Vietnam Vet, Shot Was Protecting Family

Son: Man Shot Was Protecting Family
Deputies: 2 Orange Park Men Shot Each Other During Spat

POSTED: Thursday, April 29, 2010
UPDATED: 5:09 pm EDT April 29, 2010



Family Photo
Robert Webster
ORANGE PARK, Fla. -- The son of an Orange Park man shot and killed Wednesday afternoon said his dad was just protecting his family.

Robert Webster, 63, a Vietnam veteran, died from a gunshot wound to his chest after deputies said he and Charles Ingram, 57, shot each other. Ingram, who was shot in the head, remains hospitalized in critical condition.

Detectives said the two men had a verbal argument and shot at each other several times in the street on Aurora Boulevard. Neighbors said Ingram was already armed when he approached Webster in his driveway, and when they began to argue, Webster went for his gun and the two began shooting.



Tim Webster, Robert Webster's son, said he blames the Clay County Sheriff's Office for not looking into complaints raised against Ingram, who deputies said has shot an unleashed dog in the neighborhood.
read more here
http://www.news4jax.com/news/23306285/detail.html

Shinseki Announces VA Cutting Insurance Premiums for Families

Shinseki Announces VA Cutting Insurance Premiums for Families

WASHINGTON (April 29, 2010) - Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K.
Shinseki announced today that military personnel insuring their families
under the Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance (SGLI) program, which is
administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs, will have reduced
out-of-pocket expenses beginning July 1.

"VA hopes these reductions will allow more military personnel to obtain
affordable life insurance coverage for their spouses, particularly in
these difficult economic times," said Shinseki. "Without insurance
protection, life after the loss of a spouse can be not only challenging
emotionally, but can place a severe financial strain on a family."

Family SGLI (FSGLI) monthly premium rates will be reduced for all age
groups by an average of 8 percent. The new rates are based on revised
estimates for the cost of the program. This is the third time that
premiums have been reduced since the FSGLI program began in November
2001. Spousal premiums were previously reduced for all age groups in
2003 and 2006.

FSGLI coverage provides life insurance protection to military personnel
for their spouses and children. Children are automatically insured for
$10,000, with no premiums charged.

Based on the coverage of service members, spouses may be insured for up
to $100,000. Military personnel pay age-based premiums for spousal
coverage -- the older the spouse, the higher the premium rate.

The premium reduction ensures FSGLI remains highly competitive compared
to commercial insurers.

FSGLI coverage is available in increments of $10,000. The current and
revised monthly premium rates per $10,000 of insurance, along with other
information, are available on the Internet at www.insurance.va.gov

Vets salute Obama on funding

Vets salute Obama on funding
Legion cites administration 'accessibility'

By Kara Rowland

President Obama is struggling to fulfill campaign promises to pass energy and immigration measures, but he's poised to notch another victory for a stump-speech vow: to make sure veterans' funding isn't held hostage to the government's bad finances.

While watchdogs caution there's still a long list of problems for veterans, all sides agree the President Obama has made big strides on promises he made in 2008 when competing for military votes against Republican nominee and Vietnam veteran Sen. John McCain - to fully fund the Veterans Administration, expand access to care in rural areas and improve treatment for mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

"The accessibility with this administration has been outstanding. They listen, they reach out to the veterans' service organizations, they see the value in communicating," Peter Gaytan, executive director of the American Legion, the nation's largest veterans' organization, with 2.5 million members.

Even amid competing priorities and a deepening recession, Mr. Obama last year managed to secure the biggest increase in funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 30 years. And as Congress begins writing spending bills for 2011, despite a spending freeze on some other domestic spending, he's looking for more aid for veterans.

Mr. Obama's proposed VA budget for fiscal 2011 asks for $125 billion - a 10 percent jump from what Congress enacted for 2010, which was itself more than 16 percent more than 2009. The discretionary portion of next year's budget request - the part the administration and Congress have the most direct control over - is up nearly 20 percent since 2009, to total $60.3 billion.
read more here
Vets salute Obama on funding

Chaplain accused of falsely claiming to be Army Ranger

A Chaplain did this?

Man accused of falsely claiming to be Ranger

The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Apr 28, 2010 21:48:51 EDT

PHOENIX — A federal grand jury in Phoenix has indicted a former chaplain for making false claims about his military honors and training.

Prosecutors say 42-year-old Kurt Alan Bishop, of Queen Creek, falsely claimed to have received advanced combat training, achieving the elite status of an Army Ranger.

The 34-count indictment alleges that Bishop began making false claims about his military decorations and training in 1991, shortly after he ended his first tour of active duty. Authorities say the claims helped him become an officer in the Arizona National Guard and to enter the Chaplain Corps in 2006, both resulting in increases in his military salary and benefits.

Bishop served as a chaplain until his discharge earlier this year.

Prosecutors said Wednesday that a summons has been issued for Bishop to appear in federal court on the charges. It was not immediately known whether Bishop had legal representation for his case.
Man accused of falsely claiming to be Ranger

Be as resolute to heal as you were to survive

If you think you have been wounded by PTSD because you are weak, you have already determined your destiny. On Criminal Minds last night Agent Rossi (Joe Mantegna) said "Scars are a reminder of where we've been but they are not dictator of where we are going." PTSD is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that you are a survivor. You have survived traumatic events that would bring even the most strongest person you know to their knees. PTSD does not have to destroy you if you understand it and be resolute to heal.

Main Entry: 1res·o·lute
Pronunciation: \ˈre-zə-ˌlüt, -lət\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin resolutus, past participle of resolvere
Date: 1533
1 : marked by firm determination : resolved
2 : bold, steady

synonyms see faithful
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolute

The sooner you seek help to heal the sooner PTSD stops getting worse. PTSD is much like an infection. It feeds of itself. It gets stronger while everything you knew about yourself becomes infected. We all know infections get worse and spread without the intervention of medical help so that your body's own built in defenses can have help to overcome the infection. PTSD works the same way. Medical intervention aids your minds ability to overcome the horrors trapped inside your memory. The sooner you begin getting help, the less PTSD is allowed to claim of the person you were before the trauma happened.

Don't let the scar you carry dictate how you spend the rest of your life.

Vietnam Recognition Day speaker under investigation

Officials investigate guest speaker at Vietnam veteran recognition ceremony
April 27, 2010 5:00 PM
HOPE HODGE
Marine officials are investigating the guest speaker at a Vietnam veterans’ recognition day who critics said never went to Vietnam.

Michael Hamilton, who says he’s a former Marine colonel, gave an emotional keynote speech at Saturday’s Vietnam Recognition Day, held at Jacksonville’s Vietnam Memorial. Each event attendee received a copy of Hamilton’s impressive biography, showing a rapid rise from the rank of private first class to colonel between 1961 and 1969 while also accumulating 80 medals and ribbons, including two Navy Crosses, four Silver Stars and eight Purple Hearts.

But, local Vietnam veterans say, none of it is true.

John Cooney, the adjutant of the Beirut Memorial Chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, said veterans attending the ceremony had their doubts even before Hamilton began to speak.

“Nobody is decorated that much,” Cooney said. “We’re positive that everything is bogus that is in that bio.”

Hamilton’s name appears in the Phonies Index at the website www.pownetwork.org. According to the listing, “Claims that his records were redacted and that he has been trying for 24 years to prove that he was in the incident … Military records so far show NO OVERSEAS DUTY, NO COVERT OR TACTICAL COMBAT TRAINING.”

Where his name doesn’t appear is in the Hall of Valor database, maintained by www.militarytimes.com. That site contains the names of all recipients of distinguished awards, including the Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross and Silver Star.
read more here
http://www.enctoday.com/news/vietnam-77705-jdn-officials-guest.html

PTSD Affects Soldiers Adjusting to Life after War

As the wife of a Vietnam veteran, I can personally testify that knowing what PTSD was and why it was haunting my husband, not only held this family together, it helped him to heal. Even with all the passing years between Vietnam and receiving help from the VA, he is living a life again instead of dying a very slow death. I've seen too many veterans abandoned by their families simply because no one told them what PTSD was or what they could do about it. Therapists avoided including the family in the healing process and no one was offering them support, excluding them when they needed to be included. They ended up making PTSD worse simply because they didn't understand.

It became my mission to correct this. While I work with veterans so that they move past the stigma and seek help, it is equally important for the families to be informed so they do not make the same mistakes unknowingly making PTSD worse. I've been married for over 25 years, so I know first hand families do not need to fall apart and veterans can heal even if they cannot be cured.

Here's a link to my book, For the Love of Jack . It's about 18 years of living with PTSD. It's for free but please consider making a donation so that I can continue this work.

Here's one of the first videos I made so that everyone can understand what it took me years to learn. Wounded Minds. Over on the sidebar, there are even more videos on PTSD. Please use them and pass them on to anyone you think may be helped by them. These are also for free but again, please consider making a donation to support my ministry of helping them heal.

Wounded Minds, PTSD

Posted to Great Americans by NamGuardianAngel on September 19, 2009

Click to Play View Details

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome Affects Soldiers Adjusting to Life after War
Corinne Hautala

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Although police have accused Spc. Kip Lynch in the slayings of his wife and baby daughter, they have not explained what led up to the horrific deaths Monday.

But psychologists say many soldiers face challenges when they return from a combat zone. It is not uncommon to see soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome when they return home from a deployment, said Cindy Alderson, the director of Military and Veteran Programs and Services at University of North Florida.

Alderson, a Navy veteran, knows personally the struggles of returning home after a long deployment.

She said loved ones can help service members by spotting the signs of PTSD and then encouraging them to seek help.
read more here
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome Affects Soldiers

Vietnam veteran donates so Mount Olive Memorial Day parade can go on

Vietnam veteran donates $3,000 so Mount Olive Memorial Day parade can go on
By MEGHAN VAN DYK • STAFF WRITER • April 28, 2010


MOUNT OLIVE — The Mount Olive Memorial Day parade is back on, thanks to a donation from a Flanders business owner.

John Post, president of Lamtec Corp., plans to donate $3,000 to cover the cost of the parade, which has been running in the township for 25 years. The parade was canceled in light of planned staff cuts to keep a lid on Mount Olive's municipal budget.


"It struck a nerve when I heard it was being canceled," said Post, of Tranquility Township. "Memorial Day is an important day to honor veterans, particularly those that never made it back."


While Post has never even attended the parade in Mount Olive, the Vietnam War Army veteran said Flanders is still his community. His manufacturing company, which produces facings for insulation, has operated at its Bartley Chester Road location since 1982, he said.
read more here
Vietnam veteran donates so Mount Olive Memorial Day parade can go on

Does CNN care about PTSD at all?

If you watched any of the news reports from Iraq, you would have seen the changes in Ware along with seeing the kind of courage it took to stay there and then go back so many times. If he needs to heal then CNN should give him all the time he needs to do it along with all the support it takes. Above that, CNN should take it personally that one of their own is suffering because he was dedicated to his job in a combat zone. Ware reported on the conditions in Iraq but he also reported on the troops. He cared. CNN could have gone a long way in helping the soldiers heal as well if they bothered to report on it as much as they do report on celebrities and gossip.

Michael Ware On Leave From CNN
Huffington Post
Danny Shea
Foreign correspondent Michael Ware, the face of CNN's coverage of Iraq, is on leave from the network.

The network says that Ware, who has been conspicuously absent from CNN, is on leave to write a book.

"Michael is currently on a leave of absence writing a book," a CNN spokesperson told the Huffington Post. "We don't discuss individual contracts."

AllThingsCNN, a blog covering the network, speculates that Ware will not be returning to CNN ever after the network denied his request for more time off to write his book and deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Ware was the subject of a haunting, must-read Men's Journal profile in December 2008 that brought readers into his tortured world. Titled "CNN's Prisoner of War," the story by Greg Veis quoted Ware as saying of his return from Iraq, "I am not the same fucking person. I am not the same person. I don't know how to come home." click link above for more

"Crazy Nam Vets" vindicated by today's wars

"Crazy Nam Vets" vindicated by today's wars

If you ever judged Vietnam veterans, protested against them, called them names or regarded them as "crazy Nam Vet" here's your chance to apologize to them. When they came home, no one cared. No one was talking about treating the traumatized veterans differently than the general population that never once did anything like they did, went where they went, risked their lives facing what they faced, but now we know better. We see the men and women we send into combat as different from the rest of us for a reason. We know that justice demands their tours of duty be taken into consideration in deciding prison time or therapy. This is good but the fact remains in a perfect nation, they would never come home without the help they need waiting for them.

Incarcerated Veterans

In January 2000, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released a special report on incarcerated veterans. The following are highlights of the report, "Veterans in Prison or Jail":

Over 225,000 veterans were held in U.S. prisons or jails in 1998.

Among adult males in 1998, there were 937 incarcerated veterans per 100,000 veteran residents.
1 in every 6 incarcerated veterans was not honorably discharged from the military.
About 20% of veterans in prison reported seeing combat duty during their military service.
In 1998, an estimated 56,500 Vietnam War-era veterans and 18,500 Persian Gulf War veterans were held in state and federal prisons.
Nearly 60% of incarcerated veterans had served in the Army.
Among state prisoners, over half (53%) of veterans were white non-hispanics, compared to nearly a third (31%) of non-veterans; among federal prisoners, the percentage of veterans who were white (50%) was nearly double that of non-veterans (26%).
Among state prisoners, the median age of veterans was 10 years older than that of other prison and jail inmates.
Among state prisoners, veterans (32%) were about 3 times more likely than non-veterans (11%) to have attended college.
Veterans are more likely than others to be in prison for a violent offense but less likely to be serving a sentence for drugs.

About 35% of veterans in state prison, compared to 20% of non-veterans, were convicted of homicide or sexual assault.
Veterans (30%) were more likely than other state prisoners (23%) to be first-time offenders.
Among violent state prisoners, the average sentence of veterans was 50 months longer than the average of non-veterans.
At year-end in 1997, sex offenders accounted for 1 in 3 prisoners held in military correctional facilities.
Combat veterans were no more likely to be violent offenders than other veterans.
Veterans in state prison reported higher levels of alcohol abuse and lower levels of drug abuse than other prisoners.

Veterans in state prison were less likely (26%) than other state prisoners (34%) to report having used drugs at the time of their offense.
Nearly 60% of veterans in state prison had driven drunk in the past, compared to 45% of other inmates.
About 70% of veterans, compared to 54% of other state prisoners, had been working full-time before arrest.
Incarcerated veterans were as likely as non-veterans to have been homeless when arrested.
http://www.nchv.org/background.cfm#incarcerated

We locked them up, let them end up homeless, let them be brought to the point where after surviving combat they didn't want to live longer back here in the states and then we topped that off with not wanting to give them jobs. History is repeating itself but at least more people in this country know about what is going on.

But we also let them end up homeless too.

Veteran-specific highlights from the USICH report include:

23% of the homeless population are veterans
33% of the male homeless population are veterans
47% served Vietnam-era
17% served post-Vietnam
15% served pre-Vietnam
67% served three or more years
33% were stationed in war zone
25% have used VA homeless services
85% completed high school/GED, compared to 56% of non-veterans
89% received an honorable discharge
79% reside in central cities
16% reside in suburban areas
5% reside in rural areas
76% experience alcohol, drug or mental health problems
46% are white males, compared to 34% of non-veterans
46% are age 45 or older, compared to 20% non-veterans

Service needs cited include:

45% need help finding a job
37% need help finding housing

How many homeless veterans are there?

Accurate numbers community-by-community are not available. Some communities do annual counts; others do an estimate based on a variety of factors. Contact the closest VA medical center's homeless coordinator, the office of your mayor, or another presiding official to get local information.

PTSD is finally becoming a common term. When you think of how far we've come when it comes to OEF and OIF veterans, we have to acknowledge that we owe the debt to the Vietnam veterans who came home and fought for all there is today for PTSD. We still have a very long way to go. Now there are Veterans Courts but they are not all over the country. This is one more example of what the need is.

From War to Prison: Veterans Caught in the Criminal Justice System
Tim King Salem-News.com
Documentary highlights conflicts between returning PTSD Combat Vets and a criminal justice system that often fails to consider their unique situation.


(LOS ANGELES) - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the impact this complex and misunderstood problem had on a young American's life is the subject of a hard driving documentary debuting online today called From War to Prison: Veterans Caught in the Criminal Justice System.

Nathan Keyes served two tours in Iraq during his 8 years in the U.S. Army. But when he came home from the war suffering from PTSD, everything went terribly wrong, and now this soldier is serving three years in prison.

His mom Jamie Keyes, says in his military service, her son followed in the footsteps of his grandfather and uncle; they both served in the military.

When Nathan came home from the war suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Jamie says didn’t know what to do for him.

"These boys don’t come home with an instruction booklet – how to deal with them, how to respond to them, and I knew almost nothing about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder," Keyes said in a report published by C. Peterson with Barrow County News in Georgia.
read more here
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april282010/in-their-boots.php