Vet wounded in Twin Towers on 9/11, then again serving in Iraq

Vet wounded in Twin Towers on 9/11, then again serving in Iraq

JAY CONNER/STAFF
Greg Amira was one of several wounded veterans attending a Memorial Day ceremony at MacDill Air Force Base.

By HOWARD ALTMAN | The Tampa Tribune
Published: May 27, 2011


TAMPA --
Greg Amira leaned on his cane, medals dangling off his black suit jacket.

Bronze Star. Purple Heart. Army Commendation of Valor.

Amira was at MacDill Air Force Base on Thursday, one of several wounded veterans attending a Memorial Day ceremony there. He says he was moved by the memory of those who died in combat and felt a connection to the 13-foot-long, 1,400-pound hunk of iron near the base flag pole, a girder from the World Trade Center, brought in especially for this ceremony.


On Sept, 11, 2001, Amira, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army reserves, was in the 73rd floor of the South Tower, where he worked as vice president of investments at Morgan Stanley.


"I stayed up there until the planes hit," said Amira, who scrambled out of the stricken building, only to run back in to the North Tower, which was hit first and where most of the people were.

"Between my military training and the fact that my father, Irv, was a New York City police officer, my instinct was to run inside and help."

Amira said he and a firefighter were running around, pulling people out of rubble, checking to see who was still alive. He was in the lobby when the South Tower fell.

"It knocked me out," said Amira.

Then the North Tower fell. He was buried in rubble for five hours.

"I woke up with tubes in me," he said. "My left elbow came out of the skin. I had head trauma, back trauma and holes all over me."

Amira said he was ruled totally disabled by Social Security and Workman's Compensation. He was in line to receive $1.25 million from the Federal Victim's Compensation Fund.

"They told me I didn't have to work another day in my life," said Amira.

Then four years later, the Army called.

They wanted him to head to Iraq.
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Vet wounded in Twin Towers on 9/11, then again serving in Iraq

2 blasts kill 8 U.S. troops in Afghan attacks on foot patrol

2 blasts kill 8 U.S. troops in Afghan attacks
By Deb Riechmann - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday May 27, 2011 6:20:19 EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan — New details that emerged Friday show that eight U.S. troops who were killed while on foot patrol in southern Afghanistan the day before were hit by two consecutive blasts, with one explosion going off as troops rushed to aid those wounded from the first blast, NATO said.

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack in the southern, Kandahar province.

It was the deadliest day for NATO in Afghanistan since April 27, when a veteran Afghan military pilot killed eight U.S. troops and an American civilian contractor at Kabul airport.

The Kandahar attack started as the troops began to inspect a suspicious object they found while patrolling on foot in the mountainous Shorabak district, 12 miles (19 kilometers) from the Pakistan border. The first explosion wounded some of the service members, while the second came as others tried to help the injured, NATO said.
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2 blasts kill 8 U.S. troops in Afghan attacks

Marine never fired on SWAT officers who fatally shot him

Report: Marine never fired on SWAT officers who fatally shot him
By Chuck Conder, CNN
May 27, 2011 8:06 a.m. EDT

Jose Guerena died May 5 after a SWAT team descended on his home in a Tucson suburb with a search warrant.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Deputies fire more than 70 shots during a drug raid near Tucson
Jose Guerena is hit more than 20 times
He never took his weapons off safety, report says
Officers remain on active duty; no legal action has been taken

Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- A U.S. Marine who died in a flurry of bullets during a drug raid near Tucson never fired on the SWAT team that stormed his house, a report by the Pima County Sheriff's Department shows.

The revelation was contained in an internal investigation released by the department Thursday.
Jose Guerena died May 5 after a SWAT team descended on his home in a Tucson suburb with a search warrant. His home was one of four believed to be associated with a drug smuggling operation in the area.

A video released Thursday by the sheriff's department shows the uniformed SWAT team pulling up outside his house, sounding their sirens, banging on the front door -- before kicking it in -- and opening fire shortly after entering the home.
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Marine never fired on SWAT officers who fatally shot him

Missoula-born Marine dies exiting cab in New York

Missoula-born Marine dies exiting cab in New York
Posted: May 26, 2011
by Breanna Roy (KPAX News)

NEW YORK CITY- A Missoula-born Marine died during Fleet Week in New York City early Thursday morning.

The Marines notified the family of Steven Jorgenson, 22, that a car struck and killed him while he was getting out of a cab, headed back to his ship. He was wearing his uniform. The driver of the passenger car that hit him has not been cited.

Jorgenson had been married just seven months. His wife, Hope Jorgenson, was waiting at home in North Carolina for his call that night. She received a call around 4 a.m. from his phone, but all she heard was static on the line.

"Maybe that was his way of letting her know that wherever he was at that time, he was fine," Jorgenson's mother-in-law Grace Hinojosa said. She said it also could have been the authorities at the crash scene dialing his last outgoing number.
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Missoula-born Marine dies exiting cab in New York

Army Combat Medic-Vet to document soldiers’ graffiti left in Iraq

Vet to document soldiers’ graffiti left in Iraq
By Emily Corio - West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Posted : Thursday May 26, 2011 14:19:38 EDT

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A military veteran from Clarksburg is documenting the war in Iraq through graffiti that soldiers created on military bases. Former Army Combat Medic, Jaeson Parsons, says it’s a way to expose the raw emotions soldiers experience during war.

Parsons knows the mental anguish that comes with spending months away from family in a dangerous place where friends are hurt and killed. He joined the Army in 2005 and began serving in Ramadi, Iraq, later that year.

“It used to be that Fallujah was the bad place to be. Well, when the Marines did the assault on Fallujah, most of the insurgents that weren’t killed moved to Ramadi,” Parsons said.

“I started running missions with a partner medic; I think it was my fourth or fifth day there. We were doing route clearance, looking for bombs ... so we would stay out all night, eight to 12 hours a night, clearing these routes. It was like being stuck in rush hour traffic except you’d get blown up every now and again.”

Parsons’ experience in Iraq left him with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He was medically discharged from the Army in 2009. And his troubles followed him home. He hit a low point that Christmas while visiting his mother in Chicago.
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Vet to document soldiers’ graffiti left in Iraq

Time has come to change policy on condolence letters for suicides

If you have read this blog, even for just this year, you've read enough heartbreaking stories of the men and women dying after surviving combat. For anyone to even suggest suicides would have happened without being deployed, does not understand the difference between a civilian and the kind of person willing to die for this country. Think about it. They face death on a daily basis in combat, most of the time deploying more than once, yet live through it. When they are out of danger from bullets and bombs, they are still in danger because of what happened.

Is this a grateful nation or not? Do we limit the point of it because they took their own lives? If you think we should then you have not considered why they would live through all of it and then not be able to live through surviving it. While there are suicides while on deployments, most of them happen when they are back here. The time to change this policy is right here and right now.

Senators Call on President to Change Condolence Letter Policy for Military Suicide Victims
Published May 25, 2011
FoxNews.com

A group of senators have asked President Obama to start sending condolence letters to families of U.S. service members who kill themselves, in what would be a reversal of long-standing policy.

Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., co-chairs of the Senate Military Family Caucus, along with nine Democratic senators on Wednesday signed a letter to Obama asking him to end what they say is an "insensitive" practice.

"As you well know, the incidence of suicide among our service men and women has reached epidemic levels due to the stresses of nearly 10 years of continuous combat operations," the letter reads.

"While we appreciate that your administration initiated a review of this policy in December 2009, we understand that this review has yet to be completed. It is long past time to overturn this hurtful policy," they wrote.

More than 1,100 members of the Armed Forces killed themselves between 2005-2009, according to an August 2010 report by a task force assigned to look at suicide prevention among military members.

Read more: Condolence Letter Policy for Military Suicide Victims

7 NATO troops killed in blast in southern Afghanistan

7 NATO troops killed in blast in southern Afghanistan
Military officials did not the disclose the nationalities of the seven NATO fatalities, an unusually large toll for a single incident. Another service member is killed in a helicopter crash in eastern Afghanistan.

By Laura King, Los Angeles Times
May 27, 2011
Reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan—
An explosion in southern Afghanistan on Thursday killed seven Western troops, officials said, an unusually large toll for a single incident.

Earlier in the day, NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, announced the death of a service member in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan's east. The cause of the crash was under investigation, the coalition said.

Western military officials did not immediately disclose the nationalities of the dead. Most of the troops in both the south and the east are Americans. U.S. troops make up about two-thirds of the overall NATO force.
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7 NATO troops killed in blast in southern Afghanistan

13 veterans died while waiting for VA care

In at least 13 cases, Murray said, veterans committed suicide or died from drug overdoses while waiting to receive help from the VA.

Senators tell VA to reduce veteran suicides


BY ROB HOTAKAINEN

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- With veterans now accounting for one of every five suicides in the nation, the Department of Veterans Affairs is under pressure from the courts and Congress to fix its mental health services in an attempt to curb the death toll.

"The suicide rate is out of control. It's epidemic proportions right now," said Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director of the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "There are very few programs that are effective, and there's a serious lack of national awareness."

While the government keeps no official tally of veteran suicides, the VA said last year that veterans account for roughly 20 percent of the estimated 30,000 suicides annually in the United States.

The latest attack on the VA came two weeks ago from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which ordered a major overhaul of the agency. The court said that with an average of 18 veterans killing themselves each day, "the VA's unchecked incompetence has gone on long enough; no more veterans should be compelled to agonize or perish while the government fails to perform its obligations."

Suicides among active-duty troops are also a cause of concern: In April, 25 soldiers killed themselves, equal to about half the deaths in Afghanistan during the month.


Read more: Senators tell VA to reduce veteran suicides

County Court judge considers letting dog calm witness at trial

County Court judge considers letting dog calm witness at trial

Written by
Larry Hertz

In a case that may break new legal ground, an 11-year-old golden retriever trained to help young people ease their stress may get the chance to put her skills to work in a Dutchess County courtroom next month.

The dog, named Rose, was in court Wednesday afternoon as Judge Stephen L. Greller heard testimony at a pretrial hearing in the case of City of Poughkeepsie resident Victor Tohom, who is accused of sexually abusing a young girl. Rose spent most of the two-hour hearing dozing under the prosecution table in the fourth-floor courtroom of the county courthouse in the City of Poughkeepsie.
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County Court judge considers letting dog calm witness at trial

Not so far fetched,,,,,,

What's a dog doing in court?

PTSD on trail:Marine accused of firing on deputies strikes deal

Marine accused of firing on deputies strikes deal
Written by
DOUGLAS WALKER

WINCHESTER -- A Marine veteran of the Iraq War accused of opening fire on three Randolph County sheriff's deputies has struck a deal with prosecutors that would eliminate the most serious charge against him.

Under the terms of the plea agreement submitted Wednesday, Andrew S. Ward, now 27 and of Farmland, would plead guilty to criminal recklessness and battery resulting in bodily injury. Randolph County Prosecutor David Daly would then recommend that Ward receive an eight-year sentence with four years suspended.
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Marine accused of firing on deputies strikes deal