President Obama Addresses American Legion

Aug 30, 2011
Obama's day: Talking to veterans

By David Jackson, USA TODAY
By Susan Walsh, AP
Good morning from The Oval. On this day in 1990, President George H.W. Bush said a "new world order" could emerge from the Persian Gulf crisis that eventually led to the first Iraq war.

Foreign policy will be on President Obama's mind today as he travels to Minneapolis to speak to the American Legion's annual convention.

"As we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, (the president) will pay special tribute to the 9/11 Generation of troops and their families who have borne the burden of a hard decade of war," says the White House.

Obama will also "discuss how responsibly ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must include meeting our obligations to take care of our troops and veterans as they come home, and will review the Administration's efforts in meeting our obligations to all veterans."
read more here

Also on this topic to clear up the emails flooding your server.

August 29, 2011
VFW Accuses White House of Snubbing Annual Convention

The Veterans of Foreign Wars convention this week will not feature a top-tier official from the Obama administration, a breach in tradition that the group's commander described as an "insult of the highest magnitude."

However, an administration official claimed Monday that the White House made "every effort" to provide a speaker for the event, offering up a range of top officials.

"In all instances, the VFW declined those offers," the official said.

Read more: read more here

Jeb Bush upset with Scott over firing fallen soldier's Mom

Emails: Jeb Bush was upset Scott fired staffers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 27, 2011
TALLAHASSEE — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was disappointed that Gov. Rick Scott fired the mother of an Army soldier who had just been killed in Afghanistan as well as others who worked in the governor's office, newly released emails show.

Bush's comments were included in more than 700 pages of emails released by an attorney who worked on Scott's transition team. The new emails, recovered from Scott's campaign manager, give some insights into those trying to influence the new administration. The emails also highlight some tensions between members of the transition team — including exchanges over who had the authority to offer jobs in the new administration.

Bush followed her comment with another email in which he notes that other people, including Carolyn “Freda” King were let go. King, who first went to work for the governor's office when Bush was there, worked in the external affairs office of the governor. King's son, Army Pfc. Brandon King, was killed in Afghanistan in July 2010.

read more here

Vietnam vet given 10 years' probation for shooting at Watauga police

Vietnam vet given 10 years' probation for shooting at Watauga police
Posted Monday, Aug. 29, 2011
BY DOMINGO RAMIREZ JR.
ramirez@star-telegram.com
FORT WORTH - A Vietnam veteran has been sentenced to 10 years' probation for shooting at police during a standoff in 2009 when the officers went to his Watauga home to check on his welfare.
No officer was injured in the standoff that lasted more than nine hours.

SWAT officers shot at least six rounds of a chemical agent into his home before they rushed in and tackled the troubled veteran.

Ronnie Crowder, 59, was sentenced to probation with deferred adjudication last week in Criminal District Court No. 213 on the charge of attempted capital murder.

Crowder joined the Marines when he was 17 and was an artilleryman in Vietnam, serving two tours, his wife told the Star-Telegram in a 2009 interview.

He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and for years has been treated by psychiatrists from Veteran Affairs. He then contracted diabetes and throat cancer which forced doctors to remove his larynx in May 2009. At that time, he also had to take nourishment through a tube in his stomach.
read more here
Vietnam Vet in standoff stopped taking medication

Pentagon pays $720M in late fees for storage containers for Iraq and Afghanistan

Folks, this is $750 million for late fees on storage containers! Why? They use the excuse Afghanistan and Iraq were "planned" to be brief but when you look back at the history of both nations, thinking anything would be "brief" was stupid. The Russians were in Afghanistan, along with other nations trying to take it over. As for Iraq, well, they need only look back to the Gulf War for what Cheney and Rumsfeld already knew. It would be a "quagmire" and they knew exactly what would happen. It is all in the history books and they can't wipe any of it away with their own books now.

Pentagon pays $720M in late fees for storage containers
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY

The Pentagon has spent more than $720 million since 2001 on fees for shipping containers that it fails to return on time, according to data and contracts obtained by USA TODAY.

The containers — large metal boxes stowed on ships and moved from port on trucks — are familiar sights on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan where troops use them for storage, shelter and building material. Yet each 20-foot container returned late can rack up more than $2,200 in late fees.

Shipping companies charge the government daily "container detention fees" after the grace period ends for the box to be returned.

The $720million represents a thin slice of the Pentagon's $553billion budget. Yet military spending is under intense scrutiny as the Defense Department has been ordered to trim $350billion in spending over the next 10 years and could face steeper reductions from budget cutters.


The cost stems from the mistaken belief that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would be brief and late fees would be minimal, said John Pike executive director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group.
read more here

But it looks like this keeps getting worse

Ten years after 9/11, wasteful Pentagon war contracting still under fire
By KEVIN BARON
Published: August 29, 2011
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon's use of no-bid contracts meant to field urgently needed war goods like counter-IED devices has tripled since 9/11, despite promises to reform the controversial practice once justified by military planners at the outbreak of war ten years ago, a new watchdog report finds.

After repeated pledges and orders from President Barack Obama and Defense Department leaders to clean up the no-bid trough, “Campaign pledges and memos have made little headway in combating the problem,” writes Sarah Whitmire, in the Center for Public Integrity's first installment of a five-day investigative report on war contracting, released Monday. What was a $50 billion worry in 2003 has ballooned to $140 billion in 2011.

The report is the latest dispatch in the Center’s “Windfalls of War” series, which in 2003 accounted for the explosion of war spending in the buildup and aftermath of the Iraq invasion and early Afghanistan fighting. (Full disclosure: I was a writer on the original project.) At the time, when U.S. officials refused or could not say how much money the wars were costing taxpayers, through Freedom of Information Act requests the Center discovered billions of dollars were being doled out to huge defense firms, like Halliburton. The Pentagon, in some cases, simply modified previously existing contracts for unrelated goods and services instead of opening up a new bidding process to competition, sometimes adding tens of millions to the potential value of the original contract.

The Pentagon and other contracting agencies said the practice was justified because the need to troops was too urgent. Some of the contractors, DOD said, were the only ones capable of providing unique and uniquely large services, like rebuilding Iraq’s electrical system. The Center found that was untrue in many cases.
read more here

1,800 riders take part in Wounded Warrior Motorcycle Run

More than 1,800 riders take part in Wounded Warrior Motorcycle Run
BY BOB OKON

More than 1,800 motorcyclists showed up Sunday for a Wounded Warrior Motorcycle Run where five local veterans were honored and money was raised for the cause of supporting injured soldiers across the country.

“A lot of bikes here,” said Bill Teckenbrock of Naperville, surveying the motorcycles lined up in the morning in New Lenox Commons. Shortly after noon, the hundreds of motorcycles rumbled off to Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery.

The ride was preceded by a ceremony in which checks of $1,000 were presented to five area veterans, three of whom are in wheelchairs.
read more here

VA directors received retention bonuses just before retiring?

Haley, Bay Pines VA directors received retention bonuses just before retiring

By William R. Levesque, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Monday, August 29, 2011

TAMPA — The former directors of Tampa Bay's two veterans hospitals received a combined $65,000 in retention bonuses not because another hospital called with a better job.

They got them, oddly enough, because they were close to retirement.

A St. Petersburg Times review of retention bonuses paid to the directors of the Haley and Bay Pines VA medical centers calls into question whether the Department of Veterans Affairs ever determined that the men would have left their jobs without the extra money.

Both directors said they never asked for the money.

In fact, Bay Pines' former director, Wallace Hopkins, 64, said the bonuses did not delay his retirement at all.

"But the retention was nice to build up my savings account," said Hopkins, who worked at the VA for 40 years.

Hopkins, who retired April 1, and former Haley director Stephen Lucas continued to receive retention payments for three months or more after announcing their retirements, the VA confirmed. Lucas, 66, retired in March 2010.
read more here

Former Marine wounded in Iraq bombing becomes Dallas officer

Former Marine wounded in Iraq bombing becomes Dallas officer, lingering health problems
TANYA EISERER Dallas Morning News
First Posted: August 29, 2011

DALLAS — Dallas police Officer Andrew Litz falls frequently and can't walk across the room without help.

He sometimes uses a wheelchair or cane. He suffers seizures. He's confused and disoriented. He's in and out of the emergency room almost every week.

After three combat tours in Iraq, he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury caused by a 2005 roadside bomb.

Litz was among the thousands of Americans who enlisted in the military during a burst of patriotism after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Now, a decade later, he has become a victim of the wars spawned by 9/11.

"I feel like I'm broken," said the 30-year-old former Marine sergeant, now a Dallas police officer who can't work because of his health problems.

After intense criticism over its handling of blast concussions, the military has in recent years toughened protocols for handling them. But for Litz and others, it is too little, too late.

Litz relies on the strained medical services of the Department of Veterans Affairs, where psychological injuries and brain injuries compete with the "more real" problems of amputations and other physical ailments.

Litz and his wife call it the "VA machine." Trips from their home in McKinney to the emergency room at the Dallas VA Medical Center are routine.
read more here

Where Generations Of Soldiers Healed And Moved On

Where Generations Of Soldiers Healed And Moved On
by STEVE INSKEEP

August 29, 2011
On a recent morning, John Pierce walked across the sprawling hospital campus of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. On the lawn, he spotted people who have come to define the place in recent years.

"[They were] having physical fitness-type tests," Pierce said. "There were people with notebooks and things, like they record when you do your sit-ups and pushups — but these were a number of double amputees."

Pierce is the historian for the Walter Reed Society, which makes him an expert on the historic American hospital in Washington, D.C.

The last doctors and patients are leaving, as the center closes. They're moving elsewhere as part of a round of base closures — a huge development for the U.S. military.
read more here

Veteran remembers friendship with Elvis Presley

Elvis Army Days

Vet befriended King in Army
August 29, 2011
By CHRISTOPHER BOBBY - Staff reporter
Tribune Chronicle

JOHNSTON - Since he was the oldest son of a coal miner from Punxsutawney, Pa., Bill Hazlett had always figured he would live his life the way he wanted, working in the mine like everyone else.

Instead he ended up dropping out of high school and followed his father to Warren where his dad eventually found work at Packard Electric.

''My brother Bob joined the Army, and my brother Luke joined the Air Force about a year earlier, but then I got my draft notice. I thought to myself it was going to be the worst time of my life,'' said Hazlett, a retiree from Wean United who bounced around from Commercial Shearing to Taylor Winfield before being called into the military.

''Nobody was volunteering at the time, so they were drafting. The company held my job for me, though, while I was gone for two years,'' said Hazlett, admitting that his time spent in the military turned out to be perhaps the best time of his life.

''What I thought was bad turned out to be good,'' he said.

Among the good things he can credit to his military service are the birth of his oldest daughter, lifelong friends and memories of his friendship with Elvis Presley, the king of rock 'n' roll.
read more here

Documenting a Fight for Environmental Justice at Camp Lejeune

Semper Fi: Always Faithful-- Documenting a Fight for Environmental Justice

Marcia G. YermanNYC writer focusing on women's issues; co-founder, cultureID

"There are over 130 contaminated military sites in the United states. This makes the Department of Defense the nation's largest polluter."

These words stand as the most salient message of the documentary Semper Fi: Always Faithful, a film that encompasses the worlds of environmental justice, the military, politics and science.

The protagonist of the narrative is Ret. Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger -- a formidable presence. When framed against the backdrop of the United States Capitol, his physical demeanor telegraphs that he is a man to be reckoned with. For Ensminger, the narrative begins with his daughter, Janey, who died at the age of 9 from a rare form of childhood leukemia. Trying to understand the reason behind her illness is the subtext of Ensminger's quest, as well as the connective tissue for the ensuing narrative about water contamination at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Ensminger's relentless search for truth is driven by the need to get answers not only for himself, but also for the nearly one million people who were unknowingly exposed to toxic chemicals at the base.

The backstory gets set in motion in 1941, when a fuel depot in operation at Camp Lejeune had leaks that were seeping into the ground -- 1,500 feet from a drinking water supply well. The estimated start date of the water contamination was 1957, when other improperly disposed of solvents additionally entered the mix. In 1975, Ensminger was living at Camp Lejeune. His wife was pregnant with Janey. In 1983, his daughter received her diagnosis. Ironically, unbeknownst to Ensminger, between 1980-1984, the water was being tested at the base with results consistently finding contaminants and "health concerns."
read more here

Widow of Army Ranger forced to leave Rumsfeld's book signing

"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." Donald Rumsfeld

Well that was the way they all seemed to think about sending troops into Iraq as the talk about Afghanistan was forgotten about even though there were still troops there, risking their lives while being ignored.

FOX news took the lead on omitting any harm being done to the troops making people believe the administration cared but like the above piece, reality was under-reported. Suicides went up and the DOD was scratching their heads to figure out why. The Army came out with a stunning study saying that redeployments increased the risk of PTSD by 50% but the administration was not about to make any changes. They continued the practice. A like study showed the need for dwell time between deployments, yet men like Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann received hardly no time home. He was do to return into combat for the 9th time. Troops were sent into Afghanistan 10 years ago in October yet this was supposed to be his 9th time?

Did any of this bother Rumsfeld? Cheney? Bush? Did the lives of the men and women sent bother any of them? All of them have books and PR agents to spin what happened but families left behind have graves to visit and heartaches to heal.

Ranger's widow expelled from Rumsfeld book signing
Two people were removed from a Donald Rumsfeld book signing Friday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, including the Yelm widow of an Army Ranger who blames the military for her husband’s suicide.

JORDAN SCHRADER; STAFF WRITER
Published: 08/28/11

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld begins to sign a copy of his book for Jorge Gonzalez while Ashley Joppa-Hagemann looks on. Gonzalez and Joppa-Hagemann were later escorted from the event Friday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. (PHOTO COURTESY OF COFFEE STRONG)

Two people were removed from a Donald Rumsfeld book signing Friday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, including the Yelm widow of an Army Ranger who blames the military for her husband’s suicide.
Security officers for the former secretary of defense escorted Ashley Joppa-Hagemann out by the arm, she said Saturday. She and Jorge Gonzalez, the executive director of Coffee Strong, a Lakewood-based anti-war group, confronted Rumsfeld as he promoted his memoir, “Known and Unknown.”
According to an account posted on Coffee Strong’s website: “Mrs. Joppa-Hagemann introduced herself by handing a copy of her husband’s funeral program to Rumsfeld, and telling him that her husband had joined the military because he believed the lies told by Rumsfeld during his tenure with the Bush administration.”
Joppa-Hagemann complained about Rumsfeld’s response Friday to her account of Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann’s multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and his death at age 25. Hagemann belonged to the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.


Read more

They shared a moment of crisis, and the anguish that remained

9/11 IN FOCUS
They shared a moment of crisis, and the anguish that remained
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
OLD BRIDGE, N.J.— From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published Sunday, Aug. 28, 2011

Deputy U.S. marshal Dominic Guadagnoli helps a women after she was injured in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, Sept. 11, 2001. The Injured woman was later identified as Donna Spera. —Gulnara Smoilova/AP

It wasn’t until she collapsed outside the building that the pain took over.

Throughout the 78-storey trek to the bottom of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, Donna Spera was unaware of her surroundings, the passage of time or her own condition.

She remembers blood on the stairs, but didn’t think it was hers. She recalls crawling over an elevator smashed through the stairwell, but not how her legs became lacerated. She couldn’t figure out why a friend wrapped his shirt around her hand.

But once outside, she became aware of the scorched and melted skin on her arms and back; of her gashed knees, shattered hand and bloody scalp.

And that’s when Dominic Guadagnoli grabbed her.

The deputy marshal, who’d been working in a courthouse nearby, made a dash for the World Trade Center shortly after the planes hit.

The people he helped out of the towers came in waves of escalating injury: First the relatively unscathed; then the dust-caked, the water-soaked, the shell-shocked and slightly battered. And then Ms. Spera.

“I just scooped her up and ran. ... I said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I got you.’ ”
read more here

No charges against Iraq war veteran with PTSD

Harlingen Police: No charges against Iraq war veteran
by Amber Dixon
Posted: 08.28.2011

A Harlingen neighborhood was shook up Saturday night after police blocked off their street and asked neighbors to stay inside their homes.

An Iraq war veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder had reportedly barricaded himself inside a home, armed with a gun.

A family member veteran Chris Huerta spoke off camera to Action 4 News.

"He's honestly a really good kid,” said the family member.

He said Huerta got into a fight with his brothers and grabbed a gun.

Police were called.
read more here

Psalm 55 suffering of the soul

There have been many claims that what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been recorded all the way back in the Old Testament. This is one of the Psalms where you can clearly see the suffering of the soul.

Psalm 55

1 Listen to my prayer, O God,

do not ignore my plea;

2 hear me and answer me.

My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught

3 because of what my enemy is saying,

because of the threats of the wicked;

for they bring down suffering on me

and assail me in their anger.

4 My heart is in anguish within me;

the terrors of death have fallen on me.

5 Fear and trembling have beset me;

horror has overwhelmed me.

6 I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!

I would fly away and be at rest.

7 I would flee far away

and stay in the desert;[c]

8 I would hurry to my place of shelter,

far from the tempest and storm.”

9 Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,

for I see violence and strife in the city.

10 Day and night they prowl about on its walls;

malice and abuse are within it.

11 Destructive forces are at work in the city;

threats and lies never leave its streets.

12 If an enemy were insulting me,

I could endure it;

if a foe were rising against me,

I could hide.

13 But it is you, a man like myself,

my companion, my close friend,

14 with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship

at the house of God,

as we walked about

among the worshipers.

15 Let death take my enemies by surprise;

let them go down alive to the realm of the dead,

for evil finds lodging among them.

16 As for me, I call to God,

and the LORD saves me.

17 Evening, morning and noon

I cry out in distress,

and he hears my voice.

18 He rescues me unharmed

from the battle waged against me,

even though many oppose me.

19 God, who is enthroned from of old,

who does not change—

he will hear them and humble them,

because they have no fear of God.

20 My companion attacks his friends;

he violates his covenant.

21 His talk is smooth as butter,

yet war is in his heart;

his words are more soothing than oil,

yet they are drawn swords.

22 Cast your cares on the LORD

and he will sustain you;

he will never let

the righteous be shaken.

23 But you, God, will bring down the wicked

into the pit of decay;

the bloodthirsty and deceitful

will not live out half their days.

But as for me, I trust in you.

Veteran sought in 4 deaths found dead in Pennsylvania

Veteran sought in 4 deaths found dead in Pennsylvania

By Associated Press
Sunday, August 28, 2011

PHILADELPHIA — Police say a soldier being sought in the deaths of four people in Pennsylvania and Virginia has been found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Pennsylvania State Police spokesman David Lynch says the body of 37-year-old Leonard John Egland of Fort Lee, Va., was found shortly after 3:30 p.m. Sunday in Warwick Township. That’s where he had been sought since early morning.
read more here

Soldier is at large in Philadelphia area, sought by police for 4 deaths in Va.
Published: Sunday, August 28, 2011, 2:22 PM
Updated: Sunday, August 28, 2011, 4:00 PM
By The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — A soldier who recently returned from war service fired at officers in suburban Philadelphia as he was sought in the Virginia deaths of his ex-wife, her boyfriend and the boyfriend's young son, authorities said. The soldier's former mother-in-law was also killed, and he remains at large.

Residents of Warwick Township were asked to stay in their homes and lock doors and cars as police hunted for Leonard John Egland, 37, of Fort Lee, Va., who evaded authorities as Hurricane Irene lashed the area.

"I have no idea whether he's acting on impulse or whether this storm played a part in his thinking," said David Heckler, district attorney in Bucks County, Pa.

Heckler didn't know when the Virginia deaths occurred but said Egland's former mother-in-law, 66-year-old Barbara Reuhl of Buckingham, Pa., was believed to have been killed Saturday night.
read more here