PTSD battles after the war

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

I wrote yesterday about some problems with how PTSD is being diagnosed and sometimes minimized or downgraded in the military medical system. There are some bright spots in the over all awareness and treatments available, but there are also some gaping holes in how it is being handled. If it sounded like the fight was getting personal, it is. For now let me just say that my girlfriend has a severe case of PTSD, which I mention in this segment. The battle hasn't ended for her yet, and for me either until these problems have been properly addressed.

Downgrading PTSD to save money?

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Budget cuts for the military are a fact of life. We can argue all we want about the relative benefits of building more ships, or planes or the number of troops we need. But the one thing there should be no argument about is taking care of those who have been wounded, this includes both invisible and visible injuries, by their time at war. Taking care of an injured troop means immediate care and continued care when they leave the military.  There seems to be plenty of focus on the visible injuries and it is easy to understand that you replace a missing leg with a prosthetic and add copious doses of physical therapy to teach the troop how to walk on it. Injuries like PTSD are tougher to deal with because invisible wounds are just that, invisible.  Those suffering from this type of trauma may look just fine, but all to often they are far from it.

Some of our community have publicly discussed their own battles with this debilitating injury including CJ Grisham and Jeremiah Workman. It has been a major challenge to get combat vets to overcome the stigma attached to admitting they have PTSD. Now we find out that the concerns over the cost of treating these wounded troops may have been used to deny them care.  One of CJ's co-writers discusses this:

This article seems to say they are passing out PTSD diagnosis to anyone who walks by and sneezes. It is not easy to get a PTSD diagnosis, that is the truth. When this same issue was brought up in the Veterans Administration, the government investigation showed that there was less then 1% actual fraud on PTSD diagnosis and service-connection compensation. When we do get that term put on our records as a service-connection, it is not a favor done for us. It means that we owe these men and women who have been destroyed in mind, body and spirit by the incredible sacrifices the average person would not think possible.

Here is the scary part

In a lecture to colleagues, a Madigan Army Medical Center psychiatrist said a soldier who retires with a post-traumatic-stress-disorder diagnosis could eventually receive $1.5 million in government payments, according to a memo by a Western Regional Medical Command ombudsman who attended the September presentation

The psychiatrist went on to claim the rate of such diagnoses eventually could cause the Army and Department of Veterans Affairs to go broke (By Hal Bernton, Seattle Times staff reporter).

This psychiatrist went beyond just noting the cost of treating those who were hurt and rightly had a knot jerked in his tail.

A Madigan Army Medical Center psychiatrist who screens soldiers for PTSD has been removed from clinical duties while investigators look into controversial remarks he made about patients and the financial costs of disability benefits, according to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray.

Keppler allegedly made inappropriate comments about the forensic team's role as financial gatekeeper in the Army retirement process during a September presentation, according to Murray.

In a meeting last fall attended by an Army ombudsman, Keppler and other team members reportedly made disrespectful comments about patients whose files were under review.

More than a dozen soldiers who believed their PTSD diagnoses were wrongly dropped by the Madigan team gained new reviews this year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in an unusual intervention arranged by Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho.

That is a good first step, but does anyone really think this was an isolated incident? I know it wasn't.  The same problem exists right back here in the Army's flagship PTSD program at Walter Reed. I know of multiple instances where diagnoses of PTSD have been downgraded or determined to be not "Line of Duty". One method of limiting the number of diagnoses is to find that the condition "Existed Prior to Service". For some patients this means taking isolated incidents that occurred long before joining the military and naming them as the proximate cause, even if the service member never had any symptoms or received any treament for them. This is analogous to telling an amputee his injury existed prior to service because the now-missing ankle was sprained on a Boy Scout hike when he was a kid.

 We let our Vietnam vets languish with no help as they dealt with these same problems. Thankfully we understand this damage better now and can offer help. But we cannot allow the bean counters to deny care. The cost of treating our combat wounded is a price we must pay. We owe it to them.

If you are aware of any cases where this has happened please let me know. I will be taking this information as high up the flag pole as needed to make sure ALL wounded warriors get the respect and care they deserve.

Iranian terrorist bombings in Thailand

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

It was only a question of time before the Iranians and their proxies upped the terror stakes against the Israelis. The recent spate of exploding nuclear scientists must be causing them consternation and embarrassment. But their sorry attempts to retaliate ought to be more embarrassing to any decent state sponsor of terrorism. In recent attacks in India and Georgia, the Iranians at least attempted to target people marginally connected to Israel, although they failed and ended up basically just killing themselves. Now they have moved on to Thailand and the results are pretty much the same, blowed-up terrorists (very gruesome video at the link). My sympathy goes out to any of those injured in these attacks and I am mainly glad that they were not killed. But that doesn't stop me from a bit of happiness at the well-sdeserved damage these scum have done to themselves.

The Israelis are not about to let these lunatics continue their path to nuclear nuttahdom without making a serious effort to take them out. Taking out their scientists is the equivalent of warning shots across the bow. The stakes are escalating every day as thje centrifuges spin. The only real question left is exactly when the main strike on the Iranian facilities will be. Looks like this Spring could be ugly.

Spirit of America conf call w/ Gen Keane

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Spirit of America has been actively assisting our troops for quite a while now by getting them items they use to help accomplish their missions. You can find out more on this call.

We invite you to join us for a conference call with Spirit of America Advisory Board member retired General Jack Keane. General Keane just returned from Afghanistan where he met with SoA's Field Rep Mike Press and Army units we are supporting.

General Keane served as four-star General and Vice Chief of Staff of the US Army. He played a critical role in conceiving and overseeing the "surge" in Iraq. Read more about General Keane here. Here he is in a great 2008 story in The Wall Street Journal.

During the conference call he will share his observations about Afghanistan, progress, challenges, and Spirit of America. After the General speaks there will be an opportunity for any interested callers to ask him, and CEO and founder Jim Hake,  questions. 

When: Wednesday, Feb. 15th, 12pm Eastern. Duration 30 minutes.
Call-in Details: On February 15th at 12:00PM Eastern, dial into the conference line (conference line: 559-726-1200) and when prompted enter the access code (access code: 613124) followed by the pound key.

Time to exit Interpol

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

The transnational police agency Interpol has done tremendous work making sure that criminals cannot simply escape justice by moving out of one country's jurisdiction. But if the following is true, they may have become just another group afraid to cross the Islamists.

Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old columnist, stands accused of blasphemy in his homeland of Saudi Arabia for tweets he posted on Islam’s prophet Mohammed that many of his countrymen find insulting to Islam. In his postings on the occasion of Mohammed’s birthday last week, Kashgari imagined a skeptical discussion with the founder of Islam. Many Saudis are enraged, demanding that he be arrested and put to death, in accordance with Saudi sharia. As the New York Times reported, “more than 13,000 people [the number now tops 14,000] have joined a Facebook page titled ‘The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari.’”....

The British Guardian is now reporting that Kashgari was caught after Interpol, the 190-country-member international police agency based in Lyon, France, issued an alert for him at the request of Saudi Arabia. If true, this violates the Article 3 neutrality clause of Interpol’s constitution, which states that it is “strictly forbidden” for the organization to undertake any intervention of a religious character. If this is allowed to become a precedent, the longtime goal of Saudi Arabia — and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — of a universal law punishing “defamation of Islam” will essentially be realized.

Just lovely eh? Might be time for another Draw Mohamed Day.

A little love for the Air Force

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

My weekly segment on Frank Gaffney's radio show. He asks if the cuts to our fighter aircraft programs like the F-35 will affect the safety of our ground pounders, and in a show of inter-service appreciation I answer "Oh Hell Yeah!". Plus sub-leasing space in our Mega-Embassy in Iraq to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, that scathing indictment of the situation in Aghanistan  and more.

Segment 4 with Jim Hanson [ 10:17 ] Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download (11)

In case you didn't think the Chinese are serious as a global threat, here is video of sea trials for their first aircraft carrier.

Obama unveils results of budget slashing

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

I wish this was a photoshop, but sadly this is our Commander in Chief.

 

Slack-jawed and awed by a marshmallow gun, President Obama said he will deploy hundreds of these to crsis areas around the globe. They will replace the Soldiers and Marines who would ususally keep the world safe for democracy.

Closing the Chapter in Afghanistan

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

A guest posting by Marc Danziger- The Armed Liberal from Winds of Change

So Grim acknowledges readers’ votes on what to do about Afghanistan, and says: “The consensus from you ladies and gentlemen is... let it go.”

If you’ve lost the readership of Blackfive – well, it’s obvious. Sec. Panetta is moving to end combat operations this year.

James Joyner, Herschel Smith, Tim Lynch, and even Michael Yon (whose career kind of depends on conflict) have all called for a withdrawal. All of these commentators are people whose opinions about the war and the situations around the war deserve serious respect. And for me, reading these thoughts couldn’t come at a worse time. (Ed comment fm Uncle J- Yon and Smith do not make my list of serious)

Three weeks ago, I flew to Fayetteville and helped my oldest son button down his house and pack. His girlfriend and I then dropped him off to head back to Afghanistan – again. He’ll have an interesting trip (he’s embedding with a bunch of Marines, so I expect he’ll be shortsheeted or whatever they do to Army guys working with them). Obviously I hope it’s not too interesting – in fact I’m pulling for outright boring. As a parent, do I want the war wound down and for him to come home? Are you kidding me? Of COURSE I want him home – tomorrow if possible. I’m sure that the parents and partners of those deployed feel the same way. I’m sure that throughout history, parents (well, non-Spartan parents) have felt the same way.

Continue reading "Closing the Chapter in Afghanistan"

Devastating indictment of Afghan situation

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

This is gonna rain a bit on Obama's mission accomplished message as he "ends" the war there.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

Read the entire thing if you want some unvarnished and depressing truth.

Afghanistan was always a horrendous challenge and the prospects for anything you could legitimately call success were low. We should have left immediately after toppling the Taliban in 2002 and dropped a few planeloads of leaflets saying "Live free, but if you let al Qaeda screw around again, we will bury you. Rubble doesn't make trouble". But we didn't and so the attempt to turn a third (or fourth) world hell hole into a civilized society began. It has failed and will serve as an object lesson. It doesn't necessarily mean that nation-building, counterinsurgency and stability operations do not work. But it sure shows that you cannot build a nation out of a collection of tribes with absolutely no idea what a nation is. Doubly so, when the next door neighbor foments the insurgency, and supports it with materiel, men and mission support.

Obama used this war as a way to fulfill his campaign smack talking and avoid the all too easy and accurate view that he didn't have the stomach, strategic vision or knowledge to run our national security affairs. His misguided attempt to derail the peace in Iraq and his faux surge (complete with withdrawal date) in Afghanistan have sadly proven that he was simply campaigning not commanding. There may have been no way to win a real victory in Afghanistan, but then why reinforce your position without any real resolve to try? The answer is politics and the man who ordered it owes an accounting to the men and women, and their families, that he sent there.

Arab Spring, Fall & Crash?

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

I rooted for the fall of dictators during the Arab Spring. Many people were saying that this could lead to Islamist groups replacing them. True dat. But can you name an Islamist country that actually manages to increase the standard of living? They don't and they rule by oppression and theocratic fiat. All of that needs to be seen by the people they purport to rule in order for them to be discredited. Well we have the first inklings that all may not be well in Allah-land.

In Egypt, which imports more than half its caloric intake, wages must keep up with the price of food or people begin to starve. Yet the country appears to be heading for a monumental financial collapse in 2012, and perhaps by the summer. If Islamists strut about as though they rule Egypt, the population will blame them and their SCAF allies – not the Tahriris – for its hunger. The anger could quickly turn ferocious. After waiting 84 years to attain legitimacy and power, the Muslim Brotherhood may find it got suckered into taking over the ship’s help just as it heads into an iceberg.

You can't feed people w/ Korans and restrictive edicts. These fanatics must fail and do so publicly so they can be discredited. Let the games begin.

Last original SAS member dies

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Enjoy your time in Fiddler's Green, Brother.

The last surviving member of the original SAS has died aged 92.

Jimmy Storie was one of 66 men handpicked to embark on a series of daring and deadly missions against the Nazis.

The brave Scots Guards officer joined the first version of the Special Air Service, L Detachment, which operated in North Africa against Field Marshal Rommel.

The regiment’s first parachute raid ended in disaster when almost two-thirds of the unit was wiped out after they leapt from a plane during a severe desert storm.

But Jimmy and his colleagues, known as The Originals, soon became the scourge of the German and Italian forces.

Arab Spring & The Grand Jihad

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

The Arab Spring has brought us more of the Muslim Brotherhood. Great Leader doesn't seem to have a problem with that. This brilliant look at Andy McCarthy's book "The Grand Jihad" shows why we need to pay attention.

Biden advised against bin Laden raid

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

Crazy Uncle Joe said no to whacking OBL. First of all is anyone surprised by his lack of judgment? Second look at the type of advisers Obama has surrounded himself with.

When the president asked his top advisers for their final opinion on the mission, all of them were hesitant, except for the former CIA director, now Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Biden said.

“Every single person in that room hedged their bet except Leon Panetta. Leon said go. Everyone else said, 49, 51,” Biden said, as he offered the unsolicited details of the decision-making process.

Being the gutsiest guy in a room full of spineless losers, Leon Panetta excepted, is not too tough. John Weisman said in his book Kill bin Laden, and confirmed to me personally, that Obama had a poll taken on the potential fall out if the public found he didn't pull the trigger, and that this delayed the raid while he waited on the answer. Still glad bin Laden took a round to the eye, but spare me all the political grandstanding.

Obama's call for an Army of the Proletariat

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

The opening of Great Leader's address to the People's Congress was pretty disturbing. He seems to think Americans should forego their petty desires and get in line with the plan, well his plan anyway, by acting like members of the military.

They’re not consumed with personal ambition.  They don’t obsess over their differences.  They focus on the mission at hand.  They work together.  Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.  (Applause.)  Think about the America within our reach.

People have thought about that America; they are called fascists. From the definition:

It opposes contemporary bourgeois class-based society and culture for allegedly being based on selfish and hedonistic individualism that results in plutocracy and war profiteering at the expense of the nation.

Just think of the America Obama could build if people put aside all that pesky personal ambition, self-interest and personal liberty. The problem is that is so fundamentally un-American you have to wonder of he is even aware of the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Does he somehow think we all share his vision of a liberal, politically correct, un-exceptional America? That or maybe he really is a socialist

Article 60. It is the duty of, and matter of honour for, every able-bodied citizen of the USSR to work conscientiously in his chosen, socially useful occupation, and strictly to observe labour discipline. Evasion of socially useful work is incompatible with the principles of socialist society.

Back to Barry O

No one built this country on their own.  This nation is great because we built it together.  This nation is great because we worked as a team.  This nation is great because we get each other’s backs. 

 This nation is great because I don't have to be on Obama's team. It is great because I can fight against the awful ideas Obama has inflicted upon our country and strive mightily to thwart his megalomaniacal ambitions.

Several of our best minds have taken a torch to Obama's draft notice. First George Will.

Well. The armed services’ ethos, although noble, is not a template for civilian society, unless the aspiration is to extinguish politics. People marching in serried ranks, fused into a solid mass by the heat of martial ardor, proceeding in lock step, shoulder to shoulder, obedient to orders from a commanding officer — this is a recurring dream of progressives eager to dispense with tiresome persuasion and untidy dissension in a free, tumultuous society.

Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands.

Next up opposing conscription, Jonah Golberg.

Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. Our warriors surrender their liberties and risk their lives to protect ours. The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I’ve seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President.

Friedrich Hayek, a guy who actually deserved his Nobel, took a preemptive axe to Obamunism in the "Road to Serfdom".

Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole of society is permanently subordinated. To a limited extent we ourselves experience this fact in wartime, when subordination of almost everything to the immediate and pressing need is the price at which we preserve our freedom in the long run. The fashionable phrases about doing for the purposes of peace what we have learned.to do for the purposes of war are completely misleading, for it is sensible temporarily to sacrifice freedom in order to make it more secure in the future, but it is quite a different thing to sacrifice liberty permanently in the interests of a planned economy.

That trifecta of truthtellers dealt a death blow to Obama's misguided, malformed, malodorous, malfeasance...you know, this is too awful and stupid an idea for even aliteration. Mr. President, just because you slid into the chair of the Commander in Chief doesn't mean you command the American people. So don't expect us to salute and move out smartly when you crank up the Internationale and start barking out orders.

Obama's political timetable for Afghan withdrawal

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

President Obama's decision to deploy troops to Afghanistan and announce their withdrawal during the same speech was one of the sorriest examples of politics trumping policy in my memory. Telling your enemy "Oh yeah, we are coming to get you" and then adding " But we have to come home in a year and a half because my boss is running for reelection" makes zero strategic sense and shows a tremendously callous attitude toward the lives of the men and women who went to war. Good people died so Obama could pretend to fulfill his mouthy campaign promises to go and win the "good war".

Any doubts about this cynical political hackery are dispelled in a new book that shows how O disregarded the advice of his military leadership and followed that of his collection of Chicago tools.

Obama began the discussion by explaining that he wanted the 23,000 forces out of Afghanistan by July 2012, five months sooner than Petraeus had recommended. Mullen thought a drawdown by July would sacrifice virtually the entire fighting season. Both Gates and Clinton also expressed reservations. When Obama looked to Gates in an attempt to achieve consensus, the defense secretary demurred that there was a big difference between July and an “end of summer” drawdown.

Can anyone think of a reason why it would be so important that the troops were out during the Summer of 2012 as opposed to the end of the year? I can, and it is not one that reflects well on the honor of the President. The only thing that would be substantially affected is his job security and hois chance to campaign as the "War Ender". His base would be outraged if he failed to "end" the war, and so he decided that their support was more important that the lives he would blithely throw away.  Petraeus, Mullen, Gates and Clinton- his entire unbiased professional strategic advisorship- told him that he was trashing the gains that the blood of our troops bought. But who was he listening to?

“Biden wins, Petraeus loses” was the headline the following morning as news of the president’s decision began to leak.

Noted military genius Joe Biden, and what did the professionals think?

(Jack) Keane, the retired general, denounced the decision and told Petraeus in another e-mail that it appeared to undermine his counterinsurgency campaign just as it was finally gaining momentum. “My god, Dave, they just pushed your recommendations aside and changed the war fundamentally. What a mess,” Keane wrote. Petraeus did not respond.

Petraeus kept his mouth shut because he is another professional and even though US soldiers were just used as pawns in the reelection campaign of a man unworthy of commanding them, he said nothing. He understood that elections have consequences and we elected the shallow narcissist who sits in the big chair, so we gotta live with that. And the troops gotta die with it. Gen. Petraeus said it perfectly when he noted that he wouldn't resign over this. He said the troops can't quit, so why should he?

By far the most dramatic moment, and a lesson for students of civil-military relations, came at the end of the hearing when Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat, asked Petraeus whether he supported the president’s drawdown plan and what would have to happen before he would ever consider resigning his command. “I obviously support the ultimate decision of the commander in chief,” Petraeus said. “That is, we take an oath to obey the orders of the president of the United States and indeed do that.”

“And if you couldn’t do that — if you couldn’t do that consistent with that oath — you would resign?” asked Levin.

“Well, I’m not a quitter, chairman,” Petraeus said. “I’ve actually had people e-mail me and say that I should quit, and actually this is something I’ve thought a bit about.”

“I’m sure you have,” Levin said.

“And I don’t think it is the place for a commander to actually consider that step unless you are in a very, very dire situation,” said Petraeus. “ . . . I actually feel quite strongly about this. Our troopers don’t get to quit, and I don’t think commanders should contemplate that, again, as any kind of idle action. That would be an extraordinary action, in my view. And at the end of the day, this is not about me, it’s not about an individual commander, it’s not about a reputation. This is about our country. And the best step for our country, with the commander in chief having made a decision, is to execute that decision to the very best of our ability.”

Amen Sir. Would that you were serving the best interests of our great country rather than the political ambitions of a small man. Petraeus did the right thing and that is unsurprising. The one institution America can always count on is our military. But when it comes time to vote for President of the United States and decide who will serve as Commander in Chief, the shameful actions of the current placeholder should lead to his being out out to pasture. The troops can't quit, but we can sure fire their civilian leader. We damn sure should.