Fitting Honor for Fallen Marine by Patriot Guard Riders and Citizens

Crowd salutes fallen Marine
Fredericksburg.com
BY REGINA WEISS
THE FREE LANCE–STAR

Lee Russell leaned against his motorcycle Tuesday afternoon outside the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, joining the crowds honoring Sgt. Charles C. Strong, a Marine who died Sept. 15 in combat in Afghanistan.

Many others joined Russell to watch the Stafford County Sheriff deputies and the Strength and Honor Motorcycle Club escort the hearse carrying Strong’s body, but for Russell, it was personal.

He was remembering the death of his own son, Army Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Michael Russell, who died trying to save others in Afghanistan in 2005.

“I’m standing for him, because he would do it, he would be out here,” Russell said.

Russell, who was part of the escort June 27 for deceased Marine Staff Sgt. David H. Stewart, is a member of the Patriot Guard Riders, an organization whose members attend funerals of those who serve in the military.
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Sep 23, 2014 A crowd gathered at the Eagles Lodge on Cool Springs Road in Stafford County to honor Marine Sgt. Charles C. Strong, 28, who died Sept. 15 in Afghanistan. His funeral procession passed through the Fredericksburg area Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Veteran Glad to Thank Marine After Searching for Him

Local 2 viewer helps reunite veteran, Marine
Click2Houston
Author: Jennifer Bauer, Reporter
Published On: Sep 24 2014

HOUSTON
After a story Local 2 aired Tuesday night where a veteran wanted to find a Marine who saved his life, that reunion was made possible by a Local 2 viewer.

Grace Horner contacted the TV station.

“My family and I were watching TV and we watched your report,” she said.

Horner is a U.S. Navy veteran who works at Ellington Field. She used her military resources and started making phone calls.

"I did everything I could to find him and this morning I got a call back from his battalion leader. He said, 'Sure enough, this is who you’re looking for,'" she said.

The Marine’s name is Wade Bracken. He’s a 28-year-old active-duty Marine stationed at Ellington Field. He had been at Hobby Airport last week picking up a fellow Marine when he spotted Jim Babb in distress.
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Mayor of South Bend Heading Back from Serving in Afghanistan

South Bend mayor returning home tonight from service in Afghanistan
WSBT-TV Report
Sep 25, 2014

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in Afghanistan

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is returning home tonight after 7 months serving with the U.S. Navy in Afghanistan!

He is scheduled to fly into the South Bend International Airport at 8:35 p.m. If you want to welcome him home, you are invited to meet him at Concourse A.

"Mayor Buttigieg will spend the next week settling back into life in South Bend, connecting with family and friends, and visiting Naval Station Great Lakes to complete final administrative procedures to end his deployment," according to the mayor's communications director, Kara Kelly. "He will return to work on Monday, October 6, relieving Deputy Mayor Mark Neal, who has been holding the authorities of the office during Mayor Buttigieg’s absence."
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PTSD Veteran Lost VA Benefit in Move Between States

After 4 tours Army veteran had what he needed from the VA. He even had financial help under Caregivers bill from Congress so his wife was paid to take care of him. I know that sounds strange but a few years ago that is what happened for OEF and OIF veteran families but not other veterans.

Where did his story go wrong? When he moved from Tennessee to Colorado so he could use medical pot to help with PTSD. In one state he qualified for a Caregiver but in another, poof, he didn't anymore.

Army veteran trying to get help from PTSD
KRDO.com
Greg Miller
Multimedia Journalist
Sep 24, 2014

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.
Jerry Hamilton was deployed in the army four times in nine years.

“I was in numerous explosions, we got mortared, we were targeted on a daily basis, in numerous explosions,” Jerry Hamilton said.

He's been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but his family thinks it could be something more.

"What the hell is wrong with my husband? What's going on? What is this? This is not just PTSD!,” Cissie Hamilton said.

What started as a small facial tick has led to seizures, Tourette syndrome, body shocks and dementia symptoms.

Eventually he and his wife qualified for the VA's highest level of caregiver assistance.

So his wife quit her job to stay with him.

The drugs the VA prescribed alleviated his symptoms somewhat, but not enough, as you can see from a video the family posted to Facebook.
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Fort Bragg Staff Sgt. Wadiyah Samirah Northern Killed in Crash

Woman killed in Fayetteville crash Sunday was Fort Bragg soldier
FayObserver.com
By Drew Brooks Military editor
September 23, 2014

A woman killed in a Fayetteville wreck on Sunday was a Fort Bragg soldier, officials said.

Staff Sgt. Wadiyah Samirah Northern, 32, of Norfolk, Virginia, died after crashing at Owen Drive and Gillespie Street on Sunday morning.

According to police, Northern's Ford Taurus and a Dodge Magnum collided at the intersection at about 9:30 a.m. The Dodge was traveling at a high rate of speed, police said.

Two people were injured, including the driver of the Dodge and a 10-year-old passenger in Northern's car. Fayetteville police continue to investigate the crash, according to Fort Bragg.
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Troubling Leadership Bringing More Troops Into Iraq

Army chief: Division headquarters going to Iraq
The Leaf Chronicle
Michelle Tan
September 24, 2014

Odierno says division has not yet been identified, but headquarters will be 'small'


As the U.S. expands its war against the Islamic State, the Army is preparing to deploy a division headquarters to Iraq.

Officials have not identified the division that will deploy — the first division headquarters to go to Iraq since the U.S. withdrawal in 2011.

An official announcement is expected in the coming days. But Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno recently confirmed the Army "will send another division headquarters to Iraq to control what we're doing there, a small headquarters."

It's unclear how many soldiers will be sent, or how long they will deploy. Division headquarters average between 100 and 500 soldiers and deploy for one year.

The division headquarters deploying to Iraq is expected to be responsible for coordinating the efforts of the 1,600 troops President Obama has sent to Iraq. Many of these troops are advising and assisting the Iraqi Security Forces, others are providing extra security, while others are providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. The headquarters also is expected to head up the joint operations center that since July has been run by Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard, the deputy commanding general for operations for U.S. Army Central.
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Who are these two leaders?

Start with Major General Dana Pittard and what he wrote on the Fort Bliss blog while "Working out in the gym."

“I have now come to the conclusion that suicide is an absolutely selfish act,” he wrote on his official blog recently. “I am personally fed up with soldiers who are choosing to take their own lives so that others can clean up their mess. Be an adult, act like an adult, and deal with your real-life problems like the rest of us.”

And General Raymond Odierno, Army Chief of Staff said this last year during Suicide Prevention Month

"First, inherently what we do is stressful. Why do I think some people are able to deal with stress differently than others? There are a lot of different factors. Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations.

But it also has to do with where you come from. I came from a loving family, one who gave lots of positive reinforcement, who built up psychologically who I was, who I am, what I might want to do. It built confidence in myself, and I believe that enables you to better deal with stress. It enables you to cope more easily than maybe some other people.

Makes what more troops being sent to Iraq are going to be subjected to above combat all the more troubling.

Suicide Prevention Sorely Lacking Military Intellligence

Considering the government has been spending billions a year on "prevention" they really need to ask for their money back.

More servicemen and women die by suicide than in combat,,,,still.

From Senator Joe Donnelly on Military Suicides Using an updated method of tracking suicides, DoD also announced in the new military suicide report that 475 servicemembers took their lives in 2013. This total is slightly lower than the 479 total DoD had previously reported. While the total number of servicemembers who took their lives declined from 522 in 2012 to 475 in 2013, there was an increase in the number of National Guard and Reserve Members who committed suicide last year. The 134 National Guard Members who took their own lives is a record high, up from 130 in 2012. Last year, 86 Reserve Members committed suicide compared to 72 in 2012.

The DOD and psychiatrists talk about pre-existing mental health issues but never seems to manage to explain how their psychological testing in the beginning could have missed it in so many cases.

"Roughly 18 out of every 100,000 Army soldiers commit suicide every year, while many more attempt or consider killing themselves. A new study on the rise in suicides found that 1 in 10 soldiers could be diagnosed for an anger impulse control disorder. Jeffrey Brown talked to Dr. Ronald Kessler of Harvard Medical School about how pre-existing mental illness may make soldiers more vulnerable."

After all, if the mental health issue was that big of factor in suicides, shouldn't they have noticed before investing so much time and training recruits they also armed? How is it no one is asking them to explain that?

The DOD says most of the suicides were not tied to deployments. What they don't explain is if their "prevention" programs were not even sufficient to prevent suicides in non-deployed, how did they expect the training to work on those deployed multiple times? How is it no one is asking them that either?

They say the majority of the suicides can be tied to relationship problems but never seem to mention what PTSD can do to a relationship.

They say financial issues are a part of the problem but never explain how it is they were willing to work 24-7 for less pay than they could get flipping burgers. (Add up the hours and how much they make and you'll understand)

Now the latest is that suicides are down from last year but yet again, they don't seem willing to explain the simple fact that there are also less serving.

2012 1,393,948
2013 1,372,336
2014 1,347,187

The ugly truth is if they explain it, then they'd have to actually admit what they have been doing to prevent them sorely lacked military intelligence!

Disabled Marine Veteran "canceled appointment" 4 days after he died?

UPDATE
VA inspector general finds no evidence of falsified record in Marine's death
Star Tribune
Article by: MARK BRUNSWICK
Updated: October 10, 2014

In its letter to the congressional delegation, the inspector general said an e-mail shows that Buisman used his cellphone to call the VA’s automated appointment center to cancel an appointment on Nov. 26 at 11:17 a.m., and that he died later that day.

The notification generated by his telephone call was subsequently transmitted to a VA schedulers’ e-mail group on the following day, Nov. 27, at 6:01 a.m.

At 10:11 a.m. that day, the scheduler who ultimately canceled Buisman’s appointment transmitted a response to the schedulers’ group that she would take care of the request. The scheduler was on leave on Nov. 28. On Nov. 30, she entered a note in the system that she had canceled the patient’s appointment as requested and tentatively scheduled him for the next available appointment, which was Jan. 17, 2013.
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Minn. VA paperwork shows Marine rescheduled appointment — from the grave
The Washington Times
By Douglas Ernst
September 23, 2014

The family of a deceased Marine is looking for answers after records from the Department of Veterans Affairs showed that he rescheduled an appointment after his death.

Cpl. Jordan Buisman, a former Marine videographer, was medically discharged after developing epilepsy. In June 2012 he saw a neurologist at a Minnesota VA, who instructed him to seek an appointment if there were any changes in his condition. After Cpl. Buisman had a seizure in September, he scheduled an appointment with the VA on Oct. 12, and was confirmed for an appointment Dec. 20, a local NBC affiliate reported.

Cpl. Buisman died Nov. 26, 2012, with “seizure disorder” listed as the cause on his death certificate. On Nov. 30, four days after his death, someone wrote in the Marine’s VA records that he canceled his appointment and rescheduled it for Jan. 17, NBC reported.
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VA Healthcare Crisis Exploited by Politics

This is about a group on the Right exploiting the VA crisis. Nothing new considering the Left does it too. So when exactly do both sides actually do something to fix what has gone on for decades instead of using veterans for some kind of political war? If they fixed the VA then how could they use veterans? By showing what they did for them instead of using what they did against them.

How the Koch Network Exploited the Veterans Affairs Crisis
The Nation
George Zornick
September 23, 2014

As the scandal over waiting lists at Veterans Affairs hospitals exploded earlier this year, there was widespread outrage—and justifiably so, as the country learned that more than 100,000 veterans waited over ninety days for care or never received it.

An ever-present force in this debate was a group called Concerned Veterans for America. Its leader, Peter Hegseth, frequently appeared on cable news segments about the scandal, and CVA was often mentioned on the floor of the Senate.

Though the group doesn’t disclose its donors, it has for a long while been clear the group is funded in part, or perhaps even in full, by the Koch brothers. Any remaining doubt can now be erased thanks to audio from the secretive Koch donor retreat this summer, obtained by The Undercurrent and reported here.

Hegseth addressed the crowd and not only confirmed that the Koch network “literally created” CVA but explained giddily “the central role that Concerned Veterans for America played in exposing and driving this crisis from the very beginning.”

Most notably, during his roughly ten-minute speech, Hegseth outlined how the group was turning legitimate grievances over Veterans Affairs care into a political weapon to attack both the Obama administration and the idea of government-provided healthcare.
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Department of Veterans Affairs Highers PR Firm for "Shareholders"

First Generation Delivers Video Series for U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Insurance Net.com
Allentown, PA (PRWEB) September 23, 2014

First Generation (FG), an advertising and integrated marketing agency and service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB), was recently awarded a contract with the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), an administration within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

The contract grants First Generation the opportunity to assist the VBA in effectively communicating changes in VA benefits and services to a wide variety of shareholders. The 508 compliant videos will describe new technology initiatives, transformation milestones and how to apply for benefits online.

Under the direction of the award-winning production team of Stephen White, David Beedle and John Costello, FG will script, direct and edit several public service announcements, develop multiple animated videos and produce over twenty video interviews to help the VBA communicate important information to valued shareholders.

"FG has a history of creating videos to assist the VA, and we are thrilled for the opportunity to continue to do so," says First Generation President, Alexandra Shade. "Our dedicated team of producers, directors and editors are eager to deliver high-quality videos to help the VBA accomplish their mission and reinforce our status as a robust partner for the U.S. government."
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