The Suffering Of Soldiers

[Gimpy]

THE SUFFERING OF SOLDIERS: "If this country gave back to wounded troops even a fraction of the commitment and service that it has received from them, they will be well cared for."


Editorial
The Suffering of Soldiers

Several years into a pair of wars, the Department of Veterans Affairs is struggling to cope with a task for which it was tragically unready: the care of soldiers who left Afghanistan and Iraq with an extra burden of brain injury and psychic anguish. The last thing they need is the toxic blend of secrecy, arrogance and heedlessness that helped to send many of them into harm’s way.


“Shh!” said the e-mail in February from Dr. Ira Katz, head of mental health services for V.A., to a colleague. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”


Dr. Katz’s hushed-up figure was nowhere near the number he gave to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee last year; he said there had been 790 suicide attempts in all of 2007, and denied there was a suicide epidemic. The veterans affairs secretary, James Peake, apologized for Dr. Katz’s “unfortunate set of words” and promised more candor and transparency.


Give some credit, anyway, to Mr. Peake for realizing that there is no hope of denying or wishing away this problem. As the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes made clear in “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” their analysis of Iraq, the medical toll of a war rises in a swelling curve for many decades after the shooting stops. The current suicide figures include a large proportion of aging and ailing veterans of Vietnam. Suffering for that long, on that scale, will not be covered up.


A study by the Rand Corporation last month found that nearly one in five service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, or about 300,000, have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression. About 19 percent reported having a possible traumatic brain injury from these bomb-afflicted wars.


Alarmingly, only half have sought treatment, the study found, and they have encountered severe delays and shortfalls in getting care. The V.A.’s inspector general has faulted the agency’s case management of brain-injured veterans, and a federal lawsuit by veterans’ groups in San Francisco seeks to force the V.A. to streamline and improve treatment.


Fortunately, the solutions are clear: more money for mental health services, closer tracking of suicides and more aggressive preventive efforts, more efficiency at managing veterans’ treatment and more help for their families. If this country gave back to wounded troops even a fraction of the commitment and service that it has received from them, they will be well cared for.


---END---

Unforutnately, the "attitude" of Dr. Ira Katz, head of mental health services for V.A is just one more slap in the face to ALL veterans from another George Bush "political appointee" during his tenure. Their history of denial, deception and dirty tricks under this administration has been nothing short of criminal!

[MORTARDUDE]

Just remember that the "quoted" wounded figures from Iraq are way off the mark, and closer to 300,000, including TBI and PTSD.

Larry

[Packo]

GREAT SEEING YOU BACK! Hope your doing better.

Gee, the VA hiding stats.....now that's new. Thanks for posting this as many don't follow what's going on in that organization. We went through this before with Vietnam Vets. They didn't even want suicide stats reported when I was with the Vet Center.

Pack

[Gimpy]

It's good to be back.


The fact is, the American public never would have never known about ANY of this were it not for a class action lawsuit brought by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth on behalf of the 1.7 million Americans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two groups allege the Department of Veterans Affairs has systematically denied mental health care and disability benefits to veterans returning from the conflict zones.


The case, officially known as Veterans for Common Sense vs. Peake, went to trial last month at a Federal Courthouse in San Francisco. The two sides are still filing briefs until May 19 and waiting for a ruling from Judge Samuel Conti, but the case is already having an impact.


That’s because over the course of the two week trial, the VA was compelled to produce a series of documents that show the extent of the crisis effecting wounded soldiers.


These are statistics that most Americans don’t know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell them. Since the start of the Iraq War, the government has tried to present it as a war without casualties.


It’s also part of a pattern. The high number of veteran suicides weren’t the only government statistics the Bush Administration was forced to reveal because of the class action lawsuit.


Another set of documents presented in court showed that in the six months leading up to March 31, a total of 1,467 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claim would be approved by the government. A third set of documents showed that veterans who appeal a VA decision to deny their disability claim have to wait an average of 1,608 days, or nearly four and a half years, for their answer.


Other casualty statistics are not directly concealed, but are also not revealed on a regular basis. For example, the Pentagon regularly reports on the numbers of American troops “wounded” in Iraq (currently at 31,948) but neglects to mention that it has two other categories “injured” (10,180) and “ill” (28,451). All three of these categories represent soldiers who are so damaged physically they have to be medically evacuated to Germany for treatment, but by splitting the numbers up, the sense of casualties mislead the public consciousness.


Here’s another number that we don’t often hear discussed in the media: 287,790. That’s the number of returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who had filed a disability claim with the Veterans Administration as of March 25th. That figure was not announced to the public at a news conference, but obtained by Veterans for Common Sense using the Freedom of Information Act. Many of these are PTSD related and do not show up in "casualty figures".


Why all the secrecy? Why is it so hard to get accurate casualty figures out of our government? Because the Bush Administration knows if Americans woke up to the real, human costs of this war they would be more likely to oppose it.


According to an April 2008 study by the Rand Corporation, 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans currently suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or major depression. Another 320,000 suffer from traumatic brain injury, physical brain damage. A majority are not receiving help from the Pentagon and VA system which are more concerned with concealing unpleasant facts than they are with providing care.


In its study, the RAND Corporation wrote that the federal government fails to care for war veterans at its own peril - noting post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury “can have far reaching and damaging consequences.”


“Individuals afflicted with these conditions face higher risks for other psychological problems and for attempting suicide. They have higher rates of unhealthy behaviors — such as smoking, overeating, and unsafe sex — and higher rates of physical health problems and mortality. Individuals with these conditions also tend to miss more work or report being less productive,” the report said. “These conditions can impair relationships, disrupt marriages, aggravate the difficulties of parenting, and cause problems in children that may extend the consequences of combat trauma across generations.”


“These consequences can have a high economic toll,” RAND said. “However, most attempts to measure the costs of these conditions focus only on medical costs to the government. Yet, direct costs of treatment are only a fraction of the total costs related to mental health and cognitive conditions. Far higher are the long-term individual and societal costs stemming from lost productivity, reduced quality of life, homelessness, domestic violence, the strain on families, and suicide. Delivering effective care and restoring veterans to full mental health have the potential to reduce these longer-term costs significantly.”


Bush and Congress have the power to stop this problem before it gets worse. It’s not too late to extend needed mental health care to our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans; it’s not too late to begin properly screening and treating returning servicemen and women who’ve experienced a traumatic brain injury; and it is not too late to simplify the disability claims process so that wounded veterans do not die waiting for their check. As the Rand study shows, this isn’t only in the best interest of veterans, it’s in the best interest of our country in the long run.


To start with, the Bush Administration needs to give us some honest information about the true human costs of this War.


But, don't look for that to happen anytime soon, not with their past record of dishonesty and deception. Especially about their (mis)treatment of this nations military veterans.


There are far too many people in this country living in a fantasy world. They put yellow ribbons on their SUV or their shiney new cars and that’s about as near as they will ever come to anything close to a "war". They say “God bless our troops” but have no idea what the troops are going through. The joke of it all is that the current government "leaders" keep the troops over in that hellhole while professing to stand by them. And then attempt to cover up or hide the TRUE COSTS of this war while failing to provide the necessary funds to make sure the troops are adequately and properly care for when they return all F--Ked Up!


Most American citizens live in their own Never Never Land. The truth about the war (and treatment of past War veterans) would shock the hell out of them.


Gimp

[revwardoc]

My company's receptionist is engaged to an AF SSgt who's currently serving his 3rd tour in Iraq. Today he was told they wouldn't be allowed to vote in the upcoming presidential election because they were prejudiced against the war. If this is true, can the military actually deny a GI his right to vote?

[revwardoc]

OK, just got a clarification on the "can't vote issue". It's not that they "can't" vote but they were told they "shouldn't" vote because they're prejudiced against the current administration and the Republican Party in general. Of course this could be just his commander saying this and not an unwritten policy in the military in general, but according to her fiance, that's what they're all being told.

[DeadlyDaring]

I thought your country had free speech and you were free to vote if you wanted.

Down under we have free speech and compulsery voting for all over eighteen including military

[Packo]

The military telling individual voters wheather they should or should not vote according to their feelings about the war? Sounds like barracks bullshit to me. I can't picture people going around to individual troops, asking how they feel about the war, then saying if they should vote or not. Bullshit. Somebody's pullin' somebody's leg...or out right lying. Oh, the evil Republicans are threatening poor little airmen about their vote. That is such a crock of shit.

My opinion and stickin' too it.

Pack