Idle US soldiers fight 'Baghdad bulge'

Idle US soldiers fight 'Baghdad bulge'

THEY call it the "Baghdad bulge".
Standing outside a Burger King on the Camp Liberty military base near the city's airport, a group of American soldiers ponder whether to order a second Whopper.

"Not me, man," said Specialist Joe Lorenzo, "I put on so much goddam weight, who knows if my wife will recognise me when I get home?"

Now US troops have been withdrawn from Iraqi city streets and are spending more time behind barbed wire awaiting withdrawal, commanders are struggling to keep them entertained.

Offering ever-increasing food options is the first line of defence in the fight against boredom.

The favourite is lobster night at the D-Fac - American military vernacular for the official "dining facilities". Thousands of sea creatures are regularly taken to the Iraqi desert by cargo plane.

For soldiers prepared to spend their own money on the base, there is also SGVillage, an upmarket mall with restaurants clustered around a car park that opened three weeks ago. The most popular eatery is the red-walled Royal China, boasting a chef from Hong Kong who offers Szechuan-style chicken (£6.90), beef and green peppers (£7.80) and stir-fried noodles with vegetables (£ 4.20).

His uniformed customers sit on wooden deckchairs by a newly planted lawn. But SGVillage faces competition from Camp Liberty Bazaar, where soldiers while away the day surrounded by branded American eateries such as Taco Bell, Subway and Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits.

Behind them is the Post Exchange, or PX, a military supermarket where they can buy T-bone steaks and pork loins along with a Smokey Joe Silver 14-inch barbecue grill (£16.70) and bags of charcoal (£2.80 for 7.2lb).
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Idle US soldiers fight Baghdad bulge
linked from ICasualties.org

13 premeditated murder charges for Hasan

What about charges for all the wounded? Don't they count? As for the wounded, will they get disability from the military for their wounds and have them treated as if they happened in war? This was an attack against them. What about medals? Do they get medals for being wounded like the Purple Heart or do they get medals for bravery when they cared more about their brothers and sisters even after they were wounded themselves? Will the families of the dead get the insurance money as if they died in war? What will happen to the families who lived on base and now their soldier is gone and they have to move off base, then get on with their lives? What happens to them? The kids? What happens to the kids when their parent was killed? Do these families get treated the same way a soldier's family is treated when they die in Iraq or Afghanistan?

13 premeditated murder charges for Hasan

By Angela K. Brown and Lolita C. Baldor - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Nov 12, 2009 18:24:30 EST

FORT HOOD, Texas — The Army psychiatrist accused of killing fellow soldiers at Fort Hood was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder Thursday as he lay in a hospital bed.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama ordered a review to determine if the government fumbled warning signs of the shooter’s contacts with a radical Islamic cleric.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan could face the death penalty if convicted.
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13 premeditated murder charges for Hasan

Military Support Program helps veterans deal with PTSD

The percentage in this is wrong but it is a good article.

Military Support Program helps veterans deal with PTSD
By: Susan Kondracki, Record-Journal staff
11/12/2009

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night in a sweat overcome with a strong sense of fear, or being unable to sleep as traumatic events replay in your mind like a broken cassette tape with no stop button. Imagine feeling isolated, alone and like no one understands what you are going through.

This is what it can be like for the 18 percent of veterans diagnosed and dealing with depression, anxiety, or post traumatic stress disorder, but the good news is the state's Military Support Program can help.

"People with post traumatic stress disorder oftentimes don't know they have it. It's the people around them, the people that know them that see the signs," said Linda Schwartz, state commissioner of veterans' affairs. "Their families can call the Military Support Program for information and maybe help to plan an intervention rather than just trying to talk to them about it."

Many veterans find it hard to admit they are having mental health issues post deployment.

"For some individuals, this is adversely true. Certain veterans will have difficulty asking for help," said Michael Balkunas, chief of psychiatry and behavioral health and medical director of psychiatry and behavioral health research at the Hospital of Central Connecticut. "The great thing is it can be treated with psychotherapy and medication."

Post traumatic stress is just one of the many disorders that can be diagnosed and treated under state's Military Support Program.

Created in March 2007, the program falls under a state law that requires the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to work with Veterans' Affairs and the Department of Children and Families, to provide transitional behavioral health services for members of any reserve component of the U.S. Armed Forces and their dependents called to active duty in Afghanistan or Iraq, according to a report by the Office of Legislative Research.
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Military Support Program helps veterans deal with PTSD

Need for face to face counseling made clear in Texas

When you read this, consider how many are deployed with medication and no therapy at all, then you may be a bit closer to what we've been screaming about since the Hartford Courant did the report years ago.

Potent Mixture: Zoloft & A Rifle

LISA CHEDEKEL And MATTHEW KAUFFMAN

Hartford Courant
May 17, 2006

When Army Sgt. 1st Class Mark C. Warren was diagnosed with depression soon after his deployment to Iraq, a military doctor handed him a supply of the mood-altering drug Effexor.

Marine Pfc. Robert Allen Guy was given Zoloft to relieve the depression he developed in Iraq.

And Army Pfc. Melissa Hobart was dutifully taking the Celexa she was prescribed to ease the anxiety of being separated from her young daughter while in Baghdad.

All three were given antidepressants to help them make it through their tours of duty in Iraq - and all came home in coffins.
Potent Mixture: Zoloft and A Rifle

Maybe they should have paid attention in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, or maybe in 2007 when I posted how if we thought PTSD was bad, it was going to get a lot worse?

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Combat PTSD and the blissful ignorance of the nation
This is why I do what I do and the thousands of others around the world do the work we do. Yes, I said around the world. Trauma does not stop at the edge of a nation. It is a human illness and does not distinguish between social classes any more than it separates people by color. As bad as we think this is right now, we are not even close to reaching everyone needing help. Over thirty years later, we are still in the beginning stages of trying.

Sickening when you think of the research around the world going into PTSD and the dedication involved.I came late into working with veterans with PTSD. I've only been at this twenty five years. By the time I started the service organizations had published their research, the DOD was getting up to speed and the VA was recognizing they had a very serious problem on their hands. In all of this I've written many times of the frustration I feel seeing that we have not accomplished very much.All these years later, all the work being done to inform the public and attempt to end the stigma, the issues of PTSD are still strongly a deterrent.

People still to this day have no clue what PTSD is. The families don't and a lot of the GIs don't. Some think they will just get over it as time goes by. Too many are seeking help only to be trapped in long lines and then redeployed before their healing even comes close to beginning. They face the most horrible futures there is without help.Families to this day are falling apart as marriage collapse and children blame themselves for the way their parents are acting. Extended families repeat the same mistakes other generations of them made when it came to veterans being wounded. They support the end of a marriage instead of supporting the family as they try to cope with the combat wound. All this out of ignorance.

Now we see spouses taking on the battles of the combat veteran because they can no longer advocate for themselves. We see them having to cope with dealing with the effects of PTSD on their lives, fighting the government and then trying to find support for what they are going through. There is not enough available in terms of information and in terms of qualified councilors, psychologist and psychiatrists.

Hiring more becomes a problem because of the lack of space and all of this is due to the lack of planning for the hundreds of thousands they should have known would come.We see them facing life after the combat veteran commits suicide.

After Vietnam, they had ignorance as an excuse. Over thirty years later, this is no longer acceptable. We already knew too much to have failed so miserably.

Civilian mental health workers are inexperienced dealing with PTSD because no one ever pushed for them to focus on Post Traumatic Stress. The sense of urgency is not there because you do not hear reporters talking about this every night of the week any more than you hear them talking about Iraq or Afghanistan.

As the media fought over who would have the first interview with Paris Hilton following her release from jail, none of them even bothered to interview the families or the veterans dealing with this silent killer. Just goes to show where the priorities of this nation are when ignorance is bliss to the population and deadly to those who serve the nation.
Combat PTSD and the blissful ignorance of the nation

But why would they listen when they wanted to focus on the "mission" and getting them into Iraq and Afghanistan instead of caring about what comes after? They are not listening still. They give them pills to calm the nerves and flashbacks, pills to sleep and more to stay awake. These pills also come with warnings about being under the supervision of a doctor but they deploy for a year or more and don't have anyone watching over them. They come home and again, they are given more pills but no counseling. Most end up without a clue what PTSD is but they are told there is a pill for it. Just keeps getting worse for them at the same time the military keep telling us they get the message.

The former Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Dr. S. Ward Casscells, said, "It's the face-to-face counseling that's so important for preventing and treating PTSD."

North Texas Family Feeling The Effects Of PTSD
By Melissa Newton
NORTH TEXAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21)

Joel McCartney is a proud and patriotic father. But when his 22-year-old son, Joel Jr., returned home from Iraq this summer, McCartney realized something had changed.

"He has nightmares, he'll break out in a cold sweat," McCartney explained.

Army counselors diagnosed the North Texas soldier with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The anxiety disorder is triggered by being involved in or witness to a traumatic event and can have long-lasting effects.

"Intrusive memories of the event, whatever the trauma was, hyper arousal, always being on edge. If someone comes up behind you, you jump," psychologist Alina Suris said of PTSD symptoms. The doctor at the Dallas VA Hospital and UT Southwestern went on to say, "Nightmares are another common symptom of PTSD."

The disorder has become almost commonplace in our nation's military. "Folks are getting redeployed over and over and over," Suris said. "Research shows the more exposure you have to trauma; the more likely you are to get PTSD."

As a concerned father McCartney said, "When they [service people] come back, I don't think there is adequate care for our military personnel."
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http://cbs11tv.com/health/post.traumatic.stress.2.1308792.html

Feds charge man for being phony Marine on Veteran’s Day

Feds charge man for being phony Marine on Veteran’s Day
November 12, 1:44 AM
Crime & Media Examiner
Jason Taylor
U.S. Attorneys announced on Veteran’s Day that they are bringing federal charges against a man who authorities say has been posing as a U.S. Marine.

Steve Burton, 39, has been accused of wearing a Marine Corps uniform decorated with some of the nation’s highest awarded medals to his 20th high school reunion.

Federal investigators said Burton has never served in any branch of the military, but has been seen and photographed wearing the uniform and medals on many occasions.

The FBI got wind of Burton’s charade when they received a photo of him in his uniform and medals from someone attending the reunion. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Colleen Solanga said she snapped the picture because she was suspicious of his Navy Cross medal, which is the second highest medal awarded for valor.
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Feds charge man for being phony Marine on Veteran’s Day

My Husband My Hero My Veteran

People thank me for what I do then, sooner or later, they ask why I do it. The truth is, my Vietnam vet husband has saved countless lives without knowing it. What I do, I do because of him. He never seems to be aware of the fact he is a hero.

Yesterday was Veterans Day and as usual, I was online most of the day or on the phone. He never complains about the hours I spend or the fact most weeks it's about a 70 hour week. He doesn't complain about hours on the phone or calls late at night. He never complains when I have to travel or go to meetings or yet another training session. He remembers what it was like when he had no one to talk to and when I had no one to teach me what he could not tell me.

My husband was very young in Vietnam and doesn't think he did much at all. He did what was asked of him and that is where the story was supposed to end. Most of them are just like that. They think they are average, but they don't see how rare they are when the rest of the over 300 million people in this country don't have a clue what it is like to risk your life for the sake of the nation. He thinks his father and uncles, all WWII veterans and all passed away, were the heroes, even though none of them thought they were.

I grew up surrounded by veterans and that is behind the reason I began to investigate Vietnam and PTSD. I knew there was something very different about Jack and wanted to figure it out. I've been doing this since we met in 1982.

I wanted everyone to know what I knew so they would be able to help veterans heal and stop the twisted thinking that they were suddenly some kind of selfish jerk when their lives before they went were much different than the way they came home. I wanted everyone to know that it was not their fault. To know they could heal and actually live lives again. Above all, I wanted them to know that beyond the heartache there comes a time when they will rejoice over the victory after the worst is over.

None of what we are seeing has to happen with the suicides, arrests, divorces, domestic violence or homelessness. No family has to bury a veteran because hope has slipped away and they commit suicide.

No one serves alone and no one heals alone. It takes the same kind of interest we all seem to have as we see them off when they deploy and welcome them home with a prayer of thanks. No one should have to spend over 25 years studying everything about PTSD coming out when people like me have already been there, lived with it and done it so they won't have to. No wife should have to lose a husband like Jack and I want them all to spend the rest of their lives happy they went through the fire the way I did so they can see them living again.

I've helped a lot of veterans over the years and some have been awarded medals for their valor. Each one of them wants me to thank my husband for what I do because they know behind it all is a man who is filled with grace and a humble spirit thinking of them.

Whenever the financial problems take a toll on me, I feel like a failure because my family is suffering for my lost paychecks but Jack tells me I am not a failure at all. He still believes in me even if I cannot believe in myself at times and he reminds me how important what I do is. I look at him and know what is possible.

This is also my greatest heartache.

When some people dismiss PTSD, I think of the years I was watching Jack dying a slow death always afraid each day would be the day a police officer would come to the door instead of him. I think of how much pain he was carrying and know even with that depth of pain, he still would risk his life to help someone else. How with the nightmares and flashbacks, the last thing he wanted to do was to quit his job but he did only because his doctors told him the stress was making it all worse for him.

I think about phone calls from mothers and wives after it was too late to help their veterans. Then I grieve deeper when I know none of it had to happen if they knew what I knew, found me sooner, had support earlier and knew they were not alone.

Even though Veterans Day is over, there will still be parades on Saturday. When you go to them, when you want to thank a veteran for their service, remember that they are not just a veteran on one day out of the year but everyday of every year and maybe when you thank them you will think of the price many of them still pay for their willingness to lay down their lives and what that statement actually means. Laying down your life means being willing to die for someone else, but it also means to be willing to put the needs of someone else first. This my Jack does everyday and this is why he is a hero to a lot of veterans he will never meet. He is the reason I do what I do.

Florida Proclaims November Is Hire A Veteran Month

Florida Proclaims November Is Hire A Veteran Month
Source: Governor of Florida
Posted on: 12th November 2009
Governor Crist Calls on Florida Businesses to ‘Hire the Best – Hire a Vet’
Recognizing the tremendous contributions and significance of veterans who have served our country, Governor Charlie Crist today visited with residents of Alexander “Sandy” Nininger State Veterans’ Nursing Home in Pembroke Pines. The 120-bed skilled nursing care facility opened to residents in 2001 and can accommodate 60 residents with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Governor Crist has proclaimed November 2009 as Hire a Veteran Month in Florida. The Governor’s proclamation reaffirms Florida’s commitment to the men and women who serve in our nation’s Armed Forces in times of war and peace.

“By recognizing our veterans, we honor not only their military service but also the contributions they bring to the workforce,” said Governor Crist. “In addition to the tremendous value our veterans provide their employers, a newly expanded federal tax credit for companies that hire our veterans offers a financial incentive to foster new businesses and help existing businesses grow.”

Florida has more than 1.7 million veterans, including more than 970,000 under the age of 65. Hire a Veteran Month is coordinated by the Florida Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI), Workforce Florida, Inc. (WFI) and the state’s 24 Regional Workforce Boards.

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Florida Proclaims November Is Hire A Veteran Month

Montana Roundtable looks to boost care for vets

Roundtable looks to boost care for vets
By PETER JOHNSON • Tribune Staff Writer • November 12, 2009
Montana is the model for broader mental health screening for war veterans, but the state needs to do more to meet their other health and employment needs.

Those were some of the major points made in two back-to-back Veterans Day panel discussions led by U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

About 25 people attended the nearly three-hour session in the Civic Center Commission Chambers.

Baucus said he is "deeply troubled" by the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and the increase in suicides among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

He praised the Montana National Guard for creating a model program requiring more frequent mental health screenings for returning veterans.

Baucus successfully carried a federal bill that will require that system to be used nationwide.

He said veterans face other issues, including chronic claims backlogs, underfunded facilities, bureaucratic red tape and a lack of access to facilities in rural areas.

Susan Fuehrer, acting director for the Veteran Administration Montana Healthcare System, said the VA treated 31,744 Montana veterans last year, and is seeking to expand its service. Plans call for a 24-bed inpatient mental health center at Fort Harrison near Helena, veterans centers in Great Falls and Kalispell, and expanded rural health treatment in Plentywood and Hamilton.

Additionally, Buck Richardson, minority veteran program coordinator for the Rocky Mountain states, is trying to line up more veteran representatives on Indian reservations to help Native American vets learn about health benefits. He also hopes to arrange for more traveling psychologists to help provide screenings for PTSD.
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Roundtable looks to boost care for vets