This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veterans Issues

  • PTS doesn’t make vets thieves

    The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports that Iraq War veteran Brittany A. Taft has been sentenced for stealing the identities and GI Bill benefits from her friends to the tune of $18,000. Of course, in a round-about way, the journalist blames PTS;

    An Iraq War veteran suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury will have to spend three months in jail followed by three months of electronically monitored home confinement…

    […]

    Taft pleaded guilty to mail fraud in January and admitted that she applied for and received $3,000 Post-9/11 GI Bill advance payment checks for each of her victims at her home in Wai­pahu in November and December 2009. She then cashed or deposited the checks into her own bank account using false power of attorney forms she prepared in her victims’ names.

    Federal prosecutor Lawrence Tong said Taft obtained a document containing the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of fellow soldiers from a roommate and personally knew two of her victims. He said some of the victims lost their benefits because of Taft’s actions, one had a tax refund check withheld by the IRS and another was forced to pay back the $3,000 to clear the debt.

    Supposedly, Taft hit her head on the steering wheel of the HMMV she was driving when an IED went off near the vehicle in front of here and she was knocked unconscious briefly and then drove herself and other wounded soldiers to the aid station.

    Taft later learned she suffered a traumatic brain injury.

    In addition to the PTSD and brain injury, Taft said she also suffers from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

    But I just want to make it clear that PTS and TBI doesn’t turn veterans into devious criminals. It sounds to me like Taft would have committed this crime without banging her head on the steering wheel. I know mentioning PTS explains the whole thing to journalists and most civilians who want to think of veterans as time bombs ticking away just one honking horn away from committing a crime, but, no, sorry, millions of veterans who suffer from PTS didn’t rip off their room mates today.

    The story is also linked at Stars & Stripes.

  • Six vets guilty of fraud in MD

    Chip sends us a link to an article in the Baltimore Sun about six veterans, some of whom had never been in Vietnam, who had paid the former deputy chief of veterans’ affairs, David Clark, to receive benefits related to Agent Orange;

    Those who pleaded guilty this week are Kenneth Williams, 64, of Baltimore (Marine Corps); Raymond Sadler, 61, of Middle River (Marine Corps); Sandra Tyree, 64, of Rosedale (Air Force); Kenneth Webster, 67, of Pasadena (Marine Corps); Paul Heard, 64, of Baltimore (Navy); and John Bratcher, 54, of Conowingo (Air Force).

    All face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and must pay back what they earned through the scheme, prosecutors said.

    The scheme included manufacturing documentation to support their phony claims. But Stolen Valor is victimless.

    Clark allegedly fabricated documents showing he and others had been awarded service honors, the indictment says, including Purple Heart Medals and Vietnam Service Medals.

    […]

    The fraud resulted in benefits losses of more than $1.15 million and property tax losses of more than $250,000, the indictment says.

    Yeah, even divided up six ways, that’s going to be tough to pay back from prison by renting out their various orifices to their cell mates. So, thanks, Maryland. Can you reelect O’Malley again so he can put some more of his cronies in positions of responsibility.

  • Atlantic: Despite evidence to the contrary, vets are the greater threat

    The Atlantic publishes the words of completely vacuous David Sterman, of the New America Foundation, as he breathlessly warns “The Greater Danger: Military-Trained Right-Wing Extremists“. This idiot meanderings through the English language was more than likely lifted from the moronic mind of Mark Potok, the anti-American, anti-military hate monger at the Southern Poverty Law Center who inspired Floyd Corkins II to try to shoot up the Family Research Council in DC last year.

    But there’s meanwhile a more worrying danger: that right-wing extremists who have served in the U.S. military will use their training in carrying out terrorist violence.

    Right-wing extremists are more likely than violent Islamist extremists–or, as they are sometimes called, jihadists–to have military experience. They are also better armed, and are responsible for more incidents. The past two decades have seen multiple attacks from right-wing extremist veterans, from Wade Michael Page, who trained at Fort Bragg, to the group of former and active-duty soldiers in Georgia, who collected weapons to carry out a plan to assassinate President Obama. In 2011, Kevin Harpham, who had served in the army, placed a bomb along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. During the 1990s, violent extremism in the militia movement and other right-wing movements relied heavily upon those who served in the military. Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator of the most deadly terrorist attack on American soil before 9/11, was a military veteran whose libertarian views were also heavily influenced by a novel by a former American Nazi Party official. Eric Rudolph, the anti-abortion extremist who bombed the 1996 Olympics, had also enlisted in the army.

    Wade Michael Page was the guy who shot up a Sikh temple. He was booted out of the Army in the late 90s. Kevin Harpham did fail at bombing a parade. Harpham, was also booted in 1999 from his Army job as a Red Leg cannon cocker at Fort Lewis, which is in no way related to anything that has to do with making and emplacing bombs. The Fort Stewart murderers had a plot to assassinate the President, but they were a bunch of headquarters wienies who had no skills related to the task that they planned. They murdered two people who they thought might expose their plot, but people who haven’t been trained by the military do that everyday. McVeigh was a Bradley gunner in the first Gulf War, nothing in the 11MB20 Skills Manual is remotely related to anything he did that day in Oklahoma, just like the others, including Eric Rudolph.

    I have no idea why the media is so preoccupied with waving this warning flag about veterans when there are millions of veterans who don’t hurt a soul every day. I think it’s very telling that they’re so preoccupied with warning about veterans in the days after an attack by real terrorists who are violent jihadists with no relationship to the military. They have to go back to the fricken 90s to find military veteran terrorists, for Pete’s sake. Yes, they all had military training, but nothing about their training had anything to do with their deeds.

    The only person Sterman interviews is our old friend Daryl Johnson, who wrote the now-famed Homeland Security Department report which warned of veterans as the greatest threat to our security. Johnson was fired soon after and his sole mission in life is to get morons like Sterman to vindicate his idiot report. The problem is that there are too many people in the media who don’t know what the military actually trains people to do, so since it sounds scary to them, it must be scary to everyone else.

    Oh, yeah, wait until you read the part about scary, nutty veterans accumulate weapons, unlike jihadists, who only accumulate pressure cookers, I suppose. I guess they’re coming for our guns.

  • The Iraq Medal of Commitment: Still in “5-Sided Asylum” Limbo

    Many of you may remember an article Jonn did some time ago on the proposal by the government of Iraq to award a an “Iraq Medal of Commitment“.  The new medal would go to those who served in Iraq between Mar 2003 and Dec 2011.

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    It seems as if DoD and the Government of Iraq are still doing the “elephant mating dance” on this one.  According to an article published about 3 weeks ago (1 Apr 2013) in the Army Times,

    “Since this is a foreign medal, traditionally the foreign government provides that medal to eligible members,” Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a DoD spokesman, told Military Times. “The department greatly appreciates the desire of the government of Iraq to recognize our members’ service. . . . The Department of Defense has not received the medals from the government of Iraq, as a result there are no medals available to approve or distribute at this time.”

    There’s precedent both ways.  During Vietnam, the US accepted multiple Vietnamese decorations and formally authorized them for wear by US troops; the same is true for decorations from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (Gulf War), Korea (Korean War), the Philippines/France/Belgium (World War II), the UN (various), and NATO (various).  But during the mid-1970s, the US rejected the Republic of Korea Service Medal when it was offered to US troops by South Korea.

    I know things take a while inside the 5-sided asylum.  But you think almost 2 years would be enough for someone to decide either yea or nay.

    Then again, we’re still waiting on a decision regarding approval/downgrade/disapproval of CPT Swenson’s MOH for Gangjal.  So maybe 2 years just isn’t enough time.

  • Brits deal with veterans’ false claims

    Common Sense sends us a link to the UK’s Daily Mail in regards to false claims clogging up their Ministry of Defense’ ability to pay legitimate disability claims;

    The volume of claims has been partly blamed on ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers and the Ministry of Defence, which publicises the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme through adverts and YouTube videos.

    Law firms such as Military Lawyers 4U and Harris Fowler advertise their services in military magazines. They have specialist teams to take cases on a no-win, no-fee basis, but who charge up to 25 per cent of a soldier’s potential payout.

    In 2005, when the compensation scheme was introduced, only 365 troops made personal injury claims. By 2011-12 that figure had rocketed to 8,815, more than a quarter of which were rejected.

    The article says that out of 36,000 claims in the past several years, 11,000 have been rejected indicating that almost a third are attempts at gaming the system. I shudder to think what that might be extrapolated into numbers in the US.

  • The downside of the failure of the gun regs

    Rick Maze sends us a link to his report on the vote in the Senate today on an amendment to the gun laws that failed today in the Senate which was intended to protect veterans second amendment rights in the face of Veterans’ Affairs bureaucrats.

    As the law stands now, those same boobs who can’t process your disability claim in a timely manner can report you to the NICS system for being financially incompetent and hinder your ability to legally purchase a firearm.

    The amendment sought allow the VA to only report to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System if a judge, magistrate or other judicial authority determines a veteran is a danger to himself or others.

    Wednesday’s vote came on an amendment to S 649, the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act, after the Senate also defeated attempts to expand background checks for gun purchases and to ban the sale of military-style assault weapons

    Sen. Richard Burr, R-S.C., who sponsored the Senate amendment, said current policy has led 129,000 veterans to be “deprived of their Second Amendment Rights to own firearms” without due process because they were declared financially “incompetent,” the term used by the VA for those appointed a fiduciary to handle their financial affairs.

    It was unfortunate that the safety net for veterans was attached to a bill doomed to fail and it should be reintroduced as a stand alone bill or attached to something that has to do with veterans rather than as a ploy to garner votes for a piece of legislation that had no chance to pass.

  • Distinguished Warfare Medal goes out with the Good Idea Fairy

    If you’re still interested what with today’s events being what they are, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel decided that he’s going to swap the Distinguished Warfare Medal (that drone pilot thingie) for a device. According to a link to the Washington Post sent to us by Chief Tango;

    After ordering a review of a policy that was one of his predecessor’s last official moves, Hagel said Monday that he concluded no such medal was needed. Instead, he said, a “device” will be affixed to existing medals to recognize those who fly and operate drones, whom he described as “critical to our military’s mission of safeguarding the nation.”

    Devices are used by the Pentagon to add a specific form of additional recognition when troops are lauded for exceptional performance.

    I don’t like Hagel much, but he did make the right decision in this case. Of course, I think we were set up in the first place. If Panetta had only made the medal lower in precedence than a Bronze Star Medal, you know a medal that you actually be in the same area as the enemy, there probably wouldn’t have been much of a stink made by veterans and VSOs across the country.

    I think the medal was just a distraction. And it worked – our Tricare out-of-pocket costs have increased, thousands of retirees have been booted out of Tricare Prime, benefits to active duty troops have been slashed, ships are sitting idle in CONUS ports, pilots have had their training hours cut, veterans are waiting for medical treatment all with hardly a peep while we were all wringing our hands over bits of metal and ribbon.

    But, hey, we won one, right? you can read more about the Medal at our buddy War on Terror News‘ place.

  • “Baffled” Obama supporters in the veteran community

    Chief Tango sends us a link to the Daily Beast in which folks who backed the two elections of Obama in the veteran community are “baffled why the Department of Veterans’ Affairs isn’t doing more for veterans;

    “I supported President Obama in both elections, but what is happening right now at VA is inexcusable,” says Thomas Bandzul, a well-known advocate for veterans who is legislative counsel for Veterans and Military Families for Progress and past associate counsel for Veterans for Common Sense.

    Bandzul, who in 2007 worked closely with then-Senator Obama on the Lane Evans Veterans Health and Benefits Improvement Act, said he is “baffled” by why the problems at the agency just keep getting worse and why Obama isn’t doing more to fix it.

    “I know Shinseki on a personal level,” he says. “I know Allison Hickey on a personal level. They’re two of the greatest people in the world. But it’s time the president takes full responsibility for this failure, and takes action. This is happening on his watch.”

    Yeah, we warned readers about Veteran and Military Families for Progress, and Veterans for Common Sense back in 2008 when we first noticed that they popped their grimy little heads up. All they cared about was getting veterans and the troops to vote for their candidate with total disregard of what would happen.

    Oh, yeah, the article mentions other disillusioned veterans’ groups, but oddly enough, they don’t mention Paul Reickhoff and IAVA who are suddenly very good on the inability of the VA to do their simple job with any measure of success. But, IAVA drove hard for the hoop getting a Democrat Administration in office in 2008 & 2010. I wonder when they’re going to admit that they were wrong. At least VoteVets has been consistently pro-Obama, despite his utter failure on veterans’ issues. And, oh yeah, by the way, most of the writing staff from VoteVets now works at the VA. Well, except for a notable few who have jumped ship now that it’s sinking.

    There was even some disagreement among the writing staff at TAH whether an Obama Administration would screw veterans. And yes, Obama has increased spending on veterans, as the VA folks reminded me incessantly at the Milblog Conference last year, but outcome is more important than intentions. In addition to the troubles at the VA , this month, thousands of veterans are being forcibly removed from the rolls of Tricare Prime for the more user-expensive Tricare Standard, while the surplus we’ve built up in Tricare is further squandered by the Department of Defense.

    But, these veterans’ groups being “baffled” as to how all of this happened were more interested in getting their guy elected than they were in looking ahead at what the inevitable outcome would be. Cry me a fricken river.