Family Searching for Missing Iraq Veteran in Louisiana

Family of missing Bossier City war veteran wants answers 
KSLA News
by Troy Washington 
Feb 14, 2016 

BOSSIER CITY, LA (KSLA) - A Bossier City family wants answers five days after the mysterious disappearance of 33-year-old Bernard Hall, an Iraqi war veteran.

"Police tell us that a blood trail led to the river, but we're still hopeful that he's out there somewhere,” said Hall’s mother, Pamela Hall. His car was found abandoned on the banks of the Red River. Hall was last seen Tuesday and reported missing on Wednesday. 

"Bernard, you have a loving family and we want you home," said Pamela Hall. Bossier and Caddo Parish dive teams have been searching for Hall who, according to his family, suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Bi-polar disorder and Schizophrenia. "He's missing and we have no idea where he is, we are hurting," added Pamela Hall. read more here

Candidates for President Couldn't Live up to Washington Standards

Presidential Candidates Run For Office and Away From Records?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 15, 2016

Fascinating report on how much the candidates for President actually thought about our veterans on Charlotte Observer. All candidates say they would help veterans. Who actually has a plan?

They took a look at all the speeches and then at how much thought they actually gave to veterans struggling to get the care they have been promised for generations.

Bernie Sanders: ‘We have a moral obligation’
Vermont Sen. Sanders’ public platform on veterans’ issues focuses heavily on his record in the Senate. He offers only five brief bullets points as a plan, including fully funding and expanding the VA and offering improved dental and mental care.

Sanders has been vocal on veterans’ issues since the beginning of his campaign. He has touted his record as the former chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, which worked to provide billions in extra funding to boost health care for veterans. On the campaign trail, his wife, Jane, has often told the story of how Sanders decided to run for president when a disabled veteran thanked him for helping him secure benefits.

At the same time, Sanders has been criticized for defending the VA in the midst of the 2014 scandal and initially dismissing its systematic failures. When pressed on the issue in recent interviews, he admitted, “We should have done better.”

Yes, he should have done better as the Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, but we saw repeated performances of duck, dodge and hide the same way we saw all of it from all the others before him.

The really ironic thing that has escaped most reporters is the simple fact they have had jurisdiction over the VA since the 40's.

Hillary Clinton is running but no one seemed to notice that when Bill Clinton claims in the backlog for President Bush. President Bush left Obama more. Now Obama will leave even more.

By March of 2007, the Boston Globe reported that the backlog of claims had gone from 69,000 in 2000 to 400,000 in 2007 taking 177 days to process an original claim and 657 days to process an appeal. The news got worse with a staggering 915,000 in 2009 with 803,000 with the Board of Appeals.

Here is what was going on in 2008

From September 2007 to May 2008, GAO looked at four VBA regional offices, in Atlanta; Baltimore; Milwaukee; and Portland, Ore.

VA officials said it takes at least two years to properly train disability claims employees, and they must complete 80 hours of training a year. New employees have three weeks of intense classroom training before they begin several months of on-the-job training at their home offices.

But “because the agency has no policy outlining consequences for individual staff who do not complete their 80 hours of training per year, individual staff are not held accountable for meeting their annual training requirement,” the GAO found. “And, at present, VBA central office lacks the ability to track training completed by individual staff members.” GAO faults training for VA claims processors Air Force Times By Kelly Kennedy

“Backlogs are at the point where veterans must wait an average of six months for a decision on benefits claims and some veterans are waiting as long as four years,” number of unprocessed veterans claims exceeds 915,000 — a 100,000 jump since the beginning of the year.” (Have VA Pay old claims automatically, Rick Maze, Marine Corps Times, June 30, 2009)

Hey but let's just pretend all this is new and no one had anything to do with anything that has gone wrong EVEN THOUGH IT IS PRESIDENT'S DAY AND THESE FOLKS ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM WHAT THEY ALREADY LET HAPPEN?

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.
read more here

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.
read more here