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

Category: Veterans Issues

  • Alex Horton slays the PTSD dragon

    Our drinking buddy, Alex Horton, formerly of the excellent military blog, Army of Dude, and currently the social media honcho at the Department of Veterans Affairs, knocks another one out of the park with his post today “The Mt. Rainier Shooting and PTSD: How the Media Got It Wrong“. This is why he beat us in the 2008 Weblog Awards shoot out;

    When I asked her today, VA clinical psychologist Dr. Sonja Batten said that “despite this image in pop culture of the dangerous, unstable Veteran, there is no direct, causal link between combat-related PTSD and the type of violence shown at Mt. Rainier. Although PTSD is associated with increased anger and irritability in some individuals—whether civilians or Veterans—this sort of negative portrayal of Veterans is unfair and does a disservice to those individuals who have served our country. We work every day in VA to dispel these negative and inaccurate stereotypes.”

    In other words, the misguided and incorrect correlation between military service and violent crimes like murder can lead to damaging stereotypes that can inhibit the success of Vets once they leave the military. The Texas Veterans Commission says some employers have reservations about hiring Veterans because they may show signs of post-traumatic signs in the workplace. Hiring managers may think they’re getting a Travis Bickle instead of a “Sully” Sullenberger.

    He wrote to tell us that he was working on this post yesterday, so we’ve been keeping our eyes open for it. You really need to read the whole thing.

  • Another PTSD-fueled shoot-out

    Fox News reports that a father is blaming his son’s PTSD which caused him to engage in a fire fight with police while the heavily-armed cops served a warrant related to drug charges in Ogden, Utah.

    Just like in the case of the veteran who the media said had extensive survival training and suffered from PTSD, there are no doctor reports of PTSD, only family members who’ve somehow diagnosed the PTSD. His father also tells the media that he was “self-medicating” with marijuana. Isn’t it great that we’ve become a society jam-packed with medical professionals who can use the language to support their diagnosis, and all without a moment of any kind of training.

    And the media eats that shit up like ice cream. Alex Johnson, the reporter who first wrote about Barnes for MSNBC, walked back his faulty reportage of that initial reportage. He explained “Barnes’ behavior did fit a statistically significant pattern observed among soldiers returning from Iraq to Lewis-McChord, where PTSD has become an important issue.” What he really meant was that Barnes behavior fit his perception of how veterans behave.

    In case you didn’t know, the media aren’t medical professionals any more than those family members who blame their relatives’ bad behavior on their participation in war. All of these know-it-alls who watch Dr Phil are just like you and me – except they’re making excuses for the guilty.

    There are millions of veterans who suffer from PTSD…and every day, millions of us refrain from going on a shooting spree or self-medication with illicit products. Where’s the media on that story?

  • The post in which I agree with Beeker

    I’ve been thinking about writing about that nutjob, Pfc. Benjamin Colton Barnes who shot several people over the weekend, including a Park ranger. I remember the news reporting that he was an Iraq veteran with extensive survival skills and then they find his body a day later in a creek, apparently dead from hypothermia. I guess those survival skills were fairly limited since he didn’t know that laying in a creek would bring on some hypothermia. So you have wonder about the PTSD thing that the media likes to wave as a bloody shirt. According to an MSNBC piece, Barnes’ problems go back to before his Army career;

    Growing up in Riverside County, Calif., he was sent to a community day school for expelled and troubled students as a teenager, the Press-Enterprise newspaper reported.

    And the Army didn’t think much of his PTSD claims, either;

    He was discharged from the Army in 2009 for drunken driving and illegal transportation of a private weapon.

    In fact, the claims of PTSD seem to come from his ex-girlfriend’s order of protection, not from any doctor. It’s just something the media likes to grab onto to exonerate criminals from their own poor choices.

    Anyway, Brandon Friedman, dicksmith’s predecessor at VetVoice, known to TAH old timers as Beeker, currently employed at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, contributed to the MSNBC piece and spoke the first true words I’ve seen from his mouth;

    Even if Barnes did have PTSD, as his ex-girlfriend says, “having PTSD doesn’t signify a propensity to murder Americans,” Friedman said, adding that he was concerned that depictions of Barnes as a sufferer of PTSD could fuel public perceptions that all Lewis-McChord veterans are “dangerous psychos.”

    “The stereotype of the crazy vet is something vets have had to deal with for years, and it’s simply not backed up with hard data,” he said.

    Yeah, the media likes to point out the tens of thousands of veterans who suffer from PTSD are coming home – you’d think they’d want to point out that those thousands also don’t randomly shoot people.

  • Obama targets veterans’ votes

    The Associated Press reports that the Obama campaign thinks it has a lock on veterans’ votes because he ended the the war in Iraq and has a generally good record on national security. While I’ll concede that he has presided over the military during a successful period, it’s only because he’s interfered with the policies established by the Bush Administration less than we expected.

    The Associated Press gives him credit for the new GI Bill, which was signed before he came into office by his predecessor. It was the Obama Administration which screwed the pooch and paid veterans months after they’d promised because they only had a year or so to figure the whole thing out, while troops and their families suffered financially.

    And remember when he wanted to force service-disabled veterans to buy insurance? Do you really think he’ll cave as easily next time when there’s no election to worry about?

    Oh, yeah, and he’s got the Defense Department doing his dirty work jacking up TriCare premiums, so he can go around proclaiming that he won’t balance the budget on the backs of veterans.

    Did I mention that Obama and his hitmen are slashing $800 billion out of the defense budget – so much so that the American Legion commander says it imperils our national security? That this President has never given veterans a cost of living increase but our healthcare costs are rising along with fuel that we use to get to veterans’ treatment facilities?

    So what has really done? He failed to successfully negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement which forced us to withdraw from Iraq while it descends into violence. Disregarding the advice from his commanders, he half-assed surged in Afghanistan hoping that drones would make up for the number of troops…and then lost drone bases in Pakistan.

    He won’t admit that service members in Fort Hood and Arkansas were victims of Islamic terrorists, pretty much refusing to recognize that war against terrorists has followed the troops home.

    He’s made a lot of pretty speeches to veterans that few of us believed. And, bin Laden and al Awlaki were killed under his command, so that’s something.

  • Australia looking to recruit in our military.

    Yep, with all the talks of cuts within the military and ending of the operation in Iraq, the military of Australia is looking into number of people that are being affected by it. That is, they are looking to enlist them for their military experience.

    With the Iraq War officially over and the Army downsizing in the face of defense budget pressure, more troops will be making the transition back to civilian life — a potentially challenging prospect given the state of the economy.

    But for those who want to stay in uniform, there may be a new option emerging — just not an American one. Australia has put out the “Help Wanted” sign for foreign national veterans.

    “We are looking for serving or ex-serving foreign military personnel, who can directly transfer their job and life skills to whichever Service they join, with limited training and preparation,” the Australian Defence Force has announced on its website.

    Also it seems that you do not have to lose your US citizenship for serving in the Australian military. What makes it more interesting is that is seems to have some level of support from the VFW.

    According to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. and Australia each recognize dual citizenship. Serving in the military of one is not listed as a cause for losing citizenship in the other. The Australian defense site also notes that security clearances acquired while in the U.S. military are transferable to the Australian military.

    “Australia is a great country and staunch ally, and aside from a common language, we share the same values and beliefs,” said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “As our military begins to downsize, it could be a great opportunity for those who want to continue serving.”

    I may email them to see what is going on with this program. I will post anything that I get back.

  • San Diego to Vets: NIMBY

    Stars & Stripes reports that residents of San Diego like veterans, but not so much that they’ll tolerate a rehabilitation center in their neighborhood;

    The proposed 40-bed center, with single rooms, would be intended for veterans who need a place to live for one to six months. The facility would also have in-house medical and psychiatric care.

    Neighbors say they don’t want it, and they insist that they’re mostly against it for the vets’ own good.

    “For the vets, I don’t think it’s a suitable place. They need wide open spaces. They shouldn’t be in a residential neighborhood,” said Janet Houts, whom the website described as “a longtime Old Town resident.”

    Yeah, they need wide-open spaces like cattle, I suppose. Since San Diego is largely a military town, I wonder how they’d like it if the Marines and the Navy packed up for some “wide open spaces” and take their local jobs and their monthly paychecks with them?

    “We have been called unpatriotic,” Houts said. “We’re anything but that. We have a VA facility down the street. We have a mental facility [on a nearby street].”

    Then what’s one more veteran facility, nimnil?

  • NOT Just Another Day.

    Commenter Doc Bailey and I have been swapping emails about this and that. I was rather surprised to learn that we have some things in common even though shifted 40 years in time.

    But he mentioned a coupla things I couldn’t directly relate to so I asked him to expand on them.

    Here is the first, in his words. Thanks Doc.

    —————————-

    Here is my account of 25 June 2007, and the events that happened to me that day. I have to put it out there because people have to know. please understand these events are painful for me to recount.

    It was a normal day like any other. We were all excited to be getting back, but i was exuasted having pulled a 6 hour gaurd shift right before getting off. We all sat around and joked. I could hear people laughing about the game “company of heroes” that Craig and WillieBo had played. They’d gone for 5 hours only to get their asses kickedby the germans. I was fretting over Jubi. I was a little upset, because he was supposed to have been evaced the night before for (what i would find out later) a slipped disk. I had given him morphine right before i thought he was going to go, he didn’t and i was bracing for the ass reeming i was going to get. I had spent all night fretting about a patient, and in the end i was pretty damm tired, everyone else on the otherhand were lively in a way only the loose cannons can be.
    Like always we had details to do, and things that needed to get done. Clean the pisser, sweep and mop, make the “gym” look pretty, Mop the mats, sweep the sleeping bay, and of course pick up cigarette buts. we did these, with the usual amount of bitching complaining and griping. It came time to load up and off we went.

    (more…)

  • BAE’s past

    Seems that the BAE has some previous issues in the past besides the current fiasco with Dakota Meyer. Thanks to DC for the link.

    I really like the Defense Articles and Services Brokering Violations to start off with and this was this year too.

    BAE Systems plc and its business units and subsidiaries – except its U.S. subsidiary, BAE Systems, Inc. – entered into a civil settlement with the U.S. Department of State for alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The State Department alleged BAE committed 2,591 violations of the ITAR in connection with unauthorized brokering of U.S. defense articles and services, and that the violations were “systemic, wide-spread, and sustained for more than ten years.”

    Or how about Foreign Corruption Global Settlement?

    In June 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigation into allegations that BAE Systems, using American banks, made up to $2 billion in secret payments to the former Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in the years after securing a multi-billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia (the al-Yamamah deal). In February 2010, BAE entered into a settlement with the Department of Justice and the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which launched an investigation in 2004 of alleged bribery by BAE in Saudi Arabia and other countries.

    Yea lots of fun stuff. So the claim that they want to sell gear to Pakistan seems to have some substance.
    Oh I wonder if the contract for the scopes fell out due to projected budget cuts that they would go looking for another bidder. Here is a screen cap that talk about what I think are the optics in question.