VA Execs Will Leave if Congress Bans Their Bonuses

Keith Roberts - Jailed and convicted
thorough prosecution by
Wisconsin U.S. Atty, Steven Biskupic
(2001-2008) for tenaciously pursuing
his disability benefits claims

President Obama's Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA, VA) has been a sea change from the Bush-Cheney years.

This is due in part because radical changes in VA disability benefit policies the last three years on Agent Orange et al, and PTSD, to the shrieks of neocons.

And in no small part because the DVA (VA) national Director of Compensation and Pension Services no longer colludes with corrupt US Attys and prosecutes and imprisons Vietnam-era veterans for filing for PTSD disability claims.

But I ran across this story this morning VA Execs Will Leave if Congress Bans Bonuses, Group Says.

You see VA employees are actually pocketing hefty bonuses from the clerks to the executives.

No VA employee should be getting any bonuses.

I say to the VA execs: Leave now.

Before 2003 Iraq Invasion, veterans' advocate Steve Robinson warned the Bush-Cheney administration about the coming toll on veterans and what a moron could guess would be a huge caseload of disability claims.

The Bush administration blew Robinson off:

"[We understood the Iraq War] was going to be different, and that it was going to be house-to-house and urban combat. And that type of warfare requires a surge, if you will, and the ability to have mental- health-care treatment available, closer to the front, and also available when they come back home. The harder and uglier the war is, the more the psychological toll is on the human mind. In that meeting [in the spring of 2002], they [DoD staff and Dr. William Winkenwerder, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs] looked at us as if we were people from outer space, wondering why we were there. They patted us on the back and told us they had everything under control, and they would be able to take care of any contingencies that might pop up. And that turned out not to be true."

You want to solve the veterans' claims backlog problem, you hire a bunch of young techies and let them work; and you appoint as VA executives veterans' advocates like Steve Robinson, Paul Sullivan and Robert Walsh.

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.

Republicans v. Veterans’ Jobs

The GOP and elements of the media such
as Allen Breed continue their lies that
U.S. veterans and reformist VA elements
effectively collude to commit widespread fraud.
Blaming veterans for illness and injury
has a long and shameful tradition

 Update: Video: GOP Senators Boozman, Johanns, Burr, and Toomey kill veterans' jobs bill

"A jobs bill that would support veterans is being blocked by some wacky maneuvers in the Senate [by the Republicans again]," reads a cheerful NYT editorial this morning.

Check out this NYT commentary for a revealing look at today's GOP distaste for veterans and the GOP's appalling lack of commitment to our troops and Marines.

Sen. Ron Johnson (Tea Party-Wisconsin) votes to obstruct.

"Pass the Veterans Jobs Corps so we can put more vets to work protecting and rebuilding America," demands President Obama repeatedly.


'No,' say the Tea Party and Republicans for whom even veterans are just another tool in their historic obstruction project to drive our country deeper into the ditch, no matter the costs.

"I had this conversation with a guy in the [Bush] White House, the liaison to the Department of Veterans Affairs. This was during the Bush Administration. He said, if we were to keep every promise that we made to the veterans, it would bankrupt us as a nation," said veterans' advocate, Steve Robinson, who challenged President Bush, the VA and the DoD establishment face-to-face on their shameful neglect of the health problems, especially mental-health issues, faced by returning Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans.

The GOP-Tea Party continues this Bush-Cheney legacy of giving veterans their get-lost directive.

U.S. Military Suicides and Palestinian Hunger Strikes

Enduring freedom

There is some awareness in the United States that suicides among American military personnel are at the highest level since the years of the Vietnam War. It is no wonder. The sense of guilt and alienation associated with taking part in the Afghanistan War, especially multiple postings to a menacing war zone for a combat mission that is increasingly hard to justify and almost impossible to carry out successfully, seems sufficient to explain such a disturbing phenomenon.

By Richard Falk

These tragic losses of life, now outnumbering battlefield deaths, about one per day since the start of 2012, are not hidden from the American public but nor do they provoke an appropriate sense of concern, of better, outrage. This contrasts with the Vietnam years, especially toward the end of the war, when many families with children at risk in a war that had lost its way and was being lost took to the streets, pressured their Congressional representatives, spoke at anti-war rallies, and supported their sons unwillingness to take part.

Now there is a stony silence in American society, which seems to be a confirmation that we now are ‘citizens’ of or ‘patriots’ in an authoritarian democracy, or more urbanely, ‘subjects’ of a constitutional democracy. We are less than ever cognizant of the Jeffersonian imperative: the health of this democracy depends on the conscience and vigilance of its citizens. ...

U.S. Suicide prevention represents departure from just two years ago

Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention
(HP/RR/SP) (U.S. Army 2010)

In 2010, an idiotic report issued by the U.S. Army entitled, Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention (HP/RR/SP), reprimands servicemembers and veterans' committing suicide as having engaged in "high risk" activity prompted by an "erosion of adherence to existing Army policies and standards" in a "key finding."

Reading the 2010 report, one wondered then: Can the brass of the U.S. Army and the authors of the report really be this dumb? Ahhh, yeah.

In two years, somebody got to these idiots.

By Michael Leon

In reaction the 2010 report, veterans' advocate, Steve Robinson—who has challenged the President and the Defense establishment face-to-face on their shameful neglect of the health problems, especially mental-health issues, faced by returning Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans—said in August 2010:

What does [Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter] Chiarelli not understand about combat? Soldiers engage in high-risk behavior on deployment. The [2010] report is written in such a way to blame the soldier, and not the leadership of the military for its part in not inculcating people so that they have resiliency and understand how to deal with stress; because there are not any real programs that train the force as a whole. Also, the leadership treats this problem as a lack of moral character, and a lack of intestinal fortitude, when it is really a medical issue. ... 'I had this conversation with a guy in the [Bush] White House, the liaison to the Department of Veterans Affairs. This was during the Bush Administration. He said, if we were to keep every promise that we made to the veterans, it would bankrupt us as a nation.'

News of another spike in suicide rates this week brings a completely different analysis and reaction from the DoD as the Pentagon appears to be focusing on halting military suicides by targeting stigmatization.

In a memo to military commanders in May, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that “suicide prevention is a leadership responsibility,” and added, “Commanders and supervisors cannot tolerate any actions that belittle, haze, humiliate or ostracize any individual, especially those who require or are responsibly seeking professional services.” (NYT)

"[L]eaders throughout the chain of command must actively promote a constructive command climate that fosters cohesion and encourages individuals to reach out for help when needed," wrote Panetta. "The secretary wants to make it very clear to everybody in uniform and their families that there’s nothing stronger you can do for yourself and your family than to come forward and seek some help and seek the counseling that you need. And you’ll get it from the department." (Pellerin. DoD)

That's an improvement.

Next on the to-do list: Acknowledge that war is pretty fucking dumb.