Military deaths often go unnoticed by the general public

“We are only one of 5,500 American families who have suffered the loss of a child in this war,” Kelly wrote in an email. “The death of my boy simply cannot be made to seem any more tragic than the others.”

Lt. General says marine son’s death went largely unnoticed to nation
By Laura Donovan - The Daily Caller


Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly’s Marine son, Robert M. Kelly died instantly when he stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan in November of last year. Though John Kelly didn’t once mention his son’s name while delivering a speech about military sacrifices later that month, he told ballroom attendees that military deaths often go unnoticed by the general public.

Kelly, the most senior U.S. military officer to lose a son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan, has taken great measures to dodge the press since his son’s passing. Before delivering that address, Kelly instructed the Marine Corps officer introducing him, “Please don’t mention my son.”



Read more: Lt. General says marine son’s death

We can no longer bury our dead in this country with dignity

Albert Snyder was right more than anyone wants to admit right now. Westboro is not just about protesting at military funerals but they have the "right" as they believe to protest at anyone's funeral. They'll show up wherever they think they'll get the most attention.

Westboro Wins Final Court Battle; Marine's Family Saddened

"My first thought was that eight justices don't have the common sense God gave a goat. We found out today that we can no longer bury our dead in this country with dignity."
- Albert Snyder

Slain Marine's Father: What Is This Country Becoming?

Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder
WASHINGTON -- A lawsuit filed against the Westboro Baptist Church that won judgment in Baltimore ultimately lost at the Supreme Court, and the family who filed the suit is now questioning where the country is headed.

The First Amendment protects fundamentalist church members who mount attention-getting, anti-gay protests outside military funerals, The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.


The court voted 8-1 in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.
The decision upheld an appeals court ruling that threw out a $5 million judgment to the father of the late Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who died in Iraq in 2006. Albert Snyder sued church members after they picketed his son's funeral in Westminster.
read more here
Westboro Wins Final Court Battle

Sweat lodge trial fuels Native American frustrations

Sweat lodge trial fuels Native American frustrations
By Jessica Ravitz, CNN

Growing up on a reservation in lower Saskatchewan, Alvin Manitopyes learned early to respect the sweat lodge. He was 10 when he attended his first sweat ceremony, and for more than 15 years tribe elders instructed him in his people's ways.

He understands the spiritual mandate he was given as a healer to serve as an intermediary between people and the spirit world. He carries with him the ancient ceremonial songs, passed on through generations.

He knows how the natural elements - earth, fire, water and air - work together to cleanse people, inside and out, and create balance. At 55, he has spent more than 20 years conducting ceremonies in sweat lodges, where water is poured over hot lava rocks as part of a purifying ritual.

"If you have the right to do it, then the environment you're creating is a safe place," says Manitopyes, a public health consultant in Calgary, Alberta, who is Plains Cree and Anishnawbe. "But today we have all kinds of people who observe what's going on and think they can do it themselves. … And that's not a safe place to be."

No example of what worries him is clearer than the case of James Arthur Ray, a self-help guru who led a crowded sweat lodge ceremony that left three people dead. Ray faces manslaughter charges for the deaths allegedly tied to his October 2009 "Spiritual Warrior" retreat outside Sedona, Arizona. His trial began Tuesday.

Ray pleaded not guilty to the charges and has been free on $525,000 bail. Prosecutors say the deaths resulted from Ray's recklessness, an overheated lodge and because he encouraged people to stay inside when they weren't feeling well. His defense team denies those allegations, and attorney Luis Li has called what transpired "a terrible accident, not a crime."
read more here
Sweat lodge trial fuels Native American frustrations

Westboro hate group support by Supreme Court ruling against fallen soldiers

Supreme Court rules for anti-gay church over military funeral protests
By Bill Mears, CNN Supreme Court Producer
March 2, 2011 11:07 a.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The 8-1 vote upholds the right of Westboro Baptist Church members to stage protests
The father of a fallen Marine sued after church members protested at his son's funeral
The U.S. has chosen "to protect even hurtful speech on public issues," Roberts writes

Washington (CNN) -- A Kansas church that attracted nationwide attention for its angry, anti-gay protests at the funerals of U.S. military members has won its appeal at the Supreme Court, an issue testing the competing constitutional rights of free speech and privacy.

The justices, by an 8-1 vote, said Wednesday that members of Westboro Baptist Church had a right to promote what they call a broad-based message on public matters such as wars. The father of a fallen Marine had sued the small church, saying those protests amounted to targeted harassment and an intentional infliction of emotional distress.
read more here

Supreme Court rules for anti-gay church

Gunman kills soldiers on military bus in Germany

BREAKING NEWS


2 U.S. soldiers reported killed at German airport
March 2nd, 2011
10:47 AM ET


[Update 10:52 a.m. ET] Two people were shot and killed Wednesday in an incident involving a U.S. military bus at Frankfurt airport in Germany, a police spokesman said.

Another person is severely wounded, Juergen Linker told CNN, and one person is in custody.

The U.S. military did not immediately comment on the incident.

[Original post, 10:47 a.m. ET] Two U.S. soldiers were shot and killed Wednesday at Frankfurt airport, Germany's busiest airport, a police spokesman said.

There were conflicting reports as to whether the shooting took place inside a terminal or aboard a shuttle bus.
check back with CNN later
2 U.S. soldiers reported killed at German airport

update



Update March 3, 2011

Germany: Shooting Suspect 'Islamist'

Germany: Suspect admits targeting U.S troops
By Melissa Eddy and Tomislav Skaro - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Mar 3, 2011 1:45:13 EST
FRANKFURT, Germany — The suspect in the slaying of two U.S. airmen at Frankfurt airport has confessed to targeting American military members, a German security official said Thursday as investigators probed what they considered a possible act of Islamic terrorism.

German federal prosecutors took over the investigation into Wednesday’s shooting, which also injured two U.S. airmen, one of them critically. They are working together with U.S. authorities, who said Thursday the suspect was not on any American watch list.

Hesse state Interior Minister Boris Rhein told reporters in Wiesbaden that the suspect, identified as a 21-year-old ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, was apparently radicalized over the last few weeks. Relatives in northern Kosovo identified him as Arid Uka, whose family has been living in Germany for 40 years.
read more of this here
Suspect admits targeting U.S troops

Slain airmen from South Carolina and Virginia
The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Mar 3, 2011 22:16:25 EST
WASHINGTON — The Air Force says that the two U.S. airmen slain in a shooting at a German airport were from South Carolina and Virginia.

The Air Force identified the victims as 25-year-old Senior Airman Nicholas J. Alden of Williamston, S.C., and Airman 1st Class Zachary R. Cuddeback of Stanardsville, Va.

RELATED READING

• Germany: Suspect admits targeting U.S. troops

• Families ID airmen killed in Germany attack

• Pa. airman survives deadly Germany shooting

Alden was assigned to the 48th Security Forces Squadron at RAF Lakenheath in England. Cuddeback was assigned to the 86th Vehicle Readiness Squadron at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

German officials say a 21-year-old temporary letter sorter has admitted targeting Americans when he opened fire with a handgun on a busload of U.S. airmen at Frankfurt’s airport on Wednesday, killing two and wounding two others. The airmen were on their way to deployment in Afghanistan.

Malmstrom chaplain shares story of contemplating suicide

"Instead, he was met with mindsets that thought chaplains shouldn't need help. They should only give help."

Think of hearing that. I can tell you that most of the time chaplains need help more but are the last ones to ask for it because of this kind of attitude.

When you spend your life as a "helper" you are all too often unable to ask for help for yourself. Once at that point, too many times, the people turned to find it impossible to understand why help for the "strong" would even be needed.

People end up with PTSD and depression because of their own lives but caregivers also end up with it because of the lives of others seeking help from them. Without support it is hard to find God in the shadows of misery. This I know all too well. I struggle everyday with my faith and most days I lose the battle, finding no comfort from God or people but then one day, out of His hands, a stranger lets me know I do matter. Days like that make the emotional burden seem worth the price but the rest of the time, I wonder who is supposed to help me.

If we help other people, there are only a few times when you can see the relief in their eyes. Only rare times when you discover that what you said or did mattered enough to help them turn the corner.

Many times I spend hours with veterans, usually with emails, and I can tell that I am getting through to them but sooner or later, they stop emailing and move on with their lives. I never know if it was because I gave them what they needed or they got it from someone else. I saw the hits on my videos when they were up on YouTube but when they reached over 5,000 hits with very few comments, I didn't know if they mattered or people were just curious. When they were being used by service groups or mental health professionals, I knew they mattered but never knew who they helped or how much. All of this makes this work even harder. There are too many reasons to just give up and move on with my own life. The thing that keeps me doing it is simple. I know what it is like to feel lost and alone, suffering without finding anywhere to turn.

Those days when there was no support living with PTSD in my family dug wounds deep inside of me and I remember those times with heartache. I know what it is like to be alone, so I do the best I can to offer the help I never found, hoping, praying that today I can make a difference in the life of someone else, just like me way back then.

This story is about a Military Chaplain and his struggle finding the help he needed.

Malmstrom chaplain shares story of contemplating suicide

Posted 3/1/2011



by Valerie Mullett
341st Missile Wing Public Affairs

3/1/2011 - MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, Mont. (AFNS) -- Chaplain (Capt.) John VanderKaay knows what it is like to contemplate suicide. He also knows what it's like to seek help for his feelings and begin the healing process. He has been there and shares his story with anyone it might help.

Three months after returning from a tour in Iraq, he made a permanent change-of-station move to Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., and started settling in to his new job and new surroundings.

Several months later, he said he started to see "dark areas" of his life and he would react in ways that were uncharacteristic of him.

He said he couldn't understand these dark areas, so he opened up to his leaders about his feelings and they encouraged him to talk to a mental health provider about them.

"John, that sounds an awful lot like (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I think you should go and talk with the professionals," Chaplain VanderKaay said he was told.

The chaplain was diagnosed with PTSD and began attending counseling sessions, but these counseling sessions were short-lived.

Not long into his counseling, Hurricane Katrina struck.

"The hospital was destroyed and mental health providers, among many others, were sent away," Chaplain VanderKaay said. "I was there for 10 months after that and there was no opportunity for me to deal with any of my 'stuff.' There were incredible needs (of others) after the devastation. My 'stuff' had to wait."

After the hurricane, he said he went to numerous houses of wives of deployed Airmen only to witness the same fate -- they had lost everything to Katrina and they turned to him for comfort.

"I did this house after house and it weighed on me," Chaplain VanderKaay said.

Eventually he received orders to a new base. However, the trauma of the Hurricane Katrina experiences led to a second diagnosis of PTSD.

"When I got to my next duty station, I was full; I was over-flowing," he said. "I needed to start taking care of my 'stuff.'"

So once again, the chaplain turned to his leaders and told his story, expecting to get the same support he had gotten prior to his first diagnosis.

Instead, he was met with mindsets that thought chaplains shouldn't need help. They should only give help. That only increased the pressures he was feeling. As a result, he came face to face with the perceived stigma of receiving mental help.
read more here
Malmstrom chaplain shares story of contemplating suicide

Supreme Court eases benefit deadline for vets

Supreme Court eases benefit deadline for vets
By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a deadline for military veterans who appeal the federal government's denial of benefits need not be rigidly enforced.

The justices sided with a mentally ill Korean War vet whose appeal was blocked because he missed a 120-day deadline for judicial review by 15 days. The high court reversed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that said Veterans Court judges could not make exceptions to the deadline, even when a veteran's illness contributed to his delayed appeal.
read more here
Supreme Court eases benefit deadline for vets

Budget smoke screen

It has been nearly impossible to comprehend where these sudden concerns about the deficit came from. Why? Because the people doing the most complaining were in charge when it all happened.

February 3, 2008
Updated: February 11, 2008
Q:
During the Clinton administration was the federal budget balanced? Was the federal deficit erased?

A:
Yes to both questions, whether you count Social Security or not.
This chart, based on historical figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, shows the total deficit or surplus for each fiscal year from 1990 through 2006. Keep in mind that fiscal years begin Oct. 1, so the first year that can be counted as a Clinton year is fiscal 1994. The appropriations bills for fiscal years 1990 through 1993 were signed by Bill Clinton's predecessor, George H.W. Bush. Fiscal 2002 is the first for which President George W. Bush signed the appropriations bills, and the first to show the effect of his tax cuts.



The Clinton years showed the effects of a large tax increase that Clinton pushed through in his first year, and that Republicans incorrectly claim is the "largest tax increase in history." It fell almost exclusively on upper-income taxpayers. Clinton's fiscal 1994 budget also contained some spending restraints. An equally if not more powerful influence was the booming economy and huge gains in the stock markets, the so-called dot-com bubble, which brought in hundreds of millions in unanticipated tax revenue from taxes on capital gains and rising salaries.
Clinton administration was the federal budget balanced

The economy was good during the Clinton years so when the GOP wanted to take control, they went after our personal lives, including the President's personal life. It was all about morals and family values.

Public opinion went the other way and wanted government out of our personal lives, including Clinton's.

They kept it up by going after gay people. Again, public opinion went the other way. They lost that battle too.

With Bush and 9-11, it was then all about security and no money was too much to spend on defense contractors. They used our emotional ties to the troops to get all the money they wanted to spend, but as we can see now, they didn't care about where the money went.

Big Bucks, Little Oversight, Big Trouble
Posted by Mark Thompson Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Much of the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers are spending rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq is likely being wasted because no one is ensuring the contractors involved are doing a good job. That's the bottom line in Monday's report from the congressionally-mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read more:
Big Bucks, Little Oversight, Big Trouble

When the economy suffered, first they blamed 9-11, told citizens to just go shopping to help the economy, but never once thought about what they needed to do to fix the problems other than tax breaks for the rich. It was never about asking us to do anything to really support the troops anymore than it was about paying for the wars they thought were all so important to fight. Tax cuts for the rich kept going on no matter what was being done. No one in the GOP said they needed to pay for Iraq or Afghanistan. Borrowing money was fine with them. That is, until the troops were coming home wounded and the VA budget was nowhere near where it should have been.

While Democrats lacked control, they tried to get the GOP to pay attention to all of this, but they said they couldn't afford to increase the VA because there were two wars to "pay for" and not enough money to go around.

Again, as we can see in the chart, paying contractors was another story.

US Federal Budget

Bush
$68.4 billion (2.62%) - Veterans' benefits 2006
$72.6 billion (+5.8%) - Veterans' benefits 2007
$39.4 billion (+18.7%) - Department of Veterans Affairs 2008
$44.8 billion - United States Department of Veterans Affairs 2009
Obama
$52.5 billion (+10.3%) – Department of Veterans Affairs 2010

With two wars producing more veterans and disabled veterans, they let the budget drop instead of increase. With more older veterans needing to be taken care of, they didn't think about them either.

Now we have these same people saying that we cannot pass on this debt to our kids years from now at the same time they want to take food and shelter away from families today. It is almost as if they want us to believe they just got to Washington and had nothing to do with anything.
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein hit the nail on the head and this is all about causing fear to take control and get rid of what they don't want. It's all a smoke screen.

PTSD is scary, confusing — but most of all, treatable

This came from Beacon News. I searched for the name of the author but couldn't find it. I wanted to say "thank you" for telling a story that had to be told. I can try to explain what PTSD is like and come pretty close but when you hear the words from people with PTSD inside of them, then you are able to understand better than I could ever come close to explaining to you. This is powerful and comes from a regular person after surviving two traumatic events. Maybe after reading it, you will have a clearer understanding of what it is like for the troops and even our police officers. They expose themselves to traumatic events everyday, year after year because they are jobs that have to be done.

PTSD is scary, confusing — but most of all, treatable
Mar 2, 2011 2:10AM
It was late, maybe 3 a.m. I was sitting in my roommate’s parked Chevy Cavalier, alone, panicked, hoping nobody could see me — hoping I wasn’t really there.

The full story is long, much like that night was. I was at a house party in November 2003, my senior year of college — something my sorority sisters and I did almost every weekend. A girlfriend and I were about to leave when we heard a few popping sounds, much like firecrackers, from just outside the front door. The next thing I knew, one friend ran inside, yelling for someone to call 911.

Our friends hosting the party were trying to kick out a group of teenaged crashers. I’ve been told one of these strangers unexpectedly pulled a gun out of his pants, fired randomly, and ran. One of the bullets hit a friend of the party host square in the chest. He died a few minutes later.

I will never forget what it felt like, sitting in my roommate’s car as we waited for police, staring at the body sprawled on the lawn. Silent. Unmoving. Dead. “I was just dancing next to him an hour ago,” I thought, “and now he’s dead.” I’ve always lived by the mantra that “life is short,” but seeing the body of one of my peers at the age of 21 was the kind of wake-up call I never expected to experience.

Fast-forward four years later, when I was 25. I was driving my relatively new Honda Civic, on my way to a family gathering at about 9 a.m. in Chicago. I’m still not clear on exactly what happened, but I’ve been told that I went through a red stoplight that I didn’t see and crashed into the side of a gold BMW that seemed to come out of nowhere. In my confusion, I veered to the right and slammed into a curb. My airbag deployed while my hand was still on the horn.

I always compare that moment to the cartoons: When one of the characters is bonked on the head, they have little gold stars floating around them. That’s exactly what that moment felt like. When I came to, probably only a few seconds later, I didn’t feel right. I looked down, saw blood from a fingernail that had broken off, and then saw my right forearm. It was shaped like an S, and my hand was almost flattened against my inner forearm. The airbag had whipped my hand around and shattered the outer portion of my wrist.
read more here
PTSD is scary, confusing but most of all, treatable

Also from Beacon News


PTSD’s stronghold can have debilitating affect

Family Faults Army In Case Of AWOL Soldier Killed By Police

Family Faults Army In Case Of AWOL Soldier Killed By Police
Austin Jenkins | February 28, 2011 | Fort Lewis, WA
ShareDiscuss
It was a surreal scene last August 27th in downtown Salt Lake City.

A soldier - AWOL from his base in Western Washington - emerged from an underground parking lot. He was dressed head-to-toe in combat gear and carrying a rifle.

Seconds later the soldier was dead.

Now, an internal Army investigation has found shortcomings in how the case was handled. The family of Specialist Brandon Barrett blames the Army for not intervening sooner.

Austin Jenkins has the latest installment in his year-long series following the hard-hit 5th Stryker Brigade as it transitions home.

No one will ever know what was in the mind of Specialist Barrett that day last August. He told passersby he was "in training." They immediately dialed 9-1-1. Here's what happened next as reported by TV station KSL.

KSL TV: "Shots were fired between the man and an officer...."

The officer was grazed in the leg. His return fire struck Specialist Barrett in the face killing him instantly.

Police have theorized Barrett was about to go on a shooting spree -- perhaps from the top of the Grand America Hotel. He carried a thousand rounds of ammunition.

But his brother Shane, a cop himself, has another theory.
read more here
Family Faults Army In Case Of AWOL Soldier Killed By Police