Mike --
This holiday season, the grassroots movement you helped build can make a big difference for those in need.
I hope you will join me in supporting your favorite charity or contributing to causes that are especially meaningful to me and my family.
While many of us will spend the holidays counting our blessings and sharing dinner with loved ones, millions of people around the country won't be so fortunate. Donating to your local food bank will help provide a holiday meal to people in your community who can't afford one.
Talking with the families of deployed troops was one of the most rewarding experiences I had during the campaign. Giving to Operation USO Care Package is a great way to send members of our military stationed around the world a reminder that someone back home is thinking of them.
This is a time to celebrate our blessings, the new year, and a new era for our country. But it's also a time to come together on behalf of those who need our help.
Do what you can to help today by locating your local food bank and giving your support:
http://my.barackobama.com/foodbanks
Or send a care package to an American in uniform:
http://my.barackobama.com/carepackage
Thank you for all that you do and have a very happy holiday season,
Michelle
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
From the Incoming First Lady if you can donate and share
British Army Losing Battle With Booze
British Army Losing Battle With Booze
December 22, 2008
Scotland on Sunday
MoD reveals six in 10 soldiers may be alcoholics
Nearly six out of 10 British soldiers drink so much they could be classified as alcoholics, according to a shocking internal report by the Ministry of Defence.
The findings, contained in a document analysing the drinking and drug-taking habits of Army recruits, found that the majority of soldiers are drinking at levels considered to be hazardous to health.
Of the group analysed in the paper, 58 per cent were "considered possibly dependent on alcohol".
Soldiers blame the heavy drinking culture on the Army which, they said, encourages regular binges and drinking to excess.
The Ministry of Defence last night insisted it had now put in place support programmes, particularly for when soldiers are known to drink the most, after tours of duty.
The insight into the hard-drinking habits of soldiers comes as the armed forces face claims of being overstretched as they attempt to cope with the demands of serving on two fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Soldiers are not helped by the fact that the Army is so overstretched," said Clive Fairweather, a former commanding officer in the SAS. "When you've been on a hard exercise or hard operations, you reach out for alcohol. It can help with bonding and a lot of good can come from alcohol in the military.
"But there is a down-side. The problem is trying to achieve the right balance, and these figures sound as if it is getting out of kilter. But an Army bereft of alcohol would not be able to do its job - it would be too brittle."
The findings were uncovered in interviews with more than 100 soldiers at three locations in Britain: Redford Barracks in Edinburgh, Longmoor Camp in Hampshire and Larkhill Camp in Wiltshire. The report, conducted in November 2007, was placed in the House of Commons library last week.
It declared: "The majority of soldiers were regularly drinking at levels considered to be hazardous to health."
Among the civilian population, figures show that around 6 per cent of people drink at levels which indicate dependency. However, measured on that standard, the report concluded that the Army figure was 10 times higher.
It also found that more than half of all the soldiers interviewed admitted that their drinking had increased after they joined the Army. The excessive drinking was a factor in drug-taking as well, the report found. "Many felt that they probably would not have taken drugs if they had not been drunk."
One soldier, quoted anonymously, said: "I didn't really think I'd change at all in drinking, because I didn't like the taste of alcohol really. But then I joined Army life and they take you out on the piss and I got my first taste for Jack Daniel's. And then I was spending near enough most of my wages because I was going out two nights a week drinking."
The report's main conclusion was that the Army needed to conduct an "immediate investigation into the medical and disciplinary context within which alcohol issues are treated in the Army".
The Ministry of Defence last night insisted it had put in place comprehensive support systems to try to persuade soldiers to ease back on drinking.
A spokesman said: "All three services run robust programmes designed to raise awareness and promote the message of sensible drinking. The sale of alcohol and individual consumption limits are strictly regulated, particularly when personnel are serving operationally."
He added: "Individuals identified as being at risk receive counselling and welfare support including attendance on preventative early intervention programmes."
Jack Law, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, said: "Those at the top must commit to changing this harmful culture."
The authors of the report asked interviewees how much they drank when they went out. A total of 64 per cent said they had six or more drinks in any one session. One in five admitted they were unable to stop drinking once they started.
A third of the interviewees also admitted they had injured themselves or someone else as a result of drinking in the last year.
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This has been a problem of Armies since time began, we use to say if a soldier wouldn't drink and fight, could you really trust them to fight, when they were sober?
Then you also have the drinking to forget the mental images of the battles you have already fought in the past, you try and drink your demons away. Trouble is it never has worked
A soldier's story: War affects whole family
A soldier's story: War affects whole family
A soldier's story: War affects whole family
Parents feel their son's stress disorder
Tim Kahlor comforted his son, Ryan, during a Las Vegas Veterans Day parade. Ryan's experience with post-traumatic stress disorder has turned his father into an antiwar activist. (Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times)
By David Zucchino
Los Angeles Times / December 21, 2008
TEMECULA, Calif. - When Army Sergeant Ryan Kahlor returned from two combat tours in Iraq last year, he was a walking billboard for virtually every affliction suffered by today's veterans. He had a detached retina, a ruptured disk, vertigo, headaches, memory lapses, and numbness in his arms. Fluid seeped from his ears.
He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury. He was violent and suicidal. He carried a loaded handgun everywhere. He drank until he passed out. He cut himself. He burned his skin with cigarettes. He bit through his tongue just to watch himself bleed.
Kahlor, 24, admits he came back not caring about anyone - the military, his friends, his family, or himself. But, pushed hard by his parents, he slowly accepted and then embraced counseling and treatment. Today, he has begun to recover.
His parents are still trying.
The Kahlors - a college employee and a nurse - have fought through a series of transformations unfamiliar to most military families.
Tim Kahlor says he and his wife, Laura, have been left with what he calls, only half in jest, "secondary PTSD." He says his doctor prescribed antidepressants to help him cope with his son's ordeal. And both parents, haunted by their son's physical and emotional breakdown, are fiercely opposed to the war.
Tim Kahlor, 50, who had felt a patriotic surge after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, turned against the war after Ryan complained during his first tour about ineffective body armor and poorly armored vehicles. Laura Kahlor, 53, blames the war for her son's psychological and physical torment. Although she is now grateful for the treatment he belatedly received, she - like her husband - wishes they had never let Ryan enlist.
They are still bitter over the several months that their son drifted while they pleaded with both Ryan and the military for effective PTSD treatment. Ryan survived several roadside bomb attacks in Iraq but was traumatized by the violence he saw.
"I was so naive. I was this kid from the Bible Belt who thought our country would take care of our soldiers," Tim Kahlor said. "I have guilt for helping him get into this."
A year after the terrorists struck America, Tim Kahlor drove Ryan, then 18, to the local Army recruiting office to sign up. Although the Kahlors would have preferred that Ryan attend college, they were proud of his determination to serve his country.
When Ryan wrote about equipment shortages, Tim telephoned and wrote to the Pentagon and Congress. Laura sent Ryan a hand-held GPS device after he complained that military devices kept failing.
Tim Kahlor joined Military Families Speak Out, a group opposed to the Iraq war. He marched in protests behind caskets, lined up boots outside the Capitol to represent the war's dead. He put up a sign outside his home: "Support Our Troops - Let 'em Come Home."Continued...
He confronted military recruiters. He intercepted young men outside recruiting offices, warning them: "You have no idea what you're getting into." He read to them from Ryan's journal - including descriptions of collecting the gear of a close friend killed by a sniper:
"My stomach soured. . . . His gear was soaked with blood. My hands could still feel the moisture of his sweat. I felt like something was missing in me."
Tim was thrown out of a political fund-raiser for railing against the war. He approached motorists in cars with yellow ribbons, demanding to know exactly how they supported the troops.
Some days, Tim wears a button to his job as a payroll coordinator at the University of California, San Diego. It features an updated number of the war's dead and a question: "How Many More?"
When Ryan returned in early 2007, "he came back a stranger to me," his father said. Tim focused on his son's deteriorating mental and physical condition. He described delays in treatment as Ryan was put on desk duty, unable to perform simple tasks because of his brain injuries and prone to violent outbursts.
"I was either going to die by my own hand - or someone else's," Ryan said.
But through it all, he said, "my dad fought tooth and nail for me, knowing people in the military can't speak for themselves always. My dad pushed me to get help. He doesn't let me cut corners, and he's always on my butt."
In November 2007, Ryan was sent to be treated at San Diego's Naval Medical Center. His therapists say he is making remarkable progress after months of physical and speech therapy and mental health counseling.
"We look at Ryan and we say, 'Thank God, we got a good one here,' " said Colleen Leners, a nurse practitioner who is his primary care manager. "Ryan wanted to get better."
To treat his PTSD, Ryan was referred in May to the National Center for PTSD in Palo Alto, Calif., run by the Veterans Administration. He completed an intensive 65-day group program with veterans from wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam.
There, Ryan said, he learned to recognize his "stuff points" - traumatic experiences in Iraq he was afraid to confront.
"There's no time to grieve in combat, so you just stuff it," he said. "You see your friend die and then you go back to work."
Without treatment, Ryan said, "I'd be sitting in a dark room somewhere - or dead."
Ryan said he suffers from survivor's guilt and intends to seek more counseling. He is still being treated for vertigo, for speech and memory difficulties, and for fluid and ringing in his ears.
The military has provided him a hand-held organizer to help him organize his life and remember appointments. He draws maps to help him locate his parked car. "As many times as I've been hit in the head, a lot of stuff that seems simple on a daily basis becomes difficult," Ryan said.
Even so, he chose a challenging subject - the Russian invasion of Georgia - for a speaking exercise in group speech therapy.
Laura Kahlor considers her son a newly minted person, just as she considered the tormented young man who returned from Iraq a different person from the son she sent off to war - the one who had "Duty, Honor, Country" tattooed on his leg.
"He came back so violent," she said, recalling the images of bloody Iraqi corpses Ryan brought home on his laptop. "I was afraid he'd use his gun on himself."
Today the gun is locked in a drawer, and Ryan is evolving into the caring, gentle son his parents remember. At the request of a counselor, he often talks to other soldiers with PTSD, encouraging them to seek treatment.
Ryan does not publicly discuss his father's activism or his own feelings about the war. He says only: "That's what we're fighting for - for people's rights to speak out."
When his enlistment ends in March, Ryan plans to leave the Army. He is shopping for a new house and intends to enroll at a community college. He wants to become a history teacher or physical therapist.
After all that has befallen him, would he enlist again?
"Probably not," Ryan said. "But since I did it, I'm glad. It's matured me. It's made me stronger, more confident."
His mother said that although she's grateful for Ryan's counseling and for the travel and educational benefits the military has provided, "it still wasn't worth it."
Tim Kahlor, sitting in his living room at dusk, flanked by his wife and his tall, strapping son in Army fatigues, reflected on his family's six-year ordeal. He paused and said, finally, "I wish he had never gone in."
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PTSD is a family and community problem it is not just the veterans it affects everyone around the veteran family and friends and neighbors....
4 recruiter suicides at one unit lead to probe
4 recruiter suicides at one unit lead to probe
Widow blames pressure to sign up soldiers, husband's earlier tour of duty
Herb Nygren Jr / AP
Amanda Henderson holds a photo of her late husband, Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Henderson, at her home in Henderson, Texas.
Each week in ‘The Daily Nightly,’ NBC's John Rutherford pays tribute to the men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
updated 3:54 p.m. ET, Mon., Dec. 22, 2008
HENDERSON, Texas - Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Henderson, a strapping Iraq combat veteran, spent the last, miserable months of his life as an Army recruiter, cold-calling dozens of people a day from his strip-mall office and sitting in strangers' living rooms, trying to sign up their sons and daughters for an unpopular war.
He put in 13-hour days, six days a week, often encountering abuse from young people or their parents. When he and other recruiters would gripe about the pressure to meet their quotas, their superiors would snarl that they ought to be grateful they were not in Iraq, according to his widow.
Less than a year into the job, Henderson — afflicted by flashbacks and sleeplessness after his tour of battle in Iraq — went into his backyard shed, slid the chain lock in place, and hanged himself with a dog chain.
He became, at age 35, the fourth member of the Army's Houston Recruiting Battalion to commit suicide in the past three years — something Henderson's widow and others blame on the psychological scars of combat, combined with the pressure-cooker job of trying to sell the war.
"Over there in Iraq, you're doing this high-intensive job you are recognized for. Then, you come back here, and one month you're a hero, one month you're a loser because you didn't put anyone in," said Staff Sgt. Amanda Henderson, herself an Iraq veteran and a former recruiter in the battalion.
The Army has 38 recruiting battalions in the United States. Patrick Henderson's is the only one to report more than one suicide in the past six years.
Senator pushed for inquiry
The Army began an investigation after being prodded by Amanda Henderson and Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Cornyn, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he will press for Senate hearings.
"We need to get to the bottom of this as soon as we can," he said.
The all-volunteer military is under heavy pressure to sign up recruits and retain soldiers while it wages two wars.
Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command, acknowledged that recruiting is a demanding job but said counseling and other support are available.
"I don't have an answer to why these suicides in Houston Recruiting Battalion occurred, but perhaps the investigation that is under way may shed some light on that question," he said.
In all, 15 of the Army's 8,400 recruiters have committed suicide since 2003. During that period, more than 540 of the Army's half-million active-duty soldiers killed themselves.
The 266-member Houston battalion covers a huge swath of East Texas, from Houston to the Arkansas line. Henderson committed suicide Sept. 20. Another battalion member, Staff Sgt. Larry Flores Jr., hanged himself in August at age 26; Sgt. Nils "Aron" Andersson, 25, shot himself to death in March 2007; and in 2005, a captain at battalion headquarters took his life, though the military has not disclosed any details. All served combat tours before their recruiting assignments.
Charlotte Porter, Andersson's mother, said her son — who served two tours in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne and earned a Bronze Star — couldn't lie to recruits about the war and felt an enormous burden to ensure they could become the kind of soldiers he would want watching his back.
"He wasn't a complainer. He just said it really sucked," said his 51-year-old mother, who is from Eugene, Ore. "He felt like a failure."
Cold calls were part of job
Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said recruiting these days "is arguably the toughest job in the military."
"They're under incredible stress. You can see it on their faces," he said.
In Iraq, Henderson helped lead other infantrymen on risky "snatch-and-grab" missions and saw several buddies die.
He had been stationed in Germany before going to Iraq. After his tour was up, he was assigned to recruiting. He didn't particularly want to leave the infantry, but going to recruiting allowed him to move back to the U.S., his widow said.
Like most recruiters, he began his day with paperwork, followed by cold calls to high school graduates and college students. He spent lunches trying to chat up high schoolers outside the cafeteria, and then, more phone calls — often 150 a day, according to his widow.
He spent evenings on the living room sofas or at the dining room tables of the few interested young people, trying to sell them and their families on the Army's opportunities while easing their fears. Some recruits' parents were hostile.
"They are completely outright nasty to you. That's stressful to you right then and there because you have some mother or father just ripping you apart," Amanda Henderson said.
Pressure from above alleged
She said her husband also found himself under crushing pressure from above. He and other recruiters in the battalion were required to account for every minute of every day in planners and logs, his widow said.
When Henderson took some time to recover from knee surgery, his bosses acted as if he was lazy and threatened to have him thrown out of recruiting and reassigned far from his wife, Amanda Henderson said.
He lived in constant fear of failing to sign up enough people, something that can result in an all-day audit by a recruiter's superiors and thwart a soldier's chances of a promotion, Amanda Henderson said.
Story continues below ↓
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As much as Henderson hated recruiting, he did the job well, his widow said. But Flores, who killed himself a few weeks before Henderson, "was getting chewed up one side and down the other" at work in the days before he died, Amanda Henderson said. Flores was her boss.
Smith, the Army spokesman, would not comment on Henderson's job performance. Asked about the demands put on recruiters by their superiors, he said recruiting duty "often does entail long hours during the week and on weekends." But he added: "There are other duty assignments in the Army that entail long hours, such as being deployed."
Most recruiters are assigned
Some recruiters volunteer for the job, but most are assigned. They must have a recent evaluation showing no record of mental instability. But Amanda Henderson said her husband, like other combat veterans, rushed through his assessment, insisting he was fine.
Patrick Henderson had been out of Iraq a little less than a year when he began recruiting, and after several months on the job, his sleeplessness and flashbacks became evident, according to his wife. She said she stayed up one night watching him apparently flash between nightmares of combat and of illegally signing up a recruit.
He suffered a breakdown in the weeks before his suicide, his wife said. Because he was hundreds of miles from the nearest Army post, he went to a local counselor recommended by the military after an initial visit with an Army doctor. But the counselor had never worked with a combat veteran and couldn't decipher the military jargon in his medical records, Amanda Henderson said.
One morning in September, she woke up alone, panicked and went out to look for her husband. The chain was on the door to the shed, but she could see him inside. She pried the window open, and screamed. "He was gone," she said, her voice breaking.
"I don't want anybody to feel this pain that I have," she said, her eyes welling with tears. "It's too much for one person. They need help."
More on Military suicides
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I see that recruiting duty hasn't changed in 40 years.......
Board: Guardsmen were not overexposed to toxin
Board: Guardsmen were not overexposed to toxin
By Maureen Groppe - Gannett News Service
Posted : Monday Dec 22, 2008 18:55:50 EST
WASHINGTON — The Army correctly concluded that Indiana National Guardsmen were not overexposed to a toxin in Iraq, according to an independent review by the Defense Health Board. The review could make it harder for a group of guardsmen to continue their lawsuit against defense contractor KBR of Texas.
Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who was briefed on the findings Monday, said he still has unanswered questions.
“What did KBR know, when did they know it, and what did they do?” Bayh told CBS News on Monday, according to a transcript of the interview. “Apparently, it was bad enough that the KBR people weren’t going back into the site. The Indiana guardsmen said, ‘Wait a minute, we’re not going back in there anymore!’ Something clicked in our guardsmen’s minds that something’s not right here, and if those employees aren’t going in, why should be we going in?”
Bayh had asked the Army for more information after two KBR employees told Senate Democrats in June that workers and soldiers at a water pumping plant in Iraq were exposed to sodium dichromate in 2003.
Sodium dichromate, which was used at the site as an anti-corrosive, contains the carcinogen hexavalent chromium. Members of the Indiana National Guard were among the soldiers providing protection to defense contractors working on the Qarmat Ali Water Injection Facility.
Sixteen Indiana guardsmen filed suit earlier this month against KBR, accusing the contractor of publicly downplaying and privately concealing the health risks.
The company has said it acted appropriately and is fighting the lawsuit.
The site was visibly contaminated by sodium dichromate when secured by U.S. military forces, according to the Army.
But the Defense Health Board, an advisory committee to the secretary of defense that provides independent advice, said none of the 137 soldiers and civilians tested had “substantially elevated” levels of chromium in their blood.
Bayh has expressed concerns about the type of tests conducted on the soldiers and their timeliness.
Because of the results of the tests on the Indiana guardsmen, the Army made the “pragmatic and reasonable” decision not to also test guard units from Oregon and South Carolina who were no longer at the site, the Defense Health Board said.
The board concluded that the Defense Department’s response was “prompt and appropriate” and included testing for health effects within approximately 30 days of the last potential exposure.
The testing did find many reports of respiratory-tract irritation. But that’s similar to what other soldiers serving in the desert have experienced, the board said. Even though the tests did not find excessive levels of chromium the Defense Health Board said it “may have been revealing or reassuring” to know if those with more respiratory problems had different chromium levels,
Bayh is also pushing legislation to help veterans exposed to toxic contaminants during war. The changes would include making at-risk veterans eligible for medical tests, allowing for a scientific review of evidence linking exposure to health problems, and requiring frontline commanders to report hazardous-material exposure.
“The burden of proof should not be on the soldier, many years later, to go back and prove that their health condition was related to that exposure,” Bayh told CBS News, according to the transcript. “That’s virtually impossible. The benefit of the doubt should go to the soldier.”
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“The burden of proof should not be on the soldier, many years later, to go back and prove that their health condition was related to that exposure,” Bayh told CBS News, according to the transcript. “That’s virtually impossible. The benefit of the doubt should go to the soldier.”
What Senator Bayh and other elected officials do NOT understand is that the VA does use the "benefit of the doubt" for veterans, they doubt any of them are ever telling the truth. They deny all claims for toxic exposures based on idiotic statements claiming that we the veterans can NOT tell them what day the exposure occurred or what was the amount of the toxic substances we were exposed to.
I have been down this route based on my medical problems I feel are related to my use as a human test subject at Edgewood Arsenal in 1974 during the Cold War era, when the Army doing experiments funded by the CIA, in all there were 354 different substances used at Edgewood, stuff like LSD, PCP, Scopolomine, and known chemical weapons like Sarin, Mustard agents, and BZ among them. Most drugs and substances are unknown to the "test veterans" or "medical volunteers" yet the EPA Superfund site shows 77 known toxic substances in the drinking water wells and the soil of the training areas on Edgewood Arsenal, now which it is a part of Aberdeen Proving Grounds, the EPA study was done in 1978 and at that time the EPA ordered the water wells capped and for a new source of water to be piped into the base and into the town of Edgewood, Maryland.
No one can argue that these toxins leached into the water wells from 1975 when the human experiments were stopped and 1978 when the EPA studies were don, the Army had been dumping chemicals into the ground or burying old barrels, both wooden and metal since 1917 when the Department of War established Edgewood Arsenal as the nations Chemical Weapons depot and research facility. No one really understood the long term toxic effects and proper disposal methods, the chemicals seeped out of the containers and contaminated the water sources.
When I submitted the EPA super fund site data and the list of known contaminants, the VA Regional Office told me that the reports were Internet trash, and that I could not PROVE I had been exposed to any of these contaminants. NO, I can't prove I was, but common sense tells you that I was on Temporary Duty (TDY) from June 25, 1974 - 22 August 1974. I brushed my teeth every day with that water, I drank coffee made from that water, I swam in the post swimming pool filled with that water, I took showers in that water for over 2 months, and I drank the kool aid in the mess hall over that two month period.
My medical problems can be linked to the toxins, everything from cardiac conditions, stomach problems or IBS, lung problems COPD,and other medical conditions. Can I prove that these toxins caused my problem NO, is it possible that these toxins contributed to my problems or aggravated them, YES, then there are the deliberate exposures from the actual experiments. This is a case where the 7120 men used in the 20 year program should be given "reasonable doubt" and their medical problems should be service connected if there is any possibility it could be linked to environmental exposures.
In a 1987 Supreme Court Decision Stanley versus the US, in a dissent Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (hardly a liberal judge) stated
No judicially crafted rule should insulate from liability the involuntary and unknowing human experimentation alleged [483 U.S. 669, 710] to have occurred in this case. Indeed, as JUSTICE BRENNAN observes, the United States military played an instrumental role in the criminal prosecution of Nazi officials who experimented with human subjects during the Second World War, ante, at 687, and the standards that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals developed to judge the behavior of the defendants stated that the "voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential . . . to satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts." United States v. Brandt (The Medical Case), 2 Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, p. 181 (1949). If this principle is violated the very least that society can do is to see that the victims are compensated, as best they can be, by the perpetrators. I am prepared to say that our Constitution's promise of due process of law guarantees this much. Accordingly, I would permit James Stanley's Bivens action to go forward, and I therefore dissent
Justice Sandra Day O'Connors dissent near the bottom of the pageSphere: Related Content
New Members Appointed to Committee on Women Veterans
New Members Appointed to Committee on Women Veterans
WASHINGTON (Dec. 23, 2008) - Four new members have been appointed to the
Advisory Committee on Women Veterans for the Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA), an expert panel that advises VA on issues and programs
affecting women veterans.
"I am pleased to welcome the newest members of this committee to the
important job of serving America's women veterans," said Secretary of
Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake. "Members of this committee work
tirelessly on behalf of women veterans to improve outreach, ensure
access to VA benefits and recommend ways in which VA can better meet
their needs."
Established in 1983, the advisory committee makes recommendations for
administrative and legislative changes. The committee members are
appointed to one, two, or three-year terms. The new committee members
are:
* Davy Coke of Poway, Calif., a retired Navy second class petty
officer who served in Vietnam. He currently is a trainer and mentor for
new service members in the aerospace field.
* Yanira Gomez of Germantown, Md., a former Army medical
specialist who served in Iraq. She is currently serving as national
outreach officer for the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
* Gloria Maser of Alexandria, Va., a colonel in the Army Reserves.
She is a former deputy chief of staff for health affairs with the
Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq. She currently works
for a strategy and technology organization.
* Barbara Ward of Sacramento, Calif., a former staff nurse in the
Air Force. She currently serves as the deputy secretary for women and
minority veterans affairs in the California Department of Veterans
Affairs.
Women veterans are one of the fastest growing segments of the veteran
population. There are approximately 1.8 million women veterans. They
constitute nearly 8 percent of the total veteran population and about 5
percent of all veterans who use VA health care. VA estimates that by
2020 women veterans will make up 10 percent of the veteran population.
VA has women veterans program managers at VA medical centers and women
veterans coordinators at VA regional offices to assist women veterans
with health and benefits issues.
Monday, December 22, 2008
more of Kelleys thoughts
Example...VA unchecked power and lawlessness
Received from one of our group in response.
Kelley:
I know someone, but don't know how to contact her. If you have anyone in your network that lives in California near Bakersfield/Tehachapi, please let them know; if they could do a direct contact that would be great. Mary Harrison is the widow of Gene Harrison, the Navy man who saved my life in 1968. Getting this news to her is important to me, as I owe her husband everything I've been able to do in the last 40 years.
My last info on her is that she lives in a place near Tehachapi called Stallion Springs. Since I found Gene after his death in 2005, I have lost contact, and now her email doesn't work. I'll try to dig up more info, but if you could put the word out to any folks you have near Bakersfield, I'd appreciate it. Tehachapi and Stallion Springs are on the highway up to the Naval Air Station in the high desert.
FYI, Gene (Harold Eugene Harrison) died of cancer. He spent over one year stripping asbestos from a Navy cruiser, and the VA turned him down for benefits because he was a smoker, even though his doctors told him his form of cancer was associated with asbestos exposure. Another example of how our Country treats its heroes.
Thanks, Buddy, and I'll keep digging to find more info.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Now you would ask, how can you tell the difference in causation and is there away. Yes there seems to be not only a blood test thatis a pointer but also lung cell dna testing that is done to evaluate the cancer and that points towards asbestos causation - not smoking.
Yes, the Veterans doctors can state associated to asbestos and VA clerks and raters have the power to deny a Veteran service connection based on their lack of knowledge of medical facts and only knowing the two cause cancer.
In fact, it is more likely than not those that smoke may develop lung cancer…those exposed to asbestos in the form discussed will develop lung cancer.
The one assumption is did the Veterans doctor run the tests. I would assume so and it was positive otherwise the statements by any doctor to the positive association would not be in character. Especially since most doctors know in dealing with VA it will be question after question after question using up his time and his resources by some one not even medically qualified to ask the question.
The second assumption and not going out on limb would be the VA clerk/rater had no idea of what in the heck they were doing in their denial yet they are allowed to deny.
The Veteran is denied and now the widow is denied from what should be a clear case of ‘service connection.’ No different than in the civilian world where those exposed to the exact same material are covered.
The Vets case only has to reach a standard of at least as likely as not associated and thereby service connected.
VA not only pleasures themselves in the denial but the aggravation of the Veterans doctors letting them know up front; it is not a good idea to support a Veteran against us.
Example from Baylor University.
As one Baylor University doctor put it:
“This letter is to support your claim about Agent Orange. The U.S. Government and the VA have many documents about this situation and they know your claim has merit. The red tape and the smoke and mirrors are just to decrease payment or delay payment or both. I am sorry you are having so much trouble.
“Your autoimmune condition proven by biopsy and by response to treatments, has to have been caused or significantly aggravated by Agent Orange because Agent Orange and other chemicals like it have been proven to cause neuropathy, and in animal studies to produce autoimmune disease.
“Usually when I make a statement like this the VA will come back with a request for more letters and more documentation, but I think they need to be specific and not open ended and tell me how many human and animal studies published in the internationally recognized scientific literature they would require to pay your claim.
“Otherwise they will just keep asking and asking for more and more papers and documents and we will get no where and you will be frustrated and so will I.”
This example repeats itself thousands of times a day. The last two statements by this Baylor University Physician sums up the 'entire efforts' by the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
