Oscar Nominated Movie Day One By Army Veteran

Why an Army veteran put a Muslim-American woman at the heart of his Oscar-nominated war movie Quartz
Written by Tim Fernholz
February 15, 2016

In terms of courage, it takes a lot more courage to be her as a Muslim-American woman surrounded by a bunch of infantrymen in Afghanistan, than to storm up a hill in combat.

More than one Academy Award-winner has been accused of demonizing Muslims, but “Day One,” the Oscar-nominated short film set against the US war in Afghanistan, makes a Muslim-American woman its hero.

Writer and director Henry Hughes served in the 173rd Airborne Brigade (paywall) for five years, including two deployments in Afghanistan. His friendship with his Afghan-American interpreter, Ayman Aziz, inspired this film, which can be seen in theaters or on-demand. Hughes spoke with Quartz about his experiences in Afghanistan, the films inspired by America’s 21st-century conflicts, and Bowe Bergdahl. The interview has been condensed and edited.
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More Prevention Bills Out of Congress Leave More Grieving Families

Congress Needs To Stop Suicide Prevention Bills
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 15, 2016

Now that you saw the pictures of Joshua Omvig's parents standing at his grave along with the bill named after him, this is what it was supposed to do after it was passed and signed in 2007.

The following is thanks to Vote Smart

After Months of Obstruction, Harkin Pushes Through Veterans Suicide Prevention Bill
By: Tom Harkin
Date: Sept. 28, 2007
Location: Washington, DC
AFTER MONTHS OF OBSTRUCTIONISM, HARKIN PUSHES THROUGH VETERANS SUICIDE PREVENTION BILL NAMED AFTER IOWA IRAQ VETERAN - JOSHUA OMVIG

Late last night, after a long fight, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) ushered the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act of 2007 unanimously through the Senate. For the past two months a Republican Senator placed a "hold" on the non-controversial, heavily bipartisan bill, preventing it from moving forward. With great effort, Harkin was able to convince his colleague to allow the Act through. Congressman Leonard Boswell (D-IA) will lead the bill through the House of Representatives for final approval before sending it to the President's desk for his signature.

The Omvig Act directs the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to integrate mental health services into veterans' primary care, and step up counseling and other mental health services for returning war veterans; it is named after Joshua Omvig, a soldier from Grundy Center Iowa who took his own life after returning from Iraq.

"I am heartened to see that after many months of talking about preventing suicide among our veterans, Congress finally took action. The Omvig family's patience and selfless determination in seeing this through so other soldiers and families are protected is truly commendable. This is a matter of honoring the memory of their son Josh," said Harkin. "And it is a matter of honoring the service and sacrifice of all our men and women in uniform. It is shockingly evident that our veterans urgently need the screening and counseling that this bill would require."

The VA estimates that more than 5,000 veterans take their lives each year. Suicide rates are 35 percent higher for Iraq veterans than for the general population. And the Department of Defense recently reported that the Army is now seeing the highest rate of suicide since the Vietnam War. A study in this July's issue of Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that those who have been in combat are twice as likely to commit suicide as men who have not served in a war.

"The memories of combat haunt many of our men and women who have served. We must provide the resources and support to prevent the unnecessary deaths of the men and women who have put their lives on the line to defend our nation," said Harkin. "I look forward to seeing the President sign this critical bill into law to ensure that programs are in place to meet the needs of veterans."

Specifically, the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act:

-- Ensures 24-hour access to mental health care for veterans who are deemed at risk for suicide, including those in rural or geographically remote locations.
-- Provides suicide prevention education and training for all VA staff, contractors, and medical personnel who interact with veterans.
-- Creates a Family Education Program to assist family members and veterans in understanding the readjustment process, signs and symptoms of mental illness, and risk factors for suicide.
-- Implements a Veterans Peer Support Program as an adjunct to mental health services that includes social support and suicide prevention.

We see how well that worked after all these years. What did members of Congress do? They repeated the same things they screwed up in the first place! That bill came out 9 years ago. It has gotten worse for all our veterans and the devastation increases along with billions going into prevention when the only thing they have been preventing is doing something that will work. 

WTF? How many more lives will it take before they open their eyes and understand the "something" they are doing is making it all worse?

When Clay Hunt committed suicide, this bill had been in effect for years.  Yet Congress wrote another bill in Hunt's name to do the same things Omvig's bill was supposed to do.  Congress just kept writing more and more of them and now, now after all these years, here comes another one.

"The Sgt. Daniel Somers Classified Veterans Access to Care Act, which was recently rolled into another bill about suicide among female veterans, passed the House last week. It would grant the right to individual counseling for vets with concerns about classified material. Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, was an original co-sponsor."

“When I first started working on Capitol Hill on veterans issues 20 years ago, you didn’t have anywhere near the amount of interest and passion that you do now,” said Thomas Porter, legislative director of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans organization.

His group put its muscle behind the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, signed in February 2015. The bill launched a pilot program to attract more psychiatrists to the VA. It also directed creation of a one-stop resources website and an annual evaluation of VA mental health and suicide-prevention programs.
Congress considers veteran suicide bills

Well poor baby.  They didn't care 20 years ago but then again they didn't care in the 80's and 90's when Vietnam veterans were killing themselves.  Shit they still don't care the majority of the suicides are by veterans over the age of 50 anymore than they care they have been waiting for help a hell of a lot longer. Why think of them at all? 

This is absolutely pure bullshit and has to stop. When you have members of Congress with jurisdiction over the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, you'd think they would actually try to figure out who has been failing after all these bills and all this money topped of with the most sickening reality of all, more suicides!

They can't even get the number right. Too many of our elected officials still use the "22 a day" as if they lack all ability to actually read the damn report from the VA stating that it was limited data from 21 states and urged caution. They would have been better off reading the damn report from the CDC on suicides to know, "There were 41,149 suicides in 2013 in the United States—a rate of 12.6 per 100,000 is equal to 113 suicides each day or one every 13 minutes." then maybe read the reports from their own states to know veteran suicides are double the civilian population rate. Do you think they should care about the others above and beyond the 22 everyone is falling in lockstep talking about?

Do you think our veterans are important enough to actually know what the hell they are trying to prevent and how many or the other simple fact so far they suck at it?

"The One Life Burnside Could Not Repair or Save Was His Own"

Santa Rosa Army veteran who suffered from PTSD buried after suicide 
Press Democrat News
Meg McConahey
February 14, 2016

On Sunday, in a scene all too familiar across the country, more than 100 friends and family members, surrounded by a protective phalanx of veterans with the Patriot Guard and American Legion on motorcycles, gathered at Cypress Hill Cemetery in Petaluma to say goodbye to a young man variously called “intense,” “loyal, ”committed,” “compassionate,” “heroic” and even “God-sent.”

Lynnett Casey watches as military rites are given to her son, Combat Medic Sgt. Raymond Burnside, a U.S. Army veteran, at Cypress Hill Memorial Park in Petaluma, February 14, 2016. Burnside killed himself after suffering from service-related PTSD due to serving as an Army Medic in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Jeremy Portje/For The Press Democrat)

As an Army medic, Ray Burnside was called upon to save many lives during two tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition to administering care that included performing emergency surgery on fellow soldiers in combat, he was credited with providing medical help to more than 4,000 Iraqis and veterinary services to 2,000 head of livestock.

His humanitarian efforts built up the kind of trust and loyalty among Iraqi civilians that helped the U.S. military gain critical access to key tribal leaders, officials said in a letter awarding him the Bronze Star.

But the one life Burnside could not repair or save was his own. Beneath his man-of-steel exterior, the sensitive young Sonoma County native who as a teenager was a pacifist and handed out food to homeless people in Old Courthouse Square was imploding into a thousand little pieces.

In the small hours of the morning on Jan. 27, nearly four years after he was honorably discharged and returned home to Santa Rosa, Burnside checked into a Santa Rosa motel and texted his mother, Lynnette Casey, that he had a rope with which to hang himself.
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Vietnam Veterans Fighting Hep C Point to Jet Guns

Vietnam vets blame 'jet guns' for their hepatitis C
OC Register
By LILY LEUNG / Staff writer
February 14, 2016

The VA and the device’s manufacturer dispute that. But the Vietnam Veterans of America, a Maryland-based nonprofit, in recent months adopted the jet gun issue as one of its causes, due to mounting evidence and member concerns.

A small, yet increasing number of military veterans, mainly those who served during the Vietnam War, are receiving VA disability benefits in connection to Hepatitis C. Here, an Army veteran gets his annual liver ultrasound at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. DETROIT FREE PRESS VIA ZUMAPRESS.COM

Near the end of the Vietnam War, Lynn Seiser lined up with other fresh-faced Army recruits to await a dreaded, often bloody ritual.

Along with millions of other members of the military, Seiser, then 21, received his service vaccines not by way of disposable syringes but with needleless “jet guns” that blasted drugs into each arm using puffs of high pressure. The U.S. military at the time touted the medical device for its ability to immunize veterans en masse, cheaply and safely.

However, the guns often weren’t sterilized between uses and “if you flinched, it ripped you open,” said Seiser, a former longtime Orange County resident and clinical psychology professor. “If anyone in the line had something, everyone would be exposed.”

Decades later, a growing chorus of Vietnam War veterans like Seiser and medical experts – including some doctors within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs – argue that the inoculators, since removed from use, were a likely vehicle for the hepatitis C virus.

During the Vietnam conflict alone, at least 4.7 million service members were administered vaccinations in this manner, based on one government report that said 235,000 recruits were injected by jet gun each year over a span of three decades. An FDA hearing cites much higher figures: It said the Department of Defense jet gun vaccinated 20 million to 40 million military personnel from 1965 to 1980.
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Polar Plunge Taken By 71-year-old Vietnam and Iraq Wars Veteran

A baptism by fire and chilly water: Corvallis army veterans join for polar plunge
Corvallis Gazette-Times
NATHAN BRUTTELL
February 13, 2016

“Either way it’s a baptism by fire ... or chilly water. We were tested in Baghdad and we were tested in the Willamette,” Riley said, laughing. “When that water hit me, it was a shock.”

Riley King splashed into the chilly Willamette River Saturday morning with a little hesitation after the first blast of water sent shivers down his spine.

But the 71-year-old Vietnam and Iraq war veteran — dressed in patriotic white socks, red shorts and a blue tank-top — had to finish the mission. So he made sure to swim out to the markers at the seventh annual Corvallis Polar Plunge. Then he dunked his head for good measure and came up smiling. And while the Corvallis man could’ve spent another few minutes in the water, he heard the voice of a man with whom he served in the Iraq war.

“Get over here,” shouted Capt. Dan Hendrickson with the Corvallis Police Department.

With King slow to emerge from the water, Hendrickson went back and threw an arm around the shoulder of his old Army buddy. The two served together for two years in the sweltering heat of Baghdad more than a decade ago, Hendrickson a lieutenant colonel and King as a sergeant. When asked afterward if the duo preferred the 47-degree Willamette River or the 100-plus degree heat of the Iraqi desert, Riley let out a big laugh.

The pair joined hundreds of other participants on 50-plus teams Saturday and helped raise more than $35,000 for Special Olympics Oregon, which celebrates its 41st anniversary this year. The organization provides year-round sports training for more than 10,000 participants with intellectual disabilities.
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