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Flawed System May Hurt Disabled Soldiers
By HOPE YEN
AP
WASHINGTON (AP) - The way the government rates service members' disabilities is inconsistent, and the Army might be shortchanging injured soldiers, the chairman of a special commission said Thursday.
Testifying before a Senate panel, retired Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott, chairman of the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission, detailed problems in the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs ratings systems. Critics contend the ratings are easily manipulated to limit disability payments and create undue confusion in a claims system already strained to the limit.
"It is apparent that service members are not well-served," Scott said at an unusual joint hearing of the Senate Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees called to examine gaps in the system.
Separately, VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said a presidential task force he is heading to improve troop and veterans care was working vigorously and planned to issue recommendations next week.
One primary focus of his department, he said, has been to pare down the growing backlog of claims, which currently take an average of 177 days to process.
"This is too long," Nicholson told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee in written testimony. "We must and will reduce the pending inventory and shorten the time veterans must wait for decisions on their claims."
In a preliminary review of Pentagon and VA data, the commission found the Army was much more likely than the other active forces to assign a disability rating of less than 30 percent, the typical cutoff to determine whether a person can get lifetime retirement payments and health care.
VA ratings tended to be higher, due to a separate system the department used that gave consideration to whether injured veterans were afflicted with multiple disabilities - not just a predominant one.
While the differing standards account for some inconsistencies, "it is also apparent that DOD has strong incentive to assign ratings less than 30 percent so that only separation pay is required," Scott said in testimony. His commission was formed in 2004 to study ways to improve the benefits system and is scheduled to issue a report later this year.
Scott also faulted the failure of the Pentagon and VA to work more effectively to create a shared electronic system for health records. He said his commission had repeatedly gotten vague, misleading or outright inaccurate explanations from the departments.
The Senate hearing is the latest to examine troop care after disclosures in February of shoddy conditions and outpatient treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, one of the premier facilities for treating injured service members from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among the complaints are the difficulties troops and veterans have in navigating the health care system, including long waits, lost paperwork and subjective ratings as they move from military hospitals to the VA's vast network of 1,400 clinics and treatment facilities. The Army has acknowledged that it must improve its disability ratings system, and the Pentagon and VA have pledged to work together, most recently touting plans to share inpatient records in one system.
"A full solution is still several years away," Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said, while offering assurances that he and Nicholson do confer "when issues need to be addressed at our level."
Since the Walter Reed controversy, three high-level Pentagon officials have been forced to step down, including former Army Secretary Francis Harvey and Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman and Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the two previous commanders at Walter Reed.
An independent review group appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates this week said money woes and Pentagon neglect were to blame for many of the problems. It concluded that "leadership at Walter Reed should have been aware of poor living conditions and administrative hurdles."
On Thursday, acting Army Secretary Pete Geren expressed confidence in Walter Reed's new leadership. He said many steps have been taken to improve conditions, such as adding more case managers, setting up phone hot lines and reducing paperwork.
"We are under no illusions that the work ahead will be easy or quick - or cheap; we have a lot to do to get this right," Geren said.
England said the Pentagon was looking ahead to requesting the money to accelerate the closing of Walter Reed and build a new expanded facility in Bethesda, Md.
Some lawmakers have suggested that efforts to close Walter Reed during a time of war were misguided and should be reconsidered.
"I do concur it's in the best interest of men and women to get personnel out of Walter Reed and into Bethesda," England said. "We don't have the funding now, but we will ask about that."
Soldier's recent suicide may not have been isolated incident
(Columbia) September 10, 2006 - It's been more than three years since the war on terror began. We've lost many of South Carolina's bravest along the way - but not all of them have died in the warzone.
WIS found that at least three soldiers from South Carolina committed suicide after returning from active duty. Whether they like it or not, the military now is on a mission to get soldiers help long after the shooting stops.
Phillip Kent was down to 90 pounds when he returned to Columbia from Iraq.
"It's screaming at me when he gets off that bus," Phillip's mother, Laura told WIS News.�"He is not well - he's stressed, he's on edge, he's just a bundle of nerves. Besides that just his general appearance, any mother would pick up on that immediately."
Laura says her son would not eat or sleep, had anxiety, and lost interest in doing all the things he loved growing up, like playing sports and making music. Laura believes Phillip was scared to ask for help.
"If he were to admit it, it was a sign of weakness - and of course in the military you don't want to be weak," said Laura.�
So behind his back, Laura called a military chaplain. However, she says nobody followed up with her son. Two months later he was hospitalized.
"For two days in the psychiatric unit - boy that was sure a long time for someone that - I just thought 'what a sham.' That was so ridiculous."
Six months later, Phillip was honorably discharged from the military after being arrested but not charged for a fight he had with his wife. Laura says Phillip's mental health had strained his marriage and at this point his life began to really unravel.
Then he threatened suicide...
"He said 'I'm going to get a bottle of Jack [Daniel's Whiskey] and I got my pistol right here,'" Laura tearfully remembers, "and then I got the call that no human being wants to get ever."
Phillip killed himself, exactly the way he said he would.
The psychological toll of war is climbing. The military does not track suicides among returning soldiers, but an Ohio newspaper was able to come up with 21 such veterans from news reports and V.A. advocate groups. WIS News was able to confirm three of the soldiers were from South Carolina.
Laura Kent believes the military is partly to blame for her family's horrific outcome. She doesn't think her son got the right counseling before being released from the Army.
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Shugart says the demand for mental health treatment is growing, and finding ways to deal with it is a battle the military is still learning about.�
����
"Certainly, there must be some places where we let people down, must be some places where we could've done it better. We want to do it better and are trying to do it better," Lt. Col. Shugart told WIS News.
According to the Army's Surgeon General, 30% of US troops returning from Iraq have developed mental health problems a few months after coming home.
Reported by Angie Goff
www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5388817
Dear Members of Congress,
People ask me every day "So is your husband home safe?"
I usually reply "Yeah, he got home from Iraq several months ago.”
What I really want to say and what's usually going through my head at that very moment is, "NO, HE IS NOT SAFE. HE IS NOT OKAY AND HE ISN"T EVEN THE SAME PERSON."
I understand that this is not an appropriate way to unload my fears and feelings on strangers so I don’t say it. You don’t know my husband’s name (it’s Joseph Hafley), you don’t know our children (Kobe, Garrett and Jack). You didn’t sit beside me as I was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease, unable to drive and even stand on some days but still responsible for three small boys while my husband was away. You weren’t there when our house was condemned because of mold and I had to move my children, by myself, with no aid from the Red Cross, the Family Readiness Group or many of the associated soldier-centric agencies who are supposed to help families. It's likely you'll never hear of the constant small tragedies of life that military families must cope with when their loved one is deployed and when they return from combat.
Go to sleep tonight knowing that while you slumber there are mothers and wives crying and pacing in an attempt to console their grief and control their anger. Understand that while you sleep there are mothers rocking their inconsolable children trying to explain to them why daddy is gone. If you wake in the night, look over and notice that there is likely not a person next to you sitting up, sweatng and shaking remembering Iraq because they heard thunder and thought they were under fire. Remember as you have breakfast tomorrow that in thousands of households across the U.S. a family member is bearing the entire responsibility of the household while under the stress of wondering if their loved one has survived another day or reassuring their returned soldier who cannot find a job. Can you (as our political body) and others see that there is an emotional war raging here not only as they face the front lines in Iraq, but upon their return?
Before you take your next vote on prolonging, funding or engaging in war, consult an Iraqi veteran and take a look at the faces of the soldiers and their families, not just at the numbers on a sheet of paper.
I have decided that from now on when people ask me if my husband is okay I am going to say "NO, he is tormented by the war daily. And until our Representatives here in the State of Missouri look at our husbands, wives, daughters and sons as people; living, beathing, loving, human beings not toy soldiers and focus on getting our troops home, he will continue to not be okay."
Advocating for troop withdrawal,
Stacy Hafley ~ Wife of an Iraq war veteran& President of
Military Families Speak Out MO/Midwest Chapter
Sexually Harassed Soldier is Arrested After Refusing to Redeploy to Iraq
Thursday, June 15th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/15/1410258
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Police in Eugene, Oregon have arrested 21-year-old Army Specialist Suzanne Swift for refusing to return to fight in Iraq. Swift served in Iraq for a year but decided she could not return and went AWOL. Not only did she feel the war lacked purpose, Swift said her superiors repeatedly sexually harassed her while serving in Iraq. We speak with her mother, Sara Rich. [includes rush transcript]
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Police in Eugene, Oregon have arrested a 21-year-old Army Specialist for refusing to return to fight in Iraq. The soldier, Suzanne Swift, served in Iraq for a year but decided she could not return. And like thousands of other soldiers, she went AWOL. Not only did Swift feel the war lacked purpose, she said her superiors repeatedly sexually harassed her while serving in Iraq.
Swift remained AWOL until Sunday night when the Eugene police knocked on her mother's front door. She was arrested and taken to the county jail. Then she was transferred to Fort Lewis in Washington. She has been forced to return to her unit but is barred from leaving the base. No charges have been filed against her yet for deserting.
We speak with Suzanne Swift's mother, Sara Rich.
Sara Rich, mother of Army Specialist Suzanne Swift. Email her at formydaughtersuzanne@yahoo.com
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RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined now in Portland, Oregon by Sara Rich. She's the mother of the Army Specialist Suzanne Swift. We welcome you to Democracy Now!
SARA RICH: Hello, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you tell us exactly what happened to Sarah? What happened when she went to Iraq, and what happened when she came home?
SARA RICH: I�ll tell you what happened to Suzanne. When Suzanne was 19, she was recruited into the Army, and they promised her she would never go to Iraq. The first thing they told her when she went to basic training is that she was going to Iraq and that she was going to die. She got home from her basic training and was immediately sent to Iraq, where we thought that she would be facing danger from the war, but mostly she was facing danger from her sergeants that were in charge of her.
She spent a year there and I sat on my hands not saying anything because she said that if I said anything about the sexual harassment and assaults, that she would be in more danger than she was in already. When she came home, I said, "Can I say something now?" She said, "No, please don't, mom. I�ll just get in so much trouble, and I�ll be a traitor to my country and to my unit. So I didn't say anything, and then within a month of her being back, her sergeant -- she reported to her sergeant and said, "Where do I report to in the morning, sergeant?" And he said, "In my bed, naked."
At that point she broke and decided to go and tell, and he was moved to a different unit, and she was shamed and treated terribly by her unit for some time. Then they told her she was going to be redeployed. We thought she would have 18 months of stabilization time. And they forced her to sign a waiver waiving her rights to 18 months and were sending her back 11 months after her first return from Iraq. She then prepared to go back to Iraq, and three days before her deployment, she had her keys in her hand. She was in the kitchen, and we were looking at each other, and she said -- she turned to me, and she said, "Mom, I just can't go back." I said, "Are you serious?" She said, "I�m serious. I can't go back there."
And from then on, she decided to go AWOL from the Army, and that was six months ago. During that time she's been seeing a psychologist, dealing with her post-traumatic stress disorder, and planning on turning herself back in. However, on Sunday night, the Eugene Police Department came to our house at 10:30 p.m., when we were all in bed, and came to the house and arrested Suzanne and took her to jail and now she's been taken back to Fort Lewis and put back in active duty with her 54th M.P. unit.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you had a chance to speak to her there?
SARA RICH: I sure have. I sure have. She -- I talked to her on Tuesday, and I spoke to her on Wednesday, yesterday.
AMY GOODMAN: What did she say?
SARA RICH: She said, �how can I help, mom? What can I do?� I said, �sweetheart, just stay safe.� They took her back and they put her under the care of one of the sergeants that we are actually pressing criminal charges against for the harassment in Iraq. So I called her attorney immediately, who was already on the base, for her, and he got her changed, and we got a no-contact order with that sergeant.
AMY GOODMAN: We invited the military to join us on the program, but they declined. However, Tammy Reed, a spokesperson from Fort Lewis where your lawyer is being held, in Washington, provided the following statement:
TAMMY REED: Specialist Swift has returned to Fort Lewis and is on duty in her unit. She will in-process back into the installation on -- today, Wednesday, June 14. She has also been restricted to her unit area and her pass privileges have been revoked, meaning she cannot leave Fort Lewis. Her chain of command is thoroughly investigating the circumstances surrounding her absence from the unit and no charges have yet been filed.
Because the matter is under investigation, and for privacy reasons, we cannot discuss details of Specialist Swift's case. The Army is committed to ensuring that every soldier is treated with dignity and respect, and the commanders take very seriously any claims of mistreatment, and investigate each claim thoroughly to determine the facts of the case and take appropriate action.
AMY GOODMAN: Tammy Reed is a spokesperson at Fort Lewis, Washington where Suzanne Swift is now being held. She's released from prison, she's with her unit. We're talking to her mother Sara Rich in a studio in Portland, Oregon. Sarah, can you talk more about her experience in Iraq, and were there other women in her unit?
SARA RICH: From what I remember, there were two other women in her unit, and most of the time the three women were separated and had their own rooms. Her experience with the war -- she was a Humvee driver so she was the driver of a Humvee for a combat patrol when she was in Karbala in Iraq, and she -- I think we were both just so shocked at the treatment that almost every one of the soldiers, the male soldiers gave her that we didn't quite know what to do for the first couple of months. Well, and we couldn't do anything because she would have been a traitor to her country and to her unit if she had spoken up.
There was one soldier who was her confidant and her friend and helped her, and when she was in real trouble or really scared of some of the sergeants and what they were doing to her, he was the one that would give her solace and comfort. She said he was the only man that was faithful to his wife in that unit, and how much she cared about him, and he's still her friend today.
So she encountered so much harassment that -- it was daily, sometimes it was hourly. She was punished. She was in her own room so she had -- you know, the some of the sergeants, especially this one main sergeant had access to her all the time. He would show up in the middle of the night, intoxicated, wanting to have sex with her and if she said no, she would be punished. She used to say, "He's just insane, mom. He's an insane person, and I�m scared to death."
AMY GOODMAN: And explain, then, how she told others about what happened, her superiors, when they had him moved to another unit, not punished, but moved, is that right?
SARA RICH: This is somebody else. She has not reported this one. The only one that she reported was after she got back from Iraq and had been serving as a military police officer in Fort Lewis. Her direct supervisor, or the person she reported to, was the one who did that and he was a different sergeant. And he is one of the three we are going to be pursuing with criminal charges soon.
AMY GOODMAN: Suzanne Swift, right now, talking about the person that she had to deal with, even at Fort Lewis, explain there.
SARA RICH: Explain there? When she was in Fort Lewis?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
SARA RICH: And she was serving as a military police officer in Fort Lewis and she -- this is the one that when she went up to them the night before she was supposed to report to duty, she said, "Sergeant, where do you want me to report to?" and he looked at her, and it was in a group of people, and he said, "In my bed, naked." And that was the straw that broke Suzanne's back, and she said, "I can't do this anymore."
She turned around and went immediately and reported him. They were both investigated. She said she was treated horribly, that it was basically her -- both of their faults, that they were both culpable for the harassment and the involvement, and he was moved to a different unit, and she told me that he was promoted. I�m not sure if that's accurate. And then she was treated like a traitor. She called me, crying, for days afterwards because people would call her names, and not look at her, and not talk to her and it was very stressful and very sad for her, the way people would respond to her finally speaking up for herself.
AMY GOODMAN: SARA, why did Suzanne join the military?
SARA RICH: Well, she got a real good deal, Amy. They -- the recruiters really wooed her. She was in a -- She had graduated from high school. She was in a dead end -- well, she working at Safeway, and she was miserable. She hated going to work every day. She didn't know what to do. You know, we looked at college, and she just said she wasn't ready for college, and the recruiters were calling our home. They have our home number, and they were offering her travel and college money and training and if she signed up for the special deal of being a military police officer for five years instead of four, she would not be deployed to Iraq, because at that time they weren't deploying military police to Iraq, she was told.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, she was deployed.
SARA RICH: Immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: What are your thoughts right now, Sarah, as Suzanne's mother, what do you want to happen right now? And will you be suing the military?
SARA RICH: Well Suzanne is -- you know, this has gotten bigger than Suzanne. Right now I want Suzanne to have an honorable discharge because she has post-traumatic stress from being treated so horribly in a war zone by the people that were supposed to be caring for her and in charge of her very life were molesting and harassing her so I want Suzanne's rights to be honored, and I want her to be discharged from the Army with full benefits because her emotional and psychological well-being is so compromised.
But what's really surprising me, Amy, is the amount of women veterans that have been calling and emailing, saying, "That's exactly what happened to me, and nobody listened." It breaks my heart, and Suzanne is just shocked at how many people are supporting her and saying, "You're not alone and you're not crazy. That's what happened to me, and it wasn't your fault." And that's the big thing for Suzanne because she has really thought that this was all her fault.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you sorry she joined the military, Sara Rich?
SARA RICH: Oh, so sorry, so sorry that she joined the military, and that's one of the things I do, I�m a counter-military recruiter now, and Suzanne has said, "Mom, I want to join you as soon as I�m clear. I want to join you and tell kids what the recruiters are really doing. It's really like selling your soul to the devil to go be human fodder for an illegal war.�
AMY GOODMAN: What do you do as a counter-military recruiter?
SARA RICH: We go to rural high schools, especially rural high schools because that's where the recruiters go, where there's kids that don't really have the money for education, where they don't have anything to do other than, you know, work in a gas station, possibly, that's, you know, what they have to look forward to. So when the recruiters come and they say, �let me take you out to lunch, let me give you this, let me promise you a college education. Let me promise you a future. Let me promise you world travel. And, you know, you probably won't go to Iraq, it will be over by the time you get in.�
So we go and we talk to these kids and we get them real fired up, but it's the kids that are already with us that are already against the war that are -- you know, because this isn't about anti-military, this is about the way that our military is being deployed and treated as human fodder that is so wrong. And we get these kids fired up, and they're the ones that work with their peers. They're the ones that are most effective in telling their peers, "Don't sign up. Are you kidding me? Don't risk your life."
AMY GOODMAN: SARA, if people want to reach you, do you have a website or an email address that you want to share? Remember, this is public; it goes out on hundreds of stations so you could get a lot of mail.
SARA RICH: Sure, somebody did set up an email account, and it's at Yahoo, and it's ForMyDaughterSuzanne@yahoo.com. And yeah, I�m already getting a lot of email. I was up for hours yesterday answering the emails.
AMY GOODMAN: SARA Rich, we look forward to speaking to you again. We'll certainly follow your daughter Suzanne Swift's case. I just want to thank you for joining us from Portland, Oregon.
SARA RICH: Thank you, Amy, so much.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 (888) 999-3877.
�BY THE WAY, BETTER NOT GET WOUNDED OR YOU'LL HAVE TO PAY EXTRA FOR YOUR HEALTH CARE"
Legion Leader Says Proposed Budget
Reaches Deep Into Veterans� Pockets
by National Commander Thomas P. Cadmus
Reaches Deep Into Veterans� Pockets
by National Commander Thomas P. Cadmus
WASHINGTON (Feb.7, 2005) � The leader of the nation�s largest military veterans organization reacted strongly to the effects that President Bush�s budget plan will have on veterans. He called it a smoke screen to raise revenue at the expense of veterans.
�This is not acceptable,� said Thomas P. Cadmus, national commander of the 2.7 million-member American Legion. �It�s nothing more than a health care tax designed to increase revenue at the expense of veterans who served their country.�
Cadmus was referring to the portion of the proposed budget that would double the co-payment charge to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year to use their own their own health care system.
�Is the goal of these legislative initiatives to drive those veterans paying for their health care away from the system designed to serve veterans?� Cadmus asked. �The President is asking Congress to make �health care poaching� legal in the world�s largest health care delivery system.�
�When the President first came to Washington, among his first official acts was to triple the prescription co-payment from $2 to $7,� Cadmus said. �Once again, the President wants to double the co-payment and fortunately, Congress has wisely rejected that proposal. Making veterans pay for timely access to quality health care is wrong.�
This is the third year in a row the President has attempted to establish an enrollment fee for those veterans making co-payments and third-party reimbursements to the VA.
�Many of these veterans are Medicare-eligible and already paying the federal government for their part A and B coverage, so why should they have to pay an additional enrollment fee? VA can't even bill Medicare,� Cadmus said. �Other veterans with private health insurance make co-payments and then VA is reimbursed for services. Again, why should they be forced to pay an additional $250 to go to VA medical facilities?�
�During my visits to VA hospitals, I have not run into Bill Gates, Donald Trump, or Ross Perot seeking care. I see mostly veterans � many on small fixed incomes � trying to make ends meet and exercising their very best health care option.� Cadmus observed.
�Veterans� health care is an ongoing expense of war,� he added. �You don�t thank veterans for serving their country and then tell them, �By the way, better not get wounded or you�ll have to pay extra for your health care.� This is offensive to every veteran in America. That is why this government must move VA health care out from under the umbrella of discretionary spending to mandatory spending,� Cadmus stressed. The American Legion has requested a $3.5 billion increase in health care spending in FY 2006. The President is proposing $9.5 billion in foreign aid, about $2.1 billion more than the current level.
�As young Americans in uniform battle terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as 119 other countries, it is incomprehensible that our veterans will pay for the shortfall in VA health care funding from their own pockets as tax dollars flow out the back door of America,� Cadmus said.
�We reminded the President of our position on veterans� health care needs during his campaign and I personally testified on the issue on Capitol Hill last September,� Cadmus added. �Our budget request is very realistic when you consider the Secretary has slammed the door in the face of hundreds of thousands of veterans eligible, but currently forbidden from seeking quality care from VA.�
�The current appropriations process is broken and is not adequately funding VA medical care,� Cadmus said. �President George W. Bush�s Task Force to Improve Health Care Delivery for Our Nation�s Veterans on May 26, 2003, identified the mismatch between demand and funding as a major obstacle in meeting the nation�s commitment to veterans. The American Legion and nine other veterans� organizations believe the answer lies in changing VA health care funding from discretionary to mandatory appropriation.�
"No active-duty service member in harm�s way should ever have to question the nation�s commitment to veterans. This is the wrong message at the wrong time to the wrong constituency.�
An Open Letter to Congress: The Iraq War
The Iraq war has NEVER made sense.
We were already in a major war and another one would have stretched our military resources to the limit (which it did).
Gulf War Syndrome had never been addressed and, as I feared, our soldiers are becoming mysteriously ill AGAIN.
We did not build up the numbers of our military past peacetime strength before engaging in this war, and we had no strategy to keep the peace.
My husband is a member of the Army National Guard and I strongly resent having the threat of deployment hanging over his head for the last three years. Three years of limbo is counter-productive. There are many more like us.
I strongly object to having to give up my daughter to this war, even AFTER two Army doctors had pronounced her medically unfit and �undeployable�. Instead of being medically discharged, she spent a year in Baghdad and my pleas to the White House and virtually everyone else were ignored. A letter from the White House assured me that I would be referred to the Dept. of Defense. That was in December �03 and I�m still waiting.
Medically unfit soldiers are routinely being sent into battle:
www.orgsites.com/ga/save-our-soldiers
I started this website to call attention to their plight, but I have found that this is an open secret and not many people care. Murderers in our prison system do not deserve such cruel and unusual punishment. Why do we force it upon our soldiers??
A pattern has emerged from the letters I've received from families of medically unfit soldiers:
1. The soldier is examined by a military doctor or doctors,
and is found to be medically unfit.
2. The soldier is sent into a war zone anyway, most are in
severe pain.
3. The soldier is denied medical treatment while in combat, at
the risk of becoming permanently disabled.
4. The soldier is given pain killers.
5. The soldier is told to "suck it up".
6. The soldier is denied access to his/her medical records while in combat.
7. The soldier is given duty that is as heavy as anyone else
in combat, even at the risk of harming (or even
killing) another soldier by mistake.
8. The soldier who returns home is still denied medical
treatment in more than half the cases.
9. After the soldier's return home, it is STILL very difficult to get medical help for the soldier.
W. Bush once said that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power because "he tried to kill my daddy". Well, W. Bush tried to kill my DAUGHTER! What do you believe I think about HIM? He has created this impossible situation that forces unfit soldiers into combat while denying them medical treatment. This administration does not care much about our men and women in the Armed forces, and even less about the thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens.
The members of our Armed forces are returning�physically and mentally broken. Many who have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, instead of being treated, are talked back into combat by military counselors to �face their fears�. My daughter won�t get help for her own PTSD because she has seen this. The military counselors told her to re-enlist, promising that if she did that she would then get surgery for the condition that rendered her �undeployable�.
Some soldiers have lost their means to make a decent living and cannot get help from the government before they lose their houses, their cars, and sometimes their own families. These soldiers are not the responsibility of the non-profit groups, but we love them and we try to help them to the best of our limited means.
Some people are quick to inform us who are the military families, that our loved one signed a contract with the government. In order to have a contract there must be two sides being held to their promises. Keeping that in mind, it's the government that broke the contract. Contracts can�t be one-sided.
This war didn�t make sense in the beginning; now it makes even less. Please stop this insane war NOW.
Denise Thomas
GA Military Families Speak Out
Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition
People Rights Organization of America
giwifegimom@netscape.net
'Jeffrey Was Really Messed Up'
by LISA CHEDEKEL, Hartford Courant
May 14th, 2006
DEL CITY, Okla. -- There is not enough guilt to go around here, so intent is each woman in Jeffrey Henthorn's life on owning a piece of the blame.
His sister, Shannon Austill, had found him in the living room, laughing at a CD he had brought back from his first combat tour - images of Iraqi adults and children who had been shot, dismembered, burned beyond recognition.
"Jeffrey," she remembers chastising him, "that's immoral. That's disgraceful. Why do you have these pictures?"
He had shrugged her off. "I don't know - because I can't believe it," she recalls him saying. "Anyway, c'mon, they're all dead."
Trisha Fish, his ex-wife, had seen the anguish in his eyes when he jolted awake from a nap, grabbed her by the shoulders and appealed for absolution - for killing a young Iraqi boy, about the same age as their son. He told family members he was tormented by memories of shoving a boy off a moving tank and watching his limp body slip under the track wheels.
"Jeffrey wasn't the same - he was really messed up," says Trisha, 27, who remained close to Jeffrey after their breakup. "I knew he wasn't right, but I didn't know what I could do."
But no one wears the guilt like Henthorn's mother, Kay, a speck of a woman who has literally seemed to shrink under the burden, her family says. More than a year after his death, she still winces as she replays the last time she saw him - Christmas 2004, at Fort Riley in Kansas the day before he shipped out for his second Iraq tour.
When she hugged him goodbye, her brave soldier son - the boy who had grown up respecting the uniform, in the sprawling shadow of Tinker Air Force Base - had crumpled in her arms.
"I don't want to go back," he sobbed. "I don't want to go."
She told him she loved him and that everything would be OK.
And then she did what she was supposed to do:
She left him there.
"I will never forget the look on his face when he looked at me. It eats all over me," says Kay, 57, who works at the deli counter of the local Wal-Mart. "Why didn't I turn the car around, bring him home, and say the hell with them, the hell with the Army?" Her breath catches in her throat. "I didn't know."
No one knew that Jeffrey, 25, would be flown back to Tinker less than two months into his second deployment - in a box. Shortly after noon on Feb. 8, 2005, he shot himself through the mouth with an M-16 rifle at an Army camp in Balad, Iraq, according to the military.
While the women left behind wrestle with the clues they missed, Henthorn's father, Warren, an Air Force veteran, seethes over what the Army missed: his son's freefall into depression, including suicide warnings that were known to his Army superiors. The elder Henthorn, divorced from Kay, is an unassuming man who runs a heating and air-conditioning repair business in the back-pocket town of Choctaw, where Jeffrey spent most of his childhood.
"This whole thing hasn't felt right from the get-go," Warren says. "If a man is having serious emotional problems, and the chain of command knows about it, you get him out of there and get him help."
Henthorn's case is perhaps the most egregious example of a military mental health system that is focused on retaining troops in combat, even when they exhibit clear signs of psychological distress. Since the war in Iraq began, the military has stressed the importance of treating troubled soldiers on the front lines and improving "return-to-duty" rates - principles that some believe are being taken too far, putting troops' safety at risk.
Henthorn is one of 11 service members identified by The Courant who killed themselves in 2004 and 2005 after being kept in Iraq despite obvious mental problems. His family agreed to speak out in the hope that "we can maybe save a couple of families from what's happened to us," in Warren Henthorn's words.
Warren has come by his anger at the Army the hard way. First, there was a 14-month wait for an investigative report on Jeffrey's death, despite his repeated appeals to U.S. congressmen and top Army brass for answers.
Then, when the report finally arrived last month, it contained no mention of the possibility of combat-related stress, and made only passing reference to his son's suicide threats - the first, shortly before his second deployment to Iraq, when he crashed his car and then slashed his arm with a knife, and the second, three weeks before he died, when he locked himself in a latrine with his rifle in Kuwait and had to be forcibly removed before he could harm himself.
Although the report makes clear that Henthorn's superiors in the 24th Transportation Company knew of both incidents, there is no indication that any of them was held accountable, or even questioned extensively about their actions.
For Warren, whose own father, uncles and brother all served in the military, the past year has unfolded like a religious conversion, stripping him of his faith.
"You've gotta understand - we have oil, we have gas, we have cattle and wheat, and then we have military here," Warren says. "The largest employer in the state is Tinker, and then you've got Fort Sill, the artillery school for the entire Army," about 90 miles away.
"The whole state's pretty well dominated by the military. I mean, I respect them. But I'm not going to kowtow to them."
An Instant Love
Jeffrey Henthorn's life could have ended eight years earlier, in the woods of Harrah, Okla., if Trisha Fish's father had squeezed the trigger.
"I could take him out right now," Trisha recounts her father boasting to his friends as he pointed a gun at the scrawny 18-year-old from the neighboring town who had gotten his daughter pregnant.
Jeffrey and Trisha had met while attending rival high schools - a giddy flirtation of late-night phone calls and after-school detours that quickly turned serious, over their parents' objections.
"It wasn't two months into dating - he was only 16 - he said, `I love you. I really do love you,'" recalls Trisha, who grew up on a farm in Harrah. "Then we just became inseparable."
In the next year, the two would drop out of school - Jeffrey at the end of his junior year, Trisha as a senior - and move in together to a rundown apartment in Midwest City. Both would earn their GEDs, and Jeffrey would juggle jobs at Pizza Hut and his father's business to cover the bills.
Shortly before Trisha became pregnant with their son, Chance, in 1997, Jeffrey came home one day and abruptly told her he was joining the National Guard.
"He said to me, `My Mom's picking me up. They're making me go in the Guard,'" she recalls. "I said, `Are you going to have to go away from me?' He said, `Yeah. But let me do this for them.'"
Kay Henthorn acknowledges that she and Warren had pushed their only son to join the Reserve after he dropped out of school. About that, she expresses no regret.
"He needed structure. I wasn't about to watch him lay around and waste his life," Kay says. "He took to it fine. It was a once-a-month thing. He was always responsible about doing his duty."
Jeffrey's family says he seemed proud of his role in the Guard, and the experience helped him mature. The teenager whose moods rose and fell on the rock band Linkin Park, Austin Powers movies, Mustang cars and Sooner football was responding to tornado emergencies and hauling hay to cattle farmers affected by drought.
"I think Jeffrey always looked at people in the military as having a higher status," says his sister, Shannon, 31. "You have to understand my brother - he wanted to be noticed, whether it was failing or succeeding at something. I think this made him feel important."
Still, Jeffrey, who divorced Trisha in 2000, spent his early 20s in what family members describe as a delayed, freewheeling adolescence. He fathered a son, Brenden, with a woman he did not marry, then married a woman who was pregnant with another man's child. He worked steady jobs installing heating and cooling units, and sought refuge from his tangled romances at Kay's house in Del City.
In early 2003, when he decided to enlist full time in the Army, Jeffrey's oldest sister, Jayme Ivie, was relieved - even as the march to war was underway.
"My Mom had kind of babied him and always come to his rescue, and we were thinking it would be good for him to cut the apron strings," recalls Jayme, 36. "He needed to be out on his own."
Jeffrey joined the Army on March 3, 2003, walking away with a $6,000 signing bonus and an assignment to Fort Riley, about five hours away.
When Operation Shock and Awe started 16 days later, Kay wasn't worried.
Everyone said it would be over in a couple of weeks.
Hazy, Empty Eyes
When Jeffrey came home from Baghdad in the spring of 2004, the first things they noticed were his eyes.
"They were glossy, kind of hazy," Jayme says.
"They were empty, like all the emotion was gone," Trisha says.
"He just had this blank stare, like he wasn't there," Shannon says.
Jeffrey, a truck and tank driver, had seemed to adapt well during his 11-month tour, asking his mother to send him candy to give out to Iraqi children, and writing candid letters to his son Chance.
"It is very hot here," he wrote in one such letter. "Sometimes there are bombs that go off. People shoot at us, but don't worry, we shoot back. ... Nothing is gonna happen to daddy.
"I am here for good reasons," he had explained to the 6-year-old. "But I wish I was home."
The eyes were just the first clue to a change in Jeffrey that the people closest to him still have trouble understanding. The CD of dead bodies, the confessions, the fear of going back - there were hints strewn everywhere Jeffrey went, but what to make of them? According to the Army, he was just fine.
And yet they knew he wasn't.
During a visit home in the summer, family members say, Jeffrey seemed sullen, withdrawn. Because his marriage to his second wife had fallen apart during his deployment, Jayme says, they assumed he was depressed about "having nobody to come home to."
But the divorce alone did not account for his peculiar behavior, family members say.
It didn't explain why he had yanked Shannon out of bed one night as she slept and urged her to "Get down! Get down!"
"He scared me to death. I couldn't tell if he was really awake," Shannon recalls. "I was like, `Jeffrey Stewart, what on earth are you doing? You're home now.' He just said, `I don't feel like I'm home.'"
Trisha still cannot explain why Jeffrey got so irritated, during a cookout at her house, when friends of hers thanked him for his service in Iraq.
"He said something like, `I get tired of hearing "thank you." You don't even know. It's not what everybody thinks. It's like a military of robots. We're all dispensable,'" she recalls. "He was going off about it."
In November, when Jeffrey was back at his apartment near Fort Riley, he called Kay late one night to say he had wrecked his car. His sisters say he was distressed over an incident with a new girlfriend, Alainna Neal, that had made him jealous. He had started dating Alainna, a fellow soldier at Fort Riley, about six months earlier.
Trisha says she, too, got a late-night call, with Jeffrey sobbing, "I just wrecked my car. I'm so sorry. Please tell Chance I love him," before hanging up.
What the women did not know at the time was that later the same night, Jeffrey would slash his arm, "possibly a suicidal attempt on his life," according to a sworn statement that Jayme provided to Army investigators after she learned about the incident from the wife of Jeffrey's best friend. That friend, a sergeant at Fort Riley, had "informed their chain of command of the incident," Jayme's statement says.
Kay, who did not learn about the arm injury until after her son's death, says Jeffrey's call about his car crash had rattled her. But she assumed that if he were having any serious problems, the Army would get him help.
There is no indication in the investigative report into Jeffrey's death that he ever received any psychological counseling, beyond a mandatory debriefing after his return from Iraq. And there is no mention of how - or whether - the "chain of command" responded to his reported suicide threat.
When Jeffrey returned to Oklahoma for a family visit later in November, accompanied by Alainna, the two made no mention of any problems and were already making plans to get married. They were set to deploy to Iraq together right after Christmas.
Kay and Shannon say Jeffrey seemed anxious and drank more heavily than usual, but he hardly spoke about having to go back to war. "He was kind of quiet. He kept a lot of things inside," Kay says.
He made a point of making sure his family listened to a music CD he brought home - a song called "This is Your Life" by the band Switchfoot:
"This is your life, is it everything you've dreamed it would be When the world was younger, and you had everything to lose ... "
When they went to Kansas on Christmas Day to see Jeffrey off for his second tour, Kay and Warren brought along their grandson, Chance. When his boy was around, they say, Jeffrey wore a mask of strength.
"The last time I saw him was Christmas of 2004," Chance would later write on a message board dedicated to the memory of his father. "He got me race cars and a xbox he let me sleep with him in fort riley he left the next day to go to Iraq."
Chance dubbed his father, who would not survive the next 45 days, "the best soldier I ever saw."
The Army Report Spec. Jeffrey Henthorn killed himself over girlfriend trouble.
That's what the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command implies in a 106-page report on his death.
Although Alainna Neal herself and several other soldiers told investigators that the couple was not having any serious problems, the Army inquiry is focused almost exclusively on the relationship. The possibility of combat stress is never discussed. In fact, the report does not even mention that Henthorn had completed one tour in Iraq and died just weeks into his second deployment.
The report also does not dwell on an incident in Kuwait in January 2005, as Henthorn's unit was getting ready to head to Iraq, in which Henthorn, reportedly upset over an argument with Neal, had locked himself in a latrine with his gun and had to be forcibly removed before he could harm himself.
A sergeant at the scene told investigators he heard "a sound he described as a slide being pulled back on an M-249" and "immediately forced the [latrine] door open and took Spc. Henthorn's weapon away." The platoon sergeant spoke to Henthorn for about 30 minutes, then directed a staff sergeant to return the gun, the report says. A first lieutenant was notified of the incident; it was unclear if the company commander also was told.
"Spc. Henthorn and Spc. [Neal] were back on good terms and he got his weapon back," the unidentified sergeant recounted to investigators.
Asked if he had ever heard Henthorn talk about suicide, the sergeant said he could not recall. But asked if Neal had ever approached him with concerns that Henthorn might harm himself, he acknowledged, "Yes, but I can't recall. We kinda just blew her off."
Neal would end up the only witness to Henthorn's death, three weeks after his Kuwait suicide threat.
According to Neal's statement to investigators, Henthorn came into her room at Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, around noon on Feb. 8, when he was supposed to be working on paperwork for a promotion, and presented her with birthday and Valentine's Day cards. He sat on the floor near her bed and asked her what she thought of the cards.
"I told him that for where we were, they meant a lot and that it showed he cared, even being out here," she told investigators, according to a transcript.
He then asked for the key to her wall locker and took out her gun. When she asked him what he was doing, he said "he was going to make my birthday memorable," her statement says. He fired one shot into his head and collapsed on the floor, while she screamed in vain, "No! No! Jeff!" The blast tore off a portion of his skull, and he died instantly.
In her statement, Neal allowed that tensions in their relationship may have been a tipping point for Henthorn's despair. She acknowledged that she and Henthorn had argued during their deployment together because she "wasn't giving in to what he wanted."
"The transition was hard for both of us by not being [able] to walk hand in hand, kiss and wake up next to each other," she told investigators. "I guess he thought I didn't love him as much as he loved me."
But she also maintained that "the relationship wasn't going to be lost and ruined."
Two other soldiers and a sergeant also said they were not aware of any serious problems in the couple's relationship.
Neal, who now lives in Texas, declined to speak with The Courant, but sent an e-mail response. "All I can say is the man was sick. He shouldn't have been over there," she wrote.
Army officials said they could not comment on individual cases, but explained that, in general, it can be difficult to determine which factors, personal or deployment-related, push a soldier over the edge.
Warren and Kay Henthorn say the long-awaited investigative report has only fueled their frustrations with the military, leaving open their questions about why Jeffrey was not sent home, or to a hospital, to get help.
"Whoever made the decision to keep him in Iraq," Kay says, "I wish I could get my hands on him."
The Henthorns did not learn about Jeffrey's suicide threat in Kuwait until after he died, when Jayme was told about the incident by friends of her brother. Warren and Kay did say they were troubled by phone calls they had received from Jeffrey from Kuwait in January, in which he sounded weary and depressed. Warren says he was concerned enough about Jeffrey's mood to suggest he find a Catholic priest to talk to.
The last time they spoke to their son, in late January, he sounded better. He told his father that the conditions at Camp Anaconda were good, and in a Jan. 26 phone call with Trisha, he suggested they take Chance away for a family vacation when he got home.
Kay says she last heard from Jeffrey about a week before his death, when he called to ask her to send him a care package with cigarettes, boxer shorts and some University of Oklahoma memorabilia - sheets, a sweat shirt and jogging shorts.
She scrambled to oblige him, as always.
The package would arrive in Iraq the day after he died.
A Matchstick Family
Wildfires are raging outside Choctaw and tornado season is closing in, but the Henthorns do not notice.
They are a matchstick family now, fragile and full of peril.
One day Kay seems bent on suing the Army for negligence; the next, she is so wracked with grief, she resents waking to another sunrise. She cannot bear to look at Jeffrey's childhood photos or to hear the old songs she used to play for him - Paul Anka, Brenda Lee, Neil Sedaka, they have all become her tormentors.
"Personally, no matter what happens," she says, "things will never be right with me again."
Trisha sought refuge from the past by moving to a house on Lake Eufaula, 100 miles and a world away from Midwest City, where she takes Chance fishing and tries to teach him about God and prayer.
"What do you want to pray for?" she asked him one recent night, before she put him to bed.
"I want to pray," said the 7-year-old, who has not yet been told how his father died, "that I never have to go into the Army."
Warren has gone head-to-head with Arlington Memory Gardens, a non-military cemetery in Midwest City, for refusing to let him put an American flag on Jeffrey's grave. Every time he plants one, someone comes by and removes it. Warren is so offended by the cemetery's policy barring such displays, he has written letters to his state legislators, who have promised to try to help.
He knows he might be diverting his anger into this small-time battle of wills.
But the bigger issue behind his anguish seems impossible to resolve.
"Let's face it, how many people really care about these soldiers?" he says matter-of-factly. "I mean, it's not your kids, right? Not that many people are being affected. They're out of sight, out of mind.
"You're down at Wal-Mart, you're over at Target, just like always," he finishes. "This is somebody else's kid."
