War—Bad; Peace and Love—Good

Joseph Bobrow has a piece out reacting to a recent 60 Minutes segment about Clay Hunt, a Marine who came home and committed suicide.

Pretty common act among U.S. military veterans.

What is uncommon, or at least is a new occurrence, is that PTSD victims such as Hunt are no longer openly ridiculed while they are still alive by the neocons and their medical mouthpiece, Dr. Sally Satel; prosecuted for filing for disability benefits; or belittled by official U.S. military reports for engaging in "risky behavior."

We have finally reached a place where the mainstream culture in several fields more often than not recognizes PTSD as a condition in which veterans are victims, not perpetrators; and it follows: War is the enemy.

We are moving away (not fast enough though) from the mindset that trauma is a personal failing, results from a lack of faith in God; is a dodge or fraud to a health-centered approach.

As recently as 2010, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli came under heavy criticism from veterans' advocates for his part in treating suicide and trauma in the neocon way—blaming the troops and treating this trauma "as a lack of moral character, and a lack of intestinal fortitude, when it is really a medical issue," as Steve Robinson wrote in August 2010 in angry reaction.

That 2010 Army report has been effectually killed now; it was commissioned by the Bush-Cheney administration that targeted veterans who give war a bad name.

We take issue at this site on occasion for President Obama's not moving fast enough in renouncing the many imbecilic policies of the Bush-Cheney administration.

On the issue of PTSD and how it is treated, we recognize that there has been a sea change.

War being war, this is not nearly enough for U.S. military veterans, and certainly not enough for the victims of war who are not American, and whose humanity remains.

Late-onset Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder--War and Hate Suck

On February 15, 2001, Sonia Reich fled her home in Skokie, Illinois, insisting that someone was trying to kill her -- to "put a bullet in [her] head." It took a year for her son, Chicago Tribune journalist Howard Reich, to understand why she was running the streets of Skokie, fearing for her life: Late-onset PTSD

Turns out that Ms. Reich is a Jewish survivor of the Ukrainian-Russian area known as Beyond the Pale of Settlement begun in the 18th century where Russian Jews became the victims of pogroms, an enterprise of West-Asian anti-Semites and Stalinists which became mindlessly organized to commit deadly violence upon Jews and assorted non-right thinking persons of the last century.

Soviets, Nazis, whatever; militarists and bigots share much in common notwithstanding wars among them.



Suddenly, and late in life for Sonia Reich the bystanders and perpetrators of some 60 years ago became a 21st-Century monster terrorizing her.

Ms. Reich's plight won't come as any great surprise to any victim of war.

War is always a crime, always an act of terror.

The people who fought wars in the name of the USA, American veterans, in a supreme irony for the world's greatest purveyor of violence remain the object of scorn and ridicule in our political system.

Running the streets, hiding out in the garage, staying vigilant against ghosts; this is a familiar story in America. Just not a story that many want to hear.

The neocons, Dr. Sally Satel, the American Enterprise Institute, Christian fundamentalists, the Republican Party with much of the Democratic Party in tow, all agree or tacitly accede to the asserted demands that caring for veterans just cost too much money.

And besides Dr. Sally Satel assures us: Trauma, PTSD, psychological problems associated with war aren't nearly as serious as veterans' groups say. No cause to expend public capital as though veterans, especially that bunch who served in the Vietnam War, can still have any problems associated with their service.

Here's an example of the tripe from Satel:

[M]emories of horrible experiences are rarely, if ever, repressed--that is, exiled from consciousness without the victim knowing it and actively kept out of her awareness.

But ask a Vietnam War veteran. Ask a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank. Ask a victim of the American wars of the last few decades which seem to have a more provincial benefactor like the state of Israel and its cheerleaders in American society. Ask Sonia Reich.

Ask the veterans before they shoot themselves.

As one angry Vietnam Army combat veteran, Bob Walsh, an attorney who battles the VA every day on behalf of veterans says, "(Veterans) freeze to death on the streets or blow their brains out in the garage. The veterans' benefits claims system is a national tragedy, and men like (longtime claims specialist with the Veterans Benefits Administration) Mark Rogers are the problem, not the solution for our veterans and their families."

Good point, Walsh.

And with respect to Sonia Reich: Perhaps she can us teach us something about demons, war and respect in a civilized society.

Rove Behind US Attys' Firings

Update: NYT: More Evidence of a Scandal

Not exactly news about Karl Rove.

But this morning's Times piece (Eric Lichtblau and Eric Lipton) does offer more evidence that the Bush Dept. of Justice and White House were composed of corrupt hacks. Now, they are mostly gone.

What's not over is the damage inflicted by the U.S. attorneys who kept their jobs (Adam Cohen, April 16, 2007).

Take former Bush U.S. Atty Stephen Biskupic who left numerous shattered lives behind in the Eastern district of Wisconsin. Consider:

- The proven-innocent Georgia Thompson [see also Biskupic tried to 'squeeze' Georgia Thompson, and Investigate Biskupic]

- Top partisan prosecutor for the Republican "voter fraud" myth pursued several overturned voter fraud cases [see also Voter Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals]

- And the yet-to-be-proven-innocent Vietnam-era veteran, Wisconsin Navy Airman Keith Roberts, [see also U.S. Attorneys Scandal–Milwaukee] who was convicted for receiving VA benefits after the national VA launched a vendetta against Roberts for being a pain, per the benefits-hostile American Enterprise Institute scholar, Dr. Sally Satel

As the former U.S. Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson put it in 1940:

"Any prosecutor who risks his day-to-day professional name for fair dealing to build up statistics of success has a perverted sense of practical values, as well as defects of character. ... he can have no better asset than to have his profession recognize that his attitude toward those who feel his power has been dispassionate, reasonable and just."

Using the prosecutor's office as a political club is not just unreasonable and unjust; it's reprehensible. One wonders how Biskupic and Rove sleep at night, likely not by falling asleep reading the disquisitions of Justice Jackson.

House Judiciary Chairman John M. Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said, "Under the Bush regime, honest and well-performing U.S. attorneys were fired for petty patronage, political horse-trading, and, in the most egregious case of political abuse of the U.S. attorney corps -- that of U.S. attorney [David C. Iglesias] -- because he refused to use his office to help Republicans win elections."

After a slow start Biskupic fell down on the office and proved himself a loyal Bushie, Rove's kind of man.

Vietnam, McNamara and Veterans

Update: From Veterans Today, VA Police Hack Medical Files of Wisconsin Vet, Seek Prison for More PTSD Vets

Bob Herbert writes today in After the War Was Over that "Robert McNamara realized early on that Vietnam was a lost cause, but he kept that crucial information close to his chest. How did he ever look at himself in a mirror? ... The obscenity of war is lost on most Americans, and that drains the death of Robert McNamara of any real significance."

The obscenity continues to this day, destroying the lives of our veterans.

No matter what the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Dr. Sally Satel say from their plush offices, veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) commonly suffer for the rest of their lives.

But the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) needs the AEI if they are going to attack veterans for “tenaciously pursuing a claim for benefits” like what happened to Wisconsin veteran Keith Roberts.
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Now, we hear that right now VA investigators are going after another veteran, one Robert E. Anthon of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.

Anthon's supporters, mostly veterans, are working to head off a prosecution for fraud against Anthon whom the VA is targeting for reasons that only warmakers and chickenhawks can fully comprehend.

First the VA goes after a veteran's benefits, leaving them destitute and still suffering from their ailments, then capriciously the Inspector General's office tries to build a case for fraud.

These VA bureaucrats and their shills are pond scum. Will keep you posted on the Anthon affair. A couple of pissed-off combat Marine veterans are on it that I know of.

The GOP War Against Veterans

Gordon Duff at Veterans Today has a piece on the GOP hostility to veterans.

Duff is a Marine combat veteran and a writer on political and social issues who apparently has had enough.

Wisconsin's jailed veteran, Keith Roberts, get a prominent mention.

Writes Duff:

‘Conservative’ means ‘saving money’ and ‘keeping soldiers as slaves onto death.’ Whether we are talking John McCain or Burr or Graham or two dozen others, these patriotic heroes have done nothing over the years but receive continual support from our favorite veterans groups for gutting military and veterans benefits.

With a series of ‘think tanks’ selling pseudo science, most of them got their feet wet with decades of ‘smoking and lung cancer denial,’ or similar idiocy, the American Enterprise Institute stands out as the lead in the war against American heroes.

Even more maniacal and radical than the Heritiage Foundation, private ‘rubber stamp’ for the schemes of Amway/Blackwater, Coors extremism and Richard Mellon Scaife, private funder for the failed Clinton impeachment, the AEI focuses on destroying veterans.

Their primary tool is a Doctor Sally Satel. Satel is an ‘odd duck’ who believes that secret groups of extremist veterans, when not busy trying to overthrow the government or tap her telephone, plot to destroy the American economy by faking symptoms of PTSD after experiencing combat.

Pardon Jailed Wisconsin Veteran

President-elect Barack Obama has tremendously more on his plate than reinventing government and restoring some semblance of accountability to Americans.

Ensuring that the world does not enter into a second depression, halting a war or two, saving the environment, formulating an industrial policy on alternative energy, one can go on; all are problems of a massive scale.

But readers of Uppity Wisconsin may notice a comment from a veteran posted this week about another veteran who is serving a four-year sentence in federal prison.

That jailed veteran is Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968-71), a Vietnam-era veteran, [see Wisconsin Navy Airman Keith Roberts and U.S. Attorneys Scandal–Milwaukee] from Gillett, Wisconsin; and he’s an innocent man wrongfully imprisoned.

Roberts was convicted on five counts of wire fraud for receiving U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefits after the national VA office launched a vendetta against Roberts for being a pain to the VA regional office in “tenaciously pursuing a claim for VA benefits" (Harper’s).

U.S. Atty Stephen Biskupic's office took up the VA’s case that resulted in the 2006 conviction.

In sum, Roberts served his country and was railroaded by a corrupt VA and an appalling U.S. DOJ.

President-elect Obama should grant an extraordinary pardon that will not only serve the cause of justice but will also repudiate a VA that has become outright hostile to veterans.

U.S. v. Roberts
The title of the case is fitting for this honorably discharged veteran diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The crux of the case against Roberts is that Roberts was not friends with his fellow Navy airman (Gary Holland) when both the men were on line duty at a Naval base in Naples, Italy on February 5, 1969 when Holland was crushed to death by a C-54 aircraft.

The prosecution also says that Roberts exaggerated his efforts to save Holland, which constituted fraud for which Roberts was convicted by a jury in northern Wisconsin. And that Roberts therefore lied about the friendship and the effort to save Holland.

Holland and Roberts did not have a friendship, and Roberts exaggerated his efforts to save Holland. That’s the alleged fraud, that’s the intent to engage in fraud? Yes.

In fact, the two men had parallel service histories that would make it unlikely that Holland and Roberts were not at least friendly in their relationship, and that contradicts the prosecution’s indictment and trial statements.

So what happened, why the prosecution on such a slender reed?

"[T]he only reason Airman Roberts was ever prosecuted was because he was a ‘belligerent ass’ who kept insisting that he get paid back to discharge. He was demanding an appeal in Washington," said a background source at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee who e-mailed the Lee Rayburn radio show in Madison in early June 2007 after a program about the Roberts case, and asked to remain anonymous out of fear of losing his job. "I'd have to say that you guys are TOTALLY (uppercase in the original) right about Roberts' conviction being bullshit ... ."

Said Roberts’ attorney Robert Walsh, a combat Vietnam Army veteran, at the oral arguments in October 2007 before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, referencing this VA standard for judging any first-person account by veterans of what happened to them during their service:

… I submit to you that they are inconsistencies in every veteran's record, combat or peacetime. And that Congress has recognized that. And that’s why VA benefits is a very paternalistic, claimant-friendly, non-adversarial system. It’s even more paternalistic that the Social Security benefits adjudication system (per the Veterans Judicial Review Act). So, where’s the intent (for fraud)?

Good question.

Roberts criminal case is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (U.S. v. Roberts, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin) where Roberts is seeking an en banc hearing, and his benefits case is on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC).

A three-member panel for the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in July found that, "The record might also have supported a jury determination that Mr. Roberts sincerely believed that his statements were true and that he had no intention to defraud the Government ... (but) (i)t is beyond our authority to disturb (a guilty) finding on appeal (in this case)."

As for the comment by the veteran who served with Roberts in Italy, it corroborates what Roberts has claimed for decades had occurred:

James W. Ervin PH3 (not verified) on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 4:13pm. I was stationed @ NAF (Naples), Italy at the time of this "incident". July 1968 thru Nov.1969 . I also remember the young sailor be trapped / crushed up inside the wheel well (nose) of the aircraft inside the hangar of NAF naples,Italy. I do remember someone wanting to drive a forklift into the side of the aircraft ; but an officer or someone of authority would not let them do that....so what they did was have men climb up into the plane & go to the rear of the plane to put weight in the rear of the plane to let the nose come up to release the trapped sailor. (Unfortunately) that process was too slow to save the sailor from death. I also remember taking photographs of the " Pin " that was in the nose gear at the time. I remember it as being a homemade looking pin without a locking clip to keep it from being removed without unlocking the device. As for the names of the people involved , I don't remember ; but there definitely was someone there who wanted to use the (fork) lift to rescue the sailor from the collapsed nose wheel and was ordered NOT to use the fork lift. Sincerely ,

Roberts' family and fellow veterans supporting him in his case remain hopeful, but desperate.

President-elect Obama should grant this family a full pardon and make things right.
- Contact author at: maleon64@yahoo.com
See also:

1. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: US Atty Biskupic and VA ...

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran ..... In June of 1999, Airman Keith Roberts (1968-71) was granted a disability rating by the ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2007/06/us-atty-biskupic-and-va-defied-us-law.html - Similar pages

2. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: Fight Is on to Free ...

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran. Keith Roberts .....Keith Roberts (1968-74) sits behind bars, ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2007/05/fight-is-on-to-free-wisconsin-vet.html - Madison, Wisconsin—As Airman Similar pages

3. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: National VA Director Pushed ...

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran ..... In the PTSD case of U.S. Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968–71) the U.S. Dept of Justice ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2007/09/national-va-director-pushed-us-atty.html - Similar pages

4. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran. Keith Roberts, 07827-089. FCI Englewood, East-Upper FCI 9595 West Quincy Avenue ... malcontends.blogspot.com/ - Similar pages

5. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: Jailed Wis Vet Files Reply ...

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran ..... Keith Roberts, an honorably discharged Navy veteran (1969-71) from Gillett, Wisconsin, ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2007/08/jailed-wis-vet-files-reply-brief-calls.html - Similar pages

6. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: Jailed Wisconsin Veteran ...

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran ..... Madison, Wisconsin - Keith Roberts awaits the decision of his appeal before a ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2008/06/jailed-wisconsin-veteran-awaits.html - Similar pages

7. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: Law Firms Rushing to ...

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran ..... Walsh is representing Wisconsin Navy veteran Keith Roberts who is a victim of VA ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2007/09/law-firms-rushing-to-veterans-aid.html - Similar pages

8. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: Jailed Wisconsin Vet Loses ...

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran. Keith Roberts, 07827-089 ... Contact Airman Keith Roberts' (Ret.) Attorney, Robert Walsh ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2008/07/jailed-wisconsin-vet-loses-appeal-va.html - Similar pages

9. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: VA Document Contradicts US ...

   Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran ..... “Keith Roberts did not seek out an earlier effective date on his own. ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2007/05/va-document-contradicts-us-atty-in.html - Similar pages

10. Michael Alan Leon: MAL Contends . . .: Commending Wisconsin ...

    Write to Keith Roberts - Wrongly Imprisoned Vietnam-era Veteran ..... Navy veteran Keith Roberts — An innocent victim of the U.S. Dept of Justice and U.S. ... malcontends.blogspot.com/2008/12/commending-wisconsin-citizens-in-2008.html - Similar pages

Biskupic Leaving in Disgrace

Stephen Biskupic, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (2002 - present) has announced that he is resigning in January before the new administration takes office.

Good riddance, though Biskupic allowed that he has amassed a good "track record."

Many Wisconsin Democrats and allies would agree with that positive performance assessment.

But I doubt that Biskupic is sending a Christmas card to the proven-innocent Georgia Thompson this year [see also Biskupic tried to 'squeeze' Georgia Thompson, and Investigate Biskupic].

As Biskupic has played the partisan prosecutor for the Republican "voter fraud" myth during his tenure, one wonders how seriously Biskupic reflects on the several overturned voter fraud cases [see also Voter-Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals].

Or how about that Vietnam-era veteran, Wisconsin Navy Airman Keith Roberts, [see also U.S. Attorneys Scandal–Milwaukee] who was convicted for receiving VA benefits after the national VA office launched a vendetta against Roberts for being a pain in their bureaucratic butt, as the VA followed the policy advice of the benefits-hostile American Enterprise Institute scholar, Dr. Sally Satel on benefits for Vietnam-era vets who as a group were not always enthusiastic about that particular bullshit war?

Some parting words for Biskupic from the late US Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson:

"Any prosecutor who risks his day-to-day professional name for fair dealing to build up statistics of success has a perverted sense of practical values, as well as defects of character. ... he can have no better asset than to have his profession recognize that his attitude toward those who feel his power has been dispassionate, reasonable and just."
- Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, April 1, 1940.

Biskupic fails miserably on that score of being reasonable and just.

Let's hope the next US Atty for the Eastern District amasses a better track record.

And if the US Dept of Justice ever again becomes as politicized and corrupt as it has under the Bush administration, the US Attys should leave the DOJ en masse with their integrity in tact and no judicial victims from corrupt prosecutions.