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By David Rothkopf
$17.16
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By Daniel Domscheit-Berg
$15.64
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By Joe Conason — As a presidential candidate, John McCain stands out not only for his vocal endorsement of the unpopular war in Iraq, but also because one of his own sons is a Marine Corps officer on active duty there.
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Of the 750,000 or so veterans who have been discharged from the “war on terror,” roughly one-quarter have been recognized by the VA as mentally or physically injured. One of the leading debilitating injuries suffered by those men and women is PTSD, but how much they’re compensated by the government depends a great deal on where they live, according to an investigation by McClatchy’s Washington bureau.
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defenseindustrydaily.com
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Roughly 20,000 soldiers who aren’t on the military’s list of combat wounded have signs of brain injury, according to an analysis of Army, Navy and Veterans Affairs data conducted by USA Today. The Pentagon’s official tally of troops who’ve suffered brain trauma in combat is 4,471—one-fifth the total gleaned from military records.
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vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.com
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It may be a few years too late, but Sen. John Kerry is going after the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, taking SBVT sympathizer T. Boone Pickens’ offer to pay $1 million to anyone who could disprove the group’s claims.
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According to the calculations of congressional Democrats, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost about $1.5 trillion. That’s nearly double the (already staggering) $804 billion that’s been appropriated or requested. Lawmakers arrived at the revised estimate by considering larger economic factors, including interest on debt and health care costs for wounded veterans.
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AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
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It’s really hard to look at these photos of President Bush meeting with severely wounded veterans at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio without just saying “wow” over and over. We’re hard pressed to imagine what Bush might’ve been thinking as he saw the effects of his foreign policy on these young soldiers.
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By Chalmers Johnson — The best-selling author of “The Sorrows of Empire” takes a look at David Halberstam’s critical history of the Korean War.
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By Marie Cocco — The elderly are paying for waste in the GOP-crafted Medicare drug benefit. Rep. Waxman, D-Calif., is lifting the lid on this kettle, and what’s inside ain’t pretty.
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By Marie Cocco — The president’s strategy is to fake out the public so that it believes Democrats in Congress can’t perform basic governmental tasks. Is this any way to run a country?
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AP Photo / Charles Dharapak
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Aaron Glantz —
The sorry state of care of American veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is not accidental. It’s on purpose. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has fought every effort to improve care for wounded and disabled veterans.
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iflipflop.com
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More and more troops are coming home from Iraq with brain damage, the result of repeated exposure to explosions, and doctors are having a difficult time keeping up. For many, the damage causes problems experts have never seen before and aren’t sure how to treat.
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thenation.com
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Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges talks about his landmark article in The Nation magazine, “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness,” the result of seven months of interviews with troops about their experiences in Iraq.
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By Amy Goodman — U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey is not counted among the Iraq war dead. But he did die, when he came home. He committed suicide.
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AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite
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With the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder on the rise among American veterans returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, two veterans’ groups have filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (pictured) and other defendants, citing systemwide failures in dealing with the PTSD crisis on the governmental level.
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The U.S. Army is starting a corps-wide push to educate soldiers on all levels about the signs and symptoms of brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), both of which are taking major tolls on active troops and veterans from the Iraq war.
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AP Photo / Toni Nicoletti, pool
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Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges teamed up with Laila Al-Arian for The Nation’s shocking report “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness,” in which American vets describe, in graphic detail that will challenge even the least fainthearted readers, “the disparity between the reality of the war and how it is portrayed by the US government and American media.”
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These members of Iraq Veterans Against the War take street theater to a new, devastating level, breaking with the nostalgic tradition of Civil War re-enactments, for example, by bringing a taste of the horror and mayhem of the Iraq war to the streets of U.S. cities with “Operation First Casualty.”
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anxietyinsights.info
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The Army plans to hire roughly 200 additional mental health workers to help care for ailing soldiers. Thirty-five percent of troops seek mental health care a year after coming home and between 15 and 20 percent of soldiers in Iraq show signs of post-traumatic stress. The latest Pentagon study found military mental health care to be inadequate.
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makeshiftblog.wordpress.com
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A new study of American veterans who served between 1917 and 1994 found that returning soldiers are more than twice as likely to kill themselves, compared to civilians. While the research did not include veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the overall trend and reports of poor mental health care are cause for concern.
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By Marie Cocco — They are an unlikely couple. She, an exhausted and emotionally spent woman limping home to find solace in a measure of solitude she could have given herself long ago. He, an upbeat and oh-so-confident man who once was down but is now anything but out.
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AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
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Nearly 1,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines have died in Iraq since last Memorial Day, and President Bush has said he expects the surge in casualties to continue through the summer: “It could be a bloody—it could be a very difficult August.”
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southofboston.net
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An exhaustive study of the VA health system and its administrators has found a pattern of overstating the quality of care, arguably at the expense of veterans. If Congress is under the impression that VA medical care is top notch, it is less motivated to appropriate resources for much-needed improvements.
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By Amy Goodman — A group of American veterans from the Spanish Civil War recently gathered to commemorate their fight against fascism before it was a popular cause. They fought for freedom and civil liberties, and they have a few words to say about our current morass.
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Jim Lehrer reports that the Army may be underestimating the severity of disabilities, denying servicemen and -women lifetime benefits. The Veterans Disability Benefits Commission found that disability ratings made by the Veterans Affairs Department were typically higher than those of the Army.
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Linda Bilmes, the Harvard finance expert who helped establish the true cost of the war, including veteran healthcare, turns her attention to the Walter Reed scandal, and the bureaucratic quagmire that keeps our soldiers from getting help. Bilmes offers four lessons to avoid future problems. We can only hope someone takes her advice.
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Documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald (“Outfoxed,” “Iraq for Sale”) and his team have worked tirelessly to collect these memories of fallen Iraq veterans from friends, family and colleagues. For more information, click here.
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By Amy Goodman — When Carlos Arredondo learned on his 44th birthday that his son Alex had been killed in Najaf, he lost his mind and nearly his life. But Carlos found a way forward, touring the country with a flag-draped coffin standing in for those “the government doesn’t want you to see.”
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Mea culpas, heated exchanges and reform pledges marked the first day of congressional hearings about the treatment of American veterans in military facilities like the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Meanwhile, Washington Post journalists Anne Hull and Dana Priest are following up on their Reed report with similar stories from vets across the country.
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ABC’s News’ Bob Woodruff, who narrowly escaped death while reporting from the Iraq war, visits with a young Marine who also sustained a major brain injury. Although rehabilitation is vital to the Marine’s recovery, the VA has refused treatment for half of the critical first year.
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The war wounded continue to accumulate at Walter Reed, facing a limbo of staff limitations, exhausted caseworkers, bureaucratic red tape and long recoveries. This two-part series from The Washington Post is a must-read investigation of the “safety net” that is failing the veterans of this war. (P.1, P.2)
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thewe.cc
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Former Truthdigger of the Week Linda Bilmes offers this scathing analysis of America’s treatment of its wounded. The Harvard public finance expert writes that for every fatality in Iraq, there are 16 injuries, and doctors and bureaucrats at home are struggling to keep up with the unprecedented—and underestimated—surge of wounded soldiers.
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Truthdigger of the Week: Medea Benjamin
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