Sunday, February 17, 2013
Publish Patriot Videos
I just started a new blog to hold the videos I film for Veterans Events here in Florida as well as new videos I find.
Publish Patriot will be the place to find my videos after they are posted here. Don't worry! Wounded Times isn't going anywhere! It was created to try and clear up this blog because after last year when I filmed over 40 events it got way too crowded to hold all of them. Publish Patriot is all about these patriots and will only have videos on it.
Hope you link to it as much as I hope you like it!
Langley air show canceled over sequestration threat
Langley air show canceled over sequestration threat
By Jeff Sheler
The Virginian-Pilot
Published: February 16, 2013
Citing budget uncertainties and the threat of sequestration, Joint Base Langley announced Friday it is canceling the Langley air show, which was set for May 3-5. A spokeswoman for Oceana Naval Air Station said it may cancel its show as well.
"The Air Force has to consider the fiscal challenges affecting the Department of Defense and the nation," Col. Korvin Auch, 633rd Air Base Wing commander, said in a statement announcing the cancellation.
"We're taking prudent steps now in order to be good stewards of taxpayer resources while focusing on maintaining readiness."
At Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, spokeswoman Kelley Stirling said that canceling its annual show
"is definitely being considered, but no decision has been made."
If sequestration happens, Stirling said, the Navy is expected to cancel shows by the Blue Angels flight demonstration team for the remainder of the year. Since the Blue Angels are a big part of Oceana's show, she said, "that would mean our show gets canceled regardless."
read more here
By Jeff Sheler
The Virginian-Pilot
Published: February 16, 2013
Citing budget uncertainties and the threat of sequestration, Joint Base Langley announced Friday it is canceling the Langley air show, which was set for May 3-5. A spokeswoman for Oceana Naval Air Station said it may cancel its show as well.
"The Air Force has to consider the fiscal challenges affecting the Department of Defense and the nation," Col. Korvin Auch, 633rd Air Base Wing commander, said in a statement announcing the cancellation.
"We're taking prudent steps now in order to be good stewards of taxpayer resources while focusing on maintaining readiness."
At Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, spokeswoman Kelley Stirling said that canceling its annual show
"is definitely being considered, but no decision has been made."
If sequestration happens, Stirling said, the Navy is expected to cancel shows by the Blue Angels flight demonstration team for the remainder of the year. Since the Blue Angels are a big part of Oceana's show, she said, "that would mean our show gets canceled regardless."
read more here
At VA, They’re Making Sure No Veteran Dies Alone
At VA, They’re Making Sure No Veteran Dies Alone
By Diane Taylor
Valley News Staff Writer
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Hartford — Given a choice, Patti Crimmin-Greenan would prefer to stay behind the scenes. The 56-year-old resident of White River Junction who enrolled in nursing school when she was 29 is not entirely comfortable being interviewed by reporters or posing for photographers. But as the palliative care coordinator at the Veterans Affairs hospital in White River Junction, Crimmin-Greenan is at the center of a new hospice volunteer program that aims to provide an around-the-clock human presence for any veteran who comes to the VA at the end of his life to use one of two hospice suites at the hospital. And for that, Crimmin-Greenan said, she is willing to “come outside the box.”
Standing alongside Crimmin-Greenan in her efforts to provide human companionship to dying veterans is Patricia West, of New London. At 53, West is the executive director of the Veterans Research and Education Association of New England, a nonprofit organization that administers non-VA funding to support research and education in veterans hospitals. Ninety-five percent of the time, West said, she oversees grants that fund research for clinical trials in areas such as oncology or cardiology or testing new drugs.
“But the fun part, the 5 percent, is education,” West said. “That’s one of the things I’ve really wanted to try to build up.”
The result of this partnership is a volunteer program called No Veteran Dies Alone. A first group of 10 hospice volunteers will begin training for the job on Feb. 21, under the guidance of Crimmin-Greenan and Kristin Barnum, of Bayada Home Health Care in Norwich.
Crimmin-Greenan and West recently spoke with the Valley News about No Veteran Dies Alone.
read more here
By Diane Taylor
Valley News Staff Writer
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Hartford — Given a choice, Patti Crimmin-Greenan would prefer to stay behind the scenes. The 56-year-old resident of White River Junction who enrolled in nursing school when she was 29 is not entirely comfortable being interviewed by reporters or posing for photographers. But as the palliative care coordinator at the Veterans Affairs hospital in White River Junction, Crimmin-Greenan is at the center of a new hospice volunteer program that aims to provide an around-the-clock human presence for any veteran who comes to the VA at the end of his life to use one of two hospice suites at the hospital. And for that, Crimmin-Greenan said, she is willing to “come outside the box.”
Standing alongside Crimmin-Greenan in her efforts to provide human companionship to dying veterans is Patricia West, of New London. At 53, West is the executive director of the Veterans Research and Education Association of New England, a nonprofit organization that administers non-VA funding to support research and education in veterans hospitals. Ninety-five percent of the time, West said, she oversees grants that fund research for clinical trials in areas such as oncology or cardiology or testing new drugs.
“But the fun part, the 5 percent, is education,” West said. “That’s one of the things I’ve really wanted to try to build up.”
The result of this partnership is a volunteer program called No Veteran Dies Alone. A first group of 10 hospice volunteers will begin training for the job on Feb. 21, under the guidance of Crimmin-Greenan and Kristin Barnum, of Bayada Home Health Care in Norwich.
Crimmin-Greenan and West recently spoke with the Valley News about No Veteran Dies Alone.
read more here
The lonely soldier and the moral scars of war
The lonely soldier and the moral scars of war
Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan find little ethical defence in the 'just war'. Each of us struggles to make peace with our actions
The Guardian
James Jeffrey
Sunday 17 February 2013
In trying to understand the ongoing suicide epidemic among soldiers and veterans a third factor in addition to physical injuries and PTSD is now being discussed: the moral injuries they bring back.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs recently coined the terminology and is spot-on in its choice. During my officer training at Sandhurst in the UK, I was taught that fighting power – the ability to operate in war – could be broken down to three mutually dependent components: physical (the means to operate), conceptual (the ideas behind how to operate), and moral (the ability to get people to operate).
Soldiers leave theatres of war affected to different degrees in those three areas, each of which influences their ability to operate once home. The physical and conceptual are all too apparent: the soldier who had his testicles blown off or who wakes up screaming at night. Moral scars, though less noticeable, have a way of cutting deep, also. And they are not negated as easily as many suppose.
Convenient arguments justifying killing legitimate enemies in the line of duty don't hold up well for Iraq and Afghanistan. This was illustrated shortly after my arrival in Helmand province, when a soldier told me about his patrol getting ambushed.
During the ensuing firefight with the Taliban, he spotted a girl – he reckoned a four-year-old – on the roof of an Afghan compound, holding a mobile phone to her ear. He assessed she was a Taliban mortar fire controller, directing intense enemy fire onto his patrol's position; they were pinned down as a result. He radioed a jet and directed it to drop a bomb on the girl and the building.
"I did what I had to do," he told me.
Not such an easy one for armchair moralists to call. Countless soldiers return with such experiences on their consciences.
"I'm no longer the 'good' person I once thought I was," wrote Timothy Kudo, an ex-US marine corps captain, of life after an Afghanistan tour and ordering the deaths of others. He nails a dilemma most veterans face: the only people who can forgive us are dead.
read more here
Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan find little ethical defence in the 'just war'. Each of us struggles to make peace with our actions
The Guardian
James Jeffrey
Sunday 17 February 2013
In trying to understand the ongoing suicide epidemic among soldiers and veterans a third factor in addition to physical injuries and PTSD is now being discussed: the moral injuries they bring back.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs recently coined the terminology and is spot-on in its choice. During my officer training at Sandhurst in the UK, I was taught that fighting power – the ability to operate in war – could be broken down to three mutually dependent components: physical (the means to operate), conceptual (the ideas behind how to operate), and moral (the ability to get people to operate).
Soldiers leave theatres of war affected to different degrees in those three areas, each of which influences their ability to operate once home. The physical and conceptual are all too apparent: the soldier who had his testicles blown off or who wakes up screaming at night. Moral scars, though less noticeable, have a way of cutting deep, also. And they are not negated as easily as many suppose.
Convenient arguments justifying killing legitimate enemies in the line of duty don't hold up well for Iraq and Afghanistan. This was illustrated shortly after my arrival in Helmand province, when a soldier told me about his patrol getting ambushed.
During the ensuing firefight with the Taliban, he spotted a girl – he reckoned a four-year-old – on the roof of an Afghan compound, holding a mobile phone to her ear. He assessed she was a Taliban mortar fire controller, directing intense enemy fire onto his patrol's position; they were pinned down as a result. He radioed a jet and directed it to drop a bomb on the girl and the building.
"I did what I had to do," he told me.
Not such an easy one for armchair moralists to call. Countless soldiers return with such experiences on their consciences.
"I'm no longer the 'good' person I once thought I was," wrote Timothy Kudo, an ex-US marine corps captain, of life after an Afghanistan tour and ordering the deaths of others. He nails a dilemma most veterans face: the only people who can forgive us are dead.
read more here
Were Vietnam veterans the greatest generation?
Were Vietnam veterans the greatest generation?
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
February 17, 2013
The answer is, yes. Vietnam veterans were and still are remarkable.
This morning started out with reading an article on Washington Times because the title of it didn't seem to match who wrote it. Mario Salazar describes himself this way.
I was not sure what I'd end up reading but considering the title is the what I've been saying all along, I was pulled into it.
Last year MOH Vietnam Hero Sammy Davis sat down for an interview with me at a Homes For Our Troops fundraiser at the Orlando Nam Knights. Sammy is just about as humble as can be. I've heard the story of how the Medal of Honor ceremony in the movie Forrest Gump was actually taken from Sammy's ceremony many times. I heard the story behind what caused him to play the harmonica and Shenandoah. Many times I've heard the citation read and had tears in my eyes. He was so young. He was a 21 year old Private when he earned the Medal of Honor and he was wounded. He came home and that part of the story I had never heard before.
It didn't matter how badly he was treated because he still loved this country enough to continue serving it. He didn't stop there. He travels all over the country and is a shining example of what Vietnam veterans are like.
Unlike this generation of veterans they returned home the way all other generations had. Back to their home towns but unlike the other generations, few from their home towns knew what they had been through. They didn't have the internet. They had the old-timers groups like the VFW and the DAV but even they were not welcomed within those halls. It took many years before they were included and accepted. Now they run most of the service groups taking care of the new generation.
Unlike the generations before them, they also decided that they would not settle to suffer from Combat PTSD in silence.
While PTSD is in the news along with suicides and attempted suicides, thousands of veterans waiting to have their claims processed and care provided, they returned to the same issues. What is available to this generation is all due to their efforts and the fact they never gave up on us.
Vietnam Veterans of America was founded in 1978 and they are fighting for all generations of veterans to make sure they are taken care of.
When it comes to spiritual healing, again, they took the lead long before PTSD made the news.
Point Man International Ministries was founded in 1984 addressing the spiritual issues of combat and PTSD because Vietnam veteran Bill Landreth was also a Seattle police officer and knew his fellow veterans needed help to heal from where they had been and what was asked of them. Author Chuck Dean took over the leadership and his research discovered 150,000 Vietnam veterans had committed suicide. Later research put the number at 200,000. Back then Vietnam veterans made the news for being arrested and they were convicted without their military service considered as a factor. They ended up homeless to the point where over 300,000 of them had no place to call home.
The Nam Knights also started by a Vietnam Veteran. "In the summer of 1989 a small group of Harley-riding combat vets of the Viet Nam War, who were also police officers, banded together to form the Nam Knights.
The Club was founded in New Jersey by Jack Quigley, now retired Undersheriff of The Bergen County Sheriff's Department. Jack served as a platoon sergeant with the 11th Motor Transport Battalion, First Marine Division."
The New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans started "In 1986, a group of Vietnam Veterans (Peace Foxx, Mark Helberg and Ken Smith) gathered weekly at a Veterans Outreach Center in the Greater Boston area to discuss and resolve their combat experiences. Two years later, the group visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC and was shocked to find veterans who were homeless living in an adjacent park. Upon their return to Boston, they discovered that one-third of the nation's homeless male population are veterans."
The International Fellowship of Chaplains began with David Vorce, a pastor and Vietnam Veteran Marine topped off with being a retired "Lieutenant with the Saginaw County Sheriffs Department where he served in the Special Operations Division. He also has 20 years as a Police Chaplain and nearly 36 years as a martial arts instructor."
While the above article caused this post, it missed much of what these veterans did for all generations. Most are not aware of the fact that had it not been for them, there would be no research done on what trauma does and people all over the world have been helped because this generation did what no other generation did before. They fought to have the invisible wounds treated even though most reporters in this country tried to make them invisible.
And then there are wives like me doing what we do because of veterans like them. I've been helping veterans and their families heal from PTSD since 1982 when I met my husband and fell in love with a Vietnam veteran.
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
February 17, 2013
The answer is, yes. Vietnam veterans were and still are remarkable.
This morning started out with reading an article on Washington Times because the title of it didn't seem to match who wrote it. Mario Salazar describes himself this way.
Mario Salazar, the 21st Century Pacifist, is a bleeding heart liberal, agnostic, exercise fanatic, Redskin fan, technophile, civil engineer, combat infantry veteran, jewelry maker, amateur computer programmer, environmental engineer, Colombian-born, free thinker, and, not surprisingly, pacifist.
I was not sure what I'd end up reading but considering the title is the what I've been saying all along, I was pulled into it.
Were Vietnam veterans the greatest generation?This part jumped out at me because what happened to Vietnam Veterans when they came home depended more on where they came home to than anything else.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
21st-Century Pacifist
by Mario Salazar
MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md., February 15, 2013 — A fellow Vietnam veteran sent me a link to a video of a speech by retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, who also served in Vietnam as a second lieutenant on his first tour there. And he doesn’t apologize for being a Vietnam veteran. While some of his sound bites are open to closer analysis, he talks like an enlisted man and not an officer.
Zinni speaks on how there are people who never served in Vietnam, but lie that they did. This to him is a vindication of the real veterans. His reasoning is that if people lie, it is because they wish they could make this claim, and therefore it is something desirable. On the other hand, his comment that no one lies about having been in Woodstock is not factual. Many people do claim they were in Woodstock, that the farm was probably stacked three stories high with hippies.
Zinni, who was the former Commander ion Chief of the U.S. Central Command, also explains how the Vietnam combat soldier had 240 days of combat, as compared with about 40 for World War II soldiers in the South Pacific. His comment that this helps in making us the “greatest generation” still may not be shared by many of us, even those of us who had boots on the ground in Vietnam.
He also extrapolates that because of the Vietnam generation, the U.S. military revised its ways, creating a force that caused the Soviets to give up. While this fact may be included in the reasons for the collapse of the Soviets, it is by no means critical. As we have learned from disclosures after the demise of the Soviet empire, it never had the strength that Cold War mongers made us believe.
read more here
"This, however, is in contrast with other veterans’ experiences, including my own. We were never insulted, we were thanked for our service and many of us received preference in jobs, especially after we finished college under the GI Bill." General Zini
Last year MOH Vietnam Hero Sammy Davis sat down for an interview with me at a Homes For Our Troops fundraiser at the Orlando Nam Knights. Sammy is just about as humble as can be. I've heard the story of how the Medal of Honor ceremony in the movie Forrest Gump was actually taken from Sammy's ceremony many times. I heard the story behind what caused him to play the harmonica and Shenandoah. Many times I've heard the citation read and had tears in my eyes. He was so young. He was a 21 year old Private when he earned the Medal of Honor and he was wounded. He came home and that part of the story I had never heard before.
What did Sammy do after? He kept serving.
It didn't matter how badly he was treated because he still loved this country enough to continue serving it. He didn't stop there. He travels all over the country and is a shining example of what Vietnam veterans are like.
Unlike this generation of veterans they returned home the way all other generations had. Back to their home towns but unlike the other generations, few from their home towns knew what they had been through. They didn't have the internet. They had the old-timers groups like the VFW and the DAV but even they were not welcomed within those halls. It took many years before they were included and accepted. Now they run most of the service groups taking care of the new generation.
Unlike the generations before them, they also decided that they would not settle to suffer from Combat PTSD in silence.
While PTSD is in the news along with suicides and attempted suicides, thousands of veterans waiting to have their claims processed and care provided, they returned to the same issues. What is available to this generation is all due to their efforts and the fact they never gave up on us.
Vietnam Veterans of America was founded in 1978 and they are fighting for all generations of veterans to make sure they are taken care of.
When it comes to spiritual healing, again, they took the lead long before PTSD made the news.
Point Man International Ministries was founded in 1984 addressing the spiritual issues of combat and PTSD because Vietnam veteran Bill Landreth was also a Seattle police officer and knew his fellow veterans needed help to heal from where they had been and what was asked of them. Author Chuck Dean took over the leadership and his research discovered 150,000 Vietnam veterans had committed suicide. Later research put the number at 200,000. Back then Vietnam veterans made the news for being arrested and they were convicted without their military service considered as a factor. They ended up homeless to the point where over 300,000 of them had no place to call home.
The Nam Knights also started by a Vietnam Veteran. "In the summer of 1989 a small group of Harley-riding combat vets of the Viet Nam War, who were also police officers, banded together to form the Nam Knights.
The Club was founded in New Jersey by Jack Quigley, now retired Undersheriff of The Bergen County Sheriff's Department. Jack served as a platoon sergeant with the 11th Motor Transport Battalion, First Marine Division."
The New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans started "In 1986, a group of Vietnam Veterans (Peace Foxx, Mark Helberg and Ken Smith) gathered weekly at a Veterans Outreach Center in the Greater Boston area to discuss and resolve their combat experiences. Two years later, the group visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC and was shocked to find veterans who were homeless living in an adjacent park. Upon their return to Boston, they discovered that one-third of the nation's homeless male population are veterans."
The International Fellowship of Chaplains began with David Vorce, a pastor and Vietnam Veteran Marine topped off with being a retired "Lieutenant with the Saginaw County Sheriffs Department where he served in the Special Operations Division. He also has 20 years as a Police Chaplain and nearly 36 years as a martial arts instructor."
While the above article caused this post, it missed much of what these veterans did for all generations. Most are not aware of the fact that had it not been for them, there would be no research done on what trauma does and people all over the world have been helped because this generation did what no other generation did before. They fought to have the invisible wounds treated even though most reporters in this country tried to make them invisible.
And then there are wives like me doing what we do because of veterans like them. I've been helping veterans and their families heal from PTSD since 1982 when I met my husband and fell in love with a Vietnam veteran.
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