice, I was sent. I remember walking into that ward, and it was like walking into hell. It was filled with alcoholics mostly - some old, some middle age, some younger guys. I remember they took us swimming in a pool that was ice cold. I thought, at the time, that must have been some sort of treatment. It was shocking." <br /><br />Eventually, McCormick was sent back to Fort Hood and given menial supervisory tasks to perform. He avoided crowded places. <br /><br />"My Legion of Merit arrived from Vietnam," he recalled. "The post commanding general gave it to me. I remember hiding behind a tree (before the ceremony) not wanting to get it." <br /><br />He thought his career was in jeopardy, until orders came in 1973 sending him to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and the Command and General Staff College. <br /><br />"I was euphoric again," McCormick said. "I was back on track." But four months into his studies, depression took over again. <br /><br />"I was writing a paper about my time with Special Operations, and it all came back," he said. <br /><br />He admitted himself to the hospital again. This time, he would bounce from Fort Leavenworth to Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colo. (since closed, in 1999) and, finally, out of the Army, medically retired June 12, 1974. <br /><br />"The next thing you know, I'm on a plane home," McCormick said. "I'm supposed to be healed, right? It didn't happen." <br /><br />Through it all, the nightmares continued. <br /><br />SELF-MEDICATING <br /><br />"They were always there. I'd just get up at night, get in the closet, close the door and pull the clothes," McCormick recalled. "The NVA (North Vietnamese Army) are chasing me. We've crashed and everyone else is dead. It wasn't just a nightmare: it was the same one, over and over and over." <br /><br />He landed a job at an employment agency and quickly rose to office manager. But McCormick turned to alcohol, at first, just to help him sleep. <br /><br />"I didn't consider myself an alcoholic," he said. "(But) it was progressive." <br /><br />He lost his first civilian job. His marriage suffered. <br /><br />"I'd say to myself, 'It was my disability pay. If I wanted to buy a gallon of scotch, it was my money,'" McCormick remembered. "I was destroying a marriage and didn't care. I got to sleep at night. No more closets, no more wide-eyed in bed. If you drink enough, it goes away. <br /><br />"As a matter of fact," he said, "Vietnam disappeared." <br /><br />Though he lost his first civilian job, McCormick headed back to the classroom and completed a second Master's Degree, in education. He began teaching at Moody High School in Corpus Christi. But by 1987, the booze got the best of him. <br /><br />"I crashed in the classroom, shaking uncontrollably, freezing," he recalled. "I was hauled out on stretcher in front of the whole student body." <br /><br />While in the hospital, unable to help himself any longer, McCormick said two words that would change his life forever: "treatment facility." <br /><br />He was sent to a now-defunct treatment facility in Corpus Christi, manned mostly by recovering alcoholics. <br /><br />"I learned humility there," McCormick said. "The biggest impression was during a group session. As we sat in a circle and they asked, 'Is there anything that happened today that would cause you to take a drug or a drink?' No." <br /><br />He asks himself that same question now, every day of his life. <br /><br />It was in the treatment facility that the nightmares finally stopped. <br /><br />"I like to say that I finally made it back from Vietnam in 1987," McCormick said. <br /><br />WORTH LIVING <br /><br />McCormick has been sober for 23 years. He's retired twice over now, once from the Army and again from the teaching profession. He volunteers at the USS Lexington, Museum on the Bay's library in Corpus Christi. He remains a regular at Alcoholics Anonymous, where cliches and catchphrases, like "Let go, Let God," "One day at a time," and "Keep coming back, it works if you work it," are used liberally by its participants. <br /><br />In sobriety, McCormick likes using the cliche, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." But, actually, he said to survive, there's much more to it than that. <br /><br />"The only problem is that when you're going through this, you don't feel tough," he said. "You've got to be able to see a future that is worth living for - be it family, job, health - anything to get out of that horrible depression. <br /><br />"Depression, suicidal ideation, alcoholism - they can all be beaten, even if they happen at the same time, as long as you find something to live for," McCormick said, as his eyes misted with tears and his voice cracked with emotion. "I'm a major, retired, U.S. Army, who has been through hell, and there is light at the end of the tunnel. It can be done. It can be done." <br /><br />McCormick's first marriage ended in 1990, his relationship with his ex-wife damaged irreparably. He remarried in 1995 and said he's mended his relationship with his grown children. John McCormick is a survivor. But he didn't do it alone. He had to reach out to others, and he's reaching out again. <br /><br />Walking slowly to his car parked outside the III Corps headquarters following an emotional two-and-a-half-hour interview session, one question remained. <br /><br />"Do you think we'll help someone?" he asked. "If we can help save just one ..."Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-86249315932011701952011-02-04T12:46:00.000-08:002011-02-04T12:59:15.342-08:00Burial at SeaTo only those who would and could appreciate it. This account is one of a kind. A powerful one that touches your heart. Tough duty then as it is now. <br /><br />Burial at Sea <br /><br />by LtCol George Goodson, USMC (Ret) <br /><br />In my 76th year, the events of my life appear to me, from time to time, as a series of vignettes. Some were significant; most were trivial... <br /><br />War is the seminal event in the life of everyone that has endured it. Though I fought in Korea and the Dominican Republicand was wounded there, Vietnam was my war. <br /><br />Now 42 years have passed and, thankfully, I rarely think of those days in Cambodia, Laos, and the panhandle of North Vietnam where small teams of Americans and Montangards fought much larger elements of the North Vietnamese Army. Instead I see vignettes: some exotic, some mundane: <br /><br />*The smell of Nuc Mam. <br /><br />*The heat, dust, and humidity. <br /><br />*The blue exhaust of cycles clogging the streets. <br /><br />*Elephants moving silently through the tall grass. <br /><br />*Hard eyes behind the servile smiles of the villagers. <br /><br />*Standing on a mountain in Laos and hearing a tiger roar. <br /><br />*A young girl squeezing my hand as my medic delivered her baby. <br /><br />*The flowing Ao Dais of the young women biking down Tran Hung Dao. <br /><br />*My two years as Casualty Notification Officer in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. <br /><br />It was late 1967. I had just returned after 18 months in Vietnam. Casualties were increasing. I moved my family from Indianapolis to Norfolk, rented a house, enrolled my children in their fifth or sixth new school, and bought a second car. <br /><br />A week later, I put on my uniform and drove 10 miles to Little Creek, Virginia. I hesitated before entering my new office. Appearance is important to career Marines. I was no longer, if ever, a poster Marine. I had returned from my third tour in Vietnam only 30 days before. At 5'9", I now weighed 128 pounds - 37 pounds below my normal weight. My uniforms fit ludicrously, my skin was yellow from malaria medication, and I think I had a twitch or two. <br /><br />I straightened my shoulders, walked into the office, looked at the nameplate on a Staff Sergeant's desk and said, "Sergeant Jolly, I'm Lieutenant Colonel Goodson. Here are my orders and my Qualification Jacket." <br /><br />Sergeant Jolly stood, looked carefully at me, took my orders, stuck out his hand; we shook and he asked, "How long were you there, Colonel?" I replied "18 months this time." Jolly breathed, you must be a slow learner Colonel." I smiled. <br /><br />Jolly said, "Colonel, I'll show you to your office and bring in the Sergeant Major. I said, "No, let's just go straight to his office." Jolly nodded, hesitated, and lowered his voice, "Colonel, the Sergeant Major. He's been in this job two years. He's packed pretty tight. I'm worried about him." I nodded. <br /><br />Jolly escorted me into the Sergeant Major's office. "Sergeant Major, this is Colonel Goodson, the new Commanding Office. The Sergeant Major stood, extended his hand and said, "Good to see you again, Colonel." I responded, "Hello Walt, how are you?" Jolly looked at me, raised an eyebrow, walked out, and closed the door. <br /><br />I sat down with the Sergeant Major. We had the obligatory cup of coffee and talked about mutual acquaintances. Walt's stress was palpable. Finally, I said, "Walt, what's the h-ll's wrong?" He turned his chair, looked out the window and said, "George, you're going to wish you were back in Nam before you leave here. I've been in the Marine Corps since 1939. I was in the Pacific 36 months, Korea for 14 months, and Vietnam for 12 months... Now I come here to bury these kids. I'm putting my letter in. I can't take it anymore." I said, "OK Walt. If that's what you want, I'll endorse your request for retirement and do what I can to push it through Headquarters Marine Corps." <br /><br />Sergeant Major Walt Xxxxx retired 12 weeks later. He had been a good Marine for 28 years, but he had seen too much death and too much suffering. He was used up. <br /><br />Over the next 16 months, I made 28 death notifications, conducted 28 military funerals, and made 30 notifications to the families of Marines that were severely wounded or missing in action. Most of the details of those casualty notifications have now, thankfully, faded from memory. Four, however, remain. <br /><br />MY FIRST NOTIFICATION <br /><br />My third or fourth day in Norfolk, I was notified of the death of a 19 year old Marine. This notification came by telephone from Headquarters Marine Corps. The information detailed: <br /><br />*Name, rank, and serial number. <br /><br />*Name, address, and phone number of next of kin. <br /><br />*Date of and limited details about the Marine's death. <br /><br />*Approximate date the body would arrive at the Norfolk Naval Air Station. <br /><br />*A strong recommendation on whether the casket should be opened or closed. <br /><br />The boy's family lived over the border in North Carolina, about 60 miles away... I drove there in a Marine Corps staff car. Crossing the state line into North Carolina, I stopped at a small country store / service station / Post Office. I went in to ask directions. <br /><br />Three people were in the store.. A man and woman approached the small Post Office window. The man held a package. The Storeowner walked up and addressed them by name, "Hello John. Good morning Mrs. Cooper." <br /><br />I was stunned. My casualty's next-of-kin's name was John Cooper! <br /><br />I hesitated, then stepped forward and said, "I beg your pardon. Are you Mr. and Mrs. John Cooper of (address.) <br /><br />The father looked at me-I was in uniform - and then, shaking, bent at the waist, he vomited. His wife looked horrified at him and then at me. Understanding came into her eyes and she collapsed in slow motion. I think I caught her before she hit the floor. <br /><br />The owner took a bottle of whiskey out of a drawer and handed it to Mr. Cooper who drank. I answered their questions for a few minutes. Then I drove them home in my staff car. The storeowner locked the store and followed in their truck. We stayed an hour or so until the family began arriving. <br /><br />I returned the storeowner to his business. He thanked me and said, "Mister, I wouldn't have your job for a million dollars." I shook his hand and said; "Neither would I." <br /><br />I vaguely remember the drive back to Norfolk. Violating about five Marine Corps regulations, I drove the staff car straight to my house. I sat with my family while they ate dinner, went into the den, closed the door, and sat there all night, alone. <br /><br />My Marines steered clear of me for days. I had made my first death notification. <br /><br />THE FUNERALS <br /><br />Weeks passed with more notifications and more funerals. I borrowed Marines from the local Marine Corps Reserve and taught them to conduct a military funeral: how to carry a casket, how to fire the volleys and how to fold the flag. <br /><br />When I presented the flag to the mother, wife, or father, I always said, "All Marines share in your grief." I had been instructed to say, "On behalf of a grateful nation...." I didn't think the nation was grateful, so I didn't say that. <br /><br />Sometimes, my emotions got the best of me and I couldn't speak. When that happened, I just handed them the flag and touched a shoulder. They would look at me and nod. Once a mother said to me, "I'm so sorry you have this terrible job." My eyes filled with tears and I leaned over and kissed her. <br /><br />ANOTHER NOTIFICATION <br /><br />Six weeks after my first notification, I had another. This was a young PFC. I drove to his mother's house. As always, I was in uniform and driving a Marine Corps staff car. I parked in front of the house, took a deep breath, and walked towards the house. Suddenly the door flew open, a middle-aged woman rushed out. She looked at me and ran across the yard, screaming "NO! NO! NO! NO!" <br /><br />I hesitated. Neighbors came out. I ran to her, grabbed her, and whispered stupid things to reassure her. She collapsed. I picked her up and carried her into the house.. Eight or nine neighbors followed. Ten or fifteen later, the father came in followed by ambulance personnel. I have no recollection of leaving. <br /><br />The funeral took place about two weeks later. We went through the drill. The mother never looked at me. The father looked at me once and shook his head sadly. <br /><br />ANOTHER NOTIFICATION <br /><br />One morning, as I walked in the office, the phone was ringing. Sergeant Jolly held the phone up and said, "You've got another one, Colonel." I nodded, walked into my office, picked up the phone, took notes, thanked the officer making the call, I have no idea why, and hung up. Jolly, who had listened, came in with a special Telephone Directory that translates telephone numbers into the person's address and place of employment. <br /><br />The father of this casualty was a Longshoreman. He lived a mile from my office. I called the Longshoreman's Union Office and asked for the Business Manager. He answered the phone, I told him who I was, and asked for the father's schedule. <br /><br />The Business Manager asked, "Is it his son?" I said nothing. After a moment, he said, in a low voice, "Tom is at home today." I said, "Don't call him. I'll take care of that." The Business Manager said, "Aye, Aye Sir," and then explained, "Tom and I were Marines in WWII." <br /><br />I got in my staff car and drove to the house. I was in uniform. I knocked and a woman in her early forties answered the door. I saw instantly that she was clueless. I asked, "Is Mr. Smith home?" She smiled pleasantly and responded, "Yes, but he's eating breakfast now. Can you come back later?" I said, "I'm sorry. It's important. I need to see him now." <br /><br />She nodded, stepped back into the beach house and said, "Tom, it's for you." <br /><br />A moment later, a ruddy man in his late forties, appeared at the door. He looked at me, turned absolutely pale, steadied himself, and said, "Jesus Christ man, he's only been there three weeks!" <br /><br />Months passed. More notifications and more funerals. Then one day while I was running, Sergeant Jolly stepped outside the building and gave a loud whistle, two fingers in his mouth... I never could do that and held an imaginary phone to his ear. <br /><br />Another call from Headquarters Marine Corps. I took notes, said, "Got it." and hung up. I had stopped saying "Thank You" long ago. <br /><br />Jolly, "Where?" <br /><br />Me, "Eastern Shore of Maryland. The father is a retired Chief Petty Officer. His brother will accompany the body back fromVietnam..." <br /><br />Jolly shook his head slowly, straightened, and then said, "This time of day, it'll take three hours to get there and back. I'll call the Naval Air Station and borrow a helicopter. And I'll have Captain Tolliver get one of his men to meet you and drive you to the Chief's home." <br /><br />He did, and 40 minutes later, I was knocking on the father's door. He opened the door, looked at me, then looked at the Marine standing at parade rest beside the car, and asked, "Which one of my boys was it, Colonel?" <br /><br />I stayed a couple of hours, gave him all the information, my office and home phone number and told him to call me, anytime. <br /><br />He called me that evening about 2300 (11:00PM). "I've gone through my boy's papers and found his will. He asked to be buried at sea. Can you make that happen?" I said, "Yes I can, Chief. I can and I will." <br /><br />My wife who had been listening said, "Can you do that?" I told her, "I have no idea. But I'm going to break my ass trying." <br /><br />I called Lieutenant General Alpha Bowser, Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, at home about 2330, explained the situation, and asked, "General, can you get me a quick appointment with the Admiral at Atlantic Fleet Headquarters?" General Bowser said," George, you be there tomorrow at 0900. He will see you. <br /><br />I was and the Admiral did. He said coldly, "How can the Navy help the Marine Corps, Colonel." I told him the story. He turned to his Chief of Staff and said, "Which is the sharpest destroyer in port?" The Chief of Staff responded with a name. <br /><br />The Admiral called the ship, "Captain, you're going to do a burial at sea. You'll report to a Marine Lieutenant Colonel Goodson until this mission is completed..." <br /><br />He hung up, looked at me, and said, "The next time you need a ship, Colonel, call me. You don't have to sic Al Bowser on my ass." I responded, "Aye Aye, Sir" and got the h-ll out of his office. <br /><br />I went to the ship and met with the Captain, Executive Officer, and the Senior Chief. Sergeant Jolly and I trained the ship's crew for four days. Then Jolly raised a question none of us had thought of. He said, "These government caskets are air tight. How do we keep it from floating?" <br /><br />All the high priced help including me sat there looking dumb. Then the Senior Chief stood and said, "Come on Jolly. I know a bar where the retired guys from World War II hang out." <br /><br />They returned a couple of hours later, slightly the worst for wear, and said, "It's simple; we cut four 12" holes in the outer shell of the casket on each side and insert 300 lbs of lead in the foot end of the casket. We can handle that, no sweat." <br /><br />The day arrived. The ship and the sailors looked razor sharp. General Bowser, the Admiral, a US Senator, and a Navy Band were on board. The sealed casket was brought aboard and taken below for modification. The ship got underway to the 12-fathom depth. <br /><br />The sun was hot. The ocean flat. The casket was brought aft and placed on a catafalque. The Chaplin spoke. The volleys were fired. The flag was removed, folded, and I gave it to the father. The band played "Eternal Father Strong to Save." The casket was raised slightly at the head and it slid into the sea. <br /><br />The heavy casket plunged straight down about six feet. The incoming water collided with the air pockets in the outer shell. The casket stopped abruptly, rose straight out of the water about three feet, stopped, and slowly slipped back into the sea. The air bubbles rising from the sinking casket sparkled in the in the sunlight as the casket disappeared from sight forever.... <br /><br />The next morning I called a personal friend, Lieutenant General Oscar Peatross, at Headquarters Marine Corps and said, "General, get me out of here. I can't take this anymore." I was transferred two weeks later. <br /><br />I was a good Marine but, after 17 years, I had seen too much death and too much suffering. I was used up. <br /><br />Vacating the house, my family and I drove to the office in a two-car convoy. I said my goodbyes. Sergeant Jolly walked out with me. He waved at my family, looked at me with tears in his eyes, came to attention, saluted, and said, "Well Done, Colonel. Well Done." <br /><br />I felt as if I had received the Medal of Honor! <br /><br />A veteran is someone who, at one point, wrote a blank check made payable to 'The United States of America' <br /><br />for an amount of ‘up to and including their life.'That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it. <br /><br /> <br /><br />////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////<br /><br />I sat here with tears in my eyes as I read this, I had to do a few notifications decades ago, but nothing that rose to this level, I buried a lot of troops in over 20years of service, that is one of the hardest things you ever do while in the military is notification detail, being part of the Honor Guard is hard enough, but folding the flag, carrying the caskets, or firing the volley none of that even comes close to having to tell a parent that their child has died in service, there is no easy way to do it, and you remember them, they are impossible to "forget", some stick out more than others, but none are ever forgotten.<br /><br />In war or peace military people will die while in service and someone has to personally notify the next of kin, my prayer was that the news didn't kill whomever it was I had to tell, that kind of stress can cause heart attacks.<br /><br />Like SGT Jolly stated "well done Colonel"Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-84955262525229944722011-02-04T07:46:00.001-08:002011-02-04T07:46:39.134-08:00Agent Orange: Thailand Military BasesSubject: RE: Agent Orange: Thailand Military Bases<br /><br /> <br /><br />The complete report with the FOIAs can be found at http://tmai18.spaces.live.com along with the authorization to use them. It would be appreciated if anyone that has pictures of their work area and bases sent them to me. Do not be deterred by the references to SPs and MWDH personnel.&n bsp; There are already approvals for direct exposure for Army engineers, MMS personnel, and aircraft mechanics who worked near the perimeters, especially arming/dearming, engine run-up, etc. Additionally, there are approvals of comm/radio operators both which worked in complete bare sites, all near the perimeters of AF and USA bases. The barracks at Udorn RTAFB were less than 100 yards from the perimeter. <br /> <br />Additional evidence such as performance reports, unit histories, pictures and buddy statements can help. Also, refer to Army Field Manual 3-3, Tactical Employment of Herbicides which state a 500 meter safe zone was required.<br /> <br /><br />I would like a brief moment to introduce myself. My name is Kurt Priessman I am a retired Air Force Master Sergeant who served from 1970 to 1990. Much of my career was spent in places where herbicides, insecticides, and toxic petroleum by-products wer e used, stored, or dumped; from Mather AFB, California to Korat RTAFB, Thailand to Taegu AB, Republic of Korea. I traveled across the entire Pacific theater during the final years of the Vietnam War and have transited the Pacific six times. <br /><br /> <br /><br />I was exposed to herbicides (agents orange, white, and blue at a minimum), Malathion, and other chemicals that cause cancers, diabetes-mellitus, and attack the nervous and immune systems.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Like many of you, I suffer from diabetes-mellitus with neuropathy, nephropathy, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and Gastroparesis. I also suffer from secondary symptoms such as Dupuytren’s contracture, Peyronies disease, and a rare blood disease called polycythemia vera. <br /><br /> <br /><br />And like many of you, after thirty five years, the paper trail is lost. There are parts, but nothing like the evidence (without the benefit, the assistance, and honesty) the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense requires. I have already done research on routes to Southeast Asia, the use of herbicides in Thailand, and am now seeking people who want to help.<br /><br /> <br /><br />In my research using the Freedom of Information Act, available archives, and many veterans organization’s websites, I have found that the Department of Defense (Marines, Navy, Air Force, and Army) and the State Department have maintained the classification of documents that should have been declassified between 1975 and 1985 and were not. I have found that histories exist that hold the truth. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Where you may ask? I found them in the histories themselves, in footnotes of documents and reports, and in messages between. While there is sometimes anger, frustration, and yes, even disbelief at why this has happened, I believe that the full truth is there, waiting for someone to ask for the release of the right document. <br /><br /> <br /><br />So what can you do you ask? Help to research, cross-reference, and link these documents so that specific FOIA requests can be made that will finally tell enough of the story that they can no longer deny claims for benefits.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Why you ask? The truth is for us, for our comrades in arms, both those still living and those who have past, for those who fought in the Gulf War, and for those serving today. We served to protect our country, our democracy, our way of life and now as we look back at what the government has done, what they have not done, and what it appears they fully intend to keep doing, our only solution is to band together as brothers to fight until we see the light of a new day. A day where the treatment we receive is documented whether the diagnoses is compensable or not, a day when after the documentation is complete, treatment, compensation, and dignity are given back to us.<br /><br /> <br /><br />If you want to help, contact me at kpriessman@msn.com or kpriessman@yahoo.com. Give me some idea of what you would like to help with, and a phone number where you can be reached. Today, we do have heroes, we do have some support, and we cannot give up, we can never give up.Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-16878074184396951312011-01-18T12:25:00.000-08:002011-01-18T13:20:32.981-08:0050th Anniversary of the Vietnam War Commemoration<a href=" http://www.vietnamwar50th.com/links.aspx">50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War Commemoration</a><br /><br />Introduction<br />In Accordance With Public Law 110-181 SEC. 598; the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act authorized the Secretary of Defense to conduct a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War and “in conducting the commemorative program, the Secretary shall coordinate, support, and facilitate other programs and activities of the Federal Government, State and local governments, and other persons and organizations in commemoration of the Vietnam War." <br /><br />The Secretary of Defense shall determine the schedule of major events and priority of efforts for the commemorative program, in order to ensure achievement of the objectives specified in Law.<br /><br />The commemorative program will include activities and ceremonies to achieve the following objectives:<br /><br />(1) To thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War, including personnel who were held as prisoners of war (POW), or listed as missing in action (MIA), for their service and sacrifice on behalf of the United States and to thank and honor the families of these veterans.<br /><br />(2) To highlight the service of the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War and the contributions of Federal agencies and governmental and non-governmental organizations that served with, or in support of, the Armed Forces.<br /><br />(3) To pay tribute to the contributions made on the home front by the people of the United States during the Vietnam War.<br /><br />(4) To highlight the advances in technology, science, and medicine related to military research conducted during the Vietnam War.<br /><br />(5) To recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by the allies of the United States during the Vietnam War.<br /><br /><br />About the Logo<br />A representation of the Vietnam Service Ribbon rests atop the inner rings of the logo. "The Vietnam Service Medal is awarded to all members of the United States Armed Forces serving in Vietnam and contiguous waters or airspace thereover, and members of the Armed Forces of the United States in Thailand, Laos, or Cambodia, or the airspace thereover, during eligible periods and serving in direct support of operations in Vietnam."<br /><br />The red, white, and blue inner rings represent the flag of the United States of America.<br /><br />The outer black ring serves as a reminder of the prisoners of war and those missing in action.<br /><br />The Great Seal at the top of the inner blue ring represents the contributions of Federal agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations that served with, or in support of, the Armed Forces, and the contributions made on the home front by the people of the United States during the Vietnam War.<br /><br />The six additional seals represent the service and dedication of the men and women of the following organizations, presented in order of precedence, left to right, top to bottom, the U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Merchant Marine. <br /><br />The seven white stars between the seals symbolize the contributions and sacrifices made by the United States and its allies: Vietnam, the Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines and Thailand.<br /><br />The center circle contains a map of Vietnam in black, with outlines of Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand representing the contiguous territories where U.S. Armed Forces served.<br /><br />The gold color of the banner and the center circle represents the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War.<br /><br />The laurel wreath signifies honor to all who served. <br /><br />Disclaimer for External Link<br />The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the United States Department of Defense of the linked web sites, or the information, products or services contained therein. <br /><br />Please let us know about existing external links which you believe are inappropriate and about specific additional external links which you believe ought to be included.<br /><br />Links<br />25th Infantry Division Association (Tropic Lightning)<br /><br />www.25thida.org<br /><br />The 25th Infantry Division Association is the dedicated to serving those who have served or are currently serving with the 25th Infantry Division, from World War II through today. It includes information on upcoming reunions, unit histories, division history, memorabilia, and links to related military sites.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />An Airman's Story<br /><br />www.anairmansstory.com<br /><br />"This is the epic anthology of Military Air Power. From the biplanes of WWI, to current times against global terrorism. Join me as I tell of their heroic feats of valor, an sacrifice, within these courageous stories."<br />-Leon J. DeLisle<br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Association of the United States Navy <br /><br />www.ausn.org<br /><br />Standing the Watch for Your Navy and YOU, AUSN is the only organization focused exclusively ons erving the enitre Navy and the only organization primarily on the welfare of the Navy people. It is know as being one of the most effective lobbying organizations for the military on Capitol Hill. Visit our website--ausn.org--and learn more <br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Coast Guard Combat Veterans<br /><br />www.coastguardcombatvets.com<br /><br />The Coast Guard Combat Veterans Association is a Non-Profit Association of Active Duty, Retirees, Reservists and Honorably Discharged Former Members of the U. S. Coast Guard, who served in, or provided direct support to combat situations recognized by an appropriate military award, while serving as a member of the United States Coast Guard. Established in 1985 the CGCVA is dedicated to extending knowledge of the Coast Guard’s service and participation in those significant historical events in United States history. In addition to being a fraternal organization, dedicated to fellowship among it’s membership, we provide educational scholarships, as part of our effort to support the public and to bring awareness of the United State Coast Guard’s military missions and reinforce the motto Semper Paratus, “Always Ready”<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Counterparts<br /><br />www.counterparts.net<br /><br />"Counterparts (Túóng Huu Ðông Nam Á) An Association of US Military and Civilian Advisors in Southeast Asia & Their Foreign Counterparts.Our purposes includes promoting an appreciation of the Advisory Experience and accomplishments to the general public, providing aid and assistance when possible to Southeast Asia’s war refugees, especially former comrades of the Vietnamese Armed Forces, Montagnard and tribal fighters, commemorating the service and sacrifice of Advisors and their Counterparts, promoting fellowship and fraternity among our members, lending encouragement and service to the orphans and relatives of former Advisors, and compiling and preserving the history of the Advisory effort in Southeast Asia. Counterparts also sponsors or participates in a number of ongoing programs in Southeast Asia to provide humanitarian aid, education and assistance to our former allies. <br /><br />Counterparts also operates a nationwide locator service to assist former Advisors and their Counterparts and the families of former Advisors and their Counterparts in locating one another and renewing contacts with their comrades."<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office<br /><br />www.dtic.mil/dpmo<br /><br />The Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office leads the U.S. government’s effort to achieve the fullest possible accounting of MIAs from the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Korean War, and World War II.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Disabled American Veterans<br /><br />www.dav.org<br /><br />The 1.2 million-member Disabled American Veterans, a non-profit organization founded in 1920 and chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1932, represents this nation's disabled veterans. It is dedicated to a single purpose: building better lives for our nation's disabled veterans and their families.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />DUSTOFF Association<br /><br />www.dustoff.org<br /><br />The DUSTOFF Association is a nonprofit incorporated veterans’ organization for Army Medical Department enlisted and officer personnel, aviation crewmembers, and others who are (or ever were) engaged in (or actively supported in any capacity) Army aeromedical evacuation programs in war or peace.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Fighter Pilot - The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds<br /><br />www.Amazon.com<br /><br />Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds was a larger-than-life hero with a towering personality. A graduate of West Point and an inductee in the National College Football Hall of Fame for his All-American performance for Army, Olds was one of the toughest college football players at the time. In WWII, Olds quickly became a top fighter pilot and squadron commander by the age of 22—and an ace with 12 aerial victories. <br /><br />But it was in Vietnam where the man became a legend. He arrived in 1966 to find a dejected group of pilots and motivated them by placing himself on the flight schedule under officers junior to himself, then challenging them to train him properly because he would soon be leading them. Proving he wasn’t a WWII retread, he led the wing with aggressiveness, scoring another four confirmed kills, becoming a rare triple ace. <br /><br />Olds (who retired a brigadier general and died in 2007) was a unique individual whose personal story is one of the most eagerly anticipated military books of the year. "<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Marine Corps League<br /><br />www.MCLeague.org<br /><br />The Marine Corps League perpetuates the traditions and spirit of ALL Marines and Navy FMF Corpsmen, who proudly wear or who have worn the eagle, globe and anchor of the Corps. Members of the Marine Corps League join together in camaraderie and fellowship for the purpose of preserving the traditions and promoting the interests of the United States Marine Corps, banding together those who are now serving in the United States Marine Corps and those who have been honorably discharged from that service that they may effectively promote the ideals of American freedom and democracy, voluntarily aiding and rendering assistance to all Marines, FMF Corpsmen and Veteran Marines and FMF Corpsmen and to their widows and orphans; and to perpetuate the history of the United States Marine Corps and by fitting acts to observe the anniversaries of historical occasions of particular interest to Marines. Founded in 1923, the League is the only Federally Chartered Marine Corps related veterans organization in the country. Since its earliest days, the Marine Corps League has enjoyed the support and encouragement of the active duty and Reserve establishments of the U. S. Marine Corps. <br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Military Officers Association of America<br /><br />www.moaa.org<br /><br />MOAA is the nation’s largest and most influential association of active duty, National Guard, Reserve, retired, and former military officers and their families and survivors. It is an independent, nonprofit, and politically nonpartisan organization with around 370,000 members from every branch of service. MOAA promotes a strong national defense by advocating for equitable treatment of those who serve and have served their country in uniform. For more information, visit www.moaa.org.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />National League of POW/MIA Families<br /><br />www.pow-miafamilies.org<br /><br />The National League of POW/MIA Families’ sole purpose is to obtain the release of all prisoners, the fullest possible accounting for the missing and repatriation of all recoverable remains of those who died serving our nation during the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />RAVEN FACs (EALPS)<br /><br />www.ravens.org<br /><br />EAPLS (Edgar Allan Poe Literary Society Inc. is a nonprofit incorporated veterans organization for former Raven FACs that flew in Laos during the Vietnam War. One of our main purposes is to give scholarships to qualifying descendents of a Lao or Lao-Hmong individual who served in the Royal Laotian Military or Hmong forces in defense of the Kingdom of Laos between 1960 and 1975.During the course of American history, there have been many covert military operations. None, however, reached the scope or intensity of the war in Laos during the Viet Nam era. The backbone of this war were the Ravens-Forward Air Controllers (FACs) who flew small, slow propeller driven airplanes. The mission of the Ravens was to support indigenous forces in Laos in their fight against invading forces from North Vietnam. <br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Rural Affairs Vietnam<br /><br />www.ruralaffairsvn.com<br /><br />Started in mid-1962 with a special $10 million fund from the Kennedy White House, this was America’s first integrated counterinsurgency program, blending local economic and social development with incentives for better local government and security. This program turned the traditional AID country effort on its head. AID/Vietnam (known as USOM) was a headquarters-focused, capital-oriented organization that worked by helping national ministries and had virtually no presence in the countryside. By contrast, a new special office, Rural Affairs, was created. It put volunteers into the provinces who lived on the local economy and were creative, problem-solving and often strikingly young, highly motivated Americans. They worked with Vietnamese on vital local needs, which included schools, wells, refugees, and improved rice and pig culture, as well as more basic issues of physical security and representative local government. The philosophy was to create a tie between villagers and government and, more basically, a greater sense of national identity and of value in belonging to the national, as opposed to Communist, side of the prolonged civil war. There was also an iconoclastic system to bring AID supplies from Saigon to the provinces when needed, unprecedented at the time and suggestive of today’s just-in-time supply procedures. And there was a new way to make funds immediately available for urgent projects in the provinces, based on decisions by a joint committee of Vietnamese and American officials at the provincial level. Over time, some Rural Affairs personnel were killed and others captured by the Vietcong and suffered greatly in captivity. The Vietnamese staff of Rural Affairs were close colleagues, strongly active in its work, and are among the most enthusiastic participants in its American reunions. Rural Affairs was succeeded by larger and more bureaucratized organizations such as the Office of Civil Operations (OCO) and Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS).<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Sons and Daughters In Touch<br /><br />www.sdit.org<br /><br />Sons and Daughters In Touch was formed in 1990 to 'locate, unite and support the children of American servicemen who were lost, or remain missing as a result of the Vietnam War.' Since then, SDIT has established contact with more than 3000 of these now-grown children. Beginning in 1992, the organization began holding national Father's Day reunions at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial ('92, '93, '97, 2000, '05 and '10.) In 2003, more than 50 SDIT members were part of an historic delegation that traveled to Vietnam to see the places where their fathers fought and died.<br /><br />In addition to fulfilling its mission, SDIT also works to share its insights and experiences with organizations committed to meeting the needs of Gold Star families who have suffered losses in our nation's current military conflicts. <br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The American Legion<br /><br />www.legion.org<br /><br />The American Legion was chartered and incorporated by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic veterans organization devoted to mutual helpfulness. It is the nation’s largest veterans service organization, committed to mentoring and sponsorship of youth programs in our communities, advocating patriotism and honor, promoting a strong national security, and continued devotion to our fellow service members and veterans.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The Marine Corp Association<br /><br />www.mca-marines.org<br /><br />The Marine Corps Association is the professional association for all Marines. MCA supports the Marine Corps by providing professional development opportunities for Marines, disseminating knowledge of military art and science, and fostering the spirit and preserving the traditions of the Marine Corps. MCA publishes Leatherneck, Magazine of the Marines, and The Marine Corps Gazette, the Professional Journal of U.S. Marines. The Association’s efforts are supported by the Marine Corps Association Foundation. www.mca-marines.org" <br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />The Mobile Riverine Force Association<br /><br />www.mrfa.org<br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The Retired Enlisted Association <br /><br />www.trea.org<br /><br />The Retired Enlisted Association is the powerful voice of retired enlisted and active duty enlisted personnel from all branches of service. They are the premier source of grassroots lobbying, and the leading resource for legislative and healthcare information. They fight every day in Washington D.C. to protect and ensure the health and welfare of enlisted military personnel, and to defend the military retirement entitlements and benefits.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The Tan Son Nhut Association<br /><br />www.tsna.org<br /><br />The Tan Son Nhut Association has been established to respect all of those service personnel from the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard, as well as the many civilians who served at any time during the Vietnam conflict at the great airdrome at Tan Son Nhut, Air Base, Saigon, Republic of Vietnam.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The Vietnam Center & Archive at Texas Tech University<br /><br />www.vietnam.ttu.edu<br /><br />Created in 1989 by Vietnam Veterans, The Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University is home to the largest collection of Vietnam-related material outside the U.S. National Archives. Its joint missions are to support and encourage research and education regarding all aspects of the American Vietnam experience and to collect and preserve the documentary record of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam Center and Archive has collected millions of pages of material and tens of thousands of photographs, slides, maps, periodicals, audio, moving images, and books related to the Vietnam War, Indochina, and the impact of the war on the United States and Southeast Asia. Many of these materials are available online through the Virtual Vietnam Archive (http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/ ). Please visit www.vietnam.ttu.edu for more information. <br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The Virtual Wall<br /><br />www.VirtualWall.org<br /><br />"The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC honors the 2.7 million <br /><br />American women and men who served in the Vietnam War. Carved of the granite panels of ""The Wall"" are the names of the 58,267 who gave the ultimate sacrifice in that war.<br /><br />The web site named The Virtual Wall(TM) has a memorial tribute page honoring each casualty.<br /><br />Many tribute pages have personal remembrances in the form of photographs, letters, and poems submitted by the general public. The names of the fallen can be found on index pages by Wall panel, by State/City, by last name, and through a photographic index."<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />U.S. Army Center of Military History <br /><br />www.history.army.mil<br /><br />Establish a global forum for the Center of Military History to distribute historical information and products to inform, educate and professionally develop the soldiers and leadership of the U.S. Army<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />United States Navy Memorial<br /><br />www.navymemorial.org<br /><br />Conveniently located on Pennsylvania Avenue - halfway between the White House and the Capitol, the United States Navy Memorial provides a living tribute to Navy people and a place for them to gather and celebrate their service. The outdoor plaza features a “Granite Sea” map of the world, towering masts with signal flags, fountain pools and waterfalls and The Lone Sailor© statue. Adjacent to the plaza is the Naval Heritage Center, where visitors can find educational displays about the contributions of the men and women of the Sea Services (Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine). Also housed in the Naval Heritage Center is the Navy Log - the online place for Navy people to stay connected with each other, celebrate their service and preserve the memories of their service. There, Navy veterans can build a record of their service online and anyone with a passion for the Navy can create and join affinity communities. Call (202) 737-2300 or visit www.navymemorial.org for more information.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />US Army Heritage & Education Center <br /><br />www.usahec.org<br /><br />Mission: The US Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) educates a broad audience on the heritage of the U.S. Army by acquiring, preserving, and making available historical records, materials, and artifacts. USAHEC educates the Army and the public on the central role of the Army in the development and protection of our nation and its way of life. USAHEC supports the US Army War College education, research and publication, and strategic communication missions through its public programs, historical holdings, and preservation practices.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />US Army Office of Medical History<br /><br />history.amedd.army.mil<br /><br /><br />"The Office of Medical History is part of the OTSG/MEDCOM History Program. Our mission is to support the men and women of the U.S. Army Medical Department and Army Medical Command through the assembly and publication of reference materials, original works, previously unpublished works, reprints, special studies, web publications, AMEDD newspaper/professional publications, and print series. The program includes the administration of a field history program as well as an oral history program for the conduct of regular interviews with key OTSG/MEDCOM active and retired personnel and provides coverage of current operations and issues with participants and decision makers."<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Veterans History Project, Library of Congress<br /><br />www.loc.gov/vets<br /><br />The Mission of the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center is to collect, preserve, and make accessible the personal accounts of America’s wartime veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Veterans of Foreign Wars<br /><br />www.vfw.org<br /><br />The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. is a nonprofit veterans' service organization composed of combat veterans and those who currently serve in uniform on active duty or in the Guard and Reserves. Founded in 1899 and chartered by Congress in 1936, the VFW is the nation's largest organization of war veterans and its oldest major veterans' organization. With 2.1 million members located in 7,700 VFW Posts worldwide, the VFW and its Auxiliaries are dedicated to "honor the dead by helping the living"" through veterans service, legislative advocacy, youth scholarships, Buddy Poppy and national military service programs. The VFW and its Auxiliaries volunteer more than 13 million hours annually in community service to the nation.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Vets With A Mission<br /><br />www.vetswithamission.org<br /><br />"Vets With A Mission was founded in 1989 and for over twenty years has implemented various humanitarian programs and projects in the country formerly known as the Republic of South Vietnam. <br /><br />Over 1,600 volunteers mostly Vietnam vets have participated on medical teams, ministry teams, disaster relief, or project teams. VWAM has built or sponsored nearly 40 medical clinics or rural healthcare stations, renovated several health facilities as well as two orphanages and two churches, built one school, and shipped 36 cargo containers filled with medical equipment, disaster relief supplies, and other humanitarian aid. In addition, Vets With A Mission has established the Children’s Heart Surgery Program in Hue and Da Nang that provides life-saving procedures for special patients. Vietnam vets participate in “Reconciliation” events with former VC/NVA, and each Vietnam vet is “Honored” during the trip by non-vet team members at a special team farewell event. <br /><br />VWAM is an IRS approved 501 (c) (3) non-profit charitable organization and officially recognized by the government of Vietnam as a NGO or Non-Governmental organization with a PTO or Permit to Operate in Vietnam.<br /><br />Vietnam vets went to Vietnam to help the Vietnamese people, and through VWAM that commitment continues."<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Vietnam Babylift<br /><br />www.Vietnambabylift.org<br /><br />This site will not politicize Babylift. Its purpose is to gather as much information as possible about Babylift and make it available to our visitors.<br /><br />It was born of a promise I made to my daughter, Heather Constance Noone / Mai Ngoc Tranh before she died on May 17, 1975. As my husband and I watched Heather's life slip away, I told her how sorry I was that medicine couldn't save her. I pledged to do whatever I could to help the world remember Babylift and her short life.<br /><br />Heather was born somewhere in Vietnam circa February, 1975 and, although critically ill, was flown halfway around the world in a valiant attempt to save her life. That effort failed but her beautiful spirit did not.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Vietnam Veterans of America<br /><br />www.vva.org<br /><br />Vietnam Veterans of America is the only congressionally chartered national veterans service organization dedicated to working on behalf of our nation’s Vietnam-era veterans and their families. Founded in 1978, VVA celebrates 32 years In Service to America. VVA's goals are to promote and support the full range of issues important to Vietnam veterans, to create a new identity for this generation of veterans, and to change public perception of Vietnam veterans. In keeping with our founding principle, “Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another,” VVA’s theme of VetsConnect enables it to reach out to our newer veterans in many ways. VVA has grown from humble beginnings in 1978 into one of our nation’s most respected and successful veterans service organizations on the national, state, and local levels. The organization’s many successes are a direct result of the hard work of thousands of dedicated men and women: our members; our national committee and task force chairs; our national officers and board of directors; and the staff at our national headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. More information about VVA can be found at www.vva.org<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association<br /><br />www.vhpa.org<br /><br />The Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association is a non-profit war veterans' group comprised of helicopter pilots from all countries who flew helicopters in the Vietnam War. Out of the estimated 40,000 helicopter pilots who flew helicopters in the Vietnam War, approximately 14,000 are currently members or have been members in the past. There are currently 8,200 active members.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />VO-67 Observation Squadron Sixty-Seven<br /><br />www.VO-67.org<br /><br />The Navy's Observation Squadron Sixty-Seven (VO-67) existed for just a little over a year, a total of 500 days, from February 1967 to July 1968. The unit was officially declassified in 1998. The "Observation" in the name is meaningless. It hid, at the time, what was a highly classified mission. The "67" stood for the year it came into being. VO-67 was a vital part of project Muscle Shoals. The mission of the project was to detect, classify, hinder and penalize the North Vietnamese Army infiltration into the South. Steel Tiger was the code name for the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. IGLOO WHITE was the code-name for the technologies associated with the project located at NKP Thailand and operated by USAF Task Force Alpha. The VO-67 squadron was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation in 2007, forty years after it was decommissioned due to the ultra secret nature of its mission in 1967-68 in South East Asia.<br /><br />/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////<br /><br />I was a young man during the Vietnam War, yes I enlisted during the war period and I am classified as an era veteran, but my only work in the actual war was as part of the 9th Infantry Division we provided soldiers to go to McChord Air Force base to help with the children and babies brought thru Tacoma and they stopped there before sending them on to the groups that would place these children with the families that would eventually raise them. During my assignment to Korea in 1975/1976 I came back to the states on Air Force planes using Space A standby, in Guam I was bounced off the C-141 that was going to Norton AFB which is ten miles from my parents home in Riverside, something about another flight crew needed the spaces and when I checked with Panam they wanted 1200 dollars for a one way ticket from Guam to Los Angeles so that was not feasible as I didn't have that much money, I was only a SP4 then. My step father Dale Jennings was retired Air Force and he still knew a lot of Air Force NCOs and Officers, I called hom an hour later and he told me to go to the Escort Office there at the Guam Air Force Base a frind of his had arranged for mt to do escort duty. <br /><br />When I got there he said so yo are Dale's son huh. He asked me how Dale was doing, he hadn't seen him in a long time he said he knew Dale when he first joined the Air Force back in 1959 and up to when Dale retired in 1962 and Dale was a good man, I agreed, I told him how he had taken care of my birth father in a nursing home until he died, he didn't have to, but he thought that our father deserved better than being put into a govt paid for nursing home. Dale and my mother paid my fathers bills for the better care facility and I cared the world for Dale. He said Dale had helped him as a young enlisted man and he was happy to be helping Dale and me now. He had me sign for 2 military caskets which were being flown out on the first plane heading to Travis AFB which happened to be a contract plane from United that was moving military personnel from Thailand back to the US. They put the caskets on the plane in the cargo area, I was told I could not leave the plane in Hawaii it was my job to ensure that the caskets were not removed in Hawaii when they refuled and wehn the plane got to Travis I would be met from someone there to sign the receipts I had for the caskets and then I would be relived of my responsibility for them when that officer signed the receipts I had.<br /><br />I was shocked to see a full bird Colonel come in the door as soon as they opened it at Travis, he called me out by name, I had been traveling for 4 days and I looked rough, when I left Korea it was 10 degrees and in California it was 80 degreees and I was in winter dress uniforms and they were badly wrinkled and I needed a shave. He asked me for the paperwork abd the signed it giving me a copy of the receipt so I could prove I had delivered them, he arranged for a MSG that was there to get me into the terminal to get a ride to Norton. A little bit surprised the plnae they put me on was the same C-141 I was bumped off of in Guam, back in the early 70s all Air Force planes had to stop at Travis AFB regardless of their ultimate destination, so it wasn't until the next morning when I saw a picture in the newspaper of the reception at Travis, that it was for the remains of 2 marines who had fallen when the Embassy in Saigon fell, they were just now being returned to the states for burial, which explained the Colonel and all of the Generals that were present at Travis for the planes arrival. I think every General from 1 star to 4 stars who could be there, was. My only hazardous duty in that time period was on the DMZ of Korea where the 1/31st Infantry ran combat patrols in the DMZ every night and manned the 2 out posts over looking the fence into North Korea.Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-7194765003144571042011-01-06T16:44:00.000-08:002011-01-06T16:49:31.875-08:00Families Bear Brunt of Deployment Strains<a href=" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/world/asia/31families.html?_r=1&scp=9&sq=military%20health&st=cse">Families Bear Brunt of Deployment Strains<br /> </a><br /><br />By JAMES DAO and CATRIN EINHORN<br />Published: December 30, 2010<br />Recommend <br />Twitter <br />comments (262)<br /> <br />E-Mail<br /> <br />Send To Phone<br />Print<br /> <br />Single Page<br /> <br /> <br />Reprints<br /> <br />Share<br />CloseLinkedinDiggMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalink WAUTOMA, Wis. — Life changed for Shawn Eisch with a phone call last January. His youngest brother, Brian, a soldier and single father, had just received orders to deploy from Fort Drum, N.Y., to Afghanistan and was mulling who might take his two boys for a year. Shawn volunteered. <br /><br />A Year at War<br />The Home Front<br /><br />Articles in this series are chronicling the yearlong deployment of the First Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, based in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan. The series follows the battalion’s part in the surge in northern Afghanistan and the impact of war on individual soldiers and their families back home.<br /><br />So began a season of adjustments as the boys came to live in their uncle’s home here. Joey, the 8-year-old, got into fistfights at his new school. His 12-year-old brother, Isaac, rebelled against their uncle’s rules. And Shawn’s three children quietly resented sharing a bedroom, the family computer and, most of all, their parents’ attention with their younger cousins. <br /><br />The once comfortable Eisch farmhouse suddenly felt crowded. <br /><br />“It was a lot more traumatic than I ever pictured it, for them,” Shawn, 44, said. “And it was for me, too.” <br /><br />The work of war is very much a family affair. Nearly 6 in 10 of the troops deployed today are married, and nearly half have children. Those families — more than a million of them since 2001 — have borne the brunt of the psychological and emotional strain of deployments. <br /><br />Siblings and grandparents have become surrogate parents. Spouses have struggled with loneliness and stress. Children have felt confused and abandoned during the long separations. All have felt anxieties about the distant dangers of war. <br /><br />Christina Narewski, 26, thought her husband’s second deployment might be easier for her than his first. But she awoke one night this summer feeling so anxious about his absence that she thought she was having a heart attack and called an ambulance. And she still jumps when the doorbell rings, worried it will be officers bearing unwanted news. <br /><br />“You’re afraid to answer your door,” she said. <br /><br />Social scientists are just beginning to document the rippling effects of multiple combat deployments on families — effects that those families themselves have intimately understood for years. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in January found that wives of deployed soldiers sought mental health services more often than other Army wives. <br /><br />They were also more likely to report mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and sleep disorder, the longer the deployments lasted. <br /><br />And a paper published in the journal Pediatrics in late 2009 found that children in military families were more likely to report anxiety than children in civilian families. The longer a parent had been deployed in the previous three years, the researchers found, the more likely the children were to have had difficulties in school and at home. <br /><br />But those studies do not describe the myriad ways, often imperceptible to outsiders, in which families cope with deployments every day. <br /><br />For Ms. Narewski, a mother of three, it has meant taking a grocery store job to distract her from thinking about her husband, a staff sergeant with the First Battalion, 87th Infantry, now in northern Afghanistan. <br /><br />For Tim Sullivan, it has meant learning how to potty train, braid hair and fix dinner for his two young children while his wife, a sergeant in a support battalion to the 1-87, is deployed. <br /><br />For young Joey Eisch, it meant crying himself to sleep for days after his father, a platoon sergeant with the battalion, left last spring. His older brother, Isaac, calm on the outside, was nervous on the inside. <br /><br />“It’s pretty hard worrying if he’ll come back safe,” Isaac said. “I think about it like 10 or more times a day.” <br /><br />Joining the Army Life <br /><br />Soon after Christina and Francisco Narewski married in 2004, he applied for a job with the local sheriff’s office in Salinas, Calif. But he got tired of waiting and, after talking things over with Christina, enlisted in the Army instead. <br /><br />“We both signed up for it,” Ms. Narewski said. “We knew deployments were going to come.” <br /><br />That day arrived in the fall of 2007, when their third child was just 5 months old. Ms. Narewski missed Francisco dearly and sometimes cried just hearing his voice when he called from Iraq. But when he returned home in October 2008, it took them weeks to feel comfortable together again, she recalled. <br /><br />“It’s almost like you’ve forgotten how to be with each other,” she said. “He’s been living in his spot for 15 months. Me and the kids have our own routine. It’s hard to get back to, ‘Oh, you’re home.’ ” <br /><br />“I’ve never missed him as much as I do right now,” she said recently. “It doesn’t feel like we’re moving. It’s like you’re in a dream and you’re trying to get something and you can’t get it.” <br /><br />Not all the spouses back home are women. Tim Sullivan’s days have revolved almost entirely around his two children, Austin, 4, and Leah, 2, since his wife, Sgt. Tamara Sullivan, deployed to Afghanistan in March. <br /><br />He rises each weekday at 5:30 a.m. to dress and feed them before shuttling them to day care. Evenings are the reverse, usually ending with him dozing off in front of the television at their rented ranch-style house in Fayetteville, N.C. <br /><br />He has moved twice and changed jobs three times in recent years to accommodate his wife’s military career. But he does not mind being home with the children, he says, because his father was not, having left the family when Mr. Sullivan was young. <br /><br />“I’m not going to put my kids through that,” said Mr. Sullivan, 35, who handles child support cases for the county. “I’m going to be there.” <br /><br />He worries about lost intimacy with his wife, saying that they have had a number of arguments by phone, usually about bill paying or child rearing. “She tells me: ‘Tim, you can’t just be Daddy, the hard person. You have to be Mommy, too,’” he said. “I tell her it’s not that easy.” <br /><br />Yet he says that if she stays in the Army — as she has said she wants to do — he is prepared to move again or even endure another deployment. “I love her,” he said. “I’m already signed up. I made a decision to join the life that goes with that.” <br /><br />Doing What Uncle Sam Asks <br /><br />Isaac and Joey Eisch have also had to adjust to their father’s nomadic life. “I don’t try to get too attached to my friends because I move around a lot,” said Isaac, who has lived in five states and Germany with his father. (Joey has lived in three states.) “When I leave, it’s like, hard.” <br /><br />When Sergeant Eisch got divorced in 2004, he took Isaac to an Army post in Germany while Joey stayed with his mother in Wisconsin. Soon after returning to the States in 2007, the sergeant became worried that his ex-wife was neglecting Joey. He petitioned family court for full custody of both boys and won. <br /><br />In 2009, he transferred to Fort Drum and took the boys with him. Within months, he received orders for Afghanistan. <br /><br />After nearly 17 years in the Army with no combat deployments, Sergeant Eisch, 36, was determined to go to war. The boys, he felt, were old enough to handle his leaving. Little did he know how hard it would be. <br /><br />When Shawn put the boys in his truck at Fort Drum to take them to Wautoma, a two-stoplight town in central Wisconsin, Isaac clawed at the rear window “like a caged animal,” Sergeant Eisch said. He still tears up at the recollection. <br /><br />“I question myself every day if I’m doing the right thing for my kids,” he said. “I’m trying to do my duty to my country and deploy, and do what Uncle Sam asks me to do. But what’s everybody asking my boys to do?” <br /><br />Within a few weeks of arriving at his uncle’s home, Joey beat up a boy so badly that the school summoned the police. It was not the last time Shawn and his wife, Lisa, would be summoned to the principal’s office. <br /><br />The boys were in pain, Shawn realized. “There was a lot more emotion,” he said, “than Lisa and I ever expected.” <br /><br />Shawn, a state water conservation officer, decided he needed to set strict rules for homework and behavior. Violations led to chores, typically stacking wood. But there were carrots, too: for Joey, promises of going to Build-a-Bear if he obeyed his teachers; for Isaac, going hunting with his uncle was the prize. Gradually, the calls from the principal declined, though they have not ended. <br /><br />In September, Sergeant Eisch returned for midtour leave and the homecoming was as joyful as his departure had been wrenching. Father and sons spent the first nights in hotels, visited an amusement park, went fishing and traveled to New York City, where they saw Times Square and the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. <br /><br />But the two weeks were over in what seemed like hours. In his final days, Sergeant Eisch had prepped the boys for his departure, but that did not make it any easier. <br /><br />“Why can’t we just, like, end the war?” Isaac asked at one point. <br /><br />As they waited at the airport, father and sons clung to each other. “I’m going to have to drink like a gallon of water to replenish these tears,” the sergeant said. “Be safe,” Isaac implored him over and over. <br /><br />Sergeant Eisch said he would, and then was gone. <br /><br />Despite his worries, Isaac tried to reassure himself. “He’s halfway through, and he’s going to make it,” he said. “With all that training he’s probably not going to get shot. He knows if there’s a red dot on his chest, run. Not toward the enemy. Run, and shoot.” <br /><br />But his father did not run. <br /><br />Dad Comes Home <br /><br />Just weeks after returning to Afghanistan, Sergeant Eisch, the senior noncommissioned officer for a reconnaissance and sniper platoon, was involved with Afghan police officers in a major offensive into a Taliban stronghold south of Kunduz city. <br /><br />While directing fire from his armored truck, Sergeant Eisch saw a rocket-propelled grenade explode among a group of police officers standing in a field. The Afghans scattered, leaving behind a man writhing in pain. Sergeant Eisch ordered his medic to move their truck alongside the officer to shield him from gunfire. Then Sergeant Eisch got out. <br /><br />“I just reacted,” he recalled. “I seen a guy hurt and nobody was helping him, so I went out there.” <br /><br />The police officer was bleeding from several gaping wounds and seemed to have lost an eye. Sergeant Eisch started applying tourniquets when he heard the snap of bullets and felt “a chainsaw ripping through my legs.” He had been hit by machine gun fire, twice in the left leg, once in the right. <br /><br />He crawled back into his truck and helped tighten tourniquets on his own legs. He was evacuated by helicopter and taken to a military hospital where, in a morphine daze, he called Shawn. <br /><br />“Are you sitting down?” Brian asked woozily. “I’ve been shot.” <br /><br />Shawn hung up and went into a quiet panic. He could not tell how badly Brian had been wounded. Would he lose his leg? He called the school and asked them to shield the boys from the news until he could get there. <br /><br />Outside school, Shawn told Isaac, Joey and his 12-year-old daughter, Anna, about Brian’s injury. Only Isaac stayed relatively calm. <br /><br />But later, Shawn found Isaac in his bedroom weeping quietly while looking at a photograph showing his father outside his tent, holding a rifle. Shawn helped him turn the photograph into a PowerPoint presentation titled, “I Love You Dad!” <br /><br />For Shawn, a gentle and reserved man, his brother’s injury brought six months of family turmoil to a new level. Sensing his distress, Lisa urged him to go hunting, a favorite pastime. So he grabbed his bow and went to a wooded ridge on his 40 acres of property. <br /><br />To his amazement, an eight-point buck wandered by. Shawn hit the deer, the largest he had ever killed with a bow. It seemed a good omen. <br /><br />A few days later, Shawn flew with the boys, his father and Brian’s twin sister, Brenda, to Washington to visit Sergeant Eisch at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. At the entrance, they saw men in wheelchairs with no arms and no legs. Others were burned or missing eyes. Shawn feared what the boys would see inside Brian’s room. <br /><br />But Brian, giddy from painkillers, was his cheerful self. His right leg seemed almost normal. His left leg, swollen and stapled together, looked terrible. But it was a real leg, and it was still attached. The boys felt relieved. <br /><br />Within days, Brian was wheeling himself around the hospital and cracking jokes with nurses, a green-and-yellow Green Bay Packers cap on his head. While Joey lost himself in coloring books and television, Isaac attended to his father’s every need. <br /><br />“I feel a little more grown up,” Isaac said. “I feel a lot more attached to him than I was when he left.” <br /><br />One doctor told Brian that he would never be able to carry a rucksack or run again because of nerve damage in his left leg. Someone even asked him if he wanted the leg amputated, since he would certainly be able to run with a prosthetic. Brian refused, and vowed to prove the doctor wrong. By December, he was walking with a cane and driving. <br /><br />For Shawn, too, the future had become murkier. It might be many weeks before Brian could reclaim his sons. But he also knew how glad the boys were to have their father back in one piece. <br /><br />“Brian came home,” Shawn said one evening after visiting his brother in the hospital. “He didn’t come home like we hoped he would come home, but he came home.” <br /><br />“Every single day I think about all those families and all those kids that are not going to have a dad come home from Afghanistan,” he said. “That hurts more than watching my brother try to take a step because I know my brother will take a step and I know he’s going to walk down the dock and get in his bass boat someday.” <br /><br />It was late, and he had to get the boys up the next morning to visit their father at the hospital again. The holidays were fast approaching and the snow would soon be arriving in Wisconsin. Shawn wondered whether he could get Isaac out hunting before the season ended. <br /><br />Yeah, he thought. He probably could.Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-65818081744981997702011-01-04T11:57:00.000-08:002011-01-04T11:58:24.867-08:00Disabled troops, vets misled on service dogsBy Rick Maze - Staff writer<br />Posted : Thursday Dec 30, 2010 13:03:36 EST<br /><br />Some service members and veterans are being misled and possibly harmed by well-meaning charities promising to provide a trained service dog to help with medical needs, according to representatives of a major veterans service organization.<br /><br />What o ften happens, according to officials from the organization AmVets, is that disabled veterans who might benefit from a dog trained to do certain tasks may end up with an animal that a charity group has rescued from a pound, has been taught no special skills and might not be a true “service dog” for legal purposes.<br /><br />“A dog with little or no training might be a great companion, but that’s all,” said Cristina Roof, AmVets legislative director.<br /><br />Is it a real service dog?<br />Minimum training standards for service dogs established by Assistance Dogs of America:<br /><br />• 90 percent of the time, a service dog must respond the first time it is asked to do a basic obedience and skill task.<br /><br />• By voic e command or hand signal, a service dog must sit, stay, lie down, come and heel.<br /><br />• A service dog must perform at least three tasks to mitigate a disability.<br /><br />• The dog must be clean, well-groomed and not have an “offensive odor.”<br /><br />• Unnecessary barking, growling, whining or soliciting attention from other people is not allowed. That includes begging for or stealing food from the general public.<br /><br />• When working, a dog should be calm and quiet, and not distracted (even by cats or squirrels). When not working, it should lie quietly without blocking aisles or doorways.<br /><br />• Unless told otherwise, a dog should be within two feet of its handler at all times.<br /><br />• In public, a service dog must wear a cape, harness, backpack or other clothing or equipment identifying it as a service dog.<br /><br />Roof said some media stories about nonprofit groups providing veterans with dogs rescued from shelters give the incorrect impression that an untrained dog is essentially the same as a trained service dog.<br /><br />“It is incredibly important to remember a service dog may not be a good fit for everyone,” Roof said. “It is also crucial to remember that a service dog is in no way a replacement for your rehabilitation, either.”<br /><br />Roof said service members and veterans should never pay for a service dog and should try to deal only with groups accredited by Assistance Dogs International, which sets training g uidelines and placement standards.<br /><br />Dogs not officially recognized as service dogs — sometimes called therapy dogs or emotional support dogs — are pets, and although they may have some basic training, they are not covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. They may not have access to public spaces and may not enter military and veterans hospitals and clinics.<br /><br />Roof said ADA rules cover guide dogs for the blind or deaf, seizure-alert dogs, and mobility dogs trained to pull a wheelchair, pick up dropped items and perform similar tasks. A month-old ADA policy revision now also allows public access for psychiatric service dogs if they are trained to perform a specific task.<br /><br />The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments don’t have to abide by ADA rules, Roof said. VA operates on rules dating to 1994 that al low only seeing-eye dogs into VA facilities, but allow case-by-case access for other types of service dogs.<br /><br />DoD has similar rules, giving discretion about allowing dogs into hospitals and clinics to base commanders, Roof said.<br /><br />Roof said access restrictions on dogs can be embarrassing for service members and veterans who believe they have a trained and officially recognized dog but are later barred from bringing the animal into public buildings and medical facilities.<br /><br />Having a companion dog rather than a recognized service dog also can make a difference in terms of benefits. VA can provide financial help to veterans for service dogs, covering some costs for food and health care, but those benefits don’t extend to emotional support or therapy dogs, said AmVets spokesman Ryan Gallucci.<br /><br />“It’s a confusing situation,” Gallucci said.<br /><br />One example of a potentially confusing message is from Pets For Vets, a California-based charity that takes animals from shelters and pairs them with veterans.<br /><br />Pets for Vets does not claim its dogs are certified as service dogs, but says in promotional material that their program is “a win-win way to give back to our troops who have given so much to us.”<br /><br />Veterans with physical and mental injuries can have a difficult transition to civilian life, and having a companion can help, the group says. “Our goal is to heal their wounds by bringing together man’s best friend and our returning soldiers while showing them both that we have not forgotten,” the group says.<br /><br />P ets for Vets did not respond to calls for comment.<br /><br />Roof said there is no industrywide standard for what skills a dog may need to be certified to help a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health issues. VA is in the early stages of research to devise standard requirements for dogs to be trained to help veterans suffering from PTSD.<br /><br />A Laurel, Md., nonprofit group, Fidos for Freedom, trains dogs in specific skills. They can be trained to open and close doors, retrieve objects, help someone keep their balance while walking, help someone get in or out of a chair, pull a wheelchair for short distances, assist in dressing or undressing, or help someone who has fallen get back on their feet.<br /><br />The group also trains dogs to help the deaf or hearing impaired by responding to the phone, smoke detector, alarm c lock, microwave, someone knocking at the door or calling a name, the sound of something being dropped or even a baby’s cry.<br /><br /><a href=" http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/12/military-disabled-troops-veterans-misled-on-service-dogs-123010w/ ">Disabled troops, vets misled on service dogs<br /> </a>Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5946574192356237518.post-90427306183993703282011-01-03T12:18:00.000-08:002011-01-03T12:39:58.540-08:00CIA Tries Again to Duck Responsibility for Doing Drug Experiments on Veterans<a href=" http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/12/14/32562.htm">CIA Tries Again to Duck Responsibility for Doing Drug Experiments on Veterans</a><br /><br />By MARIA DINZEO <br />ShareThis<br /> SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The Central Intelligence Agency in January will argue for dismissal of Vietnam veterans' claims that the CIA must provide them with information about the health effects of chemicals used on them during Cold War-era human experiments. The CIA also claims it is not obligated to provide the veterans with medical care for side effects of the drugs. It's the CIA's third attempt to get the case dismissed. <br /> In a 2009 federal lawsuit, Vietnam Veterans of America claimed that the Army and CIA had used at least 7,800 soldiers as guinea pigs in "Project Paperclip." They were given at least 250 and as many as 400 types of drugs, among them sarin, one of the most deadly drugs known to man, amphetamines, barbiturates, mustard gas, phosgene gas and LSD.<br /> Among the project's goals were to control human behavior, develop drugs that would cause confusion, promote weakness or temporarily cause loss of hearing or vision, create a drug to induce hypnosis and identify drugs that could enhance a person's ability to withstand torture.<br /> The veterans say that some of the soldiers died, and others suffered grand mal seizures, epileptic seizures and paranoia. The veterans say the CIA promised in the 1970s to compensate those who were made guinea pigs, but the 2009 complaint states that the government "never made a sincere effort to locate the survivors."<br /> In its 32-page motion to dismiss the group's third amended complaint, the CIA claims it has no legal obligation under the Administrative Procedures Act to provide the veterans with notice of the drugs' health effects and that the veterans' notice claim "rests solely on state common-law duty."<br /> The CIA claims that the law on which the veterans base their claim for health care compensation stems from the Department of Defense and Army regulations, "which do not purport to have a binding affect on the CIA." <br /> And it claims that the Defense Department "never intended nor committed to providing medical care for service member participants in the test programs."<br /> In its response, the veterans group says the CIA has already tried, in past motions, "to re-argue issues already decided" by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in 2009. "Defendants argue that plaintiffs do not state a claim for relief under the APA against the CIA or the Department of Defense because they do not allege a legally enforceable duty against those agencies," the response states. "Defendants presented this argument in each of their previous motions to dismiss," but the court has already "rejected this line of argument," finding that a letter from the Department of Justice supports the groups' claim that the CIA is obligated to provide them with medical care.<br /> "Contrary to the court's express direction, defendants now seek to use the addition of the new parties as a crass opportunity for another bite at the apple (their third), seeking to re-litigate issues the court already decided nearly a year ago," the group says.<br /> The hearing is set for Jan. 13, 2011 before Judge Wilken. The case is expected to go to trial in 2012. <br /><br />/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////<br /><br />the writer made the mistake of calling these "7,800 soldiers as guinea pigs in Project Paperclip." The conde names used for the experiments were known as MKULTRA, Artichoke, Naomi, Blueberry etc Operation paperclip was the OSS/CIA project to bring Nazi war criminals into the US after WW2 as President Truman had stated that no known Nazi's could be brought in they had to be "good germans" so the agencies cleaned up the records of these 2100 men and their families and brought them in primarily thru Canada in the early 50s, men like Werner Von Braun, Dr Strughold men who would do great things for the science and medical communities of the US and many worked for American corporations after they spent a few years or a decade working for military programs at places like Edgewood Arsenal, Fort Detrick, Fort McClellan, Dugway Proving Grounds etc it is estimated that nine of them worked at Edgewood Arsenal during the years that human testing was done on enlisted Army volunteers, however none of the volunteers were ever told that some of the researchers were tied to the death camps of WW2 Europe, I get the feeling that the power to be knew that the soldiers would not have volunteered if they had been given that information. I know I would not have volunteered, knowing what I know now I feel that I was duped and lied to, and I think it is time for the government to tell these veterans all of the substances they were or might have been exposed to and the toxix water wells that were used until 1978, for the bases drinking water and other uses such as cooking and bathing, swimming pools etc, after the EPA conducted tests in 1978 all of the wells were capped on base and in the aquifer of Edgewood Maryland and water was then piped in from an outside source that was clean. The EPA superfund is still working on the clean up of Edgewood Arsenal in 2010, more than 30 years later, the base was really contaminated. The water could hardly be called "safe" before 1978 how much of the toxins were we exposed to and how many of mour medical problems are related to either the experiments themselves or the water? Will we ever know? Who is repsonsible? The Army declines to answer and the VA states we can't prove the water harmed us, can they prove it didn't harm us? What about reasonable doubt?<br /><br />Seriously a program that has a 75% death and disability rate for men aged 45-65 just leaves a lot of questions and it seems that our government would prefer NOT to answer them, why? What about the PROMISE to care for military personnel either killed by service or harmed by service we have to fit in here some place. <br /><br />They can stonewall the truth but the graves are full and more will be and that can not be changed. The right or wrong is now irrelevant helping the veterans and their widows should be the goal the misguided reasons for doing the experiments and the men who authorized them are mostly deceased as are most of the "volunteers" but some of them are still alive and they need medical care and compensation as do the widows. The children of these men also deserve the truth. Their fathers were not just crazy old men who felt abused by the Army, they were veterans who were abused by the Army and then the VA, the CIA just used some of the scientists at Edgewood Arsenal to share the data and in some cases guided the substances used to find what would be advantageous for men like Sidney Gottlieb.Mike (Beetle) Baileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607744991190390695noreply@blogger.com