Boston DAV helps Camp Lejeune toxic water vet receive comp

Lejeune veteran receives full disability on contaminated water claims

March 16, 2010 1:20 AM
HOPE HODGE
A former Camp Lejeune Marine suffering from a rare blood disease last week became one of a small number of veterans to receive full disability due to historical water contamination.

Braintree, Mass., resident Paul Buckley said he was shocked after multiple claim denials from the Department of Veterans Affairs to discover a packet in his mailbox granting his claim in full.

“I opened it up and almost fell to the ground,” he said.

The victory comes after a long and harrowing journey for the 46-year-old veteran. On May 10, 2006, more than 20 years after Buckley’s contract with the Marine Corps ended, he became rapidly ill, driving himself to the hospital before collapsing in its emergency room. He was in a coma for 10 days.

Buckley, then 42, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an uncommon and largely incurable form of cancer that typically afflicts a far different demographic.

“The doctors were confused because the people who get my disease are primarily elderly and they have worked in industries where there has been exposure to certain chemicals,” Buckley said. “I was burning my brain trying to figure out where I got this.”

Staff with the Boston branch of Disabled American Veterans, who advocated on Buckley’s behalf, said that he represented a “perfect storm” of circumstances: no environmental or family links to his disease and a detailed nexus letter from doctors with Harvard Medical School making his case.

read more here

http://www.jdnews.com/articles/full-73912-veterans-claim.html

National Medal Of Honor Day at White House

The White House Blog
National Medal of Honor Day
Posted by Jesse Lee on March 26, 2009 at 08:46 AM EDT
Yesterday the President participated in the wreath-laying ceremony for National Medal of Honor Day at Arlington National Cemetery, along with more than 30 of the 98 living Medal of Honor recipients.

The President issued the following statement yesterday:
We are grateful to all those who wear the uniform of our Armed Forces and serve and sacrifice on behalf of our great nation. Members of our Armed Forces hold themselves to the highest standards and set an example of responsibility to one another and to the country that should inspire all Americans to serve a purpose greater than themselves. Today we pay our respect to those who distinguished themselves conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty - the recipients of the Medal of Honor.
Since it was first awarded during the Civil War to the current battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, Medal of Honor recipients have displayed tremendous courage, an unfailing determination to succeed, and a humbling willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice. It is telling that so many Medal of Honor recipients received the award posthumously. These soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsman embody the best of American values and ideals.
Medal of Honor recipients are the foremost example of greatness in service and sacrifice. Their bravery and humble strength continues to reassure our nation of the strength of its character and ideals even in these difficult times. We owe these heroes a debt of gratitude that our nation can never fully repay. So, it is on this day that we salute that fact and celebrate their lives and heroic actions that have placed them amongst the "bravest of the brave." We must never forget their sacrifice and will always keep the Fallen and their families in our thoughts and prayers.

Youth suicides epidemic on tribal reservations

Youth suicides epidemic on tribal reservations
Rates among Native Americans are 10 times the national average

Coloradas Mangus, a sophomore at Ruidoso High School on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, N.M., testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing on "The Preventable Epidemic: Youth Suicides and the Urgent Need for Mental Health Care Resources in Indian Country."

By MATTHEW DALY

updated 7:47 p.m. ET, Thurs., March. 25, 2010
WASHINGTON - At 15, high school sophomore Coloradas Mangas knows all too much about suicide.

He's recently had several friends who took their own lives, and he survived a suicide attempt himself.

Coloradas, a member of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, lives on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico, where there have been five youth suicides since the start of the school year. All were his friends.


Coloradas went to Capitol Hill Thursday to tell lawmakers about the urgent problem of suicide among Native Americans. Tribal suicide rates are 70 percent higher than for the general population, and the youth suicide rate is even higher. On some reservations youth suicide rates are 10 times the national average.

"Things go wrong that they can't change," Coloradas said, trying to explain the high rate of suicide in his community. "They don't get shown the love they need. They say, 'You don't love me when I was here. Now you love me when I'm not here.' "

On the mountainous Mescalero reservation, located in south-central New Mexico more than 200 miles south of Albuquerque, a single mental health clinic serves a tribe of more than 4,500 people. The closest 24-hour Hotline is in Albuquerque.
read more here
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36039795/ns/health-mental_health/

At least 10 dead following multi vehicle crash on Interstate 65

At least 10 people were killed in a wreck on Interstate 65 in Kentucky this morning, a spokesman for the Kentucky State Police said. FULL STORY

Los Angeles SWAT team officer killed in Afghanistan

2 Calif Marines killed in Afghanistan

Associated Press
03/26/10 3:10 AM PDT

LOS ANGELES — They were Marines from the same Southern California city. One was a Los Angeles SWAT team officer on active duty, the other was the son of a Santa Ana police sergeant. Both were killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb while on patrol in Afghanistan.

Sgt., Maj. Robert. J. Cottle, 45, a 20-year LAPD veteran, and Lance Cpl. Rick. J. Centanni, 19, both of Yorba Linda, were traveling with two other Marines in an armored truck in the Marjah region of Afghanistan when the blast occurred, LAPD Capt. John Incontro said. The other Marines were seriously injured. No other details of the incident were immediately available.

Cottle and Centanni were stationed with the 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, out of Camp Pendleton, in southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Cottle had been deployed on active duty since August 2009.

2 Calif Marines killed in Afghanistan

11 Utah Guard workers hospitalized

11 Utah Guard workers hospitalized

By Mike Stark - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Mar 25, 2010 19:33:00 EDT

CAMP WILLIAMS, Utah —Eleven workers who were exposed to an irritating material at a Utah National Guard training base on Thursday had to be decontaminated in a hospital parking lot before they were taken to the emergency room and released several hours later.

The irritant came from material leaking from a building’s heating system that was dripping onto some drywall, according to Maj. Craig Bello of the 85th Civil Support Team.
read more here
11 Utah Guard workers hospitalized

Online scammers are posing as US serviceman prey on hearts

Beware online knights in shining armor, US Army warns

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, March 26th, 2010 -- 8:26 am
Online scammers are posing as US serviceman posted overseas and promising love and marriage to cheat women out of thousands of dollars, the US Army's Criminal Investigation Command has warned.

Special CID agents cautioned that they had learned of multiple incidents in which people online posed as US soldiers and got "romantically involved... with female victims and prey on their emotions and patriotism."

Army CID spokesman Chris Grey said the scammers often used information about real soldiers, including their names and ranks, and found photographs of soldiers online to create a false identity.

These individuals promise "true love, but only end up breaking hearts and bank accounts," the CID warned.
read more here
Beware online knights in shining armor, US Army warns

What Joe Dwyer's Death Can Teach Us about PTSD

Battling the Inner Demons of War
What Joe Dwyer's Death Can Teach Us about PTSD
By Cordula Meyer
A photograph of PFC Joseph Dwyer in Iraq made him an American hero, but five years after returning home, mental combat wounds drove him to his death. He is not alone. In 2009, more than twice as many soldiers died by their own hands than were killed by the enemy in Iraq. But new types of therapy are giving others the chance for the peace he never had.

On an afternoon in June 2008, police in Pinehurst, North Carolina, were dispatched to a white farmhouse. The town is set in an idyllic location, complete with woods, plantation houses and eight golf courses. Many of its inhabitants are retirees, so law enforcement officers generally don't have much to do. But, in the previous months, they had repeatedly been called to this particular address. Its owner, a 31-year-old man named Joe Dwyer, had been barricading himself in his house, where he kept several pistols and a semiautomatic rifle.


This time, the officers broke down the door. Once inside, they found Dwyer lying on the ground, covered in feces and urine, gasping for air. "Help me!" the young man begged the officers. "I can't breathe." Surrounding him were dozens of empty cans of Dust-Off, an aerosol spray meant to clean electronic equipment. But it can also be inhaled as a kind of sedative, which can cause heart and lung damage if repeated.

A taxi driver had alerted the police. She told them that, for months, she had been driving him to local shops every day to buy his cans of Dust-Off because he had wrecked his own car veering to avoid a roadside object he thought was an Iraqi bomb.

Joseph Dwyer was a giant of a man with reddish-brown hair. He died that same day while being rushed to the hospital. He was buried a few days later with military honors. While handing Dwyer's widow, Matina, the folded flag that had been draped over her husband's coffin as a mark of respect from the US Army, an officer fell to his knees in front of her.
read more here
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,685442,00.html

Fiery WWII veteran surrenders peacefully after standoff

Fiery veteran surrenders peacefully after standoff
After dispute with wife, he says he's been married 'too damn long'
By DALE LEZON HOUSTON CHRONICLE
March 25, 2010, 8:13PM
After he allegedly fired a gunshot during an argument with his wife, a 84-year-old World War II-era veteran held a SWAT team at bay at the couple's home in southwest Houston for nearly six hours early Thursday before he was arrested peacefully.

The standoff began around 1:30 a.m. after the homeowner, who identified himself as Gerald Lancaster, fired a shot as his wife was leaving their home in the 10100 block of Amblewood, authorities said.

He was arrested about 7 a.m., police said, and charged with aggravated assault.

Patrol officers arrived at the home after the gunshot, and later the Houston Police Department SWAT unit was dispatched because Lancaster did not come outside.

Lancaster was unarmed when arrested by SWAT officers who broke through a door at the home. He didn't resist, police said, and no injuries were reported.

Lancaster, in an interview from the backseat of a police cruiser after his arrest, said he had been drinking alcohol during the day and that he and his wife had argued. He said his wife had not been drinking.
read more here
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/military/6929247.html

Senators want data on military prescription drug use

Senators want data on prescription drug use

By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Mar 25, 2010 9:21:40 EDT

Several senators expressed concern Wednesday about increasing psychiatric drug usage among service members and called on top military health officials to provide detailed data about how many troops are on anti-depressants and other mind-altering drugs.

At a hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s military personnel panel, cited a recent Military Times report about the spike in psychotropic drug use in the military community, pointing to evidence that overall psychiatric drug usage has risen about 76 percent since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We’ve seen recent reports of increased prescription drug use that are deeply troubling … in fact, the data is stunning,” Webb told the surgeons general from the Army, Navy and Air Force and the Marine Corps’s top health official, who all appeared at the hearing on the military health system.
read more here
Senators want data on prescription drug use