FW: FIGHT OR DIE premiering on Discovery this Thursday, June 26 at 10PM
Forwarded FYI, please forward to others...
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Dear Joe:
We finally heard from Discovery that FIGHT OR DIE will premiere on the Discovery Channel on Thursday, June 26 at 10pm EDT/PDT. We would appreciate your help in getting this information out to your military and Ia Drang veterans networks!
You can watch the preview for the show by clicking this link to YouTube.
Based on the viewer response to this broadcast, Discovery will decide whether the show will become a weekly series. So please tune in (or TiVo it) and please forward this email on to those you think might also be interested. And if you like the show, please email feedback to: FEEDBACK@WHEELHOUSEENTERTAINMENT.COM
FIGHT OR DIE
Discovery Channel (in HD)
Thursday, June 26 at 10pm ET/PT
Thanks,
Steve
(Additional show info below)
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From Executive Producer Randall Wallace (BRAVEHEART, PEARL HARBOR, WE WERE SOLDIERS, THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK), comes FiGHT OR DIE, an exciting new epic documentary special that captures the personal experience of war in groundbreaking fashion by delving inside the psyche of the soldier under fire, allowing viewers to walk the Thin Red Line that separates sanity from madness and the living from the dead.
Harrowing personal accounts of battle are seamlessly blended with cinematic dramatizations, digitally remastered combat footage, and a bullet-ridden soundscape to present one of the most riveting, emotional, and realistic portrayals of war ever produced for television. 'We all have the capacity for depths of courage, compassion and even cruelty that we can't imagine when sitting in safety and comfort,” said Wallace. “FIGHT OR DIE explores these extremes of human character made apparent in the cauldron of conflict.'
The first episode tells the real-life story of a group of American soldiers whose lives were made famous in Wallace’s motion picture WE WERE SOLDIERS starring Mel Gibson. On November 14, 1965 in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam, in a small clearing called Landing Zone X-Ray, 2,000 enemy soldiers surrounded 400 United States Army troopers. The ensuing battle was one of the most savage in U.S. history. FIGHT OR DIE is a tribute to the nobility of those men under fire, their common acts of uncommon valor, and their loyalty to and love for one another.
Monday, June 23, 2008
FIGHT OR DIE premiering on Discovery this Thursday, June 26 at 10PM
U.S. President's 2009 Biodefense Budget Proposal Calls for Overall Growth, But Some Cuts
U.S. President's 2009 Biodefense Budget Proposal Calls for Overall Growth, But Some Cuts
In 2001, 22 anthrax victims "wreaked havoc on hospitals up and down the East Coast," said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior associate with the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Although only 11 of the 22 anthrax victims were afflicted by the most extreme form of exposure, resulting from inhalation, thousands of other patients had to be individually assessed in hospital emergency rooms.
Since then, hospitals have dramatically improved their ability to respond to biosecurity threats through better planning, drills and improved communications, according to Toner, a speaker at a 12 June Capitol Hill briefing organized by AAAS and the Congressional R&D Caucus.
Yet the number of hospital beds and emergency departments continues to decline, particularly in cities and at academic health centers, and many hospitals remain unprepared for either deliberate terrorist attacks or major disease outbreaks. "Unless we address the critical issue of hospital overcrowding, our ability to respond to any sort of biological attack is going to be severely limited," Toner cautioned.
Under U.S. President George W. Bush's proposed biodefense budget for fiscal year 2009, support for hospital preparedness would drop by 15%, or $60 million, according to Alan Pearson, director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
The other "big loser" in the proposed budget, he said, would be state and local capacity-building efforts, which are recommended for an 18%, $140 million cut in biodefense funding. Pearson was the featured speaker at the Hill event planned by two AAAS program: the Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy, and the Center for Science, Technology and Congress.
Pearson later added that, according to the Bush Administration, these cuts reflect one-time adjustments to better align federal funding with state budget cycles, and further that funding would be unchanged compared with fiscal year 2008, when viewed on a month-to-month basis. "Funding for these activities has been slowly but steadily declining since FY2003," Pearson said. "It remains to be seen whether annual funding in FY2010 will return to the FY2008 level, or continue at the lower FY2009 level."
Across multiple agencies, however, the Bush Administration has recommended a big overall increase—an additional $8.97 billion for bioweapons, prevention and defense in 2009—equivalent to a 39% increase, compared with the congressional appropriation for 2008. The new funding would be devoted primarily for biodefense-related research, development, and medical countermeasures such as vaccines.
The proposed $8.97 billion includes $2.18 billion in BioShield funding, appropriated in 2004, but not available until 2009, Pearson explained. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), established within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also is significantly increasing biodefense investments, and is likely to continue to do so, he added.
After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks triggered relatively rapid growth in U.S. federal funding for bioweapons, prevention and defense between fiscal years 2001 and 2009—for a total of $57 billion over those years, if the president's 2009 budget is approved, according to Pearson. Funds also are now being provided for Project BioShield, a 10-year effort to stockpile protection against biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear agents.
Within the president's proposed 2009 budget, Pearson said, the "winners," or categories of activity receiving the largest increases in funding would be research and development (R&D), which would rise by $330 million, or 10% compared with 2008; surveillance and detection, slated to go up by $114 million, representing a significant increase; and prevention efforts, which would jump by $32 million, or 15%. Funding for food and agricultural security also would increase, by $146 million, or about 35%.
But hospital preparedness and state and local readiness would see less support. "Particularly noticeable this year is a dramatic decrease in [proposed] funding for health professions training," he noted. This recommendation is "ironic" in light of a nursing shortage and requirements for pandemic and hazard preparedness, Pearson added.
Pearson also described a shift in funding emphasis, from "biodefense," or a focus on deliberate attacks, to "biosecurity," which also encompasses natural outbreaks of diseases, food contamination and other non-deliberate crises.
In addition to Pearson and Toner, four other leading experts took part in the 12 June briefing to provide perspectives on medical countermeasures, prevention strategies; agriculture and food defense; and public health preparedness.
Brad Smith, a senior associate at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, addressed medical countermeasures—efforts to develop vaccines and other medicines to protect people from anthrax, smallpox and other biological agents.
Developing such treatments is time-consuming, expensive and often futile, Smith noted. He and his colleagues recently completed an analysis to determine how much it would cost to develop eight key medical products currently of interest to the government. By their estimate, it would cost $3.4 billion per year, every year, to have a 90%percent chance of successfully developing each of the eight needed medicines. By comparison, researchers have so far received $100 million per year for the past two years, through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
"That's enough to support two of those [development] funnels with a 30% chance of getting products," Smith said. "If the government is going to get the products it says it needs to protect American citizens, the government will need to increase its investment across the board in developing new vaccines and medicines."
In the biodefense field, efforts to prevent new biological knowledge and technologies from falling into the wrong hands are inherently complicated, said Gerald Epstein, a senior fellow for science and security in the Center for Strategic and International Studies Homeland Security Program. That's because "biotechnologies are pervasively dual-use," Epstein noted. "The very technologies and capabilities we need to worry about are the capabilities we need to actively promote."
Epstein sees long-term scientific partnerships between nations as an important aspect of any strategies for preventing the misuse of biotechnologies.
While funding to prevent deliberate contamination of the U.S. food supply has increased since 2001, Pearson said, support for efforts to avoid accidental contamination of food has remained flat. Dr. James A. Roth, a veterinarian and director of the Center for Food Security and Public Health at Iowa State University, pointed out that food has been relatively cheap and abundant in the United States since World War II. But, he added, "that period is over, and internationally, food insecurity is becoming a huge and increasing problem."
Already in the United States, he said, corn has increased from $2 a bushel to $7 a bushel, and the food distribution system remains extremely vulnerable to any disruptions. In Iowa, for example, the largest egg-producing state, a single case of avian influenza would bring production to a halt, and within several days, eggs would disappear from grocery store shelves, restaurants and food processing plants.
Roth identified three defense-related food and agricultural areas in need of more funding: First, he said, efforts to combat zoonotic diseases deserve greater support. A new, $460million research facility is being built in Ames, Iowa, he said, but with insufficient support for operations and research. Second, Roth said, the pharmaceutical stockpile for protecting animals against major diseases is inadequate, which puts humans at risk, too. Third, Roth echoed Pearson's call for additional investment in the veterinary workforce.
"Only 26 states have vet colleges," Roth said. "We don't have nearly enough vets in rural areas, or to treat livestock." In the event of a disease outbreak affecting animals, he said, vets would be at the forefront of a rapid, critical response effort.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, discussed public health preparedness. The public health system has made dramatic improvements in its capacity for dealing with bioterrorism, he said. The national stockpile of key medicines also has improved, along with systems for enhancing communications among states and agencies. Today, more epidemiologists are trained in biopreparedness, but Benjamin noted that too few professionals are focusing on chronic disease and maternal-child health issues. Further, low-income, elderly and other disadvantaged populations remain particularly vulnerable to biosecurity risks.
Moreover, Benjamin said: "The public really has not yet developed cultural awareness" of biosecurity risks. "We've not yet built this awareness that we need to have gas in the car, food in the fridge and an awareness of where our family members are and how we're going to communicate with them."
Looking to the future of biodefense, Pearson said that BARDA funding is likely to increase for the next few years. Support for medical countermeasures is shifting from agent-specific approaches to mixed strategies, he said. Further, policy-makers are beginning to recognize the need for efforts to prevent and prepare for natural disease outbreaks and food contamination as well as deliberate terrorism.
Ginger Pinholster
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2008/0619biosecurity.shtml
19 June 2008
Maryland to seek Superfund status for Fort Detrick dump site
Maryland to seek Superfund status for Fort Detrick dump site
June 18, 2008
FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s environmental secretary, hoping to speed the cleanup of ground water tainted by an old Army dump, has asked federal regulators to add the site at Fort Detrick to a list of the nation’s most polluted places.
The Army says it has spent $43 million since 1992 to remove industrial and laboratory waste dumped decades ago in unlined trenches, but it has yet to clean up the contaminated ground water.
In a letter dated June 4, Department of the Environment Secretary Shari T. Wilson asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to add the site known as Area B to the Superfund program’s National Priorities List by July 4, The Frederick News-Post reported Wednesday.
“The continued delay perpetuates the unacceptably long timeline that this investigation continues to take,” Wilson wrote.
Adding Area B to the list would enable the state to “move forward with alternative forms of action, if necessary,” Wilson wrote. She didn’t specify the possible actions.
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Wilson also wrote that despite state requests and the recommendation of a cleanup advisory board in 1999, the Army has never completed a comprehensive review of the water contamination.
The EPA is considering the state’s request but hasn’t made a decision, agency spokeswoman Roxanne Smith said in an e-mail.
Fort Detrick’s Environmental Management Office said in a written statement that it expects to finish work in the near future on 41 of 42 sites targeted for cleanup. The 42nd site is the groundwater contamination, the agency said.
In April, the Army announced a renewed effort to find and test private wells near Area B for possible contamination.
Fort Detrick is home to the military’s biological warfare defense program. In the 1940s through the 1960s, workers dumped chemical and biological wastes in unlined trenches at Area B.
In 1991, test wells detected industrial solvents in the water running beneath Area B. The chemicals were identified as trichloroethylene, a metal degreaser linked to liver tumors, and tetrachloroethylene, a dry-cleaning solvent that is a suspected carcinogen. A number of private wells near the post also were contaminated, prompting the Army to connect at least seven homes to public water lines.
From 1997 to 1999, the levels of contamination reached 20,000 parts per billion of TCE and PCE. Anything higher than 5 parts per billion violates federal standards.
In 2004, the Army finished removing about 3,500 tons of contaminated soil, drums, laboratory vials and cylinders from four pits at Area B, but lacked funding to clean up the ground water. Since then, contamination levels in the ground water have fallen sharply, installation spokesman Chuck Gordon said in April.
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On the Net:
Maryland Department of the Environment: http://www.mde.state.md.us
Fort Detrick: http://www.detrick.army.mil
Maryland to seek Superfund status for Fort Detrick dump site
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Given the fact that Edgewood Arsenal/Aberdeen Proving Grounds was added to the Superfund site decades ago, I wonder why it took so long for the state government to catch on the Fort Detricks toxic levels?
How to Recoup Taxes Paid on Disability Severance pay From the Armed Forces
How to Recoup Taxes Paid on Disability
Severance pay From the Armed Forces
EAST CANTON, Ohio; 20 June 2008 -- IRS publications 17 (Your Federal Income
Tax) & 525 (Taxable & Non-taxable Income, page 17) both state that "if you
receive a lump-sum disability severance payment and are later awarded VA
disability benefits, exclude 100% of the severance benefit from your
income." But neither publication says how.
"Many medically discharged vets, including some good friends of mine, don't
know they are entitled to get the taxes back if they get a VA rating," says
Dorothy, the author of this extremely important USVI veteran document.
In this informative USVI document, composed by a discharged veteran of
recent years, discharged veterans awarded VA disability benefits will learn
how to recoup money paid as taxes on disability severance income.
Read it on USVI: http://www.usvetinfo.com/meddischarge.htm
--
U.S. Veteran Information (non-governmental) USVI - Serving Veterans since
1997 P.O. Box 30076 East Canton, Ohio 44730 USA http://www.usvetinfo.com
---
Disclaimer:
Al Colombo, the U.S. Veteran Information web site, and the individuals who
actively research and provide information are not affiliated with the
Veterans Affairs, Federal Government, or any state or local government
agency. Neither are these individuals or the U.S. Veteran Information
(non-governmental) organization qualified to render legal advice of any
kind. Opinions or information offered should be verified with the VA or
appropriate agency/department at http://www.va.gov/ before taking action.
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I am 52 years old and have never heard of this before, this is good info for recently disabled veterans that are medically discharged from the military, all the dollars add up
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Ethics of military drug testing questioned
Ethics of military drug testing questioned
Degree of 'voluntary' participation raises concerns
David R. Sands (Contact)
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Colombian and Indonesian troops have been drafted to test new anti-malaria drugs. South African researchers used Tanzanian soldiers to study the effectiveness of an unorthodox treatment for HIV/AIDS.
And a trial conducted on some 2,000 Nepalese soldiers for a new hepatitis-E vaccine by a major U.S. drug company sparked public protests and complaints that the Nepalese troops were being used as human guinea pigs.
An investigation by The Washington Times and ABC News, which on Tuesday reported a troubled U.S. government program using military veterans to test potentially dangerous drugs, has focused new attention on what medical ethicists say is an especially difficult problem. The U.S. military is not the only one that has had to deal with the consequences.
Military personnel and veterans represent two particularly tempting populations for medical study, researchers say. A large sample of participants, complete with detailed medical histories and personal data, can be quickly assembled. Their behavior, travel and personal habits are far easier to control during the study period.
But that high level of control also makes military medical testing a moral minefield, ethicists say. Just how much freedom does a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine in the ranks have to refuse to participate in a medical trial when asked by a superior officer?
"Considering that the majority of defense-related research is 'non-therapeutic' and ... is typically carried out on healthy volunteers, the standard of legal consent is high," according to recent study of military medical issues by lawyer Ashley R. Melson.
Earlier this year, Britain's Ministry of Defense paid out more than $5.9 million to settle claims from 369 veterans subjected to tests at the government's Porton Down chemical-warfare center. The veterans claimed in a lawsuit that they had been exposed to nerve gas and mustard gas in trials there, leading to a wide variety of health problems.
Porton Down, believed to be the oldest chemical-warfare research site in the world, has tested some 25,000 British servicemen since its establishment in 1916.
In Nepal in the mid-1990s, an institute of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research set up a field station to test a new hepatitis vaccine licensed to pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.
After popular protests forced the cancellation of plans to test the vaccine on Nepalese citizens, researchers in 2001 turned to 2,000 Royal Nepalese Army soldiers at a military hospital in Katmandu.
The U.S. Embassy strongly defended the tests, saying the Nepalese soldiers had volunteered for the trial and denying a link between the research and U.S. military aid to the poor Asian nation. The U.S. government had given tens of millions of dollars to the government as it battled a Maoist insurgency.
But critics said the Nepalese military was unlikely to refuse a request from its biggest patron to provide recruits for the medical study.
The money, training and equipment supplied by the U.S. military to Nepal's army "threatened the voluntary nature of the institutional and individual participation in the trial," medical researcher Jason Andrews wrote in the American Journal of Bioethics.
cRita Tiwari contributed to this report
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This was my reply to the reporter that wrote this story, this nation refuses to address the issue of the enlisted men they tested in similar experiments as Porton Downs, at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland from 1955 thru 1975.
Your article talked about Porton Downs and the British govt compensating their "volunteers" for being used in "drug experiments" right now no one is talking about the enlisted men used at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland from 1955 thru 1975 in experiments using 254 substances from chemical weapons Sarin, mustard agents, LSD, PCP, Scopolomine, Ecstacy, etc.
I realize I am dismissed as a "raving, agenda driven person" well if you had been used in classified experiments and the VA refised to address the medical problems caused by the long term consequences of the experiments I vounteered for at age 18, and have left me totally disabled by age 45, naturally I am angry at the government.
Of the 7120 men used at Edgewood during the 20 years, the last health study shows that 40% of them are assumed to be deceased. 3098 men could not be found in FY 2000, the compnay that did the survey had access to IRS, VA and SS databases, men aged 45-65 are either paying taxes or drawing federal disability benefits, they don't just disappear. Of the 4022 survivors they did locate, 54% of them reported being disabled, that combines for a 74.43% death and disability rate, and still DOD and the VA dismiss any nexus to the experiments, that is just not reasonable. There are 2 studies from reputable organizations, that National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that show the effects of the long term health problems from the chemical weapons exposures. This is the link to Dr Page's study in March 2003 based on the FY 2000 data gathering
http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/5/844/0.pdf, this is the NIH Study from Jan 1, 1994
http://www.ehponline.org/members/1994/102-1/munro-full.html then finally this is the SIPRI study
http://www.sipri.org/contents/cbwarfare/Publications/pdfs/cw-delayed.pdf
Sir, I have the names of 18 other Edgewood "test vets" and their e mail addresses you can contact them about this, since I am a "liability" publicly when it comes to this issue, but these other men are not as public as I am about speaking about this.
Last year the last living researcher from the experiments wrote a book about them, Colonel James Ketchum, US Army Retired. He spent most of his career at Edgewood doing research and worked for DR Van Sim and with DR Fred Siddell.
http://forgottensecrets.net/
I bought a copy of it last year DR Ketchum signed it and on Dec 17,2007 I was able to get President Bill Clinton to sign it at a veterans event, as he apologized for the experiments done by the government during the Cold War and the Tuskeegee Sysphlis experiments and the Nuclear tests done on civilans and military.
Canada and Britain have both compensated their "test veterans" they ran similar experiments at Gagetown, since they have National Health Care they gave each veteran or their surviving spouse 24,000 dollars, why is the United States the only nation to ignore, it's test veterans. I will be happy to give you the names of the other veterans, they are all like me, they can't get the VA to deal with them on their claims for medical problems caused by the expsoures. Thank you for your time.
Peabody-winning reporter writes about injuries in Iraq
Peabody-winning reporter writes about injuries in Iraq
NEW YORK -- When Kimberly Dozier accepted a Peabody Award on Monday for her "CBS News Sunday Morning" story about two female veterans who lost limbs in Iraq, it was a big step in her transition from blown-up journalist to journalist.
Even sweeter, from Dozier's perspective, is that the award has nothing to do with May 29, 2006, when a Baghdad car bomb seriously injured her and killed two CBS News colleagues and a U.S. Army captain out on a story about the Iraq War.
Dozier hopes now that telling her story, in the just-published book "Breathing the Fire," can help families and veterans of the Iraq War who return home with physical and psychic damage.
The war has been going on for so long that Dozier is concerned people have become numb to it.
"I'm not lecturing people which way to go on the Iraq War, one way or another, but this sort of willingness to ignore what is going on, or turn away from it kind of scares me," she said. "I want people to pay attention."
Her book tells about that fateful day and her long physical recovery in gripping detail. Perhaps more interesting are the emotional after-effects that usually aren't as well documented, from survivor's guilt to the resentment of others, to the frustration of well-meaning people who think they understand what she's feeling.
Dozier had harrowing hallucinations involving her dead colleagues, cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan. She was hypervigilant, so worried about another attack when she was transferred from one military hospital to another that she tensely grabbed the sides of her gurney when any car approached her ambulance.
Navy people told her that for many trauma survivors, probably the majority, dredging up harrowing memories is harmful. Others are helped by it. Dozier fell into the latter camp.
Her family was supportive and protective. But as with many families of trauma victims, they eventually became too protective. A fellow journalist, CBS News' Bob Schieffer, was the first to truly fill Dozier in on what had happened.
During the brutal period of more than two dozen operations and subsequent strength-gathering, Dozier spent many hours in her hospital bed crying. She replayed the events in her mind over and over, wondering if there was anything she could have done that would have saved Douglas and Brolan, or even if she should have gone out on patrol at all. She knew some people in CBS News' London bureau, where the two men were based, thought she should have done a less risky story standing on a building rooftop.
Dozier received reassurance from a fellow member of a terrible club. ABC News' Bob Woodruff, who had been badly wounded in a car bomb attack four months before Dozier's injury, told her to remember that Douglas and Brolan were professionals who made their own decisions to go on the trip. It would dishonor them to believe she had somehow ordered them to go on an assignment that killed them.
She also knew that Sgt. Justin Farrar, aide to the late Capt. James Alex Funkhouser, was furious with her. Funkhouser was killed guiding Dozier on the mission.
Besides his guilt that the man he was charged with watching had been killed, Farrar said the explosion wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for the CBS crew coming along (Farrar and Dozier have since patched things up).
"At first, I was angry and hurt to know that there was some of this out there," Dozier said. "But then I realized that they have to do what they have to do to get through it. I'm standing on two feet, so if they need to hate me for the rest of all time in order to get through it, I'm OK with that."
She stays away from stories about wounded soldiers now. She does national security issues from within the United States, a low-profile assignment because of the current focus on domestic issues. She owns a home in Jerusalem, but CBS doesn't want her overseas.
"My inner rebellious teenager was very angry with that ... until I came to the realization that this experience was not just about me," she said. "My whole company went through hell. My bosses ... are very sensitive that even sending me back to what I consider my home in Jerusalem is for them like sending me straight into the fire." She has agreed to stay in the United States until next year. After that, it's anyone's guess.
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This lady is quite the journalist in my opinion. I realize it is just my two cents, but she went to war, and was harmed by it, and lived thru it, to report a story, I understand why soldiers go, becuase they were ordered to, why do journalists keep going back? I look forward to reading her book.
Job fair buoys hopes of wounded Marines
Job fair buoys hopes of wounded Marines
By Jay Price, Staff Writer
Comment on this story
Camp Lejeune's first job fair aimed at wounded troops drew many of the 40 injured Marines from Camp Lejeune's Wounded Warrior Barracks.
Seeing the recruiters from 45 employers waiting at their booths was an instant confidence boost, said Pvt. Robert Wild, who was wounded in 2006 by two rocket-propelled grenades while serving in Iraq. He's days away from a medical retirement from the Marines with no job prospects and back, neck and leg injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury. He's 22 years old.
"It gives you hope that once you get out, it's not the end of the world, that there are people out there who want to hire us," he said today. "Until I came here and talked to some of these guys I didn't know my options."
Talking to a representative of a trucking company made him think that might be a good choice once his injuries have healed some.
Employers said it wasn't about charity, that veterans injured or not can make top-notch hires.
John F. Moore, himself a former Marine, has recruiting almost 50 from Camp Lejeune for the Nebraska-based trucking company Werner Enterprises.
Often civilians will hear that they can make $50,000 a year driving a truck and think it's easy money, then drop out quickly when they discover it's not. That doesn't happen as often for former service members, he said, since they're used to even tougher conditions, and issues such as time away from home on the road don't trouble them as much.
As long as a disabled veteran can pass the mandatory DOT physical and the requirements for a commercial drivers license, the company can hire them, he said. It has even taken on amputees, which is allowed in some cases with DOT waivers. If they can't drive, they can be mechanics or perform other work for the company, he said.
The job fair was sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Regiment, the unit to which injured out-patient Marines are assigned while they recuperate and go through the process of medical evaluation and discharge.
Such job fairs are a new idea for the Marines, who held the first two in Virginia and California earlier this year, and plan to make them a regular event every six months or so, said Richard Waller, a civilian worker with the regiment who helps organize the fairs.
"Instead of making them go looking for employers, we wanted to bring the employers here to them," he said.
The first two hours were reserved solely for wounded troops, then other veterans and their families were allowed in.
Employers represented included the likes of defense contractor Northrop Grumman, Alion Science Tech, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Veteran's Affairs Educational Services and the Durham Police Department.
jay.price@newsobserver.com or (919)829-45267
