What about Bob?

Obama's speech

2012-01-25T13:21:00.000-08:00

1/25/12 Wednesday
We have rain, not much, just a little drizzle. It’s cold so have a fire going. Cooked some chicken for Cherie. Right now I am working on a response to Obama’s State of the Union speech. I’d called him “Liar in Chief” on my facebook page and got someone a bit upset. He asked me to name the lies so I am taking the time to go through his speech and do just that.

Part of the difficulty with Obama’s speech is he, and his team of assistants, is careful to not be caught in an obvious lie. However Obama is an expert at bending the truth and spinning facts in such a way as to achieve his purpose. We live in an age where propaganda is so pervasive it is hardly recognized, and the sheeple often swallow whatever line they are fed. So I will go through his speech point by point.

“For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.”

Ok, That’s a fact, kind of. But is this good? There are still troops in Iraq but they are not technically fighting but training and providing some guidance. Meantime Iraq is decaying into a civil war as the situation deteriorates. Iran’s influence is immense and growing so though Obama’s early withdrawal we could well end up with a worse enemy than we had. I know Obama would like to take credit for Osama Bin Laden being killed but those wheels were put in motion with President Bush so Obama inherited that blessing. Al Qaeda’s top lieutenants defeated? Taliban momentum broken? Bull. Sure we have killed many Al Qaeda leaders but there are plenty to step into their shoes. As far as the Taliban goes, many of you may not be aware that Obama has opened channels of negotiation with the Taliban and part of that negotiation involves releasing many of the prisoners we have at Guantamino Bay, along with other compromises. Troops coming home from Afghanistan? Sure, whenever it is politically expedient our president can order some home for a big false show to impress us.

The reality in all this is that we are fighting a war with an ideology, a religion that believes in lying and deceit to achieve it’s goals. And our president has done much to hide or disguise that fact. All references to “radical Islam” Muslim terrorists, and anything else that identifies violent acts as being motivated by the Islamic religious belief has been ordered purged from all official government communication. Meantime the Obama administration is funneling not just millions but billions of dollars into the hands of these radicals through all kinds of back doors and under many guises.

“In the six months before I took office, we lost nearly four million jobs. And we lost another four million before our policies were in full effect. Those are the facts. But so are these. In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005. American manufacturers are hiring again, creating jobs for the first time since the late 1990s. Together, we’ve agreed to cut the deficit by more than $2 trillion. And we’ve put in place new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like that never happens again.”

Sounds good doesn’t it? That’s because it’s supposed to sound good. The 4 million jobs lost were a fact, part of what Obama inherited, however that was over a 9 month period, not six as stated. But read how carefully he states the next sentence “we lost another 4 million Before our policies were in Full effect” The reality is that took a full nine months and this includes 8 months after the trillion dollar stimulus package was passed. So despite a trillion dollars being put on the table job losses still continued. The reality is that he talks about 8 million jobs being lost but only created three million to replace them. Unemployment today is still at one of its highest points ever. And the unemployment figures used aren’t honest anyway because many have given up on finding a job and thus are no longer counted. Here is another fact. Obama has the worst job creation record of any president since world war ll.

“We will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt, and phony financial profits… It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts.”

Interesting. Obama was the bailout and handout president. He bailed out the banks but held no one accountable, he bailed out the auto industry, and he’s handed out billions of dollars. “No copouts” is a meaningless good sounding political phrase that has no real value.

“Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right — eight years. Not only that — last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years.”

Not really. America’s oil production is practically unchanged since 2003 and according to the Energy Information Administration is only slightly up in the last few years. Oil and gas production on federal lands directly under Obama’s control is down 40 percent compared to 10 years ago, according to Spencer Pederson, a spokesman for Representative Doc Hastings, a Washington Republican and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. In 2010, the U.S. signed the fewest number of offshore drilling leases since 1984.

“Lower imports are the result of lower demand, and increasing production has come despite Obama’s policies”, according to Jack Gerard, American Petroleum Institute President. Here’s another quote from someone in the industry “The losses due to the Obama administration’s death-grip on offshore drilling and its unwillingness to open federal lands or issue timely permits for exploration far outweigh any energy gains that the White House may tout this week,” Thomas Pyle, president of the Washington-based Institute for Energy Research, said in a statement.

Essentially, the increase in oil and gas production has happened despite the Obama administrations apparent efforts to stymy that growth. Oh, but he’s quick to claim credit for it.

“Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”

And it’s the “Let’s play with words” game. The money we spent on war we borrowed. Period. So what he is saying, in such a nice way, is that we will continue to borrow money “to pay down our debt” and keep on borrowing more for what he calls “Nation building”. What this really means is that he wants to increase domestic spending relative to what we use with the military. And all the while keep borrowing money while increasing our countries debt. Creating more debt to “pay down” debt is the height of stupidity but our country has been practicing this long before Obama became president. We now have to borrow money just to pay the interest on money we have already borrowed. Why can’t anyone in government see this is a bad course to follow? It’s like a heroin addict stealing money for his next fix and saying “this will be the last time I do this”.

“Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households.”

Blame it on the rich. That’s the popular thing to do now. The reality is that most millionaires actually pay more tax, about a 30 percent tax rate. But there are loopholes that I personally would like to see dealt with, loopholes put in by our self-serving congress. Personally I would like to see a flat tax with no loopholes.

I’m tired and have stuff to do. There is much more in Obama’s speech but it’s your country, so investigate and read up on it yourself. Don’t forget to Vote and get your friends to vote too.

Tired of it

2012-01-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

Got this email today. Pass it on if you agree

Congress Unexplainable, Inexcusable
Col. Amos wrote, "Please forward this to every one you know, we need a 28th Amendment along these lines. No one has been able to explain to me why young men and women serve in the U.S. Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get 50% of their pay. While Politicians hold their political positions in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men and women, and receive full pay retirement after serving one term. It just does not make any sense. Monday on Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?
Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention. If you agree, please pass it on. This is an idea that we should address. For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent, or whatever. The self-serving must stop. If each person that receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.
Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.

It's a new year, with the same problems, only...

2012-01-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

They are going to get a lot worse. We have a president who lies, blatantly, obviously, and verifiably, but no one seems to notice. My personal opinion is that Obama is actively and knowingly working for the downfall of America, with the goal of establishing a socialist and Muslim government. Is that radical paranoid thinking? It might be but the evidence is pretty clear when you view what is happening throughout the world. Here is an article about the financial situations America and the rest of the world face.

Date: January 2, 2012
Reporting From: Coyhaique, Northern Patagonia

New Year's predictions are always a fun exercise. We can bet each other over the price of gold on December 31, 2012, or who will win the White House this year, or even make wild, black swan predictions.

It's like the Charades of thought experiments... good for laughs at a cocktail party, but ultimately meaningless. Serious personal and financial plans cannot be developed from mere conjecture-- it takes significant research, uncovering little-known facts, reviewing historical examples, and looking for ongoing signs that either reinforce or void hypotheses.

I'd like to share a few with you today. In my assessment, these ideas are not so much predictions, but rather mathematical near-certainties that underpin some of my own plans and investments.

Note-- the timing for these is loose, not based on some fixed calendar date (Mayan or Gregorian). Some may occur this year, others may not arise for another 3, 4, even 5-years. But with each passing day, the likelihood becomes stronger.

1) Social Security in the US, and public pensions in Western Europe, will be completely restructured.

That which cannot be sustained will not be sustained, and the public pension Ponzi scheme is at the top of the list. This is already happening in the European countries that have had to face the music already, but the rest will soon follow.

Why? Because at a $1.725 trillion cost, the US government spent nearly 75% of all tax revenue on Medicare and Social Security last year. And the situation will only get worse. Tax revenues are falling in a dismal economy, while the retiree demographic and rising healthcare costs are pushing up entitlement spending year in, year out.

Even by the US GAO's own math, these entitlements constitute a $33 trillion liability. And amazingly enough, it's even worse in Europe.

Not to mention, public pensions represent a neat little kitty for cash-strapped politicians to raid... and the likelihood of these criminals allowing the funds to end up where they were promised is incredibly low.

Inflating away the debt is certainly the preferred course of action as it is more politically palatable. Inflating away a $33 trillion liability in the available time frame, however, is nearly impossible...not without sparking hyperinflation.

Rather, retirees and prospective retirees are going to be hit squarely between the eyes with a restructuring of what had been promised to them for their entire lives. And most will be completely unprepared.

2) Epic failure: the 'ah-ha' moment

At some point, even the most dim-witted American is going to realize that his country is flat broke. Most Europeans are starting to realize it... but Americans have an incredible ability to ignore the obvious and kick the can down the road.

This may arise from some major infrastructure failure, or another epic natural disaster-- the mother of all hurricanes, or an ill-located earthquake-- that absolutely levels a major city. And it'll stay that way. The government will be too broke to rebuild, and too uncreditworthy to borrow.

The city will remain an architectural graveyard, an American Pompeii that becomes a monument to insolvency. And it will be the ultimate 'ah-ha' moment as people are finally shaken from their apathy and blissful ignorance. This will mark the start of the mania phase for everything ranging from firearm purchases to expatriation.

3) Gun control

With over 129,000 federal background checks registered on Black Friday 2011, the previous single day gun sales record was shattered by 32% according to FBI records. And baby, we ain't seen nothin' yet.

From ancient Carthage to Nazi Germany, history is full of examples of how a citizenry is systematically disarmed by its government prior to a major erosion of civil liberties and restructuring of the social contract. The calculus is quite simple-- government is interested in maintaining the status quo, i.e. their power at our expense.

Consequently, attempts at gun control become a foregone conclusion in times of social and economic turmoil.

4) Western governments pull a Mubarak

In an effort to stamp out dissent, Western governments begin utilizing Internet and mobile kill switches, censoring web sites, and increasing their authority over telecommunications architecture. Google's 'don't be evil' mantra becomes the de facto 'ignorance is strength' from 1984 as every major service provider becomes a willing accomplice.

Facial recognition technology will become ingrained with public surveillance under the banner of national security. All Internet activity is monitored. Privacy ceases to exist in the developed west.

5) War

In his book Civilization , historian Niall Ferguson pokes a bit of fun at Karl Marx when he refers to nationalism as 'the cocaine of the Middle Class'. Nothing unites people like a common enemy, and the time-tested trick to get an entire society to forget about their domestic plight is to start a war.

Boogeyman terrorists have done a marvelous job keeping society in check, but in a world of scarce resources and economic decay, a more conventional conflict may ensue. After all, to the victors go the spoils, and many countries won't be above taking what they need by force: water, farmland, oil, etc.

6) Dollar dominance ends

As I travel around the world, I'm constantly struck by high levels of inflation. From Thailand to Egypt to Sri Lanka to Uruguay, uncomfortably high inflation is prevalent, particularly major categories like fuel, food, and housing. Poor people don't but iPads.

With its genesis in the Fed's quantitative easing measures, inflation has become a major US export, right after Hollywood movies, hip hop music, and worthless debt instruments. America ships dollars overseas, and developing nations literally pay the price.

This is unsustainable, and the dollar's status as the global reserve currency will continue to decline. In the coming years, you can expect to see the US Treasury issuing debt (at much higher yields) denominated in a foreign currency-- perhaps Chinese renminbi, or a to-be-determined new monetary reserve unit.

[To be continued tomorrow...]

Until tomorrow,
sig.jpg
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com

This will happen, along with a lot of other things as the world falls apart

2011-12-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

Following in the footsteps of a rather ignominious list of nations like Argentina and Hungary, the government of lreland is set to take its 'fair share' of private retirement funds.
Drowning in debt and faced with unpopular, unrealistic, ridiculously unpopular austerity measures, the government has announced that it will now tax private pension savings in order to raise 470 million euros (roughly $675 million) per year... a lot of money in a country of only 4.4 million people.

Somehow, the government expects to be able to create 100,000 jobs to bring down an unemployment rate at 14.7%. Perhaps they plan on hiring 100,000 new workers to go around the country and collect the tax.

It reminds me of what I saw in Bolivia a couple of weeks ago-- there's a tax or toll or fee for nearly everything you do. Driving on the highway (if you can call it that) outside of Santa Cruz, you pay a toll... obviously not for the maintenance of the road, but to pay the salary of the toll collector.

At the airport, you have to pay an airport tax before departure... obviously not for the upkeep and efficiency of the airport (it took 2-hours to make it to my gate), but to pay the salaries of the guys who collect the airport tax.

This is what politicians consider 'job creation,' yet these positions only serve to destroy value. That they would stick up the retirement funds of hard working people is even more immoral.

Here's the best part, though. If you are a government worker in Ireland, your pension is exempt. They're only going after people in the private work force. It's truly disgusting logic to force private workers to pay for years of political incompetence while absolving government employees.

Coincidentally, there are a few other loopholes as well, particularly for non-residents and non-resident funds. Apparently those Irish who saw the writing on the wall and got busy moving themselves and their assets offshore will get to keep all of their savings.

Ireland is not the first country to call this play, nor will it be the last. Pension funds are attractive targets for politicians who have wide eyes and the most carnal thoughts at the site of any large pool of cash.

Think it can't happen where you live? Think again. Late last year, the French government went through an elaborate process to change its pension laws, 'legally' allowing politicians to steal retirement funds from the public in order to pay off other debts.

In the US, public pensions have been raided for years, Congress routinely 'borrows' from Social Security to make up budget shortfalls. This is what talking heads mean when they play down concerns of a $14 trillion debt "because we owe it to ourselves--" $4.6 trillion of the debt is owed to intragovernmental agencies like Social Security.

Chances of this money being repaid to Social Security in full? Slim. The trend is more debt, not paying off existing debt. In fact, I'm convinced that politicians have their eyes firmly fixed on the trillions of dollars in private, individual retirement accounts (IRAs) in the United States to fund new spending.

Here's how it will go down:

First, there will be some event... some sort of financial cataclysm, similar to the market meltdown we saw in 2008 after Lehman.

Bear in mind that most IRAs are managed by boneheads at big financial institutions; they get compensated not based on the performance of their portfolio, but on the total amount of assets under management. Your interests and their interests do not align.

As such, most IRAs are callously tossed into S&P index funds or some such generic vehicle, citing the safety of broader market diversification, as if that nonsense they teach in MBA finance classes is how the real world actually works.

When a big crash occurs, these unhedged broad market positions get hammered the most. Don't worry though, your fund manager will still get a big fat bonus check, because his performance is irrelevant.

This is when Congress will step in. Citing its desire to 'protect' the American people from future market shocks, the politicians will mandate that a portion of all managed retirement funds be invested in the 'safety and security' of US Treasury bonds. And, just to be on the safe side, let's park them in 30-year bonds that yield 4.35%.

Sound fair? Well who asked you anyways... just be a good citizen and turn over your money already. The important part is that the big financial institutions still get their big fat fees, and the government gets its hands on the mother lode.

This is how US taxpayers will end up being forced to loan their hard earned retirement savings to the government at rates far below any expected inflation.

Right now, there is a window of opportunity to take action; US taxpayers with retirement accounts can set up a special kind of IRA structure that allows you to take control of your retirement savings, and even ship it offshore if you want to, completely legitimately.

After taking control of your IRA, you can do any number of things-- buy and store gold and silver coins overseas; hold foreign currencies in an offshore bank account; buy securities on international stock exchanges; purchase agricultural property overseas, or even a beautiful apartment on the beach in some sunny country.

The possibilities are incredible... but the most important thing is that you get this retirement money off the radar of the politicians before they pull an Ireland and announce some new measure, virtually overnight. These things can happen very, very quickly.

I've talked about this before a number of times, and every time I read the news of yet another country taking this approach, it serves as a reminder to take action.

If what I'm saying makes sense to you, my recommendation is to check out Terry Coxon's book on this subject, Unleash your IRA. As one of the world's foremost experts on this strategy, Terry walks you through the process of protecting your retirement savings quickly and legitimately.

You can read more about it here.

Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com

The end is coming, and it won't be nice

2011-12-05T09:22:00.000-08:00

Sovereign Man
Notes from the Field

Date: December 5, 2011
Reporting From: Santiago, Chile

Say what you want about him, but Bernie Madoff was a guy who knew how to keep the party going. For years, he ran one of the largest private-sector Ponzi schemes in history and always heeded the golden rule of financial scams: make sure your inflows are greater than your outflows.

He was finally done in when redemptions exceeded new investments. He didn't have enough cash to pay out investors, and he wasn't able to scam more people into paying in to the scheme. As a result, Madoff finally had to admit that the whole thing was a total fraud.

Governments around the world are in similar situations right now with their own public sector Ponzi schemes. Faced with failed auctions, declining demand, and rising yields, politicians are having to resort to desperate measures.

Like any good scam artist, they're appealing to the masses first; all over Europe, governments are sponsoring new marketing campaigns suggesting that it's people's patriotic duty to buy government debt.

In Spain, they're actually issuing instruments called 'Bonos Patrioticos,' or 'patriotic bonds.' Ad campaigns say that the bonds are "good for you, good for the future."

In Ireland, they've issued "Prize Bonds" which carry a 0% interest rate; instead of receiving interest, bondholders are entered into a weekly lottery contest. Naturally, lottery winnings are only possible as long as people keep buying the bonds... pretty much the definition of a Ponzi scheme!

In Italy, they're rolling out the country's sports celebrities to encourage everyone to buy Italian sovereign debt.

What's ironic is that Italy's dismal balance sheet is almost universally acknowledged. It's as if everyone knows the country has almost no chance of making good on its obligations, but they still feel the need to willingly throw away their hard earned savings for the greater good of political incompetence.

Thing is, it's not the millionaire sports stars, wealthy business leaders, or political elite who are buying these bonds... at least, not in anything beyond a token, symbolic amount. It's the average guy on the street who really stands to get hurt when the government finally capitulates.

This is a truly despicable act and amounts to theft, plain and simple.

The United Kingdom, which is rapidly reaching this banana republic sovereign debt status itself, has unveiled a plan to issue roughly $50 billion in infrastructure bonds. This would be the equivalent of issuing $300 billion in the US-- not exactly chump change.

Given Britain's already colossal debt level, private investors aren't exact diving in head first to loan the government even more money.

Undeterred, British Chancellor George Osborne plans to 'highly encourage' UK pension funds to mop up about 60% of the total amount. "We have got to make sure that British savings in things like pension funds are employed here and British taxpayers' money is well used," he said.

In other words, 'we are going to make sure that British people buy our junk, one way or another.'

The last year has seen numerous pension funds around the world, from the United States to Argentina to Hungary, be raided for the sake of keeping these Ponzi scheme going. The UK is already lining up to be the next.

It's one of the last acts of a truly desperate government to begin directing public and private savings into their Ponzi schemes.

Fast-forward a few downgrades and you can plan on seeing the exact same thing in the United States-- appealing to people's patriotism to loan their hard-earned savings (if they even have any) to the Federal government at a rate of interest that fails to keep up with inflation.

It's nothing more than a very clever (and subtle) form of theft.

Until tomorrow,

Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com

A few hundred years ago...

2011-09-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

(I didn't write this, but wish I did)
A few hundred years ago, some rather courageous men and women decided that they'd had enough of living under someone else's rule-- that the right of self-determination was stronger than any benefit or protection from living under a corrupt government.

The US Declaration of Independence eloquently posed the colonists' grievances against King George III, including among others, that he had:

"erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance;"

"obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers;"

"[deprived] us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury"

The Constitution was supposed to address all of these grievances as the Founding Fathers sought to create a government where no single branch or office had too much power. Even to this day, US government officials swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies-- foreign and domestic.

My guess is that most of them haven't bothered to read it.

Take the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) under the US Department of Interior, for example. A few months ago, a government agent from FWS showed up to the home of an eleven-year-old girl with a federal summons in one hand and a citation for $535 in another.

The girl's crime? Saving a baby woodpecker from being killed and eaten by the family cat. The bird's mother was nowhere to be seen, so the girl (an aspiring vet) convinced her parents to let her care for it for a few days until the bird was well enough to fly away on its own.

Noble act? Wrong. Federal crime. It turns out that the bird is on the government list of protected species... and according to the government's newspeak, protecting a bird that's on the protected species list is a crime.

It sort of echoes Thomas Jefferson's line about King George having "erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people..." It seems not too much has changed.

What's more, the agent obviously couldn't come alone to confront an 11-year old girl and her mother. No, that wouldn't be threatening enough. That's why FWS requested to be escorted by a Virginia State Police Trooper who "stood on the porch and said nothing."

It's government fear and intimidation tactics at their best... a far cry from supporting and defending the Constitution.

Then there's the case of Gibson Guitar , a legendary American company that manufactures some of the most famous, high quality guitars in the industry. Less than two weeks ago, armed government agents (also from the US Fish and Wildlife Service) raided Gibson Guitar's manufacturing plants and corporate headquarters in Tennessee.

Gibson Guitar's crime? Being in possession of a rare ebony wood imported from India; they use it in their manufacturing.

Here's what's funny: possession of said wood is not illegal in the United States.

Here's what's really funny: Gibson Guitar has clear evidence-- letters from the Indian government-- proving that their possession of the wood is not illegal in India either.

And... here's what's really, really funny: This is the second time in two years that the company has been raided and inventory been seized by federal agents. Gibson's management team is STILL waiting for a court hearing to get their property back from the 2009 seizure.

Again, echoes of Thomas Jefferson: that King George "[deprived] us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury."

Welcome to the new reality. Executive agencies in the United States have extraordinary unchecked power. They can seize your assets, freeze your bank accounts, intercept your emails, comb through your credit card transactions, and even take away your children... all without so much as a court order or any form of oversight.

We've explored before how you can end up on the wrong side of a government agency, even if you haven't done anything illegal. If you are so much as suspected of wrongdoing, they can come after you... even if you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time, they can come after you.

These are two cases where the government has come after its citizens-- even when they are doing the RIGHT thing.

Think about it: two of the most unlikely people in the country have become enemies of the state: an eleven-year-old girl who wants to save a baby bird, and a manufacturing company that has managed to stay in business (and continue hiring!) in the midst of the worst recession in the nation's history.

How we treat those who give so much

2010-12-20T18:04:00.000-08:00

Special request: Please share this story widely --- Thank you!

Pentagon Health Plan Won’t Cover
Brain-Damage Therapy for Troops

Wades

Sarah Wade, 36, and her husband, Ted Wade, 33, are seen in front of the Capitol building in
Washington, D.C., on Dec. 18, 2010. Ted suffered a traumatic brain injury, along with multiple
other injuries, while riding in a Humvee in Iraq in 2004. Although Ted gets health insurance
through the Defense Department, Sarah says "it doesn't cover what it needs to" and that he
needs "more options, and less bureaucracy." The Wades live in Chapel Hill, N.C., but regularly
travel to Washington for medical appointments and meetings. (Coburn Dukehart/NPR)

by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica, and Daniel Zwerdling, NPR Dec. 20, 2010

Versions of this story were co-published with NPR and Stars and Stripes. For more coverage, listen to NPR's All Things Considered starting today at 4 p.m.

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/20/132145959/pentagon-health-plan-wont-cover-brain-damage-therapy-for-troops

Battle over science, money blocks recommended TBI therapy

Despite pressure from Congress and the recommendations of military and civilian experts, Tricare refuses to cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy for TBI -- a decision that could affect the tens of thousands of servicemembers who are suffering from brain damage.

Stars and Stripes' coverage of TBI:

http://www.stripes.com/news/battle-over-science-money-blocks-widely-recommended-tbi-therapy-1.129346

This article is part of an ongoing investigation:

TBI series

Brain Wars: How the Military Is Failing Its Wounded

http://www.propublica.org/series/brain-wars/

The military has failed to diagnose brain injuries in thousands of soldiers returning from overseas.

During the past few decades, scientists have become increasingly persuaded that people who suffer brain injuries benefit from what is called cognitive rehabilitation therapy -- a lengthy, painstaking process in which patients relearn basic life tasks such as counting, cooking or remembering directions to get home.

Many neurologists, several major insurance companies and even some medical facilities run by the Pentagon agree that the therapy can help people whose functioning has been diminished by blows to the head.

But despite pressure from Congress and the recommendations of military and civilian experts, the Pentagon's health plan for troops and many veterans refuses to cover the treatment -- a decision that could affect the tens of thousands of service members who have suffered brain damage while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tricare, an insurance-style program covering nearly 4 million active-duty military and retirees, says the scientific evidence does not justify providing comprehensive cognitive rehabilitation. Tricare officials say an assessment of the available research that they commissioned last year shows that the therapy is not well proven.

But an investigation by NPR and ProPublica found that internal and external reviewers of the Tricare-funded assessment criticized it as fundamentally misguided. Confidential documents obtained by NPR and ProPublica show that reviewers called the Tricare study "deeply flawed," "unacceptable" and "dismaying." One top scientist called the assessment a "misuse" of science designed to deny treatment for service members.

Tricare's stance is also at odds with some medical groups, years of research and even other branches of the Pentagon. Last year, a panel of 50 civilian and military brain specialists convened by the Pentagon unanimously concluded that cognitive therapy was an effective treatment that would help many brain-damaged troops. More than a decade ago, a similar panel convened by the National Institutes of Health reached a similar consensus. Several peer-reviewed studies in the past few years have also endorsed cognitive therapy as a treatment for brain injury.

Tricare officials said their decisions are based on regulations requiring scientific proof of the efficacy and quality of treatment. But our investigation found that Tricare officials have worried in private meetings about the high cost of cognitive rehabilitation, which can cost $15,000 to $50,000 per soldier.

With so many troops and veterans suffering long-term symptoms from head injuries, treatment costs could quickly soar into the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars -- a crippling burden to the military's already overtaxed medical system.

The battle over science and money has made it difficult for wounded troops to get a treatment recommended by many doctors for one of the wars' signature injuries, according to the NPR and ProPublica investigation. The six-month investigation was based on scores of interviews with military and civilian doctors and researchers, troops and their families, visits to treatment centers across the country, confidential scientific reviews and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

"I'm horrified," said James Malec, research director at the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana and one of the reviewers of the Tricare study. "I think it's appalling that we're not knocking ourselves out to do the very best" for troops and veterans.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has complained over the past year about the growing cost of the Pentagon's health care budget, declined a request for an interview. George Peach Taylor, the newly appointed acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, the top ranking Pentagon health official, also declined repeated interview requests. Tricare officials defended the agency's decision not to cover cognitive rehabilitative therapy and said it was not linked to budget concerns.

Capt. Robert DeMartino, a U.S. Public Health Service official who directs Tricare's behavioral health department, said Tricare is mandated to ensure the quality, consistency and safety of medical care delivered to service members.

He said those standards can be difficult to meet with cognitive rehabilitation. Therapists design highly individualized treatment plans, often relying on a variety of different techniques. The holistic approach and lack of standardization makes it hard to measure the effects of the therapy, he added.

DeMartino noted that the agency covers some types of treatment considered part of cognitive rehabilitative therapy. For instance, Tricare will pay for speech and occupational therapy, which can play a role in cognitive rehabilitation.

DeMartino said cost played no role in the agency's decision, calling such a suggestion "completely wrong." He defended the agency's studies of cognitive rehabilitation, calling them objective scientific reviews designed to ensure troops and retirees receive the best treatment possible.

Cognitive rehabilitation therapy "is a new field for us," DeMartino said. "We don't know what it is. That's really an important thing. You don't want to send people out when you don't know what treatment they're going to get and what the services are going to be."

Officials at the Pentagon are themselves divided on the value of the treatment. A handful of military and veteran facilities provide cognitive rehabilitation therapy, though most do not have the capacity or offer programs of limited scope.

Tricare was designed to fill in such gaps in the military health system by allowing troops and veterans access to civilian medical providers. But since Tricare has a policy against covering cognitive rehabilitation, service members and retirees who seek treatment at one of the nation's hundred of civilian rehabilitation centers could have their claims denied, or only partly paid.

The contradictory policies have resulted in unequal care. Some troops and their families have relied upon high level contacts or fought lengthy bureaucratic battles to gain access to civilian cognitive rehabilitation programs which provide up to 30 hours of therapy a week. Soldiers without strong advocates have been turned away from such programs, or never sought care, due to Tricare's policy of refusing to cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy.

As a result, many soldiers, Marines and sailors with brain injuries wind up in understaffed and underfunded military programs providing only a few hours of therapy a week focused on restoring cognitive deficits.

Sarah Wade's husband, Ted, was a sergeant with the 82nd Airborne Division when a roadside bomb tore through his Humvee in February 2004. The blast severed his right arm above the elbow, shattered his body and left him with severe brain damage.

After the military medically retired her husband later that year, Wade struggled to find appropriate care for him. The closest VA hospital set up to handle such complex injuries was in Richmond, Va., a 320-mile drive from their home in North Carolina.

Tricare, however, would not pay for cognitive rehabilitation at a nearby civilian program. Wade, who once worked as an intern on Capitol Hill, turned herself into a one-woman lobbyist on her husband's behalf. She called her representatives and met with senior VA and DOD officials. She testified before Congress, met President George W. Bush and Gates, and was recently invited to the White House by President Barack Obama for a bill signing ceremony.

Wade managed to set up a special contract between the VA and a local rehabilitation doctor to help her husband. But now she wants to move back to Washington, D.C., to be closer to family.

She must begin her fight all over again -- more phone calls to Tricare, more visits to government offices, more battles to get Ted Wade the care he needs.

"We go to Capitol Hill like some people go to the grocery store," Wade joked one afternoon during a recent visit to Washington. "If we can't figure it out, then probably nobody can."

Brain Campaign

The campaign to persuade Tricare to cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy began in earnest after the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington in 2007. News reports featured brain-damaged soldiers living in squalid conditions and receiving substandard care.

The Brain Injury Association of America, a grassroots advocacy group for head trauma victims, started lobbying Congress and the Defense Department to order Tricare to cover rehabilitation for service members.

The campaign was a natural extension of the association's mission. Each year, more than 1.4 million American civilians suffer brain injuries in car accidents, strokes and other medical emergencies. They and their families often have to battle private insurance companies for cognitive rehabilitation.

The insurance industry is divided: Five of 12 major carriers will pay for cognitive rehabilitation therapy for head trauma, according to Tricare's study. Aetna, United Healthcare and Humana cite national evidence-based studies and industry-recognized clinical recommendations that point to the therapy's benefits.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services does not have a single national policy on cognitive rehabilitation. Instead, it leaves decisions to local contractors, often insurance carriers who process claims for the agency. The contractors are able to provide the therapy case by case, so long as they determine the treatment is "reasonable and necessary," a Medicare spokesman said.

"The totality of the evidence appears to support the value of cognitive rehabilitation for people with traumatic brain injury in improving their function," said Robert McDonough, the head of clinical policy at Aetna. "We feel on balance the evidence leads us to conclude that cognitive rehabilitation is effective."

Carriers and doctors providing the service can point to a long list of medical associations and scientific studies backing the effectiveness of cognitive therapy: The National Institutes of Health; the National Academy of Neuropsychology and the British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine, among others, have weighed in supporting the treatment.

Armed with such evidence, brain injury association lobbyists did not have much trouble finding support in Congress. By 2008, more than 70 House and Senate members had signed letters to Gates asking him to support funding for cognitive rehabilitation therapy. Then-Sen. Obama led a group of 10 senators urging Tricare to pay for therapy.

They noted that the Pentagon and the VA have improved their efforts to treat brain injury, including increases in the number of doctors and therapists available at facilities.

But the military needed to do more, they said. They wrote that Tricare should cover cognitive rehabilitation so all troops "can benefit from the best brain injury care this country has to offer."

"Given the prevalence of TBI among returning service personnel, it is difficult to comprehend why the military's managed healthcare plan does not cover the very therapies that give our soldiers the best opportunities to recover and live full and productive lives," the letter said.

A response letter from the Pentagon told the representatives that Tricare officials had not been convinced by available evidence. "The rigor of the research ... has not yet met the required standard," wrote Gordon England, then the deputy defense secretary.

Everyone Agrees

On an unusually hot spring day in April 2009, 50 of America's leading brain specialists gathered for two days in a sterile hotel ballroom in suburban Washington, D.C.

The Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, the Pentagon's lead program for the treatment of brain injury, convened the conference to help settle the debate about cognitive rehabilitation therapy.

The participants were top researchers and doctors from the military and civilian world: neurologists, neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, family doctors and rehabilitation experts.

After two days of discussion, the group hammered out a consensus report, representing the combined wisdom of the field. Their unanimous conclusion: Cognitive therapy improved the thinking skills and quality of life for people suffering from severe and moderate head injuries. Troops with lingering problems from a mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, also could benefit from the therapy, the experts said.

The consensus was not binding. But those in attendance believed that their opinion -- based on the decades of combined clinical experience and academic study present in the room -- would lead to troops' receiving better treatment.

"When you get the right people in the right room at the right time, you'd expect it would influence the decision makers," said Maria Mouratidis, chairwoman of psychology and sociology at the College of Notre Dame in Baltimore and a conference participant.

Shortly after the conference ended, however, a handful of top officials from the military's medical system met to discuss the findings at Tricare's headquarters, an anonymous sprawl of office buildings in Falls Church, Va., known as Skyline 5.

One person familiar with the discussion, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal, said money was part of the debate.

Official Pentagon figures show that 188,000 service members have suffered brain injuries since 2000. Of those, 44,000 suffered moderate or severe head injuries. Another 144,000 had mild traumatic brain injuries. However, previous ProPublica and NPR reports showed that number likely understates the true toll by tens of thousands of troops. Some estimates put the number of brain injuries at 400,000 service members.

Mild traumatic brain injuries are the most common head trauma in Iraq and Afghanistan. Commonly caused by blast waves from roadside bombs, such injuries are defined as a blow to the head resulting in an alteration or loss of consciousness of less than 30 minutes. Studies suggest that while most troops with concussions heal quickly, some 5 percent to 15 percent go on to suffer lasting difficulties in memory, concentration and multitasking.

For the military's health system, the costs of treating brain damaged soldiers with cognitive rehabilitative therapy added up quickly. If tens of thousands of service members and veterans were authorized to receive such treatment, the bill might be in the billions, using high-end estimates for the cost of treatment from the Brain Injury Association.

The costs could swell the Pentagon's annual $50 billion health budget -- at a time when Gates has said the military is being "eaten alive" by skyrocketing medical bills.

Tricare "is basically an insurance company. They'll take no action to provide more service," said the person familiar with the conversation, who would only discuss it in general terms. "If they do it, it's an enormous cost."

At the meeting following the consensus conference, the person said, Tricare staked out its own position: "They had already decided not to do it," the person said.

NPR and ProPublica contacted two others who attended the meeting. Jack Smith, Tricare's acting chief medical officer, said through a spokesman that he could not recall the meeting, but "can't say for sure there wasn't one." Rear Adm. David J. Smith, the joint staff surgeon, declined comment through a spokesman.

The Contract

Soon after the meeting, Tricare sprang into action. In May 2009, records show, it issued a $21,000 contract to the ECRI Institute, a respected nonprofit research center best known for evaluating the safety of medical devices.

The contract called for ECRI to review the available scientific literature to weigh the evidence for whether cognitive rehabilitation therapy helped improve patients with traumatic brain injuries.

Tricare routinely hires contractors to carry out assessments to help determine which medical treatments to fund. But in selecting ECRI, Tricare had a pretty good idea of the response it would receive. ECRI had conducted a similar review for Tricare in 2007 that cast doubts on the evidence supporting cognitive rehabilitation therapy.

To carry out the new review, ECRI followed its standard protocol. It chose to include only randomized, controlled studies. Such studies randomly divide patients into groups that receive different treatments in order to compare their effects.

ECRI gave more credence to blind studies, meaning that patients did not know whether they were receiving genuine therapy or a placebo -- a fake treatment. Blinding reduces bias and is considered one of the most rigorous standards that can be used in scientific testing.

ECRI also excluded studies deemed irrelevant; those studies with fewer than 10 patients; and studies where 15 percent or more of the patients were injured from a nontraumatic blow, such as stroke.

The criteria resulted in the elimination of much of the published scientific literature on cognitive rehabilitative therapy. Before applying the protocol, ECRI identified 318 articles as potential sources of information about cognitive rehabilitative therapy. The firm's final report examined 18.

Based on this limited pool, ECRI graded the evidence for the benefits of cognitive therapy as being "inconclusive" or offering only "low" or "moderate" support of improvement in patients' cognitive functions.

The final report, delivered to Tricare in October 2009, noted some areas of benefit. For instance, "tentative" evidence showed cognitive therapy significantly improved quality of life for brain-damaged patients.

ECRI's review wasn't limited only to science. The review noted one study that found that comprehensive cognitive rehabilitative therapy could cost as much as $51,480 per patient. By contrast, sending patients home from the hospital to get a weekly phone call from a therapist amounted to only $504 per patient.

Overall, the report concluded, the evidence for most benefits from cognitive rehabilitation therapy remained inconclusive, especially when compared to cheaper programs.

"The evidence is insufficient to determine if comprehensive, holistic (cognitive rehabilitation therapy) is more effective than less intensive care" in helping patients, the 2009 report concluded.

Tricare Criticized

By the summer 2009, ECRI researchers had finished a draft of the study. ECRI, later joined by Tricare, asked outside scientific experts to review it.

The reviews, according to interviews and copies obtained by NPR and ProPublica, were uniformly critical.

(NPR and ProPublica obtained a copy of the ECRI reports through the Freedom of Information Act. However, Tricare denied access to reviews of the reports. ProPublica and NPR have appealed the request, but obtained copies of the reports and information on the reports from sources.)

The reviewers acknowledged that more research was needed on cognitive rehabilitation therapy. However, they noted that the Tricare report ran counter to several other so-called meta-analyses, which combine multiple, individual scientific studies to achieve greater statistical reliability.

For instance, a 2005 article in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, a peer-reviewed journal that is one of the mostly widely respected in the field, examined 258 studies. It concluded that "substantial evidence" supported cognitive rehabilitation. The review included 46 randomized control studies -- more than double the number in the Tricare study.

Reviewer Keith Cicerone, a leading civilian researcher who runs the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute's Center for Head Injuries in New Jersey, disputed Tricare's contention that the treatment was new and untested.

"We have a significant body of evidence describing cognitive rehabilitation and showing what works in cognitive rehabilitation," Cicerone said. "The idea that cognitive rehabilitation is new and untested is simply not true. It's got a better evidence base than most things that we do in rehabilitation."

Asked to explain in plain terms, Cicerone grew animated: "The arguments that are being made against" cognitive rehabilitation "in terms of the level of research that has been conducted are hooey," he said. "It is baloney."

The outside experts also attacked Tricare and ECRI for relying upon a methodology that ruled out important research. ECRI's protocols, they acknowledged, are well-suited for drug studies, where it is easy to prevent patients from knowing which pill they are receiving.

But ECRI's protocols do a poor job in assessing rehabilitation therapy where patients and doctors constantly interact in face-to-face treatment sessions. Other well-accepted methodologies, they said, have been designed to examine the benefits of therapeutic interventions.

They also questioned the reasons for excluding studies with a small number of patients, or with differing causes for brain injury, since a stroke can produce the same types of symptoms as a blow to the head.

Malec, the research director at the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana, said Tricare's study sounded like it came from a private insurance company seeking to cut costs. His review said that Tricare's study "fails to represent the evidence relevant to evaluating the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation after traumatic brain injury."

In an interview, he said Tricare's demand for conclusive evidence was understandable, but ill-advised. While research continues, existing evidence indicates that the therapy helps, with no studies showing that it harms troops.

"They missed the forest for the trees. They missed the big picture," he said.

Some of the researchers accused Tricare of using ECRI's strict assessment protocols as a cover to justify denying troops' coverage.

Wayne Gordon, director of rehabilitation psychology and neuropsychology services at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, called the review "dismaying" and "unacceptable." He compared it to tobacco companies that dismissed studies that showed a link between smoking and cancer.

"The ECRI Institute seems to be stating that, while sufficient evidence exists for there to be consensus among diverse groups that cognitive rehabilitation is a useful service, this evidence is 'not good enough' for Tricare," wrote Gordon, who declined to explain his comments further in an interview. He wrote that the ECRI study was "designed to reach a negative conclusion."

ECRI also asked two additional researchers to examine the report, John Corrigan, director of the Ohio Valley Center for Brain Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation in Columbus, and John Whyte, the director of Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Pennsylvania, both leading researchers in the field.

Both men declined to comment, citing their contractual obligations with ECRI, and Tricare declined to release their reviews. People familiar with their contents said Corrigan and Whyte closely mirrored the views of their fellow critics. They recommended that ECRI use a different method to judge studies of cognitive therapy, but the institute refused.

ECRI "said thank you very much, but we're not changing anything," said one person familiar with the review process.

More Studies, More Waiting

In an interview, ECRI Institute officials defended their firm's methodology. The system is designed to provide a rigorous review free from researchers' bias, they said.

Karen Schoelles, ECRI's medical director for the health technology assessment group, acknowledged that some of the institute's criteria -- such as accepting only studies with 10 or more patients -- were "arbitrary." But she said they were widely accepted in the assessment industry.

She also noted that Tricare officials were aware of the criteria and made no attempt to change or adjust them. Tricare used ECRI Institute for almost 10 years to carry out health reviews, though the agency recently terminated the contract and selected a new firm to carry out assessments.

Cognitive rehabilitation "may be on to something," Schoelles said. "But it needs more research."

Schoelles acknowledged that ECRI's own reviewers had criticized the report. ECRI offered to provide copies of the reviews, but later said that Tricare ordered them not to release them.

Stacey Uhl, the lead researcher on the review, said the criticism did not change her view that randomized controlled trials were the best way to assess the quality of evidence.

She noted the review found evidence that cognitive therapy did help in some way and said she would not rule out seeking such care for a loved one.

"I as a parent would want my child to receive all available therapies," she said.

DeMartino, the Tricare official who commissioned the report, acknowledged the outside reviewers had "very, very strong opinions" that were "of concern."

He said Tricare was conducting a review to determine whether ECRI's techniques were best suited to measure cognitive therapy's benefits. He denied submitting cognitive therapy to overly-strict review standards.

"You get what you ask for," DeMartino said. "They tell us what they're going to give us, and it's our job to sort of say, 'Okay, we understand that within the limitations of their methodology, this is the information that we get.'"

He added: "The better the information you have, the better that you can move forward and do the best thing." The Tricare reports, coupled with high cost projections, ended the legislative push to get cognitive rehabilitation for service members and veterans.

Last year, Congress ordered the Pentagon to conduct further studies to review the effectiveness of the therapy, but those studies have not yet begun and results are not expected for several years.

Tricare said it would conduct regular reviews to monitor developments in the field. DeMartino first said Tricare would carry out a new review beginning in September. A spokesman later clarified that the National Academy of Sciences Institutes of Medicine would perform the review. It is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2011.

Susan Connors, president of the brain injury association, said she was stunned by the need for legislation at all. As the Pentagon conducts yet more studies, thousands of troops and veterans may be going without the best known treatment available. Thousands more would have to rely on military hospitals or veterans clinics far from their homes, or with substandard programs. The Tricare refusal shut down access to the hundreds of civilian rehabilitation clinics nationwide.

"I'm very disappointed by the resistance," she said. "The military should want to do this."

Struggling for Care

Tricare's stance has not made it impossible to get cognitive rehabilitative. But it has discouraged civilian clinics from treating soldiers.

In interviews, several clinic owners and medical directors described their frustrations.

On some occasions, they were paid after developing relationships with individual Tricare claims processors or case managers, only to have the arrangements fall apart if the person left.

"We have tried to get Tricare and just beat our head against the wall," said Brent Masel, the president of the Transitional Learning Center in Galveston, Texas. "It took forever to get paid. It was always a fight."

Mark Ashley, the president of the Centre for Neuro Skills, a chain of rehabilitation clinics, said Tricare and other insurance providers were unwilling to pay because those with brain injuries can often perform basic functions that let them get through their daily lives.

They are "able to walk around, able to maneuver, but can't function cognitively in a manner that's safe, appropriate or competent," said Ashley, a past president of the brain injury association. "We can fix much of that, but it takes an exhaustive amount of time and effort. That's where the payers are out of touch."

One of the nation's top brain injury centers set up a charity program to help cover gaps left by Tricare. Susan Johnson, who runs Project Share at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, said Tricare pays only about 40 cents of each dollar of care provided for the type of comprehensive program that the clinic has found successful. The rest comes from Bernie Marcus, a billionaire philanthropist, and income from inpatient services.

"These guys go and they put their lives on the line and we put them in this situation that's difficult for some and less difficult for others to get care," Johnson said. "I find it frustrating."

Other clinic owners said they were able to game the system by providing cognitive therapy, but billing for other Tricare-covered services -- putting them at risk of being accused of false billing.

One clinic manager acknowledged being "creative" when submitting bills to Tricare. He said that he submitted bills to Tricare for occupational therapy when the treatment focused more on improving memory.

"They won't pay for this, but they will pay for that," said the manager, who did not want to be identified for fear of damaging his ability to receive payments. "You just have to figure out how to work the system."

Soldiers and families agreed that Tricare's stance has made getting care a battle.

Sarah Wade said she patched together adequate care for Ted, arranging for him to go to a VA hospital for some services and to travel to Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital for others.

Tricare would have paid for some things, such as a physical therapist to help him learn to walk again. But she has had no luck trying to persuade Tricare to pay to treat his brain injury.

In frustration, Wade personally visited a high-ranking official at the Veterans Affairs Department. He, in turn, ordered a VA hospital to fund a special contract with a local civilian rehabilitation doctor near the Wades' North Carolina home.

"Yes, we have been able to get [cognitive rehabilitation] paid for, but it's been with a lot fighting, red tape, and bureaucracy," Sarah Wade said. "It's his greatest injury and the one that impacts his life the most, that impacts his ability to be a human." She added, "It shouldn't be this hard."

The Wades credit the rehabilitation that Ted has received with markedly improving his cognitive problems. After his 2004 injury, Ted spent months regaining consciousness. Doctors were unsure about his mental state, not certain he would ever talk or even think rationally.

Today, Ted speaks in slow, sure sentences, even cracking jokes. He can make decisions -- choices that seem simple enough to someone with normal cognitive skills, but which often stymie those with brain injury.

He knows, for example, to buy cherry tomatoes at the store rather than big tomatoes, which are hard for him to chop and slice with only one arm. He can read through a menu, and pick food that's nutritious. He can wash and fold his own laundry.

One recent day after dining at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, Ted smiled when Sarah reminded him that he was once unable to figure out whether he liked hot sauce on his tacos.

"It's been a long, slow process," he said.

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Jihad Denial, A nation buries it's head in the sand

2010-06-28T07:55:00.000-07:00

Actually, our heads are being buried in the sand by this Obama led administration. What is Obama's goal? He is leading this country to ruin purposefully and with intelligent design. I believe he is a Muslim in disguise, who's agenda matches that of Islam.

Jihad Denial Syndrome

By Guy Rodgers, executive director of ACT! for America
June 24, 2010

www.thehill.com | See no jihad. Hear no jihad. Speak no jihad.

This sums up the Obama administration's national security assessment regarding our ongoing conflict with global Islamic jihad. Unfortunately for us, it seems they have come down with a severe case of Jihad Denial Syndrome (JDS).

Americans were tipped off to this when the Pentagon released its report on the Fort Hood jihadist attack. The mountains of evidence, including Nidal Hasan screaming "Allahu Akbar" as he fired away, indisputably revealed that Hasan was motivated by the ideology of jihad.

Yet the body of the Pentagon report achieves the remarkable feat of avoiding a single mention of "radical Islam," "jihad" or any similar reference.

The recent National Security Strategy document affirmed that what happened in the Ft. Hood report was no accident or oversight. Stripped from the document were all references to radical Islam as a factor in the increasing number of terrorist attacks attempted against the United States.

Then came Attorney General Eric Holder's tongue-tied response to U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith's simple question about the recent spate of terrorist incidents asking if Holder "believe[d] these individuals might have been incited to take the actions they did because of radical Islam?"

As if affirming the obvious might instantly turn him into a leper, Holder couldn't bring himself to acknowledge that radical Islam might have ever been a part of the motivation behind these attacks.

When pressed, he referred to Anwar al-Awlaki's views as a "version of Islam that is not consistent with it..."

On June 4, Todd Rosenblum, deputy undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, made a similar argument at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

According to a report in Congressional Quarterly, he "...defended the Obama administration's decision to avoid using terms such as `jihadist' or `Islamist' to describe the enemy in the war on terrorism, saying such descriptions legitimize the rhetoric of criminals and extremists while denigrating true Islam."

This echoed what Obama counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan said in a recent speech: "Nor do we describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists."

There can be no doubt: The Obama administration has made it official policy to silence any reference to "jihad," "radical Islam" or any related term by officials in its justice, defense, intelligence and counterterrorism branches.

This goes beyond political correctness. This is Jihad Denial Syndrome, an obsessive denial of reality that will encourage more terrorism and put America at greater risk.

It is also the height of hubris.

What the Obama administration is asserting is that it understands the doctrines of historic political Islam better than the leading Islamic clerics in the world today; better than the Islamic scholars who developed the sharia law within the five Islamic schools of jurisprudence; and better than the Prophet Muhammed, whose years of engaging in jihad to purge or conquer non-Muslims is an indisputable historical fact.

If this approach actually worked, we would be seeing a decline in Islamic terror plots against the United States. Yet the very opposite is true. There has been a significant ramping up of Islamist terrorist activity since Barack Obama became president.

This is not a blip but a quantifiable trend. There is no evidence that the Obama administration's Jihad Denial Syndrome has made America any safer. There is also no evidence that the existence of JDS within the Obama administration has marginalized those they call "extremists," minimized their numbers or won us any increased approval in the Muslim world.

President Obama and his national security leadership have bought into a false narrative promoted by organizations and leaders with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, such as CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America). Dozens of such individuals have been placed in his administration, including Dalia Mogahed, a top Mideast adviser to Obama who made the astounding assertion last October that most women in the world associate sharia law with "gender justice."

The false narrative being peddled to the Obama administration includes redefining "jihad" as merely a "personal struggle against sin," which denies the historical and doctrinal centrality of violent jihad to political Islam and as a means to advance sharia law.

This narrative is integral to the disinformation campaign emanating from Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations. The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood is this: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

During the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, at which organizations including CAIR and ISNA were named as unindicted co-conspirators, the Muslim Brotherhood's Strategic Goal for North America was entered into evidence.

It states in part: "The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging their miserable house..."

What better way to sabotage a nation from within than to dupe its leadership regarding the true nature of, and motivation for, the threat that is arrayed against it?

The results of this administration's arrogance and foolishness speak for themselves.

Guy Rodgers is the executive director of ACT! for America, the nation's largest national security grassroots organization dedicated to combating the threat of radical Islam.

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/105243-jihad-denial-syndrome

How our soldiers are being drugged to death

2010-06-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

This tells of how our war veterans are being drugged to death by VA doctors who would rather dope our soldiers up than take the time to do their job right. To say it's an outrage is an understatement but it's downplayed and hidden, covered up as so many things are. Plus it's a safe bet that the drug companies, who make billions selling these drugs and have a well developed habit of hiding their problems and lying to the public, are influencing this cover up.

Dying In Their Sleep: The Invisible Plague Attacking U.S. Soldiers

Cilla McCain
Author, Murder in Baker Company
Posted: June 23, 2010 05:42 PM

2010-06-21-andrew.jpg

Corporal Andrew White USMC

While doing research for the book Murder In Baker Company, I came to know many military family members from the support group "Home of the Brave*." The group's goal is to help one another gain information and justice in the noncombat related deaths of their loved ones. According to the Department of Defense nearly 1 out of 4 fatalities in the military are noncombat related.

Stan and Shirley White of West Virginia represent one of the "Home of the Brave" families. Three of their four children have served in the armed forces. Two have died because of their time in war. On September 26, 2005, their son Robert, an Army Staff Sergeant, was killed in a rocket attack in Afghanistan. On February 12, 2008, their youngest son, 23 year-old Marine Corporal Andrew White died in his sleep after being treated for PTSD with lethal prescription drugs.

Struggling with PTSD compounded by grief over the death of his brother, Andrew sought help from VA doctors. Their first line of defense was to prescribe him 20 mg. of Paxil, 4 mg of Klonopin and 50 mg of Seroquel. These medications helped at first, but later proved ineffective. Instead of changing the course of treatment, the doctors responded by continually increasing his dosage until the Seroquel alone reached a whopping 1600 mg per day. Within weeks of Andrew's death, three more young West Virginia veterans died while being treated for PTSD with the same drugs, prompting Stan and Shirley White to begin a mission to find out what the deaths have in common.

"When we first learned of the other West Virginia soldiers who died in their sleep," Stan says. "We thought it must be a reaction to biological warfare, we thought they must have been exposed to something in Iraq and now it is killing them."

Indeed, if you conduct an internet search with the phrase "soldier found dead" the results are staggering. Narrow it down even further by including the phrase "unexplained" and you will begin to get a glimpse of what some would call an epidemic.

When the White's received Andrew's autopsy report, the official cause was listed as "accidental intoxication of Seroquel, Paxil, and pain medication." Andrew had not committed suicide, nor did he take his medication in a manner it was not prescribed. Death, as it turned out, is a potential side effect of Seroquel. The doctors and the pharmaceutical company knew that, however nobody told Andrew, despite the fact that he was experiencing many of Seroquel's most serious side effects.

In the 11-months Andrew was taking Seroquel, he gained 40 lbs., suffered from tremors, severe constipation and swelling of the mammary glands. Before his death, a VA doctor referred Andrew to an endocrinologist for tests to determine the cause of his symptoms, even though it is clearly stated in Seroquel's literature that all of this can be caused by using the drug.

Andrew passed away before the appointment.

Dr. Fred Baughman, a neurologist and outspoken critic on the use of anti-psychotic drugs has studied the West Virginia soldier deaths and has determined that "sudden cardiac death" is the cause. In a May 2010 press release, Dr. Baughman states:

"All were diagnosed with PTSD. All seemed "normal" when they went to bed. And, all were on Seroquel (an antipsychotic) Paxil (an antidepressant) and Klonopin (a benzodiazepine). They were not comatose and unarousable -- with pulse and respirations or pulse intact, responsive to CPR, surviving transport to a hospital, frequently surviving. These were sudden cardiac deaths."

Between the VA medical doctors and psychiatrists Andrew was going to for help, none tried to assess the effectiveness of these drugs on his PTSD symptoms. They just kept increasing the dosage as if he were a guinea pig in some twisted lab experiment. Whether sudden cardiac death, polypharmacy, or suicide, a prescription tracking system could be a major step toward preventing tragedy.

To that end, in March 2010, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia called on the Surgeons General from the Department of Defense to provide data regarding prescription drugs in the military. This vital information was never received despite repeated requests, so on June 9, 2010, Senator Webb released a public statement calling on the DOD to finally adhere to the request:

Three months ago in an Armed Services hearing, Army Surgeon General Schoomaker downplayed media reports of skyrocketing prescription drug use of those serving in the Army. I am still waiting to see existing data across services and a judgment of these findings.

Webb's statement went on to say:

A reporting requirement has been added to the FY 2011 National Defense Authorization Act requiring the DOD to keep health records that detail the prescription and administration of psychotropic medications.

There are many possible reasons why an avalanche of prescriptions are befalling our soldiers with no accountability even as those drugs kill. Financial gain by medical personnel of the DOD is one of the most serious allegations being examined and I will continue to follow this matter.

Let us hope the powers that be do not continue to stall and downplay the seriousness of this issue.

I shudder to think of how many more young, vibrant soldiers will die in their sleep in the meantime.

The truth, often hidden from us.

2010-06-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

ALL THAT VOTED FOR THE MAN PROBABLY DID NOT HEAR HIS ANSWERS ON "MEET THE PRESS", BEFORE HAND.

The following is a narrative taken from a 2008 Sunday morning televised "Meet The Press'. The author (Dale Lindsborg) is employed by none other than the very liberal Washington Post!!

From Sunday's 07 Sept. 2008 11:48:04 EST, Televised "Meet the Press" THE THEN Senator Obama was asked about his stance on the American Flag.

General Bill Ginn' USAF (ret.) asked Obama to explain WHY he doesn't follow protocol when the National Anthem is played.
The General stated to Obama that according to the United States Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171...During rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all present (except those in uniform) are expected to stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. Or, at the very least, "Stand and Face It".

'Senator' Obama replied:

"As I've said about the flag pin, I don't want to be perceived as taking sides". "There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American
flag is a symbol of oppression.." "The anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air and all that sort of thing."

Obama continued: "The National Anthem should be 'swapped' for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song 'I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing'. If that were our anthem, then, I might salute
it. In my opinion, we should consider reinventing our National Anthem
as well as 'redesign' our Flag to better offer our enemies hope and love.
It's my intention, if elected, to disarm America to the level of acceptance
to our Middle East Brethren. If we, as a Nation of waring people, conduct ourselves like the nations of Islam, where peace prevails - - - perhaps a
state or period of mutual accord could exist between our governments .."

When I become President, I will seek a pact of agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity, and a freedom from disquieting oppressive thoughts. We as a Nation, have placed upon the nations of Islam, an unfair injustice which is WHY my wife disrespects the Flag and she and I have attended several flag burning ceremonies in the past".
"Of course now, I have found myself about to become the President of the United States and I have put my hatred aside. I will use my power to bring CHANGE to this Nation, and offer the people a new path... My wife and I look forward to becoming our Country's First black Family. Indeed, CHANGE is about to overwhelm the United States of America "

WHAAAAAAAT, the **** is that!!!
Yes, you read it right.
I, for one, am speechless!!!
Dale Lindsborg , Washington Post

Disposable Warriors

2010-05-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

'While Daniels dismisses the Army doctors' diagnosis as a "gross error," he says he was not surprised by it. "I've treated hundreds of soldiers over the years, and I've seen a dozen personality disorder diagnoses. None of them," says the psychologist, "actually had personality disorder."'

Joshua Kors
April 8, 2010 | This article appeared in the April 26, 2010 edition of The Nation.
Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

The mortar shell that wrecked Chuck Luther's life exploded at the base of the guard tower. Luther heard the brief whistling, followed by a flash of fire, a plume of smoke and a deafening bang that shook the tower and threw him to the floor. The Army sergeant's head slammed against the concrete, and he lay there in the Iraqi heat, his nose leaking clear fluid.

"I remember laying there in a daze, looking around, trying to figure out where I was at," he says. "I was nauseous. My teeth hurt. My shoulder hurt. And my right ear was killing me." Luther picked himself up and finished his shift, then took some ibuprofen to dull the pain. The sergeant was seven months into his deployment at Camp Taji, in the volatile Sunni Triangle, twenty miles north of Baghdad. He was determined, he says, to complete his mission. But the short, muscular frame that had guided him to twenty-two honors--including three Army Achievement Medals and a Combat Action Badge--was basically broken. The shoulder pain persisted, and the hearing in his right ear, which evaporated on impact, never returned, replaced by the maddening hum of tinnitus.

Then came the headaches. "They'd start with a speckling in the corner of my vision, then grow worse and worse until finally the right eye would just shut down and go blank," he says. "The left one felt like someone was stabbing me over and over in the eye."

Doctors at Camp Taji's aid station told Luther he was faking his symptoms. When he insisted he wasn't, they presented a new diagnosis for his blindness: personality disorder.

"To be told that I was lying, that was a real smack in the face," says Luther. "Then when they said 'personality disorder,' I was really confused. I didn't understand how a problem with my personality could cause deafness or blindness or shoulder pain."

For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors' fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers [see Kors, "How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits," April 9, 2007]. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.

According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.

In July 2007 the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs called a hearing to investigate PD discharges. Barack Obama, then a senator, put forward a bill to halt all PD discharges. And before leaving office, President Bush signed a law requiring the defense secretary to conduct his own investigation of the PD discharge system. But Obama's bill did not pass, and the Defense Department concluded that no soldiers had been wrongly discharged. The PD dismissals have continued. Since 2001 more than 22,600 soldiers have been discharged with personality disorder. That number includes soldiers who have served two and three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This should have been resolved during the Bush administration. And it should have been stopped now by the Obama administration," says Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "The fact that it hasn't is a national disgrace."

On Capitol Hill, the fight is not over. In October four senators wrote a letter to President Obama to underline their continuing concern over PD discharges. The president, almost three years after presenting his personality disorder bill, says he remains concerned as well.

Veterans' leaders say they're particularly disturbed by Luther's case because it highlights the severe consequences a soldier can face if he questions his diagnosis and opposes his PD discharge.

Luther insisted to doctors at Camp Taji that he did not have personality disorder, that the idea of developing a childhood mental illness at the age of 36, after passing eight psychological screenings, was ridiculous. The sergeant used a vivid expression to convey how much pain he was in. "I told them that some days, the pain was so bad, I felt like dying." Doctors declared him a suicide risk. They collected his shoelaces, his belt and his rifle and ordered him confined to an isolation chamber.

Extensive medical records written by Luther's doctors document his confinement in the aid station for more than a month. The sergeant was kept under twenty-four-hour guard. Most nights, he says, guards enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on and blasting heavy metal music. When Luther rebelled, he was pinned down and injected with sleeping medication.

Eventually Luther was brought to his commander, who told him he had a choice: he could sign papers saying his medical problems stemmed from personality disorder or face more time in isolation.

'Every Night It Was Megadeth'

Luther entered the Army in 1988, following in the footsteps of his grandfathers, both decorated World War II veterans. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, he and his unit were deployed to New Orleans, where he helped evacuate residents and dispose of bodies left in the street. In 2006 he was deployed from Fort Hood in Texas to Camp Taji, where he performed reconnaissance with the First Squadron, Seventh Cavalry Regiment, led by Maj. Christopher Wehri. "Luther was older and more mature than most of the soldiers. He was forthcoming, very polite," says Wehri. "He seemed to have a good head on his shoulders."

Doctors at the aid station didn't see him that way. Following the May 2007 mortar attack, Luther entered the base's clinic and described his concussion symptoms to Capt. Aaron Dewees. Dewees, a pediatrician charged with caring for soldiers in the 1-7 Cavalry, grew suspicious of Luther's self-report. "It is my professional opinion," Dewees wrote in his medical records, "that Sgt. Charles F. Luther Jr. has been misrepresenting himself and his self-described medical conditions for secondary gain." The doctor suggested that Luther was faking his ailments to avoid reconnaissance duty. He called the sergeant "narcissistic" and said Luther's descriptions of his injuries were a mixture of "exaggeration and flat-out fabrication."

Luther's medical records document severe nosebleeds and "sharp and burning" pain. Still, the sergeant says he could sense that his doctors didn't believe him. It was at that point--frustrated, plagued by blinding migraines--that he spoke of pain so severe he wished he were dead. "I made clear that I was not going to kill myself, that it was just a colorful expression to explain how much pain I was in." Dewees agreed. In their records, Luther's doctors note a "suicide gesture" and "'off-handed' comments" that the sergeant was going to kill himself, but Dewees said those gestures were "unlikely to have been a serious attempt" at self-harm. Nonetheless, Dewees wrote, such statements "must be taken seriously and treated as such," that Luther "remains a threat to himself and others given his need for attention, narcissistic tendencies and impulsive behavior."

Luther was taken to an isolation chamber and told this was his new sleeping quarters. The room, which Luther captured on his digital camera, served as a walk-in closet. It was slightly larger than an Army cot and was crammed with cardboard boxes, a desk and a bedpan. Through a small, cracked window, he could look out onto the base. Through the open doorway, the sergeant was monitored by armed guards.

Both Dewees and Lt. Col. Larry Applewhite, an aid station social worker, declared Luther mentally ill, suffering from a personality disorder. The next step was to remove him from the military as fast as possible. "It is strongly recommended that Sgt. Luther be administratively separated via Chapter 5-13," wrote Applewhite, citing the official discharge code for personality disorder. In a separate statement, Dewees endorsed the 5-13 discharge and urged that it be handled rapidly. "I feel the safest course of action," he wrote, "is to expedite his departure from theater."

That didn't happen. For more than a month Luther remained in his six-by-eight-foot isolation chamber, weeks he describes as "the hardest of my life." He says the guards would ridicule him and most nights enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on all night and using a nearby Xbox and TV speakers to blast heavy metal into his room. "Every night it was Megadeth, Saliva, Disturbed." The sergeant pulled a blanket over his head to block out the noise and the light, but it was no use.

"They told me I wasn't a real soldier, that I was a piece of crap. All I wanted was to be treated for my injuries. Now suddenly I'm not a soldier. I'm a prisoner, by my own people," says Luther, his voice tightening. "I felt like a caged animal in that room. That's when I started to lose it."

Isolated, exhausted, the sergeant who had been confined for being mentally ill says he began feeling exactly that. Finally Luther snapped. He stepped out of his room and was walking toward a senior official's office when an altercation broke out. In the ensuing scuffle, Luther bit one of his guards, then spit in the face of the aid station chaplain. The sergeant was pinned to the floor and injected with five milligrams of Haldol, an antipsychotic medication. Sedated, Luther was returned to isolation.

Staff Sgt. James Byington, who was serving at Camp Taji with the 1-7 Cavalry, walked the half-mile to the aid station to visit his fellow soldier. Byington says that off the battlefield, Sergeant Luther was "animated and peppy," the comedian of the chow hall. During combat, he says, Luther was focused and prepared, a key component in a farmland raid just outside Taji that discovered a cache of weapons and money. The man he found in the isolation chamber was neither the soldier nor the comedian, he says, but something altogether odd and decrepit. "He wasn't energetic like he used to be. He wasn't cutting jokes. Chuck's one of those guys that talks with his hands. You go into a room with twenty guys, and you're going to hear Chuck Luther," says Byington. "Now he seemed half-asleep. He looked worn out."

A few hours after Byington's visit, Luther was called to his commander's office. Major Wehri was frank. He held the personality disorder discharge papers in his hand. "And he said, 'Sign this paperwork, and we'll get you out.' I said, 'I don't have a personality disorder.' But it was like that didn't matter," says Luther. "He said, 'If you don't sign this, you're going to be here a lot longer.'"

The sergeant signed. "They had me broke down," he says. "At that point, I just wanted to get home." Luther's voice grows quiet as he recounts that final meeting. "I still remember Wehri's face," he says. "He was smiling."

Wehri confirms his statements to Luther. He says he pressed the sergeant to sign because he felt it was in Luther's best interest and in the best interest of the Army. The sergeant, he says, "had gotten so belligerent. If we had returned him to his unit, he would have been a danger to himself and to others. His behavior was not suitable to military service. And he wanted to get home. So I told him, 'If your goal is to get home, and we've diagnosed you with personality disorder, your fastest way is to sign the papers. If you don't sign, you're just subjecting yourself to further anguish and discomfort.'"

Wehri insists that his comments to Luther were not pivotal to the sergeant's discharge. Even without a soldier's signature, a PD dismissal can proceed. But the papers would then move to an Army lawyer, and the process would be delayed. "You can't force anyone to sign," he says. "But if you're going to be stubborn and not sign, try to play hardball, you run the risk of a dishonorable discharge. With Luther's biting and spitting, I could have court-martialed him out right there for failure to perform in a military manner."

The major says Luther's real story is that of a good soldier who came home for leave, saw his wife's new haircut and slimmed figure and was driven mad by fears of her infidelity. "When he came back to Iraq, something had changed. He had a negative attitude. He wouldn't respond to direct orders. His head wasn't in the game." Wehri says it became clear to him that Luther was intent on returning home right away, a realization that left him disappointed but not shocked. "Soldiers are conniving," he says. "They are manipulative. If they get in their minds they want to do something for personal gain, including going home, they'll go to any lengths to get it."

Wehri rejects the idea that the mortar attack and subsequent concussion could have triggered Luther's woes. "That mortar attack was nothing," he says. "Insignificant. Maybe he fell down. Sure. I've fallen down lots of times." The major wonders aloud whether Luther is using that injury to justify his instability. He says if he thought the attack was significant, he would have investigated it fully and gotten the ball rolling for a Purple Heart.

The major confirms that Luther was confined to the aid station for several weeks and that his room was minuscule. But he says those circumstances were unavoidable. "Discharging a soldier with personality disorder is a very long and drawn-out process," he says. "And Luther was a danger to himself and others. He needed to be watched. The aid station, that's where they had 24-7 supervision."

Wehri says he marvels at the idea that Luther could be a poster child for false personality disorder discharges. He has seen seven personality disorder cases in his career, he says. "And Chuck Luther was by far the clearest one." The major says that when Luther's troubles began, the sergeant's behavior confounded him. Then, says Wehri, he heard from a commander who said Luther's family had spoken with him and revealed that Luther had suffered from psychiatric problems before entering the military and had been treated with medication. "Then suddenly it made sense to me," says Wehri. "This was not new. His symptoms were just popping up now, after he'd kept a lid on them for many years. It all clicked into place."

But Luther's wife and his mother say that story is flatly false. Both say they never had such a conversation with an Army commander and are emphatic that the sergeant never faced any psychiatric problems before entering the military. "Hearing that makes me really angry," says Luther's mother, Barbara Guignard. "Chuck was an all-American boy. He never took any medication, and he never had a problem."

How Dewees and Applewhite came to the conclusion that Luther was suffering from a pre-existing mental illness remains unclear. They declined to elaborate on their notes or discuss the diagnosis of personality disorder in general. What is clear is that neither Dewees nor Applewhite spoke with Luther's family before determining that his problems existed before his military service. The sergeant's wife and his mother say that had they been asked, both could have provided key information demonstrating Luther's stability and health before the mortar attack.

Spc. Angel Sandoval says he could have helped as well. Sandoval, who was stationed at Camp Taji and served under Luther in the 1-7 Cavalry, laughs at the idea that the sergeant was mentally ill. "Chuck was a lot more than 'not mentally ill,'" he says. "He saved my life." Sandoval describes heading into combat under Luther's command. The specialist was ready to dump his side-SAPIs, large ceramic plates that strap to the side of a bulletproof vest, protecting the kidneys from machine-gun fire. "They're bulky and kinda heavy, but he said, 'No way, you have to wear them,'" says Sandoval. "Two days later I got shot right there, under my arm. It could have killed me."

Luther, he says, was "one of the greatest leaders I had. He never steered me wrong. If they thought he was ill and needed medical help, they should have given it to him instead of kicking him out of the Army."

But it was Wehri and Applewhite's view that mattered. Soon after signing the personality disorder papers, Luther was placed in a DC-10 and whisked back to Fort Hood. There he would learn about Chapter 5-13's fine print: he was ineligible for disability benefits, since his condition was pre-existing. He would not be receiving the lifetime of medical care given to severely wounded soldiers. And because he did not complete his contract, he would have to return a slice of his signing bonus.

At the base, a Fort Hood discharge specialist laid out the details. "He said I now owed the Army $1,500. And if I did not pay, they'd garnish my wages and assess interest on my debt," Luther says.

Luther was then released into a pelting Texas rain. He called his wife, Nicki, to pick him up. "When I got to Fort Hood he was in the parking lot, alone, wet, sitting on his duffel bag," Nicki recalls. "He had lost a lot of weight. He looked like...a little boy. I remember thinking, My God, what have they done to my husband?"

The President 'Continues to Be Concerned'

Luther's case is not an isolated incident. In the past three years, The Nation has uncovered more than two dozen cases like his from bases across the country. All the soldiers were examined, deemed physically and psychologically fit, then welcomed into the military. All performed honorably before being wounded during service. None had a documented history of psychological problems. Yet after seeking treatment for their wounds, each soldier was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then discharged and denied benefits.

That group includes Sgt. Jose Rivera, whose hands and legs were punctured by grenade shrapnel during his second tour in Iraq. Army doctors said his wounds were caused by personality disorder. Sailor Samantha Stitz fractured her pelvis and two bones in her ankle. Navy doctors cited personality disorder as the cause. Spc. Bonnie Moore developed an inflamed uterus during her service. Army doctors said her profuse vaginal bleeding was caused by personality disorder. Civilian doctors disagreed: they performed emergency surgery to remove her uterus and appendix. After being discharged and denied benefits, Moore and her teenage daughter became homeless.

"The military is exacerbating an already bad situation," says Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense. "This is more than neglect. It's malice." Sullivan's organization has spent the past few years pressing officials in Washington to take action on the personality disorder issue. In July 2007 he testified before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Sullivan told the committee that PD discharges needed to be halted immediately.

That month Obama put forward his bill to do just that. The bill was matched in the House by legislation from Representative Phil Hare, and it had passionate support on both sides of the aisle, from prominent Democrats like Senator Barbara Boxer to high-ranking Republicans like Senator Kit Bond. Sullivan and other veterans' leaders say they were hopeful that Obama would use the spotlight of the presidential campaign to generate further momentum for his bill.

That didn't happen. In the twenty-one months of his presidential run, the Illinois senator never spoke publicly about PD discharges or his bill to halt them. Eventually, without widespread public knowledge or support, and facing opposition from senators who had never heard of personality disorder and worried the bill would open a floodgate of expensive benefits, Obama and Bond, the bill's co-author, were forced to reshape it into an amendment and water down its contents. Their amendment did not halt PD discharges. Instead, it required the Pentagon to investigate PD dismissals and report back to Congress. The amendment, part of the Defense Authorization Act, was signed by President Bush in January 2008.

Five months later the report landed on Obama's and Bond's desks. The Pentagon's conclusion: no soldiers had been improperly diagnosed, and none had been wrongly discharged. The report praises the military's doctors as "competent professionals" and endorses continued use of pre-existing personality disorder to discharge soldiers whose "ability to function effectively" is impaired. The report's author, former Under Secretary of Defense David Chu, further notes that though the Navy's official label for the discharge is "Separation by Reason of Convenience of the Government," soldiers "are not wantonly discharged at the convenience of the Military."

It is unclear how Chu came to these conclusions. The report does not cite any interviews with soldiers discharged with personality disorder, or their families, doctors or commanders. That fact infuriated many military families, as it triggered memories of a 2007 study by former Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock. Pollock had been asked to examine a stack of PD cases. Five months later she released her report, saying her office had "thoughtfully and thoroughly" reviewed them. Like Chu, she commended the soldiers' doctors and determined that they all had been properly diagnosed. The Nation later revealed that Pollock's office did not interview anyone, not even the soldiers whose cases she was reviewing [see Kors, "Specialist Town Takes His Case to Washington," October 15, 2007].

"He doesn't talk to soldiers, and he doesn't talk to their families?" says Nicki Luther, the sergeant's wife, her eyes welling with tears. "I heard the same thing from that surgeon general, and I thought, You haven't been in my house. You don't know what I've dealt with. How dare you sit there and say you've investigated thoroughly and found nothing. That's a crock."

The Chu report does recommend several changes to the PD discharge system, alterations, it says, that will protect soldiers from being wrongly discharged. Those protections include requiring that a doctor diagnose the soldier's personality disorder and a lawyer counsel him on the ramifications of the discharge. The report also recommends that the surgeon general review each soldier's case and endorse the PD discharge before releasing the soldier from the military.

Chu, a Bush appointee, left office in 2008 with the president. But his findings remain as the Defense Department's position on PD discharges. In early April the Pentagon released a statement saying that Clifford Stanley, the current under secretary, is implementing Chu's recommendations and fully embraces his findings.

That fact left many on Capitol Hill enraged. "This study, with the new requirement to have the upper-ups approve discharges--all it basically did was set up one more hurdle. As far as we can tell, the impact has been somewhere between zero and less," says Senator Bond. Bond says the Pentagon still hasn't explained the fundamental contradiction of a PD discharge: recruits who have a severe pre-existing mental illness could not pass the rigorous screening process and would not be accepted into the military in the first place. Yet he says his office is looking at several cases, like Luther's, in which the soldiers have been deemed physically and psychologically fit in several screenings before their personality disorder is diagnosed. "These men and women who have put their lives on the line, we owe them," says Bond. "We have a responsibility. Discharging them with personality disorder--it's just an easy way to duck that responsibility."

The Republican from Missouri says he's hopeful that Obama, his partner on the PD bill, will take action from the White House. "He has a unique chance now to change the whole operation, to alter the system from the inside." In October Bond gathered a small coalition of senators and wrote a letter to the president, asking him to confront the issue once again. "In 2007 we were partners in the fight against the military's misuse of personality disorder discharges," wrote the senators. "Today, we urge you to renew your commitment to address this critical issue."

The next week Senator Boxer, a co-sponsor of the original bill, submitted a statement of her own. "It is simply appalling that any combat veteran with a Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI] or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder would be denied medical care for injuries sustained during combat," Boxer wrote. Even with the reforms that followed the Chu report, "we must make sure that the new discharge process...is working."

The White House responded quickly, assuring the senators that the president still has his eye on personality disorder. President Obama "is determined to fulfill America's responsibility to our Armed Forces," says White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro. "The president was concerned with personality disorder discharges as a senator, and he drafted a bill. He continues to be concerned as commander in chief."

Disposable Warriors

Luther hopes that concern will translate into action. The sergeant stands in his backyard, 1,500 miles from Washington, five miles from Fort Hood, talking about Obama's bill and watching his 7-year-old daughter floating high above the family's oversize trampoline, her face wild with joy. Luther looks on with sullen eyes. "Right now I can't worry about Washington, or even about fixing my discharge papers," he says. "First thing, I got to fix myself." He gestures to his daughter, a mop of blond hair leaping to and fro. "I used to be like that: a goofball, all this energy. Now... I don't know."

Some nights he doesn't sleep. Others he's back in Iraq, in the aid station, in endless isolation. The blinding headaches and piercing shoulder pain still plague him, he says, along with panic attacks and bursts of post-traumatic stress-fueled rage. Luther broke four bones in his hand punching a hole in his bedroom wall. His family's hallway is pocked with holes from similar incidents.

"He's not the man I married," says Nicki Luther. "And when I'm honest with myself, I don't think I'll ever have that man again. He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, sweating, swearing." Nicki says he tries to be a good dad to their kids. "He used to wrestle around with them. But his body's like an old man's now. And he's so quick to anger. The kids say, 'We want our dad back.' I don't know what to tell them."

Three years after the mortar blast, Luther's life is still on shaky ground. Some days he's posting love notes on his wife's Facebook page and hand-delivering her favorite salad to her office at lunchtime. Another day, in the midst of an argument, he knocked down a family photo, then ripped the furniture out of the living room and dumped it in the garage, scaring his children. Soon after the birth of their fourth child, Marlee Grace, Luther and his wife separated. They reunited a few months later, in time for their eighteenth anniversary.

Luther knew he needed help. This time he sought it outside the military. He began seeing Troy Daniels, a psychologist, once a week. One fact was clear immediately, says Daniels. "He did not have personality disorder. The symptoms we were looking at looked more like traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. To take a soldier having problems with vision, hearing and so forth--and to say he has personality disorder--that's a bogus kind of statement. I don't even think a master's student would make that kind of mistake."

While Daniels dismisses the Army doctors' diagnosis as a "gross error," he says he was not surprised by it. "I've treated hundreds of soldiers over the years, and I've seen a dozen personality disorder diagnoses. None of them," says the psychologist, "actually had personality disorder."

Yet all of those soldiers, he says, faced serious repercussions because of their discharge. "Many of the soldiers can't get hired anymore. Every time they go for a job, they'll have this paper that says they've been diagnosed with a personality disorder. Employers take one look at that and think, 'This guy's crazy. We can't hire him.' For most of the soldiers," says Daniels, "it becomes a lifetime label."

Luther luckily has secured a job, as a truck driver for Frito-Lay. Securing benefits has proved a bit tougher. Since being released from the Army, the sergeant has been locked in battle with the VA, fighting to prove that despite his PD discharge, his wounds are war related and thus worthy of disability and medical benefits.

Those efforts stumbled at first. In May 2008 the VA declared Luther "incompetent" and demanded that a fiduciary collect any disability benefits he may receive. Eventually, following a slew of paperwork and medical exams, the sergeant re-established his full standing. This past December--after VA doctors found Luther to be suffering from migraine headaches, vision problems, dizziness, nausea, difficulty hearing, numbness, anxiety and irritability--the VA cited traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder and declared Luther 80 percent disabled. "PTSD, a consequence of the TBI," wrote one VA doctor, "is a clear diagnosis."

The VA rating cleared the way for the sergeant to receive disability benefits and a lifetime of medical care. But it hasn't changed the Army's view--or altered Luther's discharge papers, which still list the sergeant as suffering from personality disorder. The sergeant, in return, has refused to pay back the $1,500 of his signing bonus that the Army says he owes, despite threats to garnish his wages. "I told them, Let me put it this way: as long as I'm breathing of my own free will, I'm not paying you a dime."

Luther says what really boils his blood is having to accept that his military career is over while the careers of those who devised his discharge are flourishing. After Luther's dismissal, Wehri, a captain at the time, was promoted to major and selected to be an executive officer with NATO. Dr. Dewees returned to Kentucky, where he continues to serve with the National Guard. Social worker Applewhite is now an instructor at Fort Sam Houston, where he teaches a class on how to identify mental disorders.

With or without the Army, Luther says he will continue to serve. With his health gradually improving and the bulk of his battle over, the sergeant is taking on a new mission: fighting the military on behalf of other soldiers like himself. Luther is now the founder and executive director of Disposable Warriors, a one-man operation that assists soldiers who are fighting their discharge and veterans who are appealing their disability rating.

Luther's organization did not receive a hero's welcome. Soon after founding the group, he discovered a threatening note on his windshield. "Back off or you and your family will pay!!" it read, in careful, black ink cursive. Weeks later, thieves broke into the home of a veterans' organizer who worked closely with Luther, taking nothing but the files of the soldiers they were assisting.

The sergeant, characteristically, is undaunted. "This is the right path for me," he says, his voice resolute. "I got to be there for these other soldiers. I'm not the only one who needs help."

---

Joshua Kors

This article appeared in the April 26, 2010 edition of The Nation.

About the Author: Joshua Kors (JoshuaKors.com) covers veterans' issues for The Nation. He is the winner of the National Magazine Award, George Polk Award, and Military Reporters and Editors Award. He was also a finalist for Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. His work is featured in the American Society of Magazine Editors' recent anthology "The Best American Magazine Writing 2008."

(Note: Find this story online for media and links to related content.)

Brain collector shows injuries

2010-03-10T06:47:00.001-08:00

After a lifetime of multiple brain injuries (along with three broken necks and one broken back related to them) I worry about and show the signs of long term consequences as noted in the article below. But as always I desire to educate those around about this for there are many others who's injuries are not recognized and could use help.

NFL Brain Collector Shows Violence in Slices of Gray Matter

Bloomberg

Businessweek

March 10, 2010, 12:28 AM EST

By Tom Moroney

March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Five years of hell ended in a hard death. Those are the widow's words.

Her husband, Lou Creekmur, suffered 13 broken noses and 16 concussions as a Hall-of-Fame lineman for the National Football League's Detroit Lions, and in retirement saw 14 doctors who couldn't explain his anger and forgetfulness. Toward the end he would chase his wife in rages, apologizing later. He died at 82 on July 5, 2009, on a bed three inches too short, in a hospice eight miles from home. Then Chris Nowinski called.

His voice was soft like her husband's when his mind was right, the widow recalled. Nowinski, with his own concussion history in football and wrestling, introduced himself as a co- founder of the Boston University School of Medicine Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. He wanted a donation: Lou Creekmur's brain.

"My husband died a hard death, and I did not know what was wrong," Caroline Creekmur, 67, said in an interview from her home in Plantation, Florida, 30 miles north of Miami. After consulting with the family, she consented to Nowinski's request.

"I wanted to know why this happened."

So did Nowinski. The 31-year-old Harvard University graduate -- who as "Chris Harvard" taunted World Wrestling Entertainment fans with his Ivy-League smarts -- is on a quest: to prove that brain damage is widespread in men, women and children who engage in sports involving repeated collisions, and to persuade professional leagues, colleges and high schools to change their rules to save lives.

Donating Their Brains

Nowinski is amassing what he thinks is the first brain bank in the U.S. dedicated to the study of head trauma.

Three times a week or more, he calls the wife, parent or child of a former athlete who has died in the past 48 hours and asks for the brain. He also contacts retirees from the NFL and other sports to request they commit their brains to research after they die, and 270 have so far agreed to do so.

Nowinski, author of the 2006 book "Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis from the NFL to Youth Leagues," (Drummond Publishing Group, 195 pages), is the public face of the Boston University brain center. The other principals are Dr. Robert Cantu, 71, chief of neurosurgery at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts; Dr. Ann McKee, 56, a neuropathologist who directs the Neuropathology Service for the New England Veterans Administration Medical Centers; and Robert Stern, 51, a Ph.D. clinical researcher and co-director of Boston University's Alzheimer's Disease Clinical and Research Program.

Seeing Orange

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee explored the center's findings -- that head injuries have cumulative effects -- at hearings last October at which Nowinski, Cantu and McKee testified, along with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. In December, Goodell told the league's 32 clubs that players with concussion symptoms can't play or practice until cleared by a neurologist. That same month, the NFL, acknowledging that head trauma can have long-term consequences, pledged $1 million to the brain center. The move came after the New York Times published articles about brain damage in NFL players.

At the NFL pre-draft camp on Feb. 24, all 329 college players who attended were given brain-wave tests and grilled about their concussion histories -- both NFL firsts. The tests were conducted so the league would have baselines.

A concussion, an injury that occurs when gray matter bumps against the skull, can result in symptoms including loss of consciousness, fogginess, blurred vision, or, as the expression goes, having your bell rung.

During one of his, Nowinski said he saw orange.

Punch-Drunk Boxers

For decades, medical professionals connected head trauma in sports to cognitive trouble later in life only in so-called punch-drunk boxers. The diagnosis: dementia pugilistica.

Other athletes' cerebral damage was routinely mistaken for Alzheimer's or other diseases, Stern said. They may have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE; the center has found a protein deformity that is a sign of CTE in the brains of 19 athletes, Nowinski said.

The work by Nowinski and his colleagues has helped expand awareness of head injury, especially for parents whose children play sports, according to Dr. Douglas Smith, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

"This group has really underscored that what happens with punch-drunk boxers can occur in other contact sports," Smith said in an interview.

About 135,000 children 5 to 18 years old are treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms every year for sports-related traumatic brain injury, a 2007 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.

Banging Heads

The concussion rate among kids who play soccer, lacrosse and hockey is about 10 percent, according to Cantu, basing his estimate on 35 years as a neurosurgeon treating young athletes. In football, the reported concussion rate is 6 to 9 percent and the actual rate six or seven times more, he said.

"The recognized rate of concussion is increasing due to better diagnosis or bigger, faster, stronger people banging heads -- nobody knows which," he said.

A law in Texas requires youth coaches be educated about concussions, and in Oregon and Washington young players suspected of having a concussion have to be cleared by a doctor before they can return to the sports field, Nowinski said. Similar legislation is pending in 20 states, and rules limiting helmet-to-helmet contact and full-force hits during practice are being discussed on the college and high school levels, he said. A helmet doesn't always safeguard against injury, he said.

Tangles of Yarn

"This is personal," Nowinski said, alluding to his fears concussions will come back to haunt him. "It doesn't get any more personal than this."

Nowinski -- six-foot-five, 250 pounds -- had two concussions in college football and four in pro wrestling, the last one bringing on headaches and dizziness that lasted five years. He worries his brain will show alteration of the protein called tau, a sign of CTE.

Healthy tau helps strengthen the neurons in the brain, like steel reinforcements in a concrete bridge. Repetitive trauma can lead to a change in tau, making it clump like tangles of yarn. The more tangles, the more the communication between cells is hampered. Functions such as memory and anger control can disappear; dementia and death can follow.

CTE is a unique pathological condition, according to Stern. The postmortem diagnosis of Alzheimer's requires the presence of deformed tau and another protein, beta amyloid. The diagnosis of CTE requires only the presence of deformed tau.

The only way to confirm a diagnosis is in an autopsy.

15 Football Players

The center has so far studied the brains of 23 deceased athletes: a hockey player, two pro wrestlers, five boxers and 15 football players, eight from the pros, four from college and three from high school. Nineteen showed abnormal amounts of deformed tau in a pattern consistent with CTE, Nowinski said. The center published its findings on three cases last year in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.

Nowinski is now consulting with the U.S. Department of Defense to reach another susceptible group: soldiers in combat.

Established in 2008, the center has been funded with $200,000 in grant money from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and $250,000 from the National Operating Committee on Standards in Athletic Equipment, a trade group of manufacturers, athletic trainers and coaches.

Nowinski never knows when he'll be picking up the phone to ask the hard question. His computer will flash an alert that an athlete has died, or he'll get a call from someone in the network of the center's roughly 500 supporters, including retired athletes and relatives who have donated.

'How Dare You'

"You just have to be respectful but persistent," he said, and if he senses resistance, he politely hangs up.

Some families are harder to persuade than others.

"They don't want the deceased's body to be mutilated any further," he said. "Is their soul still in there? Is it not? Those are the questions people are asking."

Survivors will sometimes have already given away other organs, "and they'll tell me that was tough enough," he said.

The mother of one deceased teenager agreed to Nowinski's request -- and then handed the phone to her angry husband.

"It was the one time I had someone say 'How dare you call us?'" Nowinski said.

When the answer is yes, he hires a doctor to retrieve the brain and ships it, in plastic on ice, via World Courier of Stamford, Connecticut. The package goes to McKee's office at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts, or, if it's at night or on a weekend, to her home.

Bottle of Champagne

In June 2008, Nowinski flew to Houston with autopsy images on a DVD that showed yarn-like tau lacing the brain of John Grimsley, a former Houston Oilers linebacker who accidentally shot himself 19 days before his 46th birthday. He had grown forgetful and volatile in the years before his death -- once launching a tirade because his wife didn't take out the trash, his widow, Virginia Grimsley, 48, said.

When she saw the DVD she understood.

"It basically broke my heart," she said.

In December, when the NFL acknowledged the long-term effects of head injuries, Grimsley sent Nowinski a bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne.

The middle child between two girls, Nowinski grew up in suburban Chicago playing multiple sports. He didn't go out for football until he was 13 because of his safety-conscious mother.

Crimson Shorts

He captained his freshman team and eventually the varsity team at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, Illinois, where as a middle linebacker he drew the attention of college scouts. He played football at Harvard, graduating cum laude in 2000 with a sociology degree.

Nowinski's brain mission began after his sixth concussion caused headaches, dizziness and sensitivity to light. He was coming off a sensational rookie year in 2002 for World Wrestling Entertainment, performing with a big "H" emblazoned on the backside of his skin-tight crimson shorts. During a tag-team match in June 2003, an errant kick by 300-pound Bubba Ray Dudley landed full-force on Nowinski's chin.

An attempted comeback ended in an Indianapolis hotel room, with Nowinski lying face-down in shattered glass and his girlfriend screaming, "Chris, Chris, are you OK?" He'd been trying to climb the wall in his sleep and had fallen onto a glass-topped nightstand, he said.

"I knew it was time to get some help," he said.

Help for Headaches

He retired from wrestling, and went to the Harvard library to read everything he could find about head injuries. He said he visited seven doctors before the eighth, Cantu, was able to help, and sent him to a headache specialist. Nowinski and Cantu in 2007 co-founded the Boston-based Sports Legacy Institute, which promotes the treatment of concussions.

Nowinski also met Dr. Bennet Omalu, the first to write about CTE in pro football players, Nowinski said. As a Pittsburgh pathologist, Omalu diagnosed the late Steelers linemen Mike Webster and Terry Long. Webster died in 2002 at age 50, having been homeless and hospitalized for heart problems, and Long, 45, killed himself in 2005 by drinking antifreeze.

Then, in November 2006, Nowinski read about Andre Waters, a former Philadelphia Eagles defensive back who committed suicide in November 2006 at age 44. What struck Nowinski was something Waters had told an interviewer: He had lost count of his concussions after 15. Omalu found extensive evidence of CTE.

The 88 Plan

Another brain Nowinski delivered to Omalu was that of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit, known as "The Canadian Crippler," who killed his wife, his seven-year-old son and himself in June 2007. Nowinski said Benoit had told him about his concussions over his 22-year performing career, and Benoit's father gave permission to examine the brain for CTE. The diagnosis was confirmed by Omalu, now chief medical examiner for San Joaquin County, California, and Dr. Julian Bailes, chairman of neurosurgery at West Virginia University in Morgantown.

The NFL is the first major sports organization to make changes regarding concussions, issuing guidelines in 2007 and updating them in 2009, said league spokesman Greg Aiello. With $8 billion in annual revenue and 225 million television viewers in the 2008-2009 season, according to Nielsen Media Research, the league is the most popular of U.S. sports and the world's richest by revenue.

The NFL's 88 Plan, established in February 2007, grants former players with brain disease $88,000 a year if they live in a facility and $55,000 if they're home, and 100 men receive the benefits, Aiello said. The plan is named for the number worn by ex-Baltimore Colts receiver John Mackey, 68, who has dementia.

'He Loved Football'

World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., based in Stamford, Connecticut, hired Dr. Joseph Maroon, a concussion expert and the Pittsburgh Steelers' team neurosurgeon, as its medical director in 2008, according to spokesman Robert Zimmerman. WWE tests wrestlers' brain waves for comparison after a concussion and, as of December, fines or suspends performers who deliberately hit opponents in the head, Zimmerman said.

The brain center applied in February for a $9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to find ways of diagnosing CTE in living athletes, what Stern called "the next big step." If the money comes through, the center will recruit hundreds of former NFL players, giving them spinal taps to measure CTE-associated proteins in their bodies and scanning their brains with imaging devices.

Caroline Creekmur is supportive. She had had her suspicions that the game that helped define her husband and gave him so much joy probably destroyed him.

"He loved football so much; you can't fault him for that," she said. "I don't want to see somebody else die like Lou did."

---

--With reporting assistance from Aaron Kuriloff in New York. Editors: Peter Waldman, Anne Reifenberg

To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Moroney in Boston at tmorrone@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Robert Blau in Washington at rblau1@bloomberg.net; John McCorry in New York at jmc@bloomberg.net

©2010 Bloomberg L.P

NFL Brain Collector Shows Violence in Slices of Gray Matter - BusinessWeek (10 March 2010)

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-10/nfl-brain-collector-shows-violence-in-slices-
of-gray-matter.html

Jihad 101

2009-12-31T06:33:00.000-08:00

Jihad 101

Center for Security Policy | Dec 28, 2009
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came in for some well-deserved criticism for declaring over the weekend that "the system worked" with respect to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's effort to blow up the plane he was flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. By Monday, she was backpedalling, acknowledging that "our system did not work in this instance."

In truth, for a lot of Americans, Ms. Napolitano has not had much credibility since she tried to ban "terrorism" from the official lexicon of her department. But arguably the most serious indication that she is wholly ill-equipped to carry out her present responsibilities can be found in another - as yet uncorrected - statement she made on Sunday. She told CNN's "State of the Union" that, "Right now, we have no indication [that Abdulmutallab's actions were] part of anything larger."

Not "part of anything larger"? Is she serious? Does she take us for fools?

Read my lips, Secretary Napolitano: Abdulmutallab's actions were absolutely, positively part of something larger. What they were part of is the comprehensive theo-political-legal program that authoritative Islam calls Shariah.

This supremacist program requires its adherents to engage in jihad, or holy war, to bring about the triumph of Islam under a global theocracy, one that will impose Shariah on Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Pursuant to Shariah, jihad should - wherever practicable - be pursued through the terrifying use of violence. Where violent jihad is impractical or would be counterproductive, Shariah directs faithful Muslims to use other means to advance the same goal. Koran expert Robert Spencer calls the latter "stealth jihad."

The question must be asked: Are we seeing a dramatic increase in violent jihadism in America - National Public Radio reported on Saturday that there had been fourteen attempts in 2009 (compared to two or three in recent years) and that they had been increasingly "operational" in character, not just "aspirational" - because violence is now seen to be practicable here?

Specifically, could it be that jihadists have been emboldened by what they see as weakness and/or fecklessness on the part of the U.S. administration? Could steps Team Obama has taken - such as the closure of Guantanamo Bay, the release of some hardened terrorists held there to Yemen (where Abdulmuttalab claims he got his plastic explosive device), granting others access to civilian courts and constitutional rights, etc. - actually be emboldening them to believe that murder and mayhem will accelerate the defeat and conquest of the infidel West?

The U.S. government was warned by Abdulmutallab's father at least two months ago that his son had been "radicalized" - in other words, that he had embraced Shariah. That being the case, he was transformed from being one of the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who are not a problem into one of those who are.

In the wake of the latest, narrowly averted massacre at the hands of jihadists, we are being promised executive branch reviews of the practice that, in the wake of his father's warning, put Abdulmuttalab on the improbably named Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database - but did not revoke his multiple entry U.S. visa or otherwise keep him from flying. Multiple congressional investigations will be launched, as well.

Such reviews will, however, amount to little more than a waste of time and taxpayer resources - and possibly a serious distraction - if they do not address, and henceforth require screening for, the motivation for such attacks. It is absurd to think that "the system" is going to do anything other than exponentially increase the amount of discomfort for airline passengers as long as it does not weed out those who embrace as an article of faith their duty to destroy us.

We need to be equally clear about the menace posed by those who adhere to Shariah but profess to seek to "Islamicize" America through non-violent means. In the wake of the recent actual and averted attacks, the press has, for example, trumpeted the views of parents of five jihadists from Northern Virginia, imams at mosques where they worshipped and prominent fixtures in the various Muslim Brotherhood front organizations. Unsurprisingly, all of them profess shock - shock! - that these young people would want to do as they have been taught to, pursuant to Shariah: namely, follow the way of jihad against the Dar al-Harb (the "House of War" that is the non-Muslim world).

Nowhere in these disinformation operations is any mention made of the Muslim Brotherhood's self-declared mission in America. According to an internal Brotherhood strategic plan dating from 1991, that mission is: "A kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

As long as Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder, the intelligence community, law enforcement, the military, the media and most especially President Obama refuse to acknowledge what animates our enemies, we will never develop an effective strategy for defeating them, let alone successfully implement it. Part and parcel of achieving such an understanding is to stop allowing the stealth jihadists in our midst to blind us to this reality.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, "Secure Freedom Radio."

Political correctness

2009-11-09T08:06:00.001-08:00

A Culture of Political Correctness

by Guy Rodgers

www.actforamerica.org

Dear Bob,

The horrific massacre at Ft. Hood has exposed the degree to which political correctness impacts government and military action — and media coverage.

Fox News contributor Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (retired) exhibited a courage and clarity that has been lacking in most media coverage when, during two different interviews I saw, he angrily and indignantly denounced what he referred to as a “culture of political correctness” in the leadership of the military.

He pointedly asserted that this was an act of Islamist terrorism, and listed just some of the telltale signs to back up his position. For instance:

* Nidal Hasan opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and would argue with his patients, vets returning from combat, against the justification for the wars.

* Hasan said the “war on terror” was in fact a war against Islam.

* There is evidence that Hasan believed “infidels” deserve beheading.

* Internet postings in Hasan’s name months earlier compared suicide bombers to heroic soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

Col. Peters went on to blame the culture of political correctness for the failure of the Army to take any action against Hasan, in spite of an awareness that Hasan held these views.

Other evidence of Hasan’s beliefs include statements he made to colleagues that Muslims have the right to rise up against the U.S. military, and that they have the right to rise up against their “oppressors” — the United States.

A fellow student at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences complained about a presentation Hasan gave that “justified suicide bombings and spewed anti-American propaganda.”

Here’s the disturbing question that needs to be asked: Could this act of terrorism had been prevented had there not been such a politically correct reluctance to act on what was known about Hasan?

Imagine if the Army had acted. It’s easy to envision the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) indignantly blasting the Army with statements alleging “discrimination.”

Yet if the Army or law enforcement authorities had stepped in, taken action months ago, and brushed aside the typical and predictable rants from groups like CAIR, is it possible that twelve dead soldiers and one dead police officer would be alive today?

Why are so many in government and the military apparently afraid of “offending” a group like CAIR, which deserves to be investigated for its many questionable activities and ties to terrorists, not accommodated? (See our petition calling for such an investigation.)

But in the aftermath of this terrorist act, too few in the media or government have been willing to call it that. There has been a desperate search for another motive, the most common focusing on his mental state.

Edina Lekovic, communications director for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), also appeared on Fox News. Lekovic was unequivocal in her remarks, claiming Hasan was “clearly disturbed” and comparing him to the killers at Virginia Tech and Columbine.

Remarkably, only a minute or so after making this unsubstantiated claim as if it were fact, when asked about any possible connection to Islam, she warned we must not “rush to judgment.”

But isn’t that precisely what Lekovic did when she asserted Hasan was “clearly disturbed?” Is she a psychiatrist? Did she examine him?

Of course not. What qualifies Lekovic to assert Hasan was like the Columbine killers? Nothing.

She did exactly what she is warning others not to. She “rushed to judgment.” And while anyone who is contending that this massacre has all the earmarks of a terrorist attack is challenged, no one on the Fox News program challenged Lekovic’s unverifiable claim falsely asserted as fact.

Why not? Political correctness?

More political correctness. Prior to killing 13 people on Thursday, Hasan gave away furniture and Korans, a telltale sign of a jihadist preparing for martyrdom.

So how does a Washington Post story characterize Hasan’s giving furniture away? As an act of kindness.

But the tide may be turning. Facts are stubborn things. There are just too many signs that Hasan was in fact a radical Muslim bent on jihad. Too many signs to be ignored.

ABC News last night ran a headline asking if the Army missed signs that Hasan was an Islamic extremist.

On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol referred to an AP story that quoted colleagues of Hasan at Walter Reed Hospital who admitted they did not report his suspicious actions due to fear of appearing to be discriminatory toward Muslims.

It may well be determined that Hasan had emotional problems. It may also turn out that he didn’t.

But as Brit Hume stated on Fox News Sunday, even if Hasan had emotional or psychological issues, the facts clearly point to the conclusion that Hasan was a radical Islamist who acted on his beliefs.

You can help enlighten America about the truth of this terrorist attack.

Forward this email to everyone you know.

And help us shed light on one of the leading “enforcers” of the political correctness that is undermining our ability to prevent terrorism. If you haven’t done so already, sign our petition calling for a government investigation of CAIR’s questionable activities and ties to terrorists.

Let’s not let the purveyors of political correctness mislead us yet again.

Swine Flu -- One of Most Massive Cover-ups in American History

2009-11-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

Here you go folks. The facts and serious research on swine flu vaccines and another instance of big business using the United States and for that matter governments around the world to suck more money out of us.

Swine Flu -- One of Most Massive Cover-ups in American History

More war

2009-10-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Co-Author of Muslim Mafia Answers CAIR

Dear Bob,

Yesterday we emailed you Rep. Sue Myrick’s op-ed response to CAIR’s counterattack. We know many of you forwarded this to others as it began popping up on blogs across the internet!

Today’s email contains a FrontPage Magazine interview with Dave Gaubatz (see below), co-author of the new blockbuster book Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America.

In many prior emails we have pointed out the common propaganda strategy employed by Islamists of attempting to “demonize” those who level factual critiques against radical Islam. That’s why one of Gaubatz’s responses jumped out at us:

Instead of addressing the numerous factual pieces of intelligence showing their support of the Islamic terrorist ideology, they [CAIR] do exactly as their ‘internal documents’ indicate. They begin intimidation, extortion, blackmail, and other related threats to silence their critics.

We are grateful for the courage of Rep. Sue Myrick; the Representatives who joined her at the press conference last week calling for an investigation of CAIR (Rep. John Shadegg, Rep. Trent Franks, Rep. Paul Broun); Chris Gaubatz (who infiltrated CAIR); and the co-authors of Muslim Mafia, Dave Gaubatz and Paul Sperry.

Kelly Cook was asked by one of our chapter leaders yesterday why we push so hard to build a bigger and bigger organization. Here’s one reason — strength in numbers. The bigger we are, the stronger our voice, and the harder it will be for Islamists to succeed in their efforts to destroy those who speak out against their evil ideology.

CAIR Exposed – by Jamie Glazov
Posted By Jamie Glazov On October 21, 2009 @ 12:11 am In FrontPage

http://frontpagemag.com/2009/10/21/cair-exposed-by-jamie-glazov/

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dave Gaubatz, the first U.S. civilian (1811) Federal Agent deployed to Iraq in 2003. He is the owner of DG Counter-terrorism Publishing [1]. He is currently conducting a 50 State Counter-terrorism Research Tour (CTRT). He is the co-author (with Paul Sperry) of the new book, Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America. [2] He can be contacted at davegaubatz@gmail.com [3].

FP: Dave Gaubatz, congrats on your book Muslim Mafia. The book is causing quite a bit of controversy. Tell us what the book is about in general and what is now going on.

Gaubatz: Thank you Jamie.

First I would like to thank everyone involved in the extensive research to make the book possible, the co-author Paul Sperry, and WND. I believe the book speaks for itself, showing CAIR Executives involvement in terrorist ties.
You ran a great review by Daniel Pipes of the book the other day here [4].

Naturally and fully expected, CAIR is on the defensive. Instead of addressing the numerous factual pieces of intelligence showing their support of the Islamic terrorist ideology, they do exactly as their ‘internal documents’ indicate. They begin intimidation, extortion, blackmail, and other related threats to silence their critics. These tactics have always worked for them for 15 years. Unfortunately for them they have finally met someone who knows how they play their game. I am not boasting but I was trained by the elite Federal Agency of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and we are tenfold better at protecting national security than they are at supporting terrorism against America.

FP: CAIR is not hiding their displeasure with you. Do you feel physically threatened?

Gaubatz: I did not hide from terrorists in Iraq and there will never be a day I will hide in America from terrorists or their supporters. The day when Americans begin hiding from terrorists is the day we have lost our country and our children’s future.

I have always conducted my research in a legal and professional manner and the truth will always prevail. Maybe I am ‘old fashioned’ but I love my country and while others are intimidated by CAIR and their supporters, I am not. Americans need to be proud of our country and keep in mind many of the CAIR Executives and their supporters are not even U.S. citizens, and many of the ones who are do not (according to their own documents) pledge allegiance to America. Simply residing here does not give anyone the right to advocate the destruction of America.

FP: Let’s talk about some of the charges that CAIR is making against you. CAIR is accusing you of being an “Islamophobe.”

Gaubatz: I owe my life to Muslims from Iraq who risked their lives for me and many Americans in 2003. The family of Mohammed Rehaief (Iraqi lawyer who rescued Private Jessica Lynch in Nasiriyah, Iraq) are examples of Muslims who truly represent the Islamic people. They saved my life on several occasions and I had the opportunity to rescue their family from Al Qaeda who had threatened their lives.

Further I have always advised all children are innocent and I (like many American troops) would have given my life for them in Iraq. During many of my lectures I have informed people they should not fear the Islamic people, but have every right to be an ‘Islamic Scholar Phobe.’

There are numerous Islamic scholars in America who have openly called for the destruction of America and Israel. There are many Imams who openly distribute violent material in their mosques and Islamic Centers and they are allowed by many ‘liberal’ elected officials to do so. Somehow they believe calling for the death of innocent men, women, and children are covered under the First Amendment to our Constitution. I disagree as do millions of Americans.

FP: CAIR has advised that you have stated President Obama is Muslim.

Gaubatz: Everyone should always keep in mind CAIR leaders are taught to ‘twist’ words and statements of their targets (reference the CAIR document titled ‘hit list’ in the Muslim Mafia book). I have talked with hundreds of Islamic leaders and reviewed the materials in their mosques. A common Islamic belief is that ‘ALL’ humans are born Muslim and it is the fault of negligent parents who turn them into Jews and Christians.

Readers can ask Yusef Estes who is a prominent Islamic leader and frequent guest of Dar al Hijrah, Falls Church, VA. Estes was the primary witness to my ‘pseudo’ conversion to Islam a couple of years ago at Dar al Hijrah. Estes immediately informed me Muslims do not use the term converting to Islam. He advised people ‘revert’ back to Islam and explained the reasoning as I described above. Readers should know by now if I say something it can be verified. In this case I have an audio recording of my pseudo ‘conversion’ to Islam and my discussion with Estes at Dar Al Hijrah.

FP: CAIR has advised that you and your researchers illegally obtained the documents from their National office.

Gaubatz: CAIR’s Nihad Awad, Hooper and Saylor may have forgotten many of their conversations they had with several of my researchers. I can easily remind them in court with video and audio footage. The CAIR leaders were going to destroy documents related to criminal and national security interests. The materials were being shredded and ‘wiped’ clean from their computers. Unlike former ‘Enron’ employees I would never allow intelligence related to the destruction of our country to be destroyed by terrorist supporters. Anyone who would should question their own loyalty to our country and our children. I highly encourage investigative reporters to conduct an extensive review of why the CAIR Virginia and CAIR Maryland offices closed.

FP: Do you have plans on conducting further first-hand research and can you clarify when the researchers finished their research within CAIR?

Gaubatz: I have never stopped conducting first-hand research on Islamic terrorist groups operating in America. As long as our children’s futures are in jeopardy I will continue.

FP: Any recommendations for our elected officials and law enforcement?

Gaubatz: America has the best law enforcement in the world. The ‘street level’ officers want to protect America and do their jobs, but unfortunately many of their Directors have become ‘stooges’ for CAIR. I recommend the Directors of these brave officers either do their jobs or get jobs being ‘lackeys’ for CAIR or ISNA. America needs leadership not ‘lackeys.’

Pertaining to our elected officials. They need to decide if they support an American who served his country for 23.5 years, risked his life in Iraq for people of all races, religions and cultures, served his Presidents both Republican and Democratic, held our nations highest security clearances, and has evidence to verify anything I have ever written or said. Or they can support organizations that advocate the destruction of our country and the futures of our children. I give my utmost thanks to our elected officials who are supporting my research. They are America’s true heroes.

FP: Any words for CAIR or their supporters?

Gaubatz: I have always said I look forward to the day when CAIR Executives or any of their supporters and I can put everything on the table in a court of law (U.S., not Sharia). CAIR is afraid of the truth and will fold before this ever happens. The Executives should get with their attorneys, let their egos not play into their decisions, and reveal to them their complete involvement in their support of terrorist groups, their blackmail and intimidation tactics of small and large U.S. companies, of people, and the negative statements they have made toward ‘one another’ to my researchers. I have no problem reminding them.

Readers should keep up with WND, FPM, and my blog at www.daveg.us [5]. Videos, documents and more are forthcoming.

FP: Dave Gaubatz, thank you for joining us.

War of the world

2009-10-20T13:50:00.001-07:00

Here's the latest on the "War of the world", that would be Islam's plan to take over and kill or subjugate us all.

Rep. Sue Myrick op-ed:

Last week, I held a press conference on Capitol Hill attended by three of my colleagues in the House of Representatives to call for a federal investigation (s) into a non-profit group called the Council on American Islamic Relations (C.A.I.R.)

Here are the facts:

1. CAIR has documented ties to the terrorist organization HAMAS. This is stated fact by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In an April 28, 2009 letter to US Senator Jon Kyl, the FBI wrote the following:
“As you know, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in the United States v. Holy Land Foundation et al. (Cr. No. 3:04-240-P (N.D.TX.). During that trial, evidence was introduced that demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders (including its current President Emeritus and its Executive Director) and the Palestinian Committee. Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestinian Committee and HAMAS, which was designated a terrorist organization in 1995. In light of that evidence, the FBI suspended all formal contacts between CAIR and the FBI.”

In case you are not familiar with the Holy Land trial referenced above, it was a Dallas, Texas trial that ended with guilty verdicts on 108 counts of funneling money ($12 million) to HAMAS.

2. The purpose of our press conference was to make public an internal CAIR memo that documented CAIR's stated goal of placing CAIR interns in the offices of members of Congress, especially the members who serve on the Homeland Security, Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. Let me be clear here, CAIR, a group whom the FBI says is affiliated with the terrorist group HAMAS, is trying to place their interns in the offices of those members who serve on the three committees that handle national security related issues. National Security is the first responsibility of the federal government.

3. Following our press conference, CAIR, immediately labeled we four members as bigots and started their public relations campaign to discredit us by claiming that we were against Muslims working on Capitol Hill. We never said that. At no time during our press conference did we even insinuate that we were investigating Muslims being interns on Capitol Hill. Go to http://www.youtube.com/suemyricknc09 and watch the press conference yourself.

Our focus was and is on CAIR and CAIR alone, not Muslims.

Likewise CAIR tried to make this a Republican vs. Democrat thing, because the four members at the press conference happened to be Republican.

How then does CAIR explain Democrat Senator Charles Schumer’s call earlier this year for a government-wide ban on CAIR in the federal government due to their ties to HAMAS? Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer has likewise made public her opinions of CAIR and any Google search will find her remarks.

4. CAIR is spending time, money and energy to position themselves as the spokespeople for the moderate Muslim community. Problem is CAIR is not a moderate Muslim organization. It is a radical front group for HAMAS. So who is CAIR competing with for this designation? The real moderate Muslim groups/individuals in America. Groups and individuals like the following who are committed to countering Islamist extremism:

Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi – President World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE)
Zeyno Baran – Director for the Center for Eurasian Policy at the Hudson Institute
Farid Ghadry – President of the Reform Party of Syria
Manda Zand Ervin – Founder and director of the Alliance of Iranian Women
Omran Salman – Arab Reformists Project, 'Aafaq (Arabic for “horizons”).
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser – American Islamic Forum for Democracy
Karim Bromund – Director of Inter-Religious Affairs for the Islamic Supreme Council of America

I SUPPORT the Muslim individuals and groups mentioned above. These groups renounce terrorists and their radical ideology. They are trying their hardest to be heard and recognized in America, but are being overshadowed and out-funded by CAIR. Today, when something happens that impacts the Muslim community, the media calls CAIR (an unindicted co-conspirator to terrorism and a HAMAS front group) for comment on behalf of American Muslims. What an insult the media is performing on the Muslim community. Instead they should be calling Muslim groups/individuals like those named above. This is part of the reason we are focusing our attention on CAIR and exposing them for who they are. For one they pose a threat to our national security, and two, they deny the ability of legitimate Muslim groups to gain credibility.

5. In July of this year I held a summit on Capitol Hill where I introduced the leaders of eight moderate Muslim organizations to the heads of several US Agencies, Members of Congress and congressional staff. For example, they met with representatives from the State Department, USAID, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. How can I be against Muslims working on Capitol Hill and hold such an event? Go to http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.3881/pub_detail.asp and read for yourself about this summit.

See through the lies and realize what is really going on here.

We are trying to expose a HAMAS Front Group (CAIR) for who they are, and they are crying we are anti-Muslim hoping that media outlets will ignore the terrorist claim and instead pick it up as a race/religion story. When those claims don’t work, they claim it’s a Republican political thing.

Americans, on this subject we need to stop the Republican vs. Democrat, Conservative vs. Liberal, Christian vs. Muslim division and unite on one simple point…. CAIR is a front group for HAMAS. It was named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in a terrorism case that lead to 108 convictions of funneling $12 million to HAMAS. Because of the evidence produced in that case, the FBI severed all ties with them. This same CAIR, by their own admission, is trying to place people inside the offices of members of Congress who deal with national security issues (judiciary, homeland security and intelligence committees). I serve on one of those committees, Intelligence, am the co-chairwoman of the House Anti-Terrorism Caucus, and have spent the better part of the last four years working every day on terrorism related issues.

If we Americans fail to set aside our political, religious and ideological differences and unite when we encounter the enemy in such stark and plain terms, then God help us.

Islam moves forward infiltrating us

2009-10-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

WND Exclusive
FBI agent says bureau muzzling him
Counter-terror investigator claims Muslim allowed to hinder probes
Posted: March 06, 2003
8:00 pm Eastern

By Art Moore
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com

An FBI counter-terrorism agent claims he is being silenced by his agency to cover up its mishandling of a pre-Sept. 11 probe into alleged supporters of Osama bin Laden.

Chicago-based Special Agent Robert Wright received a rejection letter yesterday from the head of the FBI's public affairs office in response to his request to disclose details of his charges. One of Wright's claims is that the FBI allowed a Muslim agent to hinder an investigation due to religious loyalties and sensitivities, reflecting a pattern of conduct by the agency that has harmed the nation's security.

Wright said he also discovered later that this same agent hindered a probe of University of South Florida professor Sami al-Arian, who was arrested last month on terror-related charges.

WorldNetDaily obtained a copy of the letter from FBI public affairs chief Michael P. Kortan, which argues that the information Wright wants to make public includes sensitive and classified material related to pending cases.

"That's nonsense," Wright's attorney David Schippers told WorldNetDaily. "Everything Bob's got is public. He's got it documented with public sources."

Wright claims his investigation in 1999 of Yassin Qadi – later named by the government as a key financial backer of al-Qaida – ran into a roadblock when Special Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz refused to wear a wire to record a meeting with a Muslim businessman connected to Qadi.

According to Wright, Abdel-Hafiz stated in his defense, "A Muslim does not record another Muslim."

Wright says Qadi, a wealthy Saudi businessman, helped fund the 1998 al-Qaida bombings of two American embassies in Africa.

Two stories

The FBI claimed in a statement last December that Abdel-Hafiz objected to the wire because the meeting was to have taken place in a mosque, though the agency now says only that the Muslim agent's supervisors were responsible for the decision.

Schippers claims that the FBI changed its story because it "found out everybody involved was ready to testify."

FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell insists that the initial statement was a misunderstanding.

"It may have been an area sensitive to [Muslims], but it wasn't technically a mosque," Cogswell told WorldNetDaily. "My understanding was that it was a convention facility, and they were to meet in the area reserved for prayer."

But Schippers insists the FBI essentially has made Wright out to be a liar and contends that the agency gives the appearance it has something to hide.

"If there is nothing there, fine, make it open, lay it out; or lay it out to a grand jury," Schippers said. "But don't hide it and tell everybody who knows about it that they can't say anything."

The FBI's Cogswell maintains, "We're not hiding anything."

"The decision as to whether he should wear the wire was made by managers in consulation with the Chicago office, not by the agent," he said.

In its December statement, the FBI said Abdel-Hafiz has been working since February 2001 in Riyadh, handling liaison with authorities in Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, and "has met all FBI performance and security standards."

No place to turn

In his letter, Kortan noted that the federal whistleblower statute allows FBI employees to disclose sensitive information to the attorney general, FBI director, deputy FBI director and the Office of Professional Responsibility.

Schippers said Wright filed a formal complaint with the inspector general of the Justice Department in October 2001, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, but was told he should take his case to Congress.

"When I asked them why they weren't going to do it, they told me that it was because they didn't have the facilities to conduct such an investigation," said Schippers, who headed the U.S. House of Representatives' 1998 impeachment inquiry of President Bill Clinton.

'This whole thing is insanity," Schippers said. "There is some reason the FBI doesn't want Bob to talk."

Schippers is working in conjunction with the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch, which has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Washington to allow Wright to publish a manuscript entitled "Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission." The document is Wright's assessment of the FBI's anti-terror failures and his ideas about how to restructure the agency.

"It's well-documented that their incompetence, recklessness and neglect contributed significantly to 9-11, and that's what [Wright's case] is all about," Judicial Watch chairman and general counsel Larry Klayman told WND. "It's also quite clear that they have not cleaned their act up since 9-11."

Klayman says that Wright's complaints have resulted in a demotion to "paper pusher" and "chief dishwasher" in the Chicago field office.

Wright's version

Wright gave his version of events in an affidavit filed in a civil rights lawsuit Abdel-Hafiz brought against him, which claimed discrimination on the basis of national origin and religion.

Wright said that while working with the international terrorist squad at the Chicago office in 1999, he learned that Qadi – who had become the subject of an investigation – had asked Abdel-Hafiz to meet for a discussion about the probe. Qadi's connection with Abdel-Hafiz came about through the businessman's accountant, who was a personal friend of the Muslim agent.

The U.S. Attorney's office agreed that it would be valuable for Abdel-Hafez to wear a wire to record the meeting, but the Muslim agent objected.

In a telephone conference that included Wright, a fellow FBI special agent, three U.S. attorneys and the Dallas office supervisor, Abdel-Hafiz explained why he would not wear the wire or meet in a specially equipped room, according to Wright.

Abdel-Hafiz first said he feared for his safety, the affidavit said.

When told that the FBI would give protection, Abdel-Hafiz said he did not trust the agency to protect him, according to Wright.

After a U.S. attorney continued to press for an answer, Abdel-Hafiz stated: "A Muslim does not record another Muslim."

Wright said that after the discussion, which was ended by Abdel-Hafiz's Dallas supervisor, he telephoned FBI headquarters in Washington and spoke with Acting Unit Chief Christopher Hamilton, who "told me I would have to understand" the Muslim agent's "perspective."

According to Wright, the U.S. attorneys documented the events, believing the case would be re-visited.

Wright later learned that an agent in Florida had a similar experience with Abdel-Hafiz, who refused to record a Muslim in his investigation. Schippers said that probe involved the Florida professor, Al-Arian.

Schippers says Wright continues to try to get his story out, but "at every step they refuse to let him talk."

"He's going to have to take his job in his hands to assert his First Amendment rights," Schippers said.

Another FBI whistleblower has warned of the bureau's purported counter-terror shortcomings.

Veteran agent Colleen Rowley sent a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller last week, warning that the bureau is not prepared to deal with new terrorist strikes that could result from a U.S. war with Iraq.

Rowley, a 22-year veteran of the bureau's Minneapolis field office, said that Mueller had a responsibility to warn the White House that the bureau would not be able to "stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq."

Will Dad die before we talk?

2009-09-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

My father holding me

9/10/09 Thursday
I got a letter from my sister last night. Dad has pneumonia, this time in the other lung from the one he had it in last time. Really not good. He is already incredibly weak and has been bedridden for some time now from the last bout with pneumonia and then the chemotherapy on top of it. It is hard. Here we finally are breaking down the wall, hopefully restoring the relationship between a father and son, and the possibility exists he may die before this can happen. So pray. You know I am praying.

There’s not much else important to me right now. We’ve had lots of rain and there is more on the way so that should help clean the soil. I might put some seeds out, I might not. Weeds I’ll chop for sure. Today I must run to Midland and drop off some stuff to the Texas Veteran’s guy for our dispute with the VA. There was something else I need to do while in town but can’t remember right now. Oh yeah, I must get canned dog food that I can mix Rascal’s medicine in.

I’ve been thinking on things of God a lot lately. Reading the old testament about the history of Israel and their constant need to separate themselves from the evils that surrounded them. How they would let the habits and practices of the people around them creep in and become a part of their lives. This would always lead to a separation from God and to destruction. There are some really not pretty pictures there.

So I will work and meditate today. Think on these things as I chop down weeds.

Corruption, Anger, Cancer, Death

2009-09-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve been researching Dr. Burzynski, who’s breakthrough cancer treatments have been severely squashed by our very corrupt FDA. I heard about him on GLC’s housecall program featuring Dr. Scott. Because my father is dying of brain cancer and that the chemotherapy is so devastating I latched on to their mention of this treatment. What an incredible story I found of the greed and heartlessness of the mega corporations who make billions in the treatment of cancers, and have placed their people in key positions of the government. Thus they have literally sent children to their death by denying, no forbidding under penalty of the law, them treatment from Dr. Burzynski. Folks, this is OUR country, the FDA and other government agencies ostensibly work for us. Obama and congress say they are fixing health care but choose to be blithely unaware of these activities by those who are immune from criminal prosecution. God this makes me mad as I learn of these things. Please check this out and if you can make it as public as you can. It is through publicity and our voice/vote that these things can be changed. When you shine a light and expose darkness the rats run for cover. Here’s Dr. Burznski’s site http://www.burzynskiclinic.com/
Here’s just one of the many testimonies of this issue. http://www.whale.to/cancer/burzynski.html
I encourage you to look into this as deep as you can, especially if you know someone battling cancer.
We need to take our country back, we need to demand our congress, who work for us, whom we elect, do our bidding instead of the bidding of the big money corporations whose desire for profit, and power, is such that they willingly and knowingly choose for us little people, and our children, to die when they could give life. We need to stop being sheep led by the nose to death as we are shorn of everything we have.
Here's more links http://www.ouralexander.org/burzynski.htm
This one is a heartbreaking one involving the death of a two year old
http://www.jpands.org/hacienda/blevins1.html

2009-09-08T09:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to a veteran's website. He's a survivor of TBI as well as severe chronic pain from the injuries received in Iraq or Afghanistan. Can't remember at the moment despite having just read it. Anyway go to it to http://www.painfoundation.org/learn/programs/military-veterans/e inspired.

Fighting for a purple heart, Why?

2009-07-15T07:17:00.001-07:00

Can Brains Be Saved?
Medical breakthroughs are bringing new hope to people with traumatic brain injuries

by Lee Woodruff
published: 07/12/2009

September 6, 2008, was a clear-blue Indian summer day in Nebraska. Jennifer Ruth sat in the stands and watched her 12-year-old son, Derek, run with the football. She was unconcerned when he was tackled in a routine play. But as he fumbled the ball, she remembers seeing his right arm drop oddly, almost in slow motion. "He never does that" flickered through her mind. The coach noticed a glazed look on Derek's face in the team huddle. He pulled him aside and asked him for the date, score, and his brothers' names. Derek answered correctly. Then, minutes later, he screamed, "My head," pulled off his helmet, and collapsed.

Derek was taken to a trauma center and went into surgery. After several weeks in the ICU and months of therapy, he is regaining his physical and cognitive abilities. At first, he could only give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down response to questions; now he reads at a sixth-grade level and tackles algebra problems.

A decade ago, Derek's prognosis might not have been hopeful. But thanks to advances in the treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI), the outlook for patients has dramatically improved. " Research points to the amazing regenerative powers locked in our brains," says Dr. Col. Rocco Armonda, senior Army neurosurgeon at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. "The proper therapies can help with the unlocking."

Each year, 1.4 million people in our country sustain brain injuries, and 9% will end up with lifelong impairments. Causes of TBI include car accidents, playground accidents, falls by the elderly, and domestic violence. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3.2 million Americans are living with long-term disabilities from brain injuries. This figure does not include the estimated 320,000 veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have TBI, according to the latest statistics.

You may think you don't know anyone with a brain injury, but they're all around you. One could be the person you see lose his temper with the store clerk because sports-induced concussions left him short-fused. Another could be your neighbor who keeps locking her keys in the car or the man who looks healthy but needs a few tries to push a revolving door.

Despite its prevalence, brain injury bears a stigma. To many of the uninitiated, a person with TBI equals "slow" or "retarded."

I used to be one of the uninitiated. Then, in January 2006, my husband, Bob, was injured in Iraq by a roadside bomb while covering the war for ABC News. Hundreds of pieces of rock shrapnel became embedded in his face, neck, and back, and his skull was shattered. Doctors were unsure whether he would ever be able to walk or talk again or regain much mental function. They also told me that if and when he regained consciousness, I could expect that his healing would be largely concluded by the end of two years.

Bob spent 36 long days in a coma. When he woke up, his abilities were severely limited. I watched, devastated, as he could not identify words like "scissors" or "helicopter." But he was determined for the sake of our family to recover, and he devoted himself to rehabilitation. Today, apart from mild aphasia—difficulty in finding the appropriate word to use—he is back as a husband and father and on the air as a journalist at ABC News.

While each injury and recovery is as varied as the patient affected, scientists now know that the healing process in the brain can go on much longer than originally believed. For instance, even three-and-a-half years after the bomb blast, Bob's speech continues to get more fluid.

Innovations in cognitive rehabilitation have played a key role in improving people's outcomes. Twenty years ago, rehab consisted of rote memorization, repetition, and trying to get patients to meet certain benchmarks. "One of the advancements in rehabilitation is to make the therapy person-centered," says Dr. Lori Terryberry-Spohr, brain-injury program manager at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Neb. "We can tailor it to the individual's goals, strengths, hobbies, interests, and occupations."

Colin Smith, 22, is a Marine who was shot in the head in October 2006 by a sniper in Iraq. He lay in a coma for five weeks. When he awoke, he couldn't talk, move his limbs, or track movements with his eyes. But thanks to the rigorous rehab regimen he is undergoing near his hometown in Ohio, he has regained those abilities. As part of therapy, animal-lover Colin walks dogs for a local shelter. This activity helps on many levels: It improves his mobility, uses his sense of direction, and helps him get re-accustomed to working amid the noise and interruptions of normal life.

In order to understand how cognitive rehabilitation works, you need to know how the brain functions. Neurons, or nerve cells, in our brains send impulses to one another to facilitate memory, thought, and speech and enable movement. When the brain is injured, the connections between neurons are temporarily or permanently disconnected or stunned.

One helpful analogy is to think of the brain's neural pathways as highways. A brain injury is like a jackknifed tractor-trailer stopping traffic. With proper medical attention and therapy, the brain repairs itself. Neurons that ran from point A to point B can grow back in different ways and make new roads, and the brain rebuilds new paths to functions like speech and memory. They might not be exactly the same as before, but they're still effective.

"The more sophisticated the function, like complex thought or writing, the longer it takes," Dr. Armonda says. "But over 70% of our patients with the most severe injuries are now approaching functional independence after treatment, and that was unheard-of previously."

The basic principle behind cognitive rehab is for patients to relearn their own abilities and develop specific strategies to make up for injury-related deficits or losses. So, someone who has trouble recalling complicated words may learn to remember them by associating them with something familiar. When Bob can't find the name he is looking for, I've watched in amazement as he quickly runs through the alphabet to trigger the word he wants. Devices like BlackBerrys and cellphones can also be used to compensate for a loss in a person's sense of time or organizational skills.

Cognitive therapy isn't only about improving the so-called executive functions—reading, writing, planning, sequencing. It's also being used to address the changes in personality that sometimes occur with TBI, such as difficulty in emotional control. Dr. Mary Hibbard, professor of rehabilitation medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center, says, "If someone's emotions overwhelm him when confronted with a problem, it reduces his executive-thinking abilities. They're all closely interconnected."

Robin DeVries, a 52-year-old nurse, slipped on the ice in a parking lot three years ago and struck her head. For months, she thought she was "going crazy" with symptoms like severe headaches, insomnia, memory lapses, and vomiting. She wrote checks for incorrect amounts and at times became completely overwhelmed with anger or sadness.

After seeing specialists, Robin was eventually diagnosed with TBI and went through cognitive rehab. She learned coping methods that she can use when she is feeling tearful or angry. "I've taught myself to take a personal time-out," Robin says. "I go for a walk or head into the bathroom. I practice deep-breathing exercises or even do something as simple as count to 10."

A recent analysis of several neurological studies found that early intervention resulted in better outcomes. "As soon as a patient can participate, it is recommended that therapy should begin," Dr. Hibbard says. "This is a critical period when damaged neurons begin to make new connections. And although younger brains have greater ability to regenerate, rehab has been found to be equally effective even for those 55 and older."

In a groundbreaking study released last December, researchers at the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center in Washington followed 360 injured veterans in a clinical trial. They found that cognitive treatment that taught people how to think through tasks enhanced their cognitive recovery. It also helped return them to work or school at a higher rate than those whose treatments focused on physically executing the tasks.

Quantifiable physical evidence that cognitive rehab works does not exist, but experts are confident that it soon will. "We now have MRIs that use neuro-imaging to show all kinds of detail in the brain, and these advancements will continue," says Dr. Steve Flanagan, chair of rehabilitation medicine at the Rusk Institute in New York. "Someday we'll be able to see how certain areas of the brain are wired and to map new growth."

Such hard evidence could be a huge help in making cognitive therapy more widely available. No figure exists of how many facilities offer it, because most health-insurance plans do not cover it. Only the state of Texas mandates insurance reimbursement for cognitive rehabilitation following brain injury.

"You'd never have a problem getting insurance to cover a broken bone or injured shoulder, but it is routinely denied for therapies that help brains heal," says Susan H. Connors, president and CEO of the nonprofit Brain Injury Association of America. Her group is working with federal and state lawmakers to raise awareness of TBI and to improve reimbursement for therapy. "Brain injury is often invisible since changes are on the inside," Connors adds. "Because of this, help and awareness are not as widespread as they should be."

Families of people with TBI are often advised that their loved one's recovery will be a " marathon and not a sprint." Derek Ruth's mother sees positive change occur in her son almost daily. Still, it's difficult for her not to have definite answers to him about his future, to be unable to promise him that his life will be back to exactly what it was before his injury.

"Derek works so hard just to make it through one day, tying his shoes and getting dressed," she says. "But brain injury is like no other injury. He can be doing his algebra and the same afternoon be unable to recognize a black spade from a red heart in a card game."

Jen remains optimistic—along with her son's doctors—as she watches his slow but incredible healing progress. "There isn't a day that goes by where I don't believe Derek is going to continue to improve."

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Lee Woodruff is the author of the recently published essay collection "Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress." To learn more about TBI, visit the Bob Woodruff Foundation at www.remind.org

2009-04-07T10:03:00.001-07:00

Battle rages inside for many Iraq veterans

Ken Klotzbach/Post-Bulletin

Gabe Cruz struggles while talking about his memories of the Gulf War and the care he has received in the Veterans Administration system. He carries worn papers and a notebook with him to keep his experiences and treatments in order.

4/3/2009
By Jeff Hansel
Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

One moment he's talking about his Dachshund named Gia, with relaxed joy evident in his face, voice and posture.

The next, an uninvited memory pushes into his mind and tears begin to stream from his eyes.

"I've tried to commit suicide a couple of times. But the damn gun didn't go off," says Cpl. Gabe Cruz, a veteran of the first Gulf war. "I had a 12-gauge shotgun with a slug in it and it just went 'click!' -- and then faith kicks in."

As veterans re-enter the civilian work force, return to their families and their neighborhoods, many will enter a lengthy healing process.

They'll need the help of friends, family, neighbors and co-workers to find a renewed sense of grounding, said Mark Frenzel, program manager with Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraq Freedom with the Veterans Administration in Minneapolis.

It's important for veterans and their kids to get reacquainted. Spending time together, perhaps going through photographs from special events or looking through report cards, is a good way to let that happen, Burnes said.

Cruz says he served in Kuwait and Iraq during the first Gulf war as a "tanker" with the Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment. He was responsible for the tank turret and eventually became a gunner, firing 9mm and M16 guns. He has documents that confirm his 100 percent war-related disability.

"There was six of us. There's two of us left," he says. "There was six of us and four of us are gone, sir, and they did take a gun to their mouth. It just hurts. It just stings. It really stings."

Suicide among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is high.

"The suicide rate among this group of veterans is twice that of the national average. And suicide is a very real outcome from being in combat," said Katie Burnes, a psychiatric nurse practitioner who works full-time helping soldiers at the VA Clinic in Rochester.

A note left behind by one of his crew members, Cruz said, explained "'I just can't take this any more. I'm sorry for the pain I've caused you. But whatever I caused you, it isn't half what I'm going through' -- and then he pulled the trigger."

Thousands of U.S. soldiers are coming home with concerns, memories and injuries they -- and you -- will have to deal with.

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Copyright 2009 Post-Bulletin Company, LLC

http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=2&a=392821

Veterans struggle to truly come home

4/4/2009
By Jeff Hansel
Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

After returning stateside from serving in the Gulf War in 1991, Gabe Cruz had a stable job.

He was a surveillance specialist with the Lubbock, Texas, Health Department, tracking the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in the west Texas population. He was considered a public health expert, especially in the field of HIV/AIDS.

"I oversaw 42 counties. I dressed in shirts and ties and I worked in nice clothes," he says.

But he experienced a personal tragedy and an emotional breakdown at work, and he lost his job. Anything can trigger such an unexpected downward spiral for veterans who might think they've returned to normalcy.

"I went crazy," Cruz says, showing his disability documents that state, "you were found running barefoot in the street, claiming people were shooting at you."

He had a flat tire and "I just started crying. I couldn't get it together."

While on active duty, most routine things are predetermined, so changes in routine can throw off veterans.

"I remember one guy getting off the plane, met his wife and family at the airport, went to have a meal and felt completely overwhelmed because the waitress put a menu in his hand," said Katie Burnes, a psychiatric nurse practitioner who helps soldiers at the VA Clinic in Rochester. "Because he didn't have to choose anything. He didn't have to choose what to eat for 16 months. And he didn't know how to act. He didn't know how to respond."

Cruz uses the disability statement as if it's proof for non-believers.

"I read it over and over (because) I forget," Cruz says. "I think any logical person would say they'd want to forget the worst parts."

He has formed a relationship with a woman and her two children, but he struggles. In post-war relationships, when a woman rolls her eyes in response to his behavior, he says, he knows it's over.

"I sleep in the garage because I don't want the kids to see me. ... It's cold in the garage. It's more embarrassing, though, if they were to see me," he says.

Severe panic attacks are the problem. Any unexpected noise can set one off.

"You just see some little kid's head split open....," the words spill out of his mouth almost too fast to follow, an intrusive memory that he'd rather not relive, but he stops himself with fits of sobbing, then regains control.

Delayed stress can hit veterans

Delayed post-traumatic stress affects veterans, often years after they return from war, said Mark Frenzel, program manager with Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraq Freedom with the Veterans Administration in Minneapolis.

Veterans specialists like Frenzel and Burnes want Minnesotans to understand that they can help veterans return to stable civilian life. But it's a long road.

"Don't make any quick decisions," Burnes advises family members. "It takes over two years to reintegrate to home life. If they're deployed for a year, it's going to take two years to readjust and re-establish their roles."

It's better to get help early, she said, because recovery will take longer if the veteran delays getting help.

"They left, they've been gone a year, year-and-a-half. The wife, the husband, the parents have moved on. They've all established sort of normalized roles during that time and all of a sudden the veteran has to come back and reinsert themselves," Frenzel said. "Being in a war zone, combat, you need to be hyper vigilant. The adrenaline's flowing. How do you replace that high they've been experiencing?"

When Cruz seeks care, he's often in the midst of a crisis, desperately in need of medication to ease intrusive thoughts, auditory hallucinations he can not suppress.

"I hear tanks. I hear gunners," Cruz said. "You can hear your commander talking to you and your fellow soldiers yelling at you."

Cruz doesn't want to be medicated into a zombie state, so he avoids medication, walking a thin line between loss of control and overmedication. But when war thoughts take control of his mind, he needs help to escape them. That's when he visits health providers, hoping for a prescription to stave off flashbacks.

But, seeing his agitated state, it's easy for health providers to believe he's an addict.

He says he doesn't drink or take street drugs. Alcohol, for him, would make the flashbacks, nightmares and reaction to loud noises even worse.

Cruz says his pain is real. He believes his back problems came from shrapnel from a mortar round that scraped across his back, knocking him down.

"The concussion just folded me backwards," he says. "Right when they get close you hear them -- 'sceerrrr!,'" he says.

Variety of stresses

Returning veterans experience a variety of stresses, Frenzel said.

One in four returning veterans has a traumatic brain injury. Brain injuries can cause impulsive behavior, agitation and outbursts of frustration. And 44 percent of returning vets have mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress, depression or another diagnosable mental illness.

Cruz has a scar along the side of his head from an improvised explosive device or mortar round.

"I took this blow here. I'm not exactly sure how I took it off of a tank, they say I took it off the tank," Cruz says. "Part of my brain still works. But if you ask me what street I turned on five minutes ago, my memory's shot."

He doesn't trust the Veterans Administration and has been banned from a Rochester medical center after missing too many appointments.

Cruz says he no longer believes in God.

After he'd been back in the United States a while, he was sleeping at his parents' house one night when a thunderstorm rolled through. He awoke in a fit and hit the wall next to his bed.

"My fist went right through it, and my dad was like, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Friendships

The effect of war can be tough on friendships, too.

"These soldiers form their strongest bonds with their fellow soldiers, so they may not be willing to talk about their experiences in Iraq," Burnes said. "If it's a non-military friend, that non-military friend needs to accept that. And they also need to understand that the veteran has changed, because you can't go through combat and come back the same. So don't plan on having the same relationship. Accept that growth and maturity have happened while they've been gone."

Cruz agrees.

"I miss the Army. I miss my friends. I miss being able to tell somebody I got your back," Cruz says.

He would serve again if he could, to protect the children of today from having to go to war.

"I would do this over again, 1,000-billion times," he says.

Employers

Employers, coworkers and health-care workers all need extra patience with returning veterans.

Most likely, a veteran will never share his or her entire story with you.

"Understand that they may have little patience, or they might be irritable. And coworkers need to not personalize that, because the veteran may have been triggered by something and is privately trying to deal with that," Burnes said. "Kind of back off and kind of give them some space. The last thing they need is somebody to be really in their face."

For Cruz, memories flood back without invitation.

He was responsible for setting up the tank's turret and eventually became a gunner, fighting against Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard in the Medina Division.

"We had the largest tank battle since Patton. It was rough, because you see all these hoards and hoards of people surrounding you," he said. "There's nothing worse than cleaning someone, or you actually hit someone that's full of gangrene and you've got to clean that off your tanks -- watching the dogs eat -- we shoot them. I saw kids getting out trying to dig holes to bury these people. Then you get to Kuwait City and you see that they killed women and cut children up, and after that you shoot them in the forehead.

"You are slightly spooked all of the time, and afraid," he said. "There are some horses that, if they get spooked, they are useless." That's the way Cruz feels; incapacitated by a fear.

Health care

One medical center in Rochester won't see Cruz any longer because he took too many pain pills, and another won't because he keeps missing appointments because of his memory loss, he says.

He writes notes to himself in a notebook, as many people with brain injuries do. He even wears a watch with an alarm to remind him of the appointments.

"Then they beep and I'm like, what's it for? And then I start going through the (notebook) and I began thinking, what am I looking for?"

To a medical provider not used to such a high number of people living with brain injuries, the patient might appear inappropriately angry -- frightening enough to ask the veteran to leave.

Instead, Burnes said, health providers should take time to figure out what's going on with the patient.

Patients should be assessed for depression, post traumatic stress and brain injuries, she said. "It may be beneficial if they know that they're dealing with a veteran to do a reminder call, that's because the memory component can be affected. Watch for signs of alcohol abuse."

It's important to remember the trauma veterans have experienced, Burnes said.

"What I hear from veterans is please ask people not to ask questions like 'did you kill somebody or did you see anyone die,'" she said. "Because, more than likely, that happened. That's not something these veterans are ready to talk about."

Healing

Perhaps it's part of Cruz's healing process to speak out.

"I want people to learn. I want people to see -- it's human life," he said.

A woman at a local medical organization hung up the phone on him after he became agitated.

"She told me to just deal with it and during the conversation, she got real snippy. I was like, look, lady, the advice you're giving me, you may as well just give me a bottle of whiskey and a shotgun with a round in it and let me blow the back of my head off. I'm going crazy here. And she said, 'Oh well' -- and hung up. ... Why don't they understand that I'm afraid? I'm always, always, always, always, always afraid. ... It's just not fair not to be able to get angry."

About 20 percent of veterans will continue to struggle on a relatively long-term basis, Frenzel said. But there are many services, including many new ones, that can help. But veterans or their loved ones must take action to get help.

Burnes said most veterans, after adjusting, are able to return to a stable life.

"There's hope," she said. "The bad news is that you have it -- PTSD or TBI. The good news is that it's treatable."

---

Reporter Jeff Hansel covers health for the Post-Bulletin. Read his blog, Pulse on Health, at Postbulletin.com.
---

Copyright 2009 Post-Bulletin Company, LLC

House resoulution

2009-03-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

H. Res. 178 --- In the House of Representatives, U. S.

Whereas traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of death and disability among children and young adults in the United States;

Whereas at least 1.4 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury each year;

Whereas each year, more than 125,000 of such Americans sustain permanent life-long disabilities from a traumatic brain injury, resulting in a life-altering experience that can include the most serious physical, cognitive, and emotional impairments;

Whereas every 21 seconds, one person in the United States sustains a traumatic brain injury;

Whereas at least 3.17 million Americans currently live with permanent disabilities resulting from a traumatic brain injury;

Whereas traumatic brain injuries may have a life-altering impact on both Americans living with resultant disabilities and their families;

Whereas concussions are serious injuries to the brain and multiple concussions can lead to lifelong disability and death;

Whereas most cases of traumatic brain injury are preventable;

Whereas traumatic brain injuries cost the nation $60 billion annually;

Whereas the lack of public awareness is so vast that traumatic brain injury is known in the disability community as the Nation's 'silent epidemic';

Whereas traumatic brain injury is the signature wound of the global war on terrorism as a result of roadside bombs and blasts;

Whereas the military personnel who have served in the Armed Forces of the United States in such war and who return to the United States with traumatic brain injuries will require additional Federal, State, and local resources;

Whereas there is a need for enhanced public awareness of traumatic brain injury;

Whereas the designation of a National Brain Injury Awareness Month will work toward enhancing public awareness of traumatic brain injury; and

Whereas the Brain Injury Association of America has recognized March as Brain Injury Awareness Month: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That House of Representatives--

(1) supports the designation of an appropriate month as National Brain Injury Awareness Month; and

(2) urges the President to issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States, Federal departments and agencies, States, localities, organizations, and media to annually observe a National Brain Injury Awareness Month with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

March 23, 2009

---

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr111-178

2009-03-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

Army Setting up TBI Program in Europe

"...Cognitive rehabilitation treatment helps with memory problems..."

March 24, 2009
Stars and Stripes|by Seth Robson

VILSECK, Germany — The Army is setting up a program at bases across Europe to treat soldiers who return from combat with mild traumatic brain injury.

European Regional Medical Command public affairs chief Steve Davis said last week that the TBI treatment program is being established at 17 base clinics and at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

This month, Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, head of the Pentagon's Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, reported that as many as 360,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan may have suffered service-related brain injuries.

ERMC TBI program manager Maria Crane said she did not know how many Europe-based soldiers are likely to have TBI. She also could not provide the cost of the new program. She said 80 staff members are being added to clinics in Europe to deal with TBI cases.

"It is mostly primary-care providers — psychiatrists, neurologists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, neurosurgeons and social workers," she said.

The decision to increase staffing was based on a gap study that looked at data that suggest 20 percent of soldiers involved in blast injuries show TBI symptoms, she said.

The Bavarian Medical Command is setting up its portion of the TBI program in temporary facilities at Vilseck and Bamberg.

Anne Felde, the Bavarian TBI program's clinical director, said the goal is to concentrate resources at the two hubs. At smaller communities, nurse case managers will assess patients to determine if they should travel to Bamberg of Vilseck, or if they can be treated by local primary care providers, she said.

Like the Europe-level ERMC officials, the staff in Bavaria also could not provide data on the number of soldiers it expects to treat. However, 25 to 30 staff members are being added to clinics to work on the program, Felde said, adding that she expected a significant number of soldiers to need treatment for the condition.

"We have an infantry population that deploys a lot and experiences a lot of bombs and explosions," she said.

Vilseck is home to the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, which recently returned from Iraq, while nearby Grafenwöhr is the home base of the 172nd Infantry Brigade, currently deployed to Iraq.

Soldiers who return from deployment are screened for health problems, including TBI, Felde said. Those with severe TBI, where there is obvious physical damage to the brain, are sent to the U.S. for treatment, she said.

Felde said mild TBI symptoms include headaches that don't respond to painkillers like Tylenol or Motrin; memory and concentration problems; irritability; balance problems; reading difficulty; problems in communication and self-expression; sleep problems; depression and anxiety; and ringing in the ears.

"They (mild TBI sufferers) are able to function, but they may have some impairment that leads them to seek treatment," she said.

Ordinarily people who suffer a concussion recover without treatment. Combat veterans often take longer to recover for a variety of reasons, she said.

"They may have had multiple blast experiences on multiple deployments," she said. "They may have a combination of TBI and [post-traumatic stress disorder]."

Researchers are attempting to unravel the disorders, which share many symptoms, but there is still much that is not known, Felde said.

"The two things seem to feed off each other," she said. "When you are having headaches and can't focus, PTSD is harder to recover from. Likewise, when you are having nightmares and flashbacks and trouble sleeping, it impairs TBI recovery."

Treatment for TBI typically involves sleeping pills and strong pain medication to dull headaches. Sometimes medication is injected directly into a patient's head to numb the nerves causing the headaches, Felde said.

Cognitive rehabilitation treatment helps with memory problems. Soldiers are taught how to organize their lives in ways that allow them to stay on top of things. Or they might do exercises that involve responding to lights on a switchboard while performing another activity such as reading, a process that helps them conquer problems with divided attention typical among TBI sufferers, she said.

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More TBI stuff

2009-03-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

You will probably find that I'll be posting more stuff regarding TBI. There's so much I get that I want to share in order to raise awareness of our issues

By Kate Wiltrout
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 22, 2009

CHARLOTTESVILLE

They live together in a Victorian house on a quiet street in this college town. Mostly men in their early 20s, they play video games, watch movies, tell stories and practice playing guitar.

But members of the unofficial fraternity at 506 Grove Ave. aren't students at the University of Virginia. They're military members learning how to live with traumatic brain injuries, or TBI.

Lakeview Virginia NeuroCare is one of two civilian-run programs in the United States that offers advanced rehabilitation to military patients with mild to moderate brain injuries. Most, like 22-year-old Edward Bennett of Virginia Beach, suffered blast injuries in combat, or during the course of their work in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others were injured in car accidents, falls or training exercises.

Military officials estimate more than 300,000 troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan may suffer from brain injuries, often from explosive blasts. About half of those injured recover spontaneously over a matter of months.

But repeated concussions or exposure to blasts can wreak havoc on the brain. Between 45,000 and 90,000 military members or veterans are thought to suffer from more severe and lasting symptoms. Mild to moderate TBI - the diagnosis for most soldiers at Grove House - usually causes slowed mental processing, short-term memory loss, difficulty sleeping, headaches, irritability and anger control issues.

Other problems include difficulty concentrating, fatigue, and sensitivity to light and sound.

"If someone goes untreated, they're going to have problems for the rest of their lives," said F. Don Nidiffer, a psychologist and Lakeview Virginia NeuroCare's executive director.

"We've had people with severe injuries who recover very, very well, and some people with mild injuries who don't recover well at all," he said. "You can lose an arm or a leg and that can be very tragic, very sad. If you have a brain injury and it's severe, and you don't recover well, it can have a tremendous impact on families."

Bennett was an engineering student at Old Dominion University when his Virginia National Guard unit, the 237th Engineer Company, was mobilized for Iraq. One of the unit's main jobs was clearing Iraqi roads of explosives. After being in the vicinity of dozens of controlled detonations, Spc. Bennett found himself sometimes grasping for words, feeling dizzy and having balance problems. He noticed himself drifting off course when he walked along the steel grate pathways that criss-crossed the base.

Doctors diagnosed him with traumatic brain injury and post-concussive syndrome, and sent him back to the United States.

He spent two months last summer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, then was assigned to a Virginia Beach-based unit for wounded Guard and reserve members.

His doctor there suggested Lakeview Virginia NeuroCare, and Bennett began the program after Thanksgiving.

He spent hours working one-on-one with Gary Levine, a speech/language pathologist. Levine is known among the tight-knit staff and patients for two things: playing the banjo, and wearing Hawaiian shirts.

Levine taught Bennett how to turn verbal or written words into images, which the brain finds easier to process. He helped him make visual associations, using mnemonic memory devices. (Instead of memorizing a list of groceries to buy, Bennett learned to link each item to, say, objects hanging on the walls of his apartment. Later, by walking through the apartment in his mind, he can recall what was on the list.)

Hawaiian shirts aside, Levine serves as a mental drill instructor. He'll ask patients to push a button every time they hear the number "two" among a long string of digits. He'll cue up a different computer program that requires listeners to signal every time they hear a number that's one smaller than the figure preceding it. The drills strengthen neurological pathways that promote higher level brain function.

One of the goals, Levine said, is to get patients functioning in complex environments without losing their concentration or having their attention fragmented - an essential skill if they want to stay in the military.

Although brain injuries don't always heal, people with mild to moderate impairment can often learn to compensate.

"It may seem harder or take more energy," Levine said. "But the end result is the same. You pass a point where you can do everything you did before."

Grove House residents often learn something new, too: how to play the guitar.

Levine and Jim Hardiman, a social worker with the program, share a love of music. Levine plays guitar and banjo; Hardiman, the guitar. They came to realize that strumming an instrument requires cognitive and motor skills, but it also serves as a stress reducer. They figured it could be a perfect outlet for military TBI patients, many of whom also struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

With the assistance of a retired Marine officer who donates guitars to anyone at Grove House who wants them, Hardiman and Levine now run a weekly music therapy session.

"It's something we all have in common," Hardiman explained. "I don't have PTSD, but I have trouble making a G-chord sometimes."

In January, the group was working on two songs: "The House of the Rising Sun" and "Man of Constant Sorrow."

Bennett has kept up with the guitar since leaving Charlottesville.

"It takes a lot of coordination," Bennett said recently. "I'm getting better. I think my transitions are really good. I can go from note to note without looking anymore."

The focus at Grove House is not just clinical rehabilitation. The program also works to reintegrate patients into the community by arranging unpaid jobs for a few hours a week, having them shop for and cook dinner once a week, and arranging outings for those who may struggle with being in crowds.

Perhaps the most powerful part of the program, though, is the unstructured time at the house. Actually living with "the other guys" was the best part of Bennett's time in Charlottesville.

The house sleeps eight. Rank doesn't matter much. Patients tend to be young, male and enlisted, but women, officers and older military members have passed through Grove House since the program began about seven years ago. Nidiffer estimates 80 to 90 percent of patients are soldiers, Guard members or Army reservists.

"Everybody there can relate to you," Bennett said. "At home, you're kind of hesitant to tell your wife some of the things you went through, and sometimes when you do tell your wife, she wishes you hadn't."

Caretakers like Darlene Brevard, a small woman with big hair and perfectly painted nails, are at the house round the clock and keep it running smoothly. "Mama D," as the men call her, is Grove House's mother hen. She sets out barbecue sandwiches, potato salad and Tater Tots for lunch, empties the dishwasher, and makes sure the refrigerator is stocked. She is generous with hugs.

Therapy, assessments and appointments fill most weekdays between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. But after-hours activities help stimulate healing, too.

Assembling model ships and planes helps with fine motor skills. Playing Wii requires hand and eye coordination. Growing vegetables in a greenhouse that will soon be built in the backyard will strengthen what's called "higher order thinking": planning, judgment, organization, concentration.

Army Lt. Col. Michael Jaffee is a neurologist, psychiatrist and national director of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.

He said Lakeview's program fills a need that military and Veterans Affairs facilities couldn't meet at the beginning of the war in Iraq.

Military hospitals could handle emergency injuries, and the VA offers long-term care for those grievously wounded in battle. Nothing existed in the middle, for patients who could possibly return to active duty but needed more help regaining function than they could get at Walter Reed or Bethesda.

Lakeview's program bridges that gap - and does it in a way that allows patients to bond with other military members without the pressure of being a soldier.

"They're not just there to be patients and receive therapy," Jaffee said. "They are there to become vital and productive members of that community."

Many of the 119 military patients who have been treated at Grove House have had to overcome significant physical wounds as well as brain injury, Jaffee said. That makes it even more impressive that approximately 30 percent of their patients have returned to active duty.

Bennett hopes to re-enroll in the ROTC program at Old Dominion University. He will resume classes, part-time, this summer, and plans to take a full load in the fall.

He knows engineering courses will put his memory and critical-thinking skills to the test.

"I'm processing stuff almost like I was," Bennett said. "I'm not as worried about going back to school."

---

The program

Lakeview Virginia NeuroCare in Charlottesville is one of two civilian-run programs in the U.S. that offer advanced rehabilitation to military patients with mild to moderate brain injuries.

The program bridges the gap left by military hospitals, which handle emergency injuries, and the VA, which offers long-term care for those grievously wounded in battle, and allows patients to bond with other military members without the pressure of being a soldier. In addition to the clinical rehabilitation, after-hours activities also help healing. Assembling model ships and planes helps with fine motor skills, playing Wii requires hand and eye coordination, and learning to play the guitar requires cognitive and motor skills and serves as a stress reducer. The program also works to reintegrate patients into the community by arranging unpaid jobs for a few hours a week.

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Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com

© 1993-2009, HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

http://hamptonroads.com/node/502988

Should parents worry?

2009-02-20T08:21:00.001-08:00

Should Parents Worry About Sports Injuries?

Watch short video for great advice:

http://www.ketv.com/news/18728039/detail.html

February 16, 2009

Derek Ruth has spent the last 6 months relearning 13 years of lessons. The Malcolm junior high student's life was forever changed after he sustained a traumatic brain injury during a September football game.

Derek's mother, Jen, remembers that game well. "He came to the sidelines, knew the score of the game," said Ruth. "He was coherent; he knew a lot."

Moments later, Derek collapsed. Paramedics flew Derek to an area hospital and doctors determined the then 12-year-old sustained a brain injury. It was later determined Derek had two subdural hematomas, and doctors temporarily removed two pieces of his skull.

Derek has since had to relearn basic motor skills such as walking and talking. He continues therapy to regain use and control of his body.

"We don't know all of the reasons some individuals have what we call catastrophic major traumatic outcomes," said Dr. Lori Terryberry-Spohr, the Brain Injury Program Manager at the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln.

"In a more serious injury, often there's bleeding on the brain that completely kills out brain tissue. That's where we have to work to retrain other parts of the brain to pick up those skills or to rewire those skills so they can still be completed, but in a different way."

Terryberry-Spohr said injuries to the extent of Derek's are rare. Less severe head injuries such as concussions, she said, are not. Dr. Terryberry-Spohr cited research that suggests one out of every four high school athletes will experience a concussion during their high school career.

Most of those victims, she said, will recover wihtout complications as long as those people are not reinjured during their recovery. "We do believe," said Terryberry-Spohr, "if we can more accurately identify individuals that have had milder brain injuries or concussions on the field, then we can prevent more serious and catastrophic injuries."

Terryberry-Spohr also noted the benefits of children and teenagers participating in sports. "The benefits of physical activity are tremendous, we know that," she said. "Benefecial to cardiovascular systems and overall health. But we have to be able to do it safely."

Terryberry-Spohr said experts are focused on prevention in terms of having good equipment and well inflated helmets in addition to better identification of smaller injuries.

Jen Ruth, Derek's mother, has a message for parents concerned about their children participating in contact sports, as Derek was when he sustained his injury. "I don't think you can focus on, 'it was a football injury.' People have car accidents and other things, and you still drive."

Jen Ruth also believes the physical benefits Derek experienced while participating in sports are now helping him in his recovery. "The doctors have said being in good physical condition before, the muscle strength, coordination he had before, is just going to help him in the long run," said Ruth.

Ruth added that the same determination and focus Derek showed on the field are now his assets in rehabilitation. "I think there's a lot of good that comes out of sports, kids playing, being on teams, learning responsibility, a lot of good comes out of it," said Ruth. "You can't live your life afraid."

Terryberry-Spohr encourages parents, coaches and trainers to keep watch for the signs of a possible concussion. Warning signs include disorientation, balance difficulties, possible headache, dizzines and nauseua.

The Centers For Disease Control offer tool kits for athletes and adults. Each tool kit contains print-off cards listing the warning signs of concussion.

Veteran of George's war

2009-01-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a video about how our government is treating one of the many soldiers who have been injured in Iraq. It's called Veteran of George's war wants a bailout.

Dementia from the frontal lobes

2008-12-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting, though bit scary, article I found this morning. These symptoms mirror exactly some of the issues I have from my traumatic brain injury. That is partly because much of the damage to my brain is in the front lobe of my brain. Many of these problems I recall having most of my life, which supports the idea I've had multiple brain injuries.

SYDNEY (AFP) – Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to research published on Friday.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic.

The study, described by its authors as groundbreaking, helps explain why patients with the condition behave the way they do and why, for example, they are unable to pick up their caregivers' moods, the research showed.

"This is significant because if care-givers are angry, sad or depressed, the patient won't pick this up. It is often very upsetting for family members," said John Hodges, the senior author of the paper published in "Brain".

"(FTD) patients present changes in personality and behaviour. They find it difficult to interact with people, they don't pick up on social cues, they lack empathy, they make bad judgements," he told AFP.

"People with FTD become very gullible and they often part with large amounts of money," he said, adding that one in 4,000 people around the world are afflicted with the condition.

Researchers began studying the role of sarcasm in detecting FTD because it requires a patient to spot discrepancies between a person's words and the tone of their voice, Hodges said.

"One of the things about FTD patients is that they don't detect humour -- they are very bad at double meaning and a lot of humour (other than sarcasm) is based on double meaning," he said.

The research, conducted in 2006-07, put 26 sufferers of FTD and 19 Alzheimer's patients through a test in which actors acted out different scenarios using exactly the same words.

While in one scenario, the actors would deliver the lines sincerely, in others they would introduce a thick layer of sarcasm. Patients were then asked if they got the joke, Hodges said.

For example, said Hodges, if a couple were discussing a weekend away and the wife suggested bringing her mother, the husband might say: "Well, that's great, you know how much I like your mother, that will really make it a great weekend."

When the same words were delivered sarcastically and then in a neutral tone, the joke was lost on FTD patients, while the Alzheimer's patients got it.

"The patients with FTD are very literal and they take what is being said as genuine and sincere," said Hodges.

FTD, often referred to as Pick's disease, is similar to Alzheimer's in that it involves a progressive decline in mental powers over a number of years, but FTD affects different regions of the brain.

"It can be very difficult to diagnose in early stages and to separate from depression or, later on, schizophrenia or personality disorders," Hodges said.

The sarcasm test could replace some more expensive and less widely available tests for dementia, he said.

When questioned about the applicability of the test to people from countries not renowned for their appreciation of sarcasm or irony, Hodges said the test could be modified.

The war we shouldn't have started

2008-09-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

Three years out of the army, diagnosed with PTSD, I recently got a nice letter from the pentagon saying they'd like me back in Iraq, pronto. They didn't even mind that I was a little sick. And I'm not the only one.

http://www.esquire.com/features/army-recall-0908

colby buzzell's army id
F. Martin Ramin/Studio D

He never thought he'd need these artifacts of service in Iraq again, but in April of 2008, after having separated from the Army early in 2005, the author received orders to report to Fort Benning, Georgia, the following month.

Imagine that you graduated from college, and a couple years afterward your alma mater contacts you and says, Sorry, you didn't graduate from college. In fact, you have five weeks to drop everything that you're doing--quit your job, get out of your lease, put all your stuff in storage, cancel your Netflix, etc.--and report back to campus so that you can redo all the schooling that you've already done. And not only that, here's a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver with only one round in the chamber--spin the chamber, point it at your head, and pull the trigger. If you live, you live. If you don't, you don't.

The only shooting that I care to do from now on is with my camera, and I had just got done with the long and arduous process of getting my GI Bill activated and signed up for photography classes down at the city college when I received the large manila envelope in the mail with the words IMPORTANT DOCUMENT printed in all caps in the center of it.

SNIP Read Rest Here: http://www.esquire.com/features/army-recall-0908

From: James Starowicz
To: jmstaro@hotmail.com
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 5:30 PM
Subject: The Army Wants You...Again! (Yes, Really.) - A Must Read!!!

The Army Wants You...Again! (Yes, Really.)

Three years out of the army, diagnosed with PTSD, I recently got a nice letter from the pentagon saying they'd like me back in Iraq, pronto. They didn't even mind that I was a little sick. And I'm not the only one.

F. Martin Ramin/Studio D

He never thought he'd need these artifacts of service in Iraq again, but in April of 2008, after having separated from the Army early in 2005, the author received orders to report to Fort Benning, Georgia, the following month.

By: Colby Buzzell

Three years out of the army, diagnosed with PTSD, I recently got a nice letter from the pentagon saying they'd like me back in Iraq, pronto. They didn't even mind that I was a little sick. And I'm not the only one.

Imagine that you graduated from college, and a couple years afterward your alma mater contacts you and says, Sorry, you didn't graduate from college. In fact, you have five weeks to drop everything that you're doing--quit your job, get out of your lease, put all your stuff in storage, cancel your Netflix, etc.--and report back to campus so that you can redo all the schooling that you've already done. And not only that, here's a Smith & Wesson 357 revolver with only one round in the chamber--spin the chamber, point it at your head, and pull the trigger. If you live, you live. If you don't, you don't.

The only shooting that I care to do from now on is with my camera, and I had just got done with the long and arduous process of getting my GI Bill activated and signed up for photography classes down at the city college when I received the large manila envelope in the mail with the words IMPORTANT DOCUMENT printed in all caps in the center of it.

Inside was a letter that said that I had five weeks (just enough time for all the illegal drugs in my system to get flushed out) to report to Fort Benning, Georgia--"Home of the Infantry"--for in-processing, and after that I'd be assigned to a National Guard Infantry unit. Purpose: Operation Iraqi Freedom. I love all-expenses-paid business trips, but I don't recall enlisting in the National Guard--I enlisted in the regular Army. What I do recall is my recruiter telling me that I wouldn't be called back up to active duty unless "World War III broke out."

When I joined up six years ago, I was under the strong impression that I'd be able to do my time, get out, and move on. Which is what I did, or at least tried to do.

I had no idea that the Army was going to turn into this psychotic ex-girlfriend that you'd need to file a restraining order against because the crazy bitch doesn't get the hint that there's no way we're getting back together again--ever!

I separated from the Army three long years ago, and ever since then I've lived every single day in fear that this was going to happen. I've endured dozens and dozens of e-mails and phone calls from the Army trying to persuade me to voluntarily reenlist. Sometimes these phone calls get pretty nasty--especially when I kindly request that my name and number be taken off their list. (There's a law that states you can do this.) This never works, but it always confuses them. One guy even told me he couldn't do that because this was the government calling, not a telemarketer. I called bullshit and hung up.

In times of crisis I call Todd Vance. He was in my platoon, and the two of us got out of the Army around the same time and we've been BFF ever since. He strongly encouraged me to find a way out and said, "Look at how fucked-up we are now. Imagine how fucked-up you're going to be when you get back the second time!"

I then called my brother. "I've got news," I said.

"What?"

"I'm gay."

"You're gay? [Pause.] That's not news."

"No, I'm serious, I'm gay. I got my orders in the mail today saying that I have to report to Fort Benning, Georgia, in five weeks!"

I was now in the market for some high heels, because my goal was to not go back to Iraq by any means necessary, and I was just going to show up and tell them that I'm gay and ask them if I can go home now. If they didn't buy it, I'd tell them about my scooter and that I live in San Francisco and there's a very good reason I live there.

"It's not going to be that easy, and it's a bad idea," my brother said. "What would Grandma say if she found out you were gay?"

After talking about it for a while, he suggested that I go back to Iraq for the sole purpose of writing a book about the experience. I rejected that absurd idea, but since the Army was kind enough to send me an invitation to go back to Operation Iraqi Freedom, I decided to RSVP by writing a little op-ed about it for the San Francisco Chronicle. One of the accolades it received was:

"So, looking at your opening paragraph. There was a clause in the contract you signed. You were concerned enough to ask about it. The person 'closing the deal' gave you assurances that were NOT in the contract and contrary to the clause you were concerned about. You chose to sign and accept the contract anyway. Would you like some cheese with your whine? Your choice was not to sign the contract if you did not want to accept the possibility of being recalled to duty. I do not see the problem here."

And people wonder why I avoid other people. A couple days after I spoke with my brother, I took my parents out to dinner to an Italian restaurant in North Beach, and I told my father how my brother suggested that I go back to Iraq. I told him that he reasoned that if a Democrat won the election, I'd be there during the retreat, er, withdrawal, and that maybe I'd be there for less than a year.

My dad made a career of the Army. He was in Vietnam to experience the Tet Offensive, and would retire a lieutenant colonel. So I was nervous about how he was going to react when I told him that I didn't want to go back to Iraq.

"Don't listen to your brother," he quickly said. "I don't think you should go back. And I've seen plenty of elections in my life and right now the Democrats are just talking about drawing down to get votes. You'd be a fool to believe that we're going to pull out of Iraq anytime soon."

When my father got up from the table to go to the restroom, it was just my mother and I. "I'll support whatever decision you make," she said. She then looked around the restaurant for a second before saying, "The other night, when you called with the news, your father couldn't sleep. He stayed up all night."

Slowly, one by one, I started telling my friends about how I was being called back up to go to Iraq, and their reactions were all the same, yet all different. Some got angry, some cried, some wondered, "Wow, they can do that?" The best was the reaction I received from my one Republican friend, who asked me if it was possible for him to come with me to Iraq. He never enlisted in the military and wanted to hurry and sign up so that he and I could go there together, which instantly reminded me of how not long ago, George Bush was telling a group of soldiers about how much he envies them, talking about how "exciting" and "romantic" war must be. I guess Vietnam wasn't "exciting" or "romantic" enough for the president, and that's why he blew it off. But Iraq was much different.

And like Bush, my Republican friend was all atwitter about the prospect of seeing combat in Iraq, and he sounded really enthusiastic about this idea of his, and as desperate as the Army is for bodies, it wouldn't amaze me at all if he could possibly do it, but I told him no, that he couldn't, and when he asked if I was sure about that, I lost it and said, "Jason, I'm going back to Iraq because you didn't!"

Harsh, maybe, but war isn't romantic. Getting shot at with an AK-47 pointed at your head--from so close you can see the muzzle flash--isn't romantic. It's terrifying.

That's all.

Joe Horrocks, on the other hand, is a fine, brave man who enlisted before 9/11 and was in my platoon with me. After a couple drunken messages on his voice mail ("Those fuckin' bastards want me back in uniform! Muthafucka! Can you believe that shit?"), I finally got ahold of him. We had shared a living conex in Iraq, and we've been friends ever since. He suggested that I should find a way not to go back and said, "I don't want to see you over there. Then I'd have to reenlist again and go back there with you to cover your ass just like I did the last time."

He was joking. Not the part about covering my ass--he did that and did that well--but about going back there again with me. I would never allow him to do such a thing, but there was a bit of truth to what he said. If Horrocks called me up and said that he was going to Iraq, and asked me to reenlist so that I could go there with him, I'd cuss him out, but I'd also drop whatever I was doing and do it in a heartbeat, because I know he'd do it for me. I still keep in touch with a handful of the guys I went to Iraq with, and every single one of them encouraged me to find a way out of it--none told me that I should go--and half of them said the same thing about going back there with me again if I went, and a couple were serious. Which brings up another possible scenario: What if I show up at Fort Benning and come across a bunch of guys that I knew from my old platoon? I'd feel like an ass for not going back there with them. This scared me--because I can be quite suicidal at times, and I can totally see myself showing up to Benning and completely losing my mind and going, "Fuck it. I'll go. Where the hell's my M240 fully automatic machine gun and ammunition?"

My old unit out of Fort Lewis, Washington, flew back to Iraq a little over a year after we returned. I got out of the Army, while several of my friends stayed in. Out of all the guys I knew, Lieutenant Damon Armeni is definitely the one who had a very legitimate reason to get out of the Army and not go back to Iraq. The guy took an RPG to the stomach for chrissakes. It gutted him, and he had to stuff his guts back in with his own hands. When he recovered, the Army gave him the option to get out on a medical discharge or stay in and remain in his old unit, which was slated to go back to Iraq. He chose to stay in.

I think very highly of Lieutenant Armeni, and the last time we spoke in person he told me, "You should reenlist." I shook my head no, that I couldn't, I'm no good at encores, and he explained to me that I could save lives by going back there again. I had something that none of the new guys who were going over there had, and that was experience. I knew what it was like over there--what to look out for, what to expect, and what to do in certain situations. One of the reasons he was going back was so that all the newbies would return home alive and in one piece.

I get severely depressed whenever I think about that because I knew I had nothing but selfish reasons for not going back with them.

Horrocks reenlisted and went back to Iraq again with our old unit. Since they were part of the "surge," the whole unit was stop-lossed, and about one week before they were to come home after being in Iraq for nearly a year and a half, Horrocks's platoon was on a foot patrol when nearly a whole squad was killed after entering a house that was booby-trapped. One soldier, they just found a leg. When Horrocks got back from Iraq, he put on his Class A uniform and delivered an urn with the leg in it to the family of the deceased soldier and explained to them what happened.

My orders came with a mobilization packet, a bunch of useless forms for me to fill out and bring with me, as well as a packing list requesting that I bring my PT uniform, battle-dress uniform, and Class B uniform (which at first scared me, because for a minute there I was looking like Jon Favreau, but much to my relief, when I threw it on, it fit fine), old ID card, dog tags, and copies of my medical records.

I went down to the VA hospital in San Francisco and spoke with a therapist there and told him straight up that I didn't want to go and needed some documentation testifying that I was a head case. I'm not ready to go on Oprah or anything, but I'm definitely not the same person I was before Iraq, and I was going to play the PTSD card and hope that would get me out of this mess.

The therapist told me that from his experience the success rate for what I was attempting to do was fifty-fifty. He's written plenty of letters for guys he's evaluated who've been called back up and didn't want to go, and some come back, others don't. He then told me all about this one guy who he evaluated who was in really bad shape and really shouldn't have gone back to Iraq, and this therapist kept on calling the Army telling them how this guy really should not be going back, and the Army's attitude toward him was thank you for calling, but we have our own doctors who can make their own decisions on whether or not a soldier is deployable, and we really don't need your suggestions. Click.

He said that he could write a letter for me but what I really needed was a letter from a psychologist. When I went to the main VA hospital in San Francisco, I sat with a staff psychologist on the PTSD clinical team who conducted a triage evaluation of me. I was completely honest with her and straight up told her that I needed this letter so I could avoid getting redeployed. She seemed cool with that. The next day I went back to the VA to pick up my letter. It read:

"Mr. Buzzell came into the evaluation visibly distressed, uncomfortable, presenting with flattened affect and speaking with soft, mumbled speech. When asked about his experiences in Iraq, he became more agitated and asked if it was necessary for him to talk about them. When told that he could refer to them very generally, he replied that one of the main incidents involved a firefight that lasted all day that took place when he was driving along a major street and his vehicle was ambushed. During the course of talking about this incident, Mr. Buzzell's speech became increasingly softer, more incoherent and more disjointed, as he was visibly disturbed and easily stimulated to flooding by this retelling. Mr. Buzzell added that there were other traumatic incidents that occurred aside from this roadside ambush, but in the interest of containing this vet, I told him that the information he provided was sufficient for the time being.

"Mr. Buzzell reported that he has tried very hard to 'push out of his head' the aforementioned incident and many others since returning from Iraq. He reported that he drinks heavily every day as a way to avoid these traumatic memories, usually to the point of blacking out so he can eventually fall asleep. He has been using alcohol for the past three years as a way to numb intrusive thoughts and reminders of his combat trauma since his return from Iraq. . . . He is severely isolated, spending most of his day in his room and sometimes going for several days to weeks without speaking to anyone. Upon returning from Iraq, Mr. Buzzell and his wife divorced. . . . When asked whether he has thoughts of harming or killing himself Mr. Buzzell endorsed having a passive suicidal ideation. . . . Mr. Buzzell also stated that he does not own a firearm because he is scared of what he might do with it when he is drunk . . . while he has gotten into a couple of fistfights in bars, he has never had an urge to hurt or kill someone. . . . In sum, Mr. Buzzell reports extremely significant functional impairments resulting from PTSD symptoms related to his military service in Iraq, including severe intrusive thoughts of his trauma in Iraq, irritability, hypervigilance, difficulty sleeping, feelings of depression, and avoidance of people, places, and things that trigger him or remind him of his service in Iraq."

When I showed this letter to a close friend of mine who I've known for years, he was amazed. "Wow," he said. "This isn't too far from the truth, is it?"

"No. It's not."

Now that I had this letter, I was able to file a service-connected disability claim for PTSD, which I was told would take several months to process, which was fine. All I needed was proof that I had the disability and documentation that I had filed a claim. A couple weeks later I received a phone call from the Department of Veterans Affairs notifying me that I didn't have enough time left for them to file a claim. And that they could fix me up in a jiffy once I got back from Iraq.

I can feel my heart rate go up as I enter the main gate, and when I stop the rental car the armed civilian security guard kindly says to me, "Welcome to Fort Benning." I release an inaudible guttural grunt of pain and agony as I hand him my ID card and military orders and he hands me a vehicle pass so that I can get on post. He looks over the documents, hands them back to me, and, with a smile, says, "Thank you. Have a nice day."

I stare blankly at him for a couple seconds until I snap out of it and slowly put pressure on the gas pedal so that the car slowly rolls into the belly of the beast. As I pass a banner encouraging the troops to vote, my entire body physically tells me to abort mission and turn this bad boy around and get out of Dodge while I still can--but just like on missions in Iraq when I felt this way, I drive on. When I report to the Welcome Center the lady there instructs me to report to the staff duty desk at 30th Adjutant General.

When I arrive at 30th AG I park the car and light up a smoke. I remember the ride on the white bus half a decade ago that took me from the Atlanta airport straight here. I stand there in the parking lot and remember how I was back then--excited, nervous, scared, but most important, I was willing to be here. That was what I wanted for my life, and this was the place I wanted to be. Now I just feel very sick.

In block letters by the American flag up on the wall it says, "Welcome to the U.S. Army," and there's two groups of soldiers waiting inside here with me, both groups wearing digital-cammo ACU uniforms, and I'm wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. One group looks like a bunch of high school sophomores (basic-training privates), and the other group all look my age or considerably older. I wonder if they are Individual Ready Reserve callbacks like me, so I approach them and find out that they're a bunch of prior-service guys who got out years ago and volunteered to reenlist. One guy tells me that he was in the Marine Corps for ten years and got out years ago, and the other one tells me that he's been trying to get back in the military for a while now and finally this last time they let him in. Same with the guy sitting next to him. He was amazed that the Army was recalling infantry guys to active duty, said he's tried several times in the last several years to get back in the Army, and they finally lowered their standards to a point where they could let him back in.

Next morning, the 0530 formation is a lineup of disgruntled half-asleep draftees straight out of central casting. Mismatched civilian clothing from head to toe, and there's this defeated tone--that nobody really wants to be here--radiating from all of us that you could probably feel a couple clicks away. About half of us still have military-style haircuts, but there's a handful here who are poorly shaven with shaggy hair. One guy has his entire neck completely tattooed. (When I ask if the Army plans on kicking him out with his neck decorated like that--it's forbidden, I recently looked into getting work done on my neck for that reason--he tells me no, that they lowered their standards and don't really care about neck tattoos anymore.) The sun's not even up yet and all around us are other platoons conducting physical-training exercises. The last time I woke up this early was back when I was in the Army, and the only time I've done any PT whatsoever since being discharged is when I'm doing wind sprints to the liquor store five minutes prior to closing. I keep telling myself over and over that this is not happening.

After a warm welcome, the NCO in charge starts the day off with a head count and one by one we sound off, One! Two! Three! . . . until it ends at around sixty. Out of 150 IRR soldiers recalled and ordered to report to duty, only a third showed up. It's a bit too late, but I realize that I'm in the wrong group. I should have been one of the ninety no-shows. A guy in the formation, sarcastic, says, "We should all pat ourselves on the back for showing up." Another replies, "We should pat ourselves on the back for being stupid?"

After that, they march us over to the chow hall, and as we wait in formation for it to open up, another E-6 walks over to us. "How many of you guys are glad to be here?" he asks. One moron who probably completely misunderstood the question raises his hand, another joker yells out a mocking "Hooah!" "How many of you are not glad to be here?" he asks. Before he could even finish asking this question, every single hand shoots straight up in the air. In the far distance you can faintly hear a platoon of soldiers standing in formation, all singing "The Army Goes Rolling Along." Last question: "How many of you have already been deployed?" E-6 asks. All the hands in the formation stay up.

Earlier, while standing around waiting for the start of formation, I recognized a face among us that I hadn't seen in years. I couldn't believe it at first, but then I realized it was Ponitz, who was in my platoon back at Fort Lewis. After exchanging what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-heres, he told me that when he got out of the military he moved back to Ann Arbor and got a job sorting and delivering bread for nine dollars an hour. And after that he showed me his wedding ring, told me that he was originally going to get married in October, but when he got the letter from the Army the two of them quickly got married a week ago. I congratulated him and could see that Ponitz was still glowing from it all, and he went on to tell me at length how great she was and how much he loved her.

"How's she feel about you deploying?"

"She wants me to find a way out of it."

"Are you?" I asked.

"No," he said. He was broke when he received the letter. He needed the money. "Fuck it," he said. "Give me back my gun and send me."

He didn't sound too excited about leaving his bride, and asked me if I was still married. I lifted my left hand, which is ringless.

As we make the stations of the cross, getting our documents checked and rechecked and new ID cards made, it becomes clear that the soldiers being recalled here at Fort Benning are vastly outnumbered. For every one of us IRR recalls who's here, there are at least three civilian contractors here as well getting their packets ready for deployment. They all seem eager and more than willing to deploy. Half are obese, almost all look pathetic, and a great majority of them seem to be living in a Blackwater fantasy with a perverse fetish for tactical gear, which a lot of them seem to be wearing an overabundance of from head to toe. One idiot is walking around carrying his Kevlar helmet. (WTF?!) While waiting in line I overhear the guy next to me say, "Why the fuck are those people so goddamn happy?" The guy next to him grumbles, "Shit--if I was making six digits doing absolutely nothing, I'd be walking around with a hard-on too."

Six hours later I get my new ID. They gave preference to the contractors and seemed to zip those guys right on through. While all of us were patiently waiting, one contractor passed by happily with his new ID card and said, "You guys don't look like you're having too much fun." None of us bothered to look up.

After I finally receive my card, I begin to panic.

I am now only two steps away from being back in the military and assigned to a unit headed straight to Iraq. Just like that the Army almost has me, and there are only two things left on my checklist that need to be marked off before I will be handed a uniform again--and that's medical and dental. The following day is set aside for dental, and the day after that is for medical. So the in-processing to see if you're mentally and physically able to deploy is roughly thirty-six hours from the time you show up.

I now need a drink. I don't want to drink at the bar on post with the lifers and the high-and-tights. I want to get away from that and get my mind off of what's going down, so I go off post to Broadway in Columbus. The bar has a sign outside advertising $2.50 drafts. I take a seat next to a guy who's already had a couple and appears to be here by himself as well, and we nod a friendly hello to each other as I order a drink. "I just got back from Iraq four days ago," he says right away.

"Welcome home," I say. "Are you with 3rd Brigade?"

"Yeah," he says. "How'd you know?"

"There's 'Welcome Home 3rd Brigade' posters and banners all over Benning."

He nods. "You're in the Army?" he asks.

I tell him that I am--was--kind of--I got out a while ago, and I am back here at Benning because the Army came calling again.

We exchange pleasantries about how the Army was now doing that a lot, and after some Army small talk (What unit were you with? What's your MOS? Where you from? When and where were you in Iraq?), we both go back to drinking by ourselves again sitting right there next to each other. And as we're both mentally in our own worlds, I keep on looking back over at him to see how he's doing--he's somewhat slouched, with both his elbows on the bar, and seems to be having trouble at times keeping his head up. He reminds me of myself when I got back, and when I point this out to him he slowly tells me, "This is the worst part. Coming home."

It's around last call when I arrive back on post, and there's a guy with a cooler of beer with his truck doors wide open blasting country music out in front of the barracks. I walk over and am instantly handed a tall can, which I happily crack open. I ask the guy who handed me the beer if this is okay, because although I drank in my room the prior night--"waiting for a mission . . . and for my sins, they gave me one"--I was under the impression that alcohol was prohibited in the barracks area. He told me not to worry. "I've been here for a little over eight weeks," he says. "It's all cool."

Eight weeks! He says he's waiting for the paperwork for him to get out. He's claiming some family-lineage reason--his father recently died and he's the only one to pass on the family name, or something like that. He's the first guy I've come across who is trying to get out of being deployed, so I ask him about PTSD, and he tells me that he tried that but those doctors don't give a fuck and they'll say you're deployable no matter what you tell them.

"I fucked up," he says. "They asked me if I wanted to kill people. I said no, which I now totally regret--not wanting to kill people is normal. What I should have said was 'Fuck yeah! I want to go to Iraq and just fucking kill everybody! I don't care who the fuck it is, I just want to kill everything and everyone!' "

All the while he's telling me this, there's this drunk guy who can barely stand, and he's just saying, "I just want to go over there and kill some fuckin' hajjis, man!" over and over again. He's in bad shape, and I try and ignore him as I ask the guy about how many people he's seen get out of it.

"Not many," he says. "Why, are you trying to get out of it?"

I cautiously nod yes.

"Do what you gotta do. If you don't want to go back, then don't go back. You and I--we've already done our part, we've already been to Iraq, we've already served our country. Ain't no shame at all in not wanting to go back." He then gives me some advice: "Your only chance is to try and find a way to the main hospital, and once you get there, find someone in mental health and talk to them."

The guy talking about going over there to kill some hajjis then tries to bro with me by extending his hand to shake, which I do, and when he asks me if I want to kill some hajjis too, I tell him no. "Why not?" he hollers. It's time for me to leave, since I don't care to answer his question, and as I thank the soldier bearing beer he again tells me, "Do what you gotta do."

First formation is in a couple hours, but instead of going back to my room, I, for whatever reason, probably because I'm drunk, decide to bring a couple beers with me up to the "off-limits" fourth floor of the barracks, and my brain works in very, very strange ways when I'm inebriated, and when I am stumbling about exploring the vacant floor I keep on thinking, Wow, they could, like, convert these barracks into, like, cool artist lofts! And then I come across a half dozen or so gallon paint cans in the corner, and in a drunken fog, I take a look at the walls, which appear to me as huge blank white canvases, and I can't help but think of the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock.

The next morning there is a loud pounding on my door as somebody is yelling my name, telling me to wake up. I quickly get up and make my way to the formation--still drunk from the night before--and once the formation is over I walk over to the E-6 and tell him that I'm not doing so well and that I have to go to the main hospital. He tells me that he can't send me to the hospital--that I have to go to sick call first. So a driver escorts me to sick call, and when I get there the receptionist hands me a form to fill out. For "Reason" I write: "illness." He then hands the form back and asks me to be more specific. So I write "mental" before the word illness and hand it back to him. When I speak with a doctor I tell him that I'm not doing so well and request to see a psychiatrist at the main hospital, and he asks me a series of questions. He then says that they will call me to set up an appointment. When I ask when they will call, he doesn't have an answer, and when I ask if there is any way that I can possibly see someone today, he tells me no.

When I told Callahan, who was a SAW gunner in my old platoon, that I was going to report back at Benning, he told me not to, that if I showed up, I'd be fucked. I'm starting to believe that he was right. I was now debating going AWOL and was putting some serious thought into it. When I get back to the shuttle van that's waiting for me outside, the driver asks me how it went and I tell him not good--that the people at sick call told me that I have to be dropped off at the main hospital immediately.

When I get to the main hospital I take the elevator up to the fourth floor. The receptionist there tells me that a doctor can't see me that day, but if I want to see a mental-health professional I can set up an appointment, the earliest of which would be in three weeks. I look at her and say, "What if I told you that I'll kill myself if I don't see somebody today?"

"Uh," she says, and then she stares at me for a second or two to see if I'm serious or not. On the counter is a ballpoint pen, and I think that if I don't hear the answer from her that I want to hear right now, I swear to God my plan is to pick up that pen and stab myself in the arm to prove to her that I need to see somebody today. She gets up and walks out of the room. A minute later she comes back. "Just take a seat in the waiting room, and a doctor will see you shortly," she says.

After I fill out the paperwork and watch two full episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger, starring Chuck Norris, there are absolutely no what-ifs at all about me contemplating suicide.

I've only had a couple hours of sleep in the past several days, and when I enter the doctor's office I take a seat and she starts off by asking me how I'm doing and I tell her that I'm not doing so well and that being back here at Benning has brought back a bunch of memories that I'd prefer not to relive. She asks me what I've been doing since I got out, and I tell her that I wrote a book about my experience in Iraq, as well as a handful of articles, half of which are military/war related, every now and then I do a panel discussion or speaking engagement where I'm asked to talk about my experience in the war--all I'm ever asked about is the war--but other than that I've pretty much been unemployed and that for the last three and a half years I've been trying to put the war and the military behind me and start on a new chapter in life and I wasn't quite able to ever do that--I was never really able to move on--and now being back here, surrounded by people in the military, and surrounded by people constantly talking about the military and the war in iraq.

"I can't do it again," I tell her. "I think I'll lose my mind."

I then hand her the letter that I got from the psychologist at the VA hospital in San Francisco and sit there quietly as she goes over it.

She looks up at me, asks me a few psychiatrist questions, writes down my answers, and then says, "Don't worry, we're going to get you back home to San Francisco."

When I got back to the barracks we had an end-of-the-day formation, and for some reason, the First Sergeant was there. He came out and told us that the other evening there had been an incident up in one of the main rooms on the off-limits fourth floor, where someone completely vandalized an entire room, splashing paint all over the walls. He mentioned that he's been here at Fort Benning for a couple years now and has never seen anything like that happen, and that he suspected that somebody--probably drunk out of his mind and pissed off about being called back up--decided to throw a hissy fit and trash the hell out of the place. First Sergeant asked anybody in the formation who knew or had seen anything to write it down on a piece of paper and slip it to him in his office. I didn't know anything at all about what happened, so I didn't write anything for the First Sergeant, and again, I have no idea what he's talking about, so I can neither confirm nor deny that I had anything to do with what happened--but I do have a newfound respect for Mr. Pollock's work. It takes a shitload of paint--a lot more than I thought--to do what he did.

I wouldn't believe it until they stamped me NOT DEPLOYABLE. And because the Army is the Army, I still had to have a hearing test, then some paperwork, blood work, quick eye check, hand my dental records off to a guy in dental, and then wait in line to see a medical provider who'd tell me what shots I needed.

While sitting on a folding chair in the waiting room, waiting--I had my head down, lost in thought, wondering if I was really going to get out of this or not--I heard my name. I looked up and it was Ponitz. He was talking to a couple of guys seated next to him. He pointed at me and said with a kindness in his voice, "That guy right there. He was my team leader in Iraq." And he went on to tell them all about how he was on my gun team, and I was reminded of all those times in Mosul when we'd set the M240 down out on OP (observation post) and just sit there together for hours bumming cigarettes off each other, staring out at the city, thinking about home; the hours spent together up on the guard towers; sitting next to him in the back of the Stryker vehicle; and the day when we received fire from a mosque and Ponitz was behind the .50-cal engaging said mosque and the combat medic next to me was yelling, "Get some, Ponitz! Get some!"

When I got to the last station I handed my medical records and in-processing packet to the guy behind the desk--he seemed to be having a great day at work--and when he opened up my packet he asked me what I did for work before this. When I told him I was unemployed, he laughed, "Well you don't have to worry about that anymore."

While going over my packet he asked me a couple more questions: Are you on any medication? "Medical marijuana." Have you ever been to the emergency room? "Not yet." When was the last time you had an anxiety attack? "Yesterday." I then pulled out the business card of the kind lady over at the hospital who had seen me the day before and told him that I spoke to her and she documented that I was non-deployable and that it'd all be in the system. He then pulled it up on the computer and started reading her assessment of me, and his attitude shifted somewhat after that. He then stamped my packet NOT DEPLOYABLE and said, "Don't worry, you can go home now."

I was numb, stepped outside to a picnic table, and lit up a smoke. Ponitz came out, sat with me, and said, "Everything I know about the M240 machine gun I learned from you and Horrocks." I smiled. "But now I don't know shit," he said.

I told him not to worry about that--he'd pick it up real quick. "After a while it'll be second nature operating that thing," I said.

And I started talking to him about what I still remember about the 240 and then I stopped talking and I took a long drag from my smoke and looked at him and said, "I'm not going to be able to be with you on this one." He took a drag from his smoke and nodded his head. He knew exactly what I meant by that. "I'm sorry, Ponitz, I just can't." He looked away and told me that he was really looking forward to me meeting his wife. I told him I would someday--as soon as he got back. He thought about that and smiled, still looking away. A shuttle bus pulled up to give us a ride back. We stood up, flipped our butts, got in, and sat down next to each other.

---

F. Martin Ramin/Studio D

He thought they'd remain souvenirs, stuffed in a box in a closet under stuff -- best forgotten -- until the orders came, and with them, a packing list requesting that he bring his old ID card, dog tags, medical records, and his PT uniform, battle-dress uniform (shown here), and Class B uniform, "which at first scared me, because for a minute there I was looking like Jon Favreau, but much to my relief, when I threw it on, it fit fine." Everything comes stamped with your blood type, just in case.

More "America's for sale"

2008-07-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

More on the thread of "America's for sale". It's the government we elect that is doing the selling and in fact selling themselves like whores.

Government-industry revolving door
From SourceWatch
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This article is part of the Nuclear spin analysis project of SpinWatch (UK) and the Center for Media and Democracy.

The government-industry revolving door puts industry-friendly experts in positions of decision-making power. Often individuals rotate between working for industry and working for the government in regulatory capacities, arrangements that are fraught with potential for conflicts of interest.

"Under current law, government officials who make contracting decisions must either wait a year before joining a military contractor or, if they want to switch immediately, must start in an affiliate or division unrelated to their government work. One big loophole is that these restrictions do not apply to many high-level policy makers..., who can join corporations or their boards without waiting."[1]
[edit]
Examples

* Edward C. (Pete) Aldridge, Jr. - In the month before he left the Pentagon to join the board of Lockheed Martin, Aldridge approved a $3 billion contract to build 20 Lockheed planes, "after having long criticized the program as overpriced and having threatened to cancel it."[2] While on the Lockheed board, Aldridge was named to head President Bush's commission on space exploration. "Lockheed is one of NASA's biggest contractors, and only Senator John McCain, ...objected and called for Mr. Aldridge's removal, complaining of conflict of interest."[3]

* David Bernhardt
o Government: Director of Congressional and Legislative Affairs, Department of the Interior
o Industry: Previously an attorney with Brownstein, Hyatt, and Farber, Bernhardt; lobbied Congress and federal administrative agencies on behalf of mining, oil, chemical companies and power plants

* Robin Batterham - Batterham worked as a senior executive for global mining company, Rio Tinto, three days a week and as Chief Scientist advising the Australian Prime Minister two days a week. In early 2005 he resigned as Chief Scientist to work full time for the mining company.

* Dale Bosworth

* Claude Burcky - "Two senior United States trade negotiators who sealed the trade deal with Australia have accepted plum jobs representing US medical and drug companies. ... Claude Burcky, who was [Ralph] Ives's [see below] head negotiator for intellectual property trade issues, is now director of global government affairs at the pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories. Mr Ives and Mr Burcky took their jobs after negotiating the trade deal." The U.S.-Australian Free Trade Agreement was criticized by U.S. health care reformers as "designed to undercut access to affordable medicines for Americans and Australians," while maintaining pharmaceutical company profits.[4]

* Nicholas E. Calio

* John T. Chain
o Government: Commander of the Strategic Air Command; retired in February 1991.
o Industry: Member of the board of Northrop Grumman Corporation since 1991; Executive Vice President for Burlington Northern Railroad from March 1991 to February 1996; President of Quarterdeck Equity Partners, Inc. since December 1996; Chairman of the Board of Thomas Group, Inc. since May 1998; director on the boards of RJ Reynolds, Inc., ConAgra Foods, Inc., and Kemper Insurance Company.

* Vice-president Dick Cheney - Cheney denied that he had any ties with Halliburton Company after he left his position as CEO of the company in 2000. An investigation by the Congressional Research Service revealed that while VP Cheney received deferred compensation from Halliburton to the tune of $500,000 to $1,000,000. While Cheney was Secretary of Defense for George Herbert Walker Bush, the Pentagon contracted infamous Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root "to study the cost effectiveness of outsourcing some military operations to private contractors. Based on the results of the study, the Pentagon hired Brown & Root to implement an outsourcing plan." Cheney became the CEO of Halliburton in 1995. Questions about "sweetheart deals" with Halliburton arose as the company was awarded no-bid contracts for reconstruction in Iraq. The contracts were estimated to be worth about $1.5 billion. Probes into Halliburton led to allegations of overcharging the military for importing oil from Kuwait into Iraq, $6 million in kickbacks for the awarding of contracts to a Kuwaiti company and $180 million in bribes to land a natural gas project contract in Nigeria while Cheney was CEO. Reported by MSNBC/AP on 9 April 2004 to be "making a pitch for Westinghouse's U.S. nuclear power technology" while in China on the taxpayer tab.

* Kathleen Clarke

* James L. Connaughton
o Government: Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (Senior environmental advisor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Environmental Policy)
o Industry: Previously a lobbyist for power industry and large electricity users. "A former lobbyist for utilities, mining, chemical, and other industrial polluters, Connaughton, represented the likes of General Electric and ARCO in their effort to escape responsibility for cleaning up toxic Superfund sites. Now he heads up pollution-policy development for the administration and coordinates its implementation. He has led the charge to weaken the standards of getting arsenic out of our drinking water, and he has steadily advised Bush to ignore, divert, stall, dismiss, and otherwise block out all calls for action against the industrial causes of global warming."[5]

* Richard Crowder - On Dec 20, 2005, Richard Crowder was confirmed by the US Senate as the US Trade Representative Chief Agricultural Negotiator. For three years prior to this appointment, Crowder was the CEO of the American Seed Trade Association - a lobby group for US agricultural corporations. Prior to 2002, from 1994 to 1999, Crowder was Senior Vice President, International, of DEKALB Genetics Corporation - an agricultural genetics and seed biotechnology corporation which is now part of Monsanto. From 1989-1992, he also occupied a government post, serving as Under Secretary of International Affairs & Commodity Programs for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. [6]

* Gordon R. England
o Government: Secretary of the Navy from May 2001 to January 2003; Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security from January 2003 to October 2003; Secretary of the Navy since October 2003.
o Industry: Executive vice president of General Dynamics Corporation from 1997 to 2001; executive vice president of the Combat Systems Group; president of General Dynamics Fort Worth aircraft company, which later became Lockheed Martin; president of General Dynamics Land Systems Company; principal of a mergers and acquisition consulting company.

* Alan K. Fitzsimmons
o Government: Wildlands Fuels Coordinator, Department of the Interior
o Industry: Founder, 1992, consulting firm Balanced Resource Solutions, writing extensively for conservative think-tanks and free-market groups; claimed “ecosystems are not real”
o Government: Previously assistant to the Deputy Director of the National Park Service (1983-1985), the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks (1985-1989), and the Deputy Under Secretary for Policy, Planning and Development at the Department of Energy (1989-1992)

* Ronald Fogleman: While serving on the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Secretary of Defense (Donald H. Rumsfeld at the time) on military strategy, was hired by Boeing Company as a consultant while it was seeking Pentagon approval for a $20 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers. "An internal Boeing e-mail message indicated that the men, Adm. David Jeremiah, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a member of five corporate boards, and Gen. Ronald Fogleman, who retired from the Air Force, were to lobby Mr. Rumsfeld's office."[7]

* Ed Gillespie - Gillespie, a prominent Republican party leader and campaign advisor to George W. Bush, also owns his own lobbying and PR firm, Quinn Gillespie & Associates. Shortly after Bush took office, Gillespie went to work for a few days for the U.S. Commerce Department, where he arranged for the department to hire as its press secretary one of his own employees at Quinn Gillespie, Jim Dyke. Gillespie finished his work at the Commerce Department on February 15, 2001, and the following day he was back at work at his own office at Quinn Gillespie.

* John D. Graham
o Government: Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Office of Management and Budget
o Industry: Is on leave from position as Professor of Policy and Decision Sciences in the Faculty of Public Health at Harvard University, financed by corporate polluters
o "Graham is the de facto boss of all regulatory programs for the entire government -- any change in enviro rules must pass through his strangling hands. An avowed enemy of pollution regulations, he previously headed a quasi-academic front group that consistently issued reports claiming that environmental protections are too costly for industry -- not a surprising stance since he and his 'risk-assessment' center were financed by more than 100 corporate entities, including the American Petroleum Institute, Dow, Dupont, Exxon, Monsanto, and 3M."[8]

* Julie Goon
o Government: Special Assistant for Medicare Outreach, Department of Health and Human Services
o Industry: Previously worked as health industry lobbyist as Senior Vice President, Government Affairs, American Association of Health Plans.

* J. Steven Griles
o Government: Deputy Secretary, Department of the Interior, where he worked closely with the industries he is supposed to regulate on polluting and exploitive policies like the Clear Skies initiative. (2001-)
o Industry: Lobbyist for coal, energy, oil, gas, mining and manufacturing industries (1989-2001)
o Government: In a variety of positions, primarily in the Department of the Interior, Griles worked on policies such as pushing for oil drilling off the coast of California and selling land contracts for oil and shale extraction at give-away prices. (1970-1989)
o "A disciple of the infamous James Lee Watt, for whom he worked in the Reagan years, Griles went on to be a lobbyist for the National Mining Association, Edison Electric, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, and other energy giants. Appointed the overseer of America's 500 million acres of public lands, Griles was hailed by the NMA as 'an ally of the industry,' and the mining association welcomed him as 'a breath of fresh air' -- for polluters, of course, not for us air breathers! Even though he is a public official now, he still draws $284,000 a year from his former lobbying firm, which represents corporations he supposedly regulates. Also, he has continued to meet behind closed doors with his former (and perhaps future) industry clients. The inspector general is investigating him for the blatant conflicts of interest posed by these meetings, which he had pledged to avoid in a 'recusal agreement' he signed to get his government job."[9]

* Jeffrey Holmstead - "assistant EPA administrator for air quality. Previously a lobbyist with the firm of Latham & Watkins, Holmstead represented electric utilities trying to fight air pollution restrictions, and he represented the Farm Bureau conglomerate in its fights against pesticide controls. Now inside, he's a key player pushing Bush's Clear Skies initiative, which will allow a 520 percent increase in toxic mercury pollution, a 225 percent jump in carbon dioxide pollution (a global warming contaminant), and a delay in the enforcement of smog and soot pollution until 2016. In charge of writing a new rule to limit mercury poisoning of children by electric power plants, Holmstead embraced a watered-down rule that essentially was written by his old lobbying firm of Latham & Watkins."[10]

* Marianne L. Horinko

* William Horn - "chairman of the fish and wildlife commission. In charge of charting policies governing America's priceless National Wildlife Refuge System, Horn's background is not as wildlife protector, but as a corporate lobbyist representing interests wanting to exploit our public refuges for their profit. He has lobbied for Florida Power & Light, Yukon Pacific Corporation (which wants to build a gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope to the port of Valdez, then export the gas to Asia), and the Nuclear Energy Institute. For a hint about his attitude toward preserving pristine wildlife areas, note that he has been the lead attorney for such outfits as the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, New Jersey Beach Buggy Association, and Sun Valley HeliSki company."[11]

* Ralph Ives - "Ralph Ives was promoted in April [2004] to assistant US trade representative for pharmaceutical policy after leading the trade negotiations with Australia. Next month he becomes vice-president for global strategy at AdvaMed, an industry group that says its members produce half of the world's medical technology products."[12]

* David E. Jeremiah: While serving on the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Secretary of Defense (Donald H. Rumsfeld at the time) on military strategy, was hired by Boeing Company as a consultant while it was seeking Pentagon approval for a $20 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers. "An internal Boeing e-mail message indicated that the men, Adm. David Jeremiah, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a member of five corporate boards, and Gen. Ronald Fogleman, who retired from the Air Force, were to lobby Mr. Rumsfeld's office."[13]

* Michael Johns
o Government: White House speechwriter to President of the United States George H.W. Bush
o Industry: Vice president, Gentiva Health Services

* Paul G. Kaminski
o Government: Under Secretary of U.S. Department of Defense for Acquisition and Technology from 1994 to 1997.
o Industry: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Technovation, Inc. since 1997; Senior Partner, Global Technology Partners, LLC, since 1998; director of Anteon International Corporation; director of General Dynamics since 1997.

* Andrew D. Lundquist
o Executive director of the National Energy Policy Development Group, a Cabinet-level task force chosen by President George W. Bush and headed by Vice President Dick Cheney
o Later became a registered lobbyist for clients that stood to benefit from the energy policy he helped formulate, including Toshiba Corp., BP, Kennecott Energy Co., and Duke Energy Corp.

* Deborah Platt Majoras - left her government post as U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair to become vice president and general counsel for Procter & Gamble, the largest U.S. consumer products company. [14]

* Jack W. Martin

* Jeffery S. Merrifield - Twelve days after leaving his position as Commissioner for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Merrifield joined the The Shaw Group, Inc. as vice-president of the company's power group. The watchdog group Project on Governmental Oversight noted that, in his last few months at the NRC, "Merrifield vigorously championed several major policy initiatives that directly benefited his future employer," including a change that reduced government and public oversight of new nuclear power plant construction, [15] and changes to the approval process for new nuclear plant construction that scaled back public hearings and public comment periods. [16]

* Margaret Miller

* William G. Myers - "solicitor of the Interior Department. The government's top lawyer for cases involving exploitation of our public lands by mining and agribusiness corporations, Myers previously was a lawyer and lobbyist representing mining and agribusiness corporations. At interior, he has pushed for new rules to allow more cattle grazing, to limit endangered species protections, to require fewer environmental impact statements for the lands under his stewardship, and to open public lands in five Western States to oil drilling. Myers is under investigation by ethics officials for meeting with his former corporate clients, despite having signed a conflict-of-interest agreement to avoid such contacts. Meanwhile, George W has nominated this possible law violator to be a federal appeals judge."[17]

* Catherine A. Novelli

* Theodore B. Olson

* Harvey L. Pitt - Pitt, Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from August 3, 2001 until his forced resignation in November 2003, served a tumultuous tenure amid multiple accusations of conflict of interest. His problems worsened with exposure of major corporate scandals such as those of Enron and WorldCom. Pitt’s appointment of William Webster to head the accounting board led to his resignation after it was determined that Pitt withheld information from other SEC commissioners about Webster's involvement with a company facing fraud charges. Prior to his appointment as SEC Chairman, Pitt was an attorney for the accounting industry.[18] [19]

* Peter Pitts
o Former associate commissioner for external affairs of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "Pitts served as the senior communications adviser to the FDA Commissioner. He provided strategic policy and program direction for the agency’s entire range of communications and interaction with stakeholders and other external audiences, including media. He oversaw the office of public affairs, office of the ombudsman, office of special health issues, and the advisory committee oversight and management staff."
o Joined Manning Selvage & Lee in June 2004 as senior vice president of health affairs. "Pitts will focus on three areas: counseling pharmaceutical, biotech and food companies on integrated marketing communications in a highly regulated environment; driving thought leadership on food and health issues facing the industry, including new drug development, drug importation, direct-to-consumer advertising, obesity and food labeling; and creating innovative consumer wellness programs for health and food companies."
o Pitts worked in marketing for the Lifetime Network, Reader's Digest, McCall's, the New York Post, the Washington Times, Insight Magazine, and the Hudson Institute before working at the FDA.[20]

* Bennett Raley
o Government: Assistant Secretary of Water and Science, Department of the Interior
o Industry: Previously a water and property rights lawyer; member of Wise Use Movement front groups.
o "A longtime, extremist 'corporate rights' advocate who previously lobbied to kill our nation's Clean Water Act, Raley now is the top official in charge of water issues at the interior department. In 2002, he teamed up with Karl Rove in a flagrant political maneuver to provide extra water for agribusiness from a federal water project in eastern Washington, even though agency scientists warned that this would be disastrous for wild salmon under federal protections in the Klamath River. Career agency professionals were forced to bow to White House political pressure, and thousands of fish died. When responsible officials tried to divert some of the Klamath basin water back to the endangered salmon populations, Raley again waved in Rove to apply top-heavy political pressure and back them off."[21]

* Joseph W. Ralston
o Government: Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from March 1996 to April 2000; Commander, U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO, from May 2000 to January 2003; retired from active duty on March 1, 2003.
o Industry: Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group since March 2003 when he retired from active duty; director on the board of Lockheed Martin since April 2003; director of The Timken Company since 2003; director on the board of URS Corporation since October 2003.

* Mark Rey
o Government: Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment, Department of Agriculture
o Industry: Previously a timber industry lobbyist
o "Rey, who now is caretaker of America's 156 national forests, has spent his entire career as a timber industry lobbyist and congressional staffer hell-bent on fattening industry profits by letting corporations clear-cut the public's trees. He headed the American Forest and Paper Association, the leading proponent of logging our national forests, prior to becoming a senate staffer and authoring an infamous 1995 act that suspended all environmental laws to give the green light for corporations to clear cut old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. He also wrote a bill that would have eliminated local citizen committees that oversee timber harvests. As forest chief, Rey has been the key force behind Bush's 'Healthy Forests' scam that would allow nearly unlimited clear-cutting in pristine national forests."[22]

* Jessie Roberson

* James G. Roche
o Government: Secretary of the Air Force since 2001.
o Industry: Various positions at Northrop Grumman from 1984 to 2001.

* Colin Roskey
o Government: Senate Finance Committee counsel
o Industry: Lobbyist with the law firm Alston & Bird, with clients including Jerome Stevens Pharmaceuticals of Bohemia, New York; Adams Laboratories of Chester, New Jersey; Mylan Laboratories of Morgantown, West Virginia; HealthSouth, a healthcare services company; and the American Clinical Laboratory Association, a trade group.[23]

* Thomas Sansonetti - "assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources. Now the public's lead lawyer for defending our environmental protection programs in court, Sansonetti is a Republican Party political operative and a lobbyist from Wyoming who represented coal companies and other energy corporations in their efforts to undermine these same environmental protections. He previously was chief lawyer for the Republican National Committee, and, as a lobbyist, he pushed in Washington to let each coal company increase its mining on federal lands by one-third. Another of the far-right corporatists that Bush has put in charge of the machinery of government, Sansonetti, is a proud member of the government-hating, laissez-faire Federalist Society, which is amply funded by ultra-conservative, corporate foundations."[24]

* Eugene Scalia - An anti-labor lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP who became Solicitor of Labor in January 2002 through a George W. Bush recess appointment after the Senate refused to confirm the nomination. He resigned in January 2003, shortly after the appointment expired, in order to avoid what would have been a bruising Senate confirmation hearing.

* Patricia Lynn Scarlett
o Government: Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget, Department of the Interior
o Industry: President and CEO Reason Foundation, funded by a variety of industry groups; senior fellow at the anti-public interest, pro-business Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
o "This overseer of overall policy affecting our nation's public resources is no fan of the public even holding resources and doesn't like regulation of private efforts to exploit the public's resources. She has written that 'environmentalism is a coherent philosophy that rivals Marxism.' Most of Scarlett's career has been spent with the Reason Foundation, a think tank that vigorously opposes government regulations and is funded by such corporations as Chevron, Dow, Enron, ExxonMobil, Phillip Morris, and Shell Oil, as well as by the American Petroleum Institute, American Plastics Council, and American Chemistry Council."[25]

* Matt Schlapp
o Government: Head of the White House’s Office of Political Affairs
o Industry: Executive Director of Federal Affairs, directing lobbying in "the Washington office of oil-and-gas conglomerate Koch Industries, the latest example of high-level administration and congressional staffers making post-election leaps to the lobbying world." [26]

* Thomas Scully
o Controversy arose over the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Bill after the revelation that Thomas Scully, the former Medicare and Medicaid Services chief received an ethics waiver from the Department of Health and Human Services so he could "negotiate jobs with private companies while ... shaping federal policies important to the potential employers." Industry offered Scully several lucrative job offers, and after leaving Medicare, he accepted positions with an investment company that profits from health care and as a healthcare lobbyist with the law firm of Alston & Bird. Immediately after Scully went through the revolving door, the Bush administration changed the rule for ethics waivers, decreeing only the White House can issue them.[27][28]
o As a lobbyist for Alston & Bird, Scully's clients include Jerome Stevens Pharmaceuticals of Bohemia, New York; Adams Laboratories of Chester, New Jersey; Mylan Laboratories of Morgantown, West Virginia; HealthSouth, a healthcare services company; and the American Clinical Laboratory Association, a trade group.[29]

* John M. Shalikashvili

* Mike Smith

* Simon Stevens: former health advisor to British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who in May 2004 is set to head up the UK office of the Minneapolis-headquartered United Health Group (UHG). UHG is seeking contracts from the government funded National Healthcare Service. [30]

* Billy Tauzin: Former chair of the the Energy and Commerce Committee, which had oversight of the drug industry, who after retiring from Congress in late 2004 started as head of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in January 2005.

* Michael Taylor - Taylor, a former attorney for Monsanto, went to work for the United States Food and Drug Administration, where he helped draft FDA's policy declaring that genetically modified foods are "generally regarded as safe" (GRAS). While at the FDA, Taylor also wrote the policy that exempted biotech foods from labeling. His former law firm, which still represented Monsanto, then began suing dairies that labeled their milk rBGH-free (Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone to increase milk production). After these policies were written, Taylor left the FDA and eventually went back to work for Monsanto.

* Carmen Toohey - "special interior assistant for Alaska. Cam, as he is known, is Gale Norton's handpicked aid to oversee environmental policies affecting the vast federal landholdings in our nation's largest state. For the Bushites, policy priority Number One in Alaska is, of course, to turn loose their oil buddies to build roads, move in drilling rigs, and extend pipelines across the majestic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Cam is well-versed on this priority and completely in tune with it, for he comes to his government job from having led Arctic Power, a lobbying group supporting corporate interests that want to open our public refuge to their private profit schemes."[31]

* Daniel E. Troy - Marking a dramatic shift in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy, Troy, formerly a representative of U.S. pharmaceutical firms and now lead counsel for the FDA, informed drug companies that he would provide aid in torpedoing certain lawsuits, especially those with claims of medications causing unexpected or harmful side effects.[32]. As of Septmeber 2, 2008, Troy will be lead counsel for the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline according tot he Wall Street Journal [33]

* Ann M. Veneman
o Government: U. S. Secretary of Agriculture (2001-2004)
o Industry: Private law practice; provided legal representation to the Sierra Nevada Access and Multiple Use Stewardship Coalition, a place-based consensus-building program for a section of California's forested areas (1999-2001)
o Industry: Served on the International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food and Trade, a group funded by Cargill, Nestle, Kraft, and Archer Daniels Midland; member of the Bennett Agriculture Round Table, and Food Foresight
o Government: Named head of California’s Department of Food and Agriculture (1995-1999)
o Industry: Served on the board of directors for Calgene Inc (makers of genetically-engineered Flavr Savr tomato, bought by Monsanto in 1997)
o Government: U.S. Department of Agriculture under George Herbert Walker Bush (1986-1993)

* Rebecca Watson - "assistant interior secretary for land and minerals. Directing the Bureau of Land Management, Watson is responsible for the rules and fees for gold mining companies, drillers, and other corporations wanting to profit on the wealth of minerals and other public resources within our federal lands. Her qualifications for the job are not as a public defender, but as a Montana lawyer representing mining and logging corporations that either wanted unfettered access to these public treasures or that didn't want to pay for the environmental damage done by their exploitative procedures. Watson has represented Golden Sunlight Mines, Fidelity Exploration, Plum Creek Timber, and other companies regulated by the agency she now heads. She also worked on the litigation committee of the right-wing Mountain States Legal Foundation, a litigious, corporate-funded group of legal activists that tries to run over any environmental protection that pinches even a dime's worth of ill-gotten corporate profits."[34]

* Thomas E. White
o Government: Secretary of the Army from May, 2001 until forced to resign April, 2003
o Industry: Senior executive at Enron Corporation, 1990-2001
o Government: Retired as Army brigadier general in 1990

* Christine Todd Whitman - After resigning as Secretary of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (a post she held from January 2001 to May 2003), Whitman formed the Whitman Strategies Group consulting firm. The firm's first client was FMC Corporation, "a chemical company negotiating with the EPA over the cleanup of arsenic-contaminated soil at a factory near Buffalo, N.Y." In a May 2005 interview, Whitman said she had not worked directly with FMC, but would likely advise them on "how to improve their image" and gain "access to the people they need to speak to." FMC "is responsible for 136 Superfund sites across the country ... and has been subject to 47 EPA enforcement actions." [35]

* Donald C. Winter - To serve as Secretary of the Navy, President Bush Jr. nominated Donald Winter, currently the Vice President of Northrop Grumman, which builds many of the Navy's warships and receives billions of dollars to build other weapons. [36]

* Michael W. Wynne - Bush Jr. also nominated Michael Wynne as Secretary of the Air Force. Wynne was one of several people who were blamed by a Pentagon inspector general for a failed 23.5 billion dollar deal with Boeing, which many lawmakers call the most significant case of contract abuse in decades. [37]

Why medicine is so expensive

2008-07-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

Most of us have heard that you can by the same medications we get here for much less in other countries. Why is that? Because America is for sale and the pharmaceutical industry is the highest bidder. Who pays??? You and I do along with every other American. Tell me, how does it feel to be raped? It's up to us, the voters who's vote is also bought and sold by those who tell us what to believe and keep the truth quiet.

Source: Center for Public Integrity, June 24, 2008

"Washington's largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, racked up another banner year on Capitol Hill in 2007, backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort," reports M. Asif Ismail. The spending, from companies and trade associations including Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, jumped 36 percent over the previous year. Much of the increase went to Democrats, after they became the majority party in Congress. "In the current election cycle so far, for the first time on record, the pharmaceutical and health products industry has given slightly more money to Democrats than Republicans," Ismail notes. Just two years earlier, "Democrats received only 31 percent of the contributions from the industry, while the Republicans received 67 percent." The industry's lobbying successes have included "thwarting congressional efforts to restrict media ads for prescription drugs," "blocking the importation of inexpensive drugs from other countries," and "ensuring greater market access for pharmaceutical companies in international free trade agreements."

It's OUR country???

2008-07-24T06:46:00.000-07:00

This Washington Post article again brings up one of my pet peeves. We are anxious to send our son's and daughters to war but not at all anxious to keep our promises to take care of the results of war. This I don't understand at all. Why should it even be an issue? Why is it still one after public scandal and heads rolling in the aftermath? And what we get is empty words with no actions to back them up with, or at least little action. This is OUR country, congress and the rest of the government is there to serve our needs and there because of our votes. We need to take control by our votes and bring this democracy back into the original balance our forefathers envisioned. Take it back from the lawmakers who have been serving their own selfish interests for decades, who have created a culture in congress and the senate that accepts and prolongs corruption and goes against the values this country and our constitution represents. Our country and it's lawmakers are for sale and have been bought by the highest bidders time and time again, and we (the public) are the ones who are sold and pay the prices big corporations and political special interests bind us into.

Oops! We Did It Again.

It's been more than a year since the Walter Reed scandal broke, but "some would say we're a step slow," acknowledged Maj. Gen. David Rubinstein, right. (By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A03

The generals were nervous.

Lt. Gen. Robert Wilson moved his index finger across the page as he read his statement with a halting delivery. Maj. Gen. David Rubenstein, holding a discolored washcloth under the witness table to dry his perspiration, accidentally dropped the cloth and felt for it with his shoe.

The anxiety, even for men with two or three stars on each shoulder, was to be expected. They had come before a House Armed Services subcommittee to explain why, 16 months and at least eight fact-finding investigations after the Walter Reed scandal, the Army still hadn't fixed the health-care system for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wisely, however, the generals armed themselves with a highly sophisticated and unexpected weapon: contrition.

"It absolutely needs to work better," said Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the Army's deputy chief of staff.

"We realize that we have much work to do," offered Wilson, of the Army's installation management command.

"Some would say that we're a step slow; I have no argument with that complaint," confessed Rubenstein, the Army's deputy surgeon general.

"Certainly, this program has been imperfect and execution uneven," said Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, an assistant surgeon general for "warrior care."

It was a tactical retreat in the face of an overwhelming enemy: the facts.

Committee investigators had visited Army medical facilities and came back with ominous statistics. At Fort Hood, Tex., last month, they found that a "warrior transition unit" designed to support 649 had 1,342 soldiers, with 350 more on a waiting list. Instead of the promised 74 nurse case managers, there were 38. Other facilities "would shortly experience similar shortages" or already had.

The Army miscalculated the growth in the number of soldiers needing care (it's now at 12,000 and is expected to reach 20,000 next year), causing it to fall below "the required level of staffing" at most facilities -- despite the Army surgeon general's assertion in February that "we are entirely staffed at the point we need to be staffed."

"Why," inquired the panel's chairman, Susan Davis (D-Calif.), "did it take oversight visits from this subcommittee to identify and spur the Army to fix these issues?" She concluded: "We are very concerned that the Army took its eye off that ball, that you are not living up to the goals you set and the promises you made."

The ranking Republican member, John McHugh (N.Y.), was no less skeptical. "In many ways, this challenge isn't being met, and I find the current circumstances unacceptable," he said. "Do you gentlemen agree with that?" Rochelle nodded his head. "Anybody disagree with that?" Nobody moved.

But with the choreography of a Special Forces team, the four generals, each in dark olive with well-shined shoes, professed their devotion to the cause.

"Warrior care is our highest priority, second only to the global war on terror," Wilson said.

"We have no higher priority," added Rubenstein, "except for putting boots on the ground itself in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"Manning the warrior transition units is only second to manning those units preparing to deploy," affirmed Rochelle.

The officers were careful to avoid the sort of bluster that caused their predecessors to be fired in the immediate aftermath of the Walter Reed scandal -- although Rubenstein got close with his boast that "we're doing phenomenal work." Instead, they heaped flattery on their interrogators.

Cheek voiced a desire to "thank Congress for the leadership and support you provide to the Army in the development and execution of this program." Rochelle thanked the half-dozen lawmakers at the hearing for their "continued support" for the "wounded warriors and families that we are all honored to serve." Wilson chimed in with praise for congressional funding. And Rubenstein managed to find gratitude that committee staff members were "very open with all of their findings."

The lawmakers were disarmed. Davis spoke of the "overall positive direction" and her confidence that the Army is "clearly providing better support" for the wounded.

Delicately, and with careful use of qualifiers, the generals argued that things had improved over 16 months. "We know we have come a long way," Rochelle said. "We also know that we still have a long way to go."

Rubenstein professed to be "working diligently at executing an outstanding Army Medical Action Plan," even if there are "challenges in its execution."

It didn't take much questioning for the "challenges" to trip up the generals. Asked whether the Army is offering competitive pay, Rubenstein boasted that "in some communities, we are too competitive" -- but a moment later complained about how he "can't compete" with the pay at civilian hospitals.

"But you told me you were overly competitive, General," McHugh said. "Which are you?"

After that, the generals mostly stuck with concession and contrition: "We had not sufficiently empowered our commanders. . . . We're going to review this. . . . We've had our challenges. . . . It simply wasn't nimble enough. . . . It is a logjam. . . . We are not meeting the standard. . . That's a valid concern."

Finding no argument, the lawmakers brought the hearing to a prompt close, but not before another round of mutual flattery. Cheek thanked the committee for its support. Wilson thanked McHugh for the pleasant hearing. Rubenstein praised the staff for its "amazing openness." The chairwoman found herself telling the generals: "Thank you for thanking our staff." Rubenstein, now dry, retrieved his perspiration cloth and hid it under his papers.

---

(Emphasis added)

© 2008 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202857.html

Ashamed

2008-07-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

In the history of our country there are times and actions that bring shame. This holds true, I am sure, for every country and for that matter every family in the world. The list of such events would be a long book and include things like our treatment of the American Indian. Right now we are in the midst of another one of those times, a time that makes me ashamed of this country. Don't get me wrong, I am proud to be an American and still think we are the best country in the world but just like sin in a Christian's life a darkness has crept into our government, a compromise of the values and morals this country stands for. This insidious decay has been growing like a cancer, it is a cultural change where good becomes evil and evil becomes accepted as something "not that bad" and justified in our minds as we are sold on it by our government.

So here is the shame. As a country America has been the bastion of morality, the defender of good and fighter of evils such as Nazism that threaten the world. We've fought against genocide, slavery, and every other terrible thing that fosters death and misery. We've signed agreements regarding the treatment of prisoners and the use of weapons of war that are unconscionable and terrible. We decry terrorism, torture, and many other things, all the while promoting the sanctity of life and the rights all humans on earth should have.

But now we are becoming like our enemies. But now we are becoming what we fight against. But now we do what we say others should not. But now we are hypocrites.In doing so we lose any credibility in the eyes of the entire world that watches.

So read this and tell me what you think.

July 2, 2008
China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo
By SCOTT SHANE

Correction Appended

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col Patrick Ryder, said he could not comment on the Guantánamo training chart. “I can’t speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current D.O.D. policy on interrogations,” Colonel Ryder said. “I can tell you that current D.O.D. policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely.”

Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

The documents released last month include an e-mail message from two SERE trainers reporting on a trip to Guantánamo from Dec. 29, 2002, to Jan. 4, 2003. Their purpose, the message said, was to present to interrogators “the theory and application of the physical pressures utilized during our training.”

The sessions included “an in-depth class on Biderman’s Principles,” the message said, referring to the chart from Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article. Versions of the same chart, often identified as “Biderman’s Chart of Coercion,” have circulated on anti-cult sites on the Web, where the methods are used to describe how cults control their members.

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who also studied the returning prisoners of war and wrote an accompanying article in the same 1957 issue of The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, said in an interview that he was disturbed to learn that the Chinese methods had been recycled and taught at Guantánamo.

“It saddens me,” said Dr. Lifton, who wrote a 1961 book on what the Chinese called “thought reform” and became known in popular American parlance as brainwashing. He called the use of the Chinese techniques by American interrogators at Guantánamo a “180-degree turn.”

The harshest known interrogation at Guantánamo was that of Mohammed al-Qahtani, a member of Al Qaeda suspected of being the intended 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Qahtani’s interrogation involved sleep deprivation, stress positions, exposure to cold and other methods also used by the Chinese.

Terror charges against Mr. Qahtani were dropped unexpectedly in May. Officials said the charges could be reinstated later and declined to say whether the decision was influenced by concern about Mr. Qahtani’s treatment.

Mr. Bush has defended the use the interrogation methods, saying they helped provide critical intelligence and prevented new terrorist attacks. But the issue continues to complicate the long-delayed prosecutions now proceeding at Guantánamo.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Qaeda member accused of playing a major role in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, was charged with murder and other crimes on Monday. In previous hearings, Mr. Nashiri, who was subjected to waterboarding, has said he confessed to participating in the bombing falsely only because he was tortured.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 3, 2008
An article on Wednesday about coercive interrogation methods taught at Guantánamo Bay that were copied from a 1957 journal article about Chinese techniques misstated the given name of the author of the article. He was Albert D. Biderman, not Alfred.

Veteran's issues and TBI

2008-07-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

My son, Bruce, during one of his tours in Iraq

I've been neglecting this blog as my energy and attention have been focused on getting our farm started and just general living issues. I get so much information now regarding veteran issues and traumatic brain injuries that I would like to share but it would clutter my "walkedwithangels" blog so I think this will be a good place to post it.

Report: 8,763 vets died waiting for benefits

By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jul 15, 2008 16:10:19 EDT

The title of the House committee report sums up what happened: "Die or Give Up Trying: How Poor Contractor Performance, Government Mismanagement and the Erosion of Quality Controls Denied Thousands of Disabled Veterans Timely and Accurate Retroactive Retired Pay Awards."

The report by the majority staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform domestic policy panel, released Tuesday, concluded that at least 28,283 disabled retirees were denied retroactive pay awards because rushed efforts to clear a huge backlog of claims led program administrators to stop doing quality assurance checks on the claims decisions.

And of the original 133,057 potentially eligible veterans, 8,763 died before their cases could be reviewed for retroactive payments, according to the report.

At issue are the Concurrent Retirement and Disability Payments and Combat-Related Special Compensation programs, approved by Congress in 2003 and 2004 to allow large numbers of disabled retirees to receive full concurrent military retirement pay and veteran's disability compensation.

For more than a century before those programs were enacted, disabled retirees were forced to forfeit a dollar of military retirement pay for every dollar they received in veterans' disability payments.

About 223,180 disabled veterans receive monthly CRDP payments, while another 60,155 disabled veterans receive monthly payments under CRSC.

Under the programs, many disabled veterans also became eligible for a single retroactive payment due to changes in their disability status.

As of September 2006, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service determined that 133,057 veterans potentially were eligible for these so-called "VA Retro" payments. Over time, another 84,237 newly retired and other veterans were added to the list.

Yet as of March 1, more than 60,000 eligible veterans were still waiting for reviews of their cases under the two programs.

The claims processing shortfall was raised during a February defense budget hearing; Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas told the Senate Budget Committee that she had recently asked Zack Gaddy, the director of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, to triple the number of people working on the backlog.

In February, the backlog was said to be "more than 39,000" cases. Jonas said she had been assured that the backlog would be cleared by April.

That did not happen, according to the subcommittee report, because Lockheed Martin, the contractor hired in July 2006 to compute the complex retroactive pay awards, had difficulty making the computations fast enough to eliminate the backlog quickly. The complexity of the computations also hindered Lockheed Martin's ability to develop software to automate the process.

Two other factors played a role: The required databases did not exist, and the Department of Veterans Affairs and the military services "were slow to put the data in the necessary form for automation."

As a result, Lockheed Martin was forced to compute the cases manually. It did so, and with just under half the number of workers the government had previously used for the work — a relic of the original contract proposal, according to the report.

Lockheed Martin missed its original November 2007 deadline and every succeeding one, the report stated. The committee said Gaddy personally monitored the program and "frequently complained to Lockheed about low productivity and the high number of errors DFAS quality control auditors were detecting."

Gaddy also expressed concern that the delays were damaging the reputation of DFAS.

To ease congressional concerns and speed up the review process, DFAS chose several "questionable approaches" — assigning federal workers to duties covered by the contract with Lockheed Martin, and suspending independent quality checks on Lockheed's calculations.

After those measures went into effect on March 1, up to 60,051 payments were made to eligible veterans. But the subcommittee concluded that "serious questions" remain about the accuracy of these payments.

"While the subcommittee majority staff does not know how many erred payments were sent, we do not believe that DFAS knows either," the report said.

Under Lockheed's operating procedures, its quality assurance team also did not verify the accuracy of any "No Pay Due" determinations, which are sent directly to veterans without verification, the report added.

"Neither DFAS nor Lockheed knows how many 'No Pay Due' letters could be in error," the report states. Such letters were sent to at least 28,283 veterans.

DFAS and Lockheed Martin announced that the VA Retro backlog was finally eliminated by the end of June, seven months after the original deadline.

Lockheed Martin was paid $18.74 million for its work on the backlog.

---

All content © 2008, Army Times Publishing Company

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/military_concurrent_receipt_071508/

Living by code

2007-05-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

Here are some words and the definitions we hear and talk about all the time. Words and concepts most of us would like to think we practice in our lives.

mor•al Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human
action and character: moral scrutiny; a moral quandary.
Teaching or exhibiting goodness or correctness of character and behavior: a
moral lesson.
Conforming to standards of what is right or just in behavior; virtuous: a moral
life.
Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong: a moral obligation.

mo•ral•i•ty conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct.
moral quality or character.

ethics A set of principles of right conduct.
A theory or a system of moral values:

in•teg•ri•ty Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.

hon•or Good name; reputation.
Principled uprightness of character; personal integrity.
A code of integrity, dignity, and pride, chiefly among men, that is maintained
in some societies, as in feudal Europe.

On the news they had a story regarding the military’s response to the abuses and even murders that have come to light in the Iraq war. They have a definition of honor that was being strongly presented during basic training of new recruits. I like it the better than what I found in the dictionary. “Honor is doing what you know is right when nobody is looking”. I think that can be applied to “Integrity” as well. The bible says “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” James 4:17.

So my point is that for me to not work for what I know is the best, to sit on my hands and watch wrong things happen, violates all these principles I respect and try to live my life by. It is unfortunate that I don’t always go about things the best way but I have no shame about trying. I have always lived by a code though the ones in my past were misguided. One of the worlds I was involved in was that of the outlaw bikers, a world where you stood with your “brother” back to back in a bar despite overwhelming odds during a fight. A world where if you were busted for a criminal act you did your time like a man and did not snitch on others despite your charges being dropped or reduced being offered. That life is long gone now but the sense of honor isn’t. It has just evolved to conform with the new life and philosophy gained from the accident, my rethinking what is really important in life. As the plaque says “Money and things can vanish in a flash. What has true lasting value is the lives that you touch”.

So if doing what you know is right comes with a price, with a sacrifice, it is a true mark of ones personal integrity. Just like true friends. Everyone talks a good game but when the chips are down you will see who is really true, what’s really inside.

So what's my code?
Love life, live a life you can love.
Become a person you can be proud of.
All things can teach wisdom, if you look for it.
Money and things can vanish in a flash.
What has real lasting value is the lives we touch.
Say what you mean.
Do what you say.

So what's your code?

Being Poor - By John Scalzi

2007-01-03T18:23:00.000-08:00

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they're what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there's not an $800 car in America that's worth a damn.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends' houses but never has friends over to yours.

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won't hear you say "I get free lunch" when you get to the cashier.

Being poor is living next to the freeway.

Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.

Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn't mind when you ask for help.

Being poor is off-brand toys.

Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.

Being poor is knowing you can't leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.

Being poor is hoping your kids don't have a growth spurt.

Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn't have make dinner tonight because you're not hungry anyway.

Being poor is Goodwill underwear.

Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is your kid's school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.

Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.

Being poor is relying on people who don't give a damn about you.

Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.

Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger's trash.

Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw.

Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find someone you trust to watch your kids.

Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she'll probably just laugh at your clothes.

Being poor is hoping you'll be invited for dinner.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is your kid's teacher assuming you don't have any books in your home.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.

Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually stupid.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually lazy.

Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.

Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn't bought first.

Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that's two extra packages for every dollar.

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old.

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you're being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.

Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.

Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.

Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won't listen to you beg them against doing so.

Being poor is a cough that doesn't go away.

Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.

Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.

Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

Being poor is running in place.

Being poor is people wondering why you didn't leave.

A Dream

2006-09-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

Psychological problems are like infectious diseases, spread by contact. In seeking to find ways of helping society break patterns of behavior this can be sometimes addressed. For instance victims of molestation at an early age often become predators themselves and if you could trace it back I am sure we would find a line of contacts going hundreds of years. This was always a closely held secret in society. By early identification and intervention we can cut off branches from this infectious tree therefore saving an unknown yet fantastic number of future victims.
For me this time I spend on the earth is but a short speck, a piece of dust like that we see floating in our rooms only I am floating in this vast universe we live in where it takes light millions of years to get here. So how then can I make an impact on the world? How can I give my life and experiences value?
You would think this to be a hard question to answer yet the answer is amazingly simple.
So the answer is - I can by affecting the life of one person change the lives of future generations. The power and duration of this change will be of varying degree just like the ripples in a pond. The bigger the rock the farther it goes. The saddest thing to me is for one to live a long life but not really make any ripples at all. No real notice of our existence. All of us leave marks wherever we go, some good some bad. I certainly seem to have made some large ripples on both sides but now I want to make waves.
Hence The Dream.

Do you want to do something powerful and good. I will need a lot of help to achieve my goals and the more that join in and become a part of it the more powerful of a change we will create. I believe that there are many want to change the world like I do and they just need to see a clear path to get involved. That brings me back to publicity. If a fervor can be generated with many branches of society involved, ranging from law enforcement, mental health, unions, trades such as construction, and most importantly politicians.

Thanksgiving 2004, Still good today

2006-06-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving
Today, as I helped some of those I minister to, prepare for Thanksgiving by taking them to the grocer and to a church that handed out food, I was asked several times what we were planning to do for that day. Now we have plans but it got me to thinking about what I have to be thankful for. There is so much that I don’t think this computer has enough room to hold it all but let me try to tell of some of it.
I am thankful for the eyes I have that allow me to see without the blinders I carried for most of my life. These blinders are the same ones we all have, they are the filters of our entire life’s experience that shade how we see the world. They are the prejudices and judgments we place on all, based on how we were told it should be. I lost these blinders when I lost my memory. Not having these blinders is a curse as well as a blessing for I now see what I used to choose not to, what I used to pretend was not there. I would just blindly walk by and refuse to see what was in front of me or I would categorize and dismiss something by casting my judgment, thus justifying my inaction in the matter.
Now I walk this world as an observer, watching those who live in different realms that are not familiar. Many of those I help are living fractured and in some cases shattered lives. Now it is true that some of these lives are the results of poor decision making and lifestyle choices but that does not negate their humanity or the pain, depression, and sorrow they feel. I cannot just say they asked for it and walk away for while there are always consequences for the paths we choose there is always the possibility of helping others choose a better path. Actually I don’t see it as just a possibility but a responsibility. Because I have personally walked down so many wrong paths and know where they lead I am compelled to at least point them in the right direction. As the Bible says “There is a way which seems right to a man but the end of that way is death”.
Let me tell you of some of the lives I have the privilege of touching and being touched by.
Wayne is a Vietnam era veteran whom I met at a homeless shelter. He has Multiple Sclerosis and it was diagnosed 10 years ago. Like many he tried to ignore it and tough it out, determined not to be a burden on others and convinced that the mark of a man is to take care of your own problems. Try as he might it still caught up with him and despite years as a skilled union welder and a truck driver he got to the point he could not hold down a job. He came home to see his property out on the street being gone through by all who passed by. This is when he lost it all. All his personal and irreplaceable stuff like photo’s and other memories. Now I know Wayne was not an angel and for much of his life he drank too much and made his share of mistakes, but when I met him he did not drink and tried to give good advice to those he met. He was depressed and lost in a world he was not familiar with for he had always worked and had a home and money. This being homeless and destitute was new to him. I helped him apply for food stamps, disability, and for housing because I had been forced to learn how myself. I have to admire Wayne for he has no hope for a cure with the MS and daily has to wake up to the pain, mental confusion, and physical weakness it causes, realizing it will not get better but will get worse till he dies from it. We will be with him for thanksgiving at his invitation. It is his way of thanking us for the help we offer. He has no income at all other than food stamps and that is barely enough to keep food on the table and does not provide for essentials like toilette paper or toothpaste yet he gives out of his need.
Fred is 87 years old and lives in our apartment complex. In fact he used to own it. His vision has deteriorated to the point he lost his license last year. I started driving him around and I take him to the store where I read the labels on food for him. He is the last of his family because his sister just died a few months ago. He does not seem to have many friends left at all because he has outlived most of them. When I asked him what he planned to do for thanksgiving he said he had nothing planned and will just stay home. His emphysema is so bad he cannot go out for long and not at all on some days. Still he does some good, he tries to help despite the hardness and sorrow that is inside. There was an old friend who had a brain tumor. As she lay dying he promised her he would care for her daughter who had suffered brain damage from a beating incurred during a robbery. This he continues to do despite mounting aggravation. Fred maintains a level of honor and integrity I must admire.
Barb is that daughter Fred promised to watch over. She exists day to day. While her traumatic brain injury is a major factor in her life there is a long list of problems she must live with. While I do not know all of them because I don’t get nosy she does not hide them. She has something called crones disease which is ugly and several others. She must take 14 different medications every day and it is beyond me how she can keep track of them. She lives in public housing which comes with it’s own set of problems. Much of my time spent for her is helping make sure she is not taken advantage of by the drug addicts and alcoholics that live there. Her social security checks and food stamps are doled out in small increments to reduce the chance of abuse. I know Barb has children but they seldom see her. Her brother sometimes comes by but it is usually to take advantage of her despite her circumstances. I help her for Fred by providing transportation and getting her to the grocery store, the doctors, and the churches that provide food and clothing. She will be having a thanksgiving dinner for 7 others who live in her complex who’s lives are also difficult. The most generous people I know are the poorest. It is a wonder for me to watch and understand that what I see today is the same heart Jesus saw 2000 years ago as I read in Luke 12:41-44. There Jesus sat by the treasury watching people come by and donate. It said that many who were rich put in much but a poor widow came by and put in 2 mites, which is like 2 pennies. Jesus said that this widow put in more than all the others because they gave out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty gave all she had, her whole livelihood.
So what do I have to be thankful for? My list grows daily. After waking from a coma and discovering I had been dead and was listed as a fatality in Oklahoma I am thankful for waking up each day. I am thankful that I have grown to not just understand but to truly have as an internal belief the lesson found in 1 Timothy 6:6-10 where it says that we have brought nothing into this world and it is certain we will carry nothing out. With food and clothing we should be content. Godliness with contentment are great gain. There are some who knew me when I owned multiple companies and earned a 6 figure income and so not understand why I am happy or how I can be content with clothes that are donated and wonder why I do not strive to regain my former status. My life is a gift and I am blessed to be able to give the gift of life to all who’s paths I cross. I am thankful for life and still being able to share it.

Truth? sounds familiar to me

2006-04-27T18:24:00.000-07:00

Subject: A NEW ELEMENT has been discovered.

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the
heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element has been named "Governmentium."

Governmentium (Gv) has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy
neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are
surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be
detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction, that would normally
take less than a second, to take over four days to complete.

Governmentium does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which
a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each
re-organization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that
Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium -- an element
which radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as
many peons but twice as many morons.

Roller coaster

2006-03-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

Hard to hold down,
nimble,
alighting wherever it likes:
the mind.
Its taming is good.
The mind well-tamed
brings ease.
Buddhist wisdom.

I’m not doing good this morning. Running about a four on the Bob scale. That Buddhist saying really doesn’t apply at the moment. Nothing nimble about the mind now. Just talked to Holly at River East about the stuff at the warehouse. It was a little difficult to communicate but I managed. I need to see about the truck and storage unit now. I am having to think through a fog right now as the brain is processing slow. Not the best time for me to be out but need to do this.

3:30 – Just got back from taking care of Barb. I am operating at about an 8 now. Big improvement but that’s the way it is. Nothing like your brain going on a roller coaster ride whenever it feels like it. It’s like being on drugs or drinking but not as bad. I never lose common sense, just can’t process as fast or handle multiple tasks at the slow times.

Fred was a bit…old, this morning. He had me drop by and pick up an old charger he had, from another phone I think, to take and see if it will work on Barb’s phone. Then he asked me to pick up $30 from Tom at the Marathon to use for buying a new charger for Barb’s phone. I told him I could probably fix the cord on her charger and he said that would be good but still buy a new one. When I asked him “What if this charger works” (referring to the one he gave me to try) he said “Don’t you think she should have a new one?”. It’s his money so I wasn’t going to argue.

I got out our cat carrier and went to pick up the money. With that done I headed to Barb’s. She was waiting and had put one of the two cats in a cardboard box. It was struggling to escape and she was struggling to keep the lids closed. We got the other cat into the cat carrier and took them to the car. I told Barb that she would have to sit in the back seat with the cardboard box. When she wondered about that I explained that the last thing I needed was for a cat to be running loose while I was driving down the road. She understood and got in. I had her give me the number of the place, called “Cat Paws and Whiskers”, and called to make sure of the address.

Barb talked about the cats all the way there as the one in the box would scratch her to escape. This is hard for Barb but has to be done. At the cat shelter Barb said her good by’s to these seven month old kittens from one of her other cats. She had plenty of time as the shelter was busy. I could see how she hurt but she handled it OK.

With that done I took her to the phone place to get her charger. Barb talked about her brother, prison, big drug busts, and other things on the way there and back to her home. She’s been through it, that’s for sure. Mostly from being around the wrong people. I gave her a couple of bucks so she could get the breather she had a prescription for. The doc had told her she had the lungs of a seventy year old. This is one of the motivations she has to quit smoking. I need to remember to ask Allen and Eileen if they have any of the nicotine patches I gave them left. I think they should have almost all of them cause neither one quit.

I stopped by the storage unit we had gotten a discount for at the home show to see if their offer still stood. It does so I reserved a unit. Getting home I called Holly at River East. I was going to go there on Thursday but when I looked at the calendar I saw that I am taking Wayne to the MS fund raiser that day. I called Calvin to see if he was still able to help me and he said probably without allot of confidence. Hope he can. Then I called Holly and we got it set up for Friday morning. Should be interesting. The guy they will have supervising me is their scrapper. This guy has been steady cleaning it out and when I called Holly said he was in the back getting more stuff. Who knows what will be there Friday.

I just called Cherie and asked if she would like to go to the park when she gets off work. She is tired but would like to go. It is 70 today and the storm clouds have long since wandered off. The sun is out, I’ve got all the windows open airing out the place, so this is spring weather. Time to get out after a long winter. Wasn’t a bad winter but winter none the less. Time to get out. I’ll have pictures for you.

What happened?

2006-02-22T18:43:00.000-08:00

What happened?

It has been hard to piece this all together but through research and interviews with those who were there I have been able to get a pretty good picture of the events leading up to my demise. This is not an excuse for what happened but an explanation. It is also an attempt to bring out the truth when it is clear that the general opinions of these events are based on rumors and gossip, not facts.
I was doing good, proud of overcoming personal failings and creating two successful companies. Things looked great and the future even better but that was soon to change.
My former secretary, Eileen Sterling, told me of when I fell fifteen feet from the pallet racking in my warehouse, knocking me out for about five minutes. The impact was so loud that it brought members of River East, who’s offices were directly underneath, running upstairs to see what happened. This occurred about the same time I wrecked my Lincoln Mark VIII. According to her I became an “asshole” immediately after. It is an established fact that this is a sign of traumatic brain injury. MRI’s at St Charles verify I sustained this type of injury. These show both old and fresh areas of damage in my brain. I remember being in intense pain but as a general rule I did not go to doctors so just bore the pain. I was to later learn that I had broken two ribs.
I had just hired an employee at the recommendation of Joe Pena, the maintenance man in our building. This employee was an old friend of Joe’s and they had gone to school and grown up together. That employee, Melvin Losek, said he had some pain pills that would help. They were expensive but they helped me continue working through the pain. I began taking more and more of these pills called “Oxycontin”. I didn’t have a clue they were highly addictive until it was too late. Research shows that drug use is common after brain injuries and amplifies the effects of such injury over time.
After the fall I began to have many other problems. I know you don’t want to hear this but it is germane to this story. Among other things I became increasingly sexually dysfunctional (another symptom of brain injury) This on top of my personality change was a big factor in my wife’s infidelity, at least I think so but she had fooled around before so who’s to say for sure.
I began to make poor business decisions with the resulting increase of money problems. Things were going downhill and I let my marketing company lapse as I concentrated on Corporate Liquidation. Melvin said he could no longer get the Oxy’s for me and when, to my surprise, I started experiencing withdrawals he said he could get me heroin which would stop the withdrawals. I was going through hell so agreed. It did stop the pain but I had to keep taking it or the withdrawals would resume. I had a company to run and it was in trouble so I had to keep going.
Then I caught my wife performing a sex act after hours in the parking lot of the mall she worked at. Our marriage was already rocky to say the least. I spent as much time as I could at work to avoid going home so it wasn’t a surprise but it still hit hard. All these things happened in quick succession. Bam, Bam, Bam…I felt like a boxer who had just received a well timed series of hits. My head was spinning and I moved out of my house into a room I set up in my business. There I isolated myself and it was the start of a depression that would eat me up inside.
I had already started the process of getting a second mortgage on my home to get the cash I so badly needed for my liquidation company. This was when Montgomery Wards was going out of business and I purchased a large amount of their assets. It was push to get what I purchased out of the stores before the deadline set by the auction company so I left the warehouse in hands of Melvin.
One day I began to notice that some of the merchandize I was hauling in seemed to be disappearing so began to keep an eye on it. Sure enough a large number of the security cameras from the Wards purchase were gone. I called the police about it and they sent two detectives from the Scott Park office. Because I didn’t have any proof Melvin stole these items they couldn’t do more than take a report.
With that I began to set up hidden surveillance cameras to record Melvin’s theft. There was nobody else who could be doing this. When Melvin’s good friend, Joe Pena, learned of this he told Melvin who immediately quit. Now I am pissed. I started putting out posters every where I could offering a reward for any information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of “Whoever” stole these security cameras. Come to find out Joe was tearing these down as fast as I put them up.
Unfortunately, during all of this I was locked into what had become a bitter, year long divorce with my unfaithful wife, who was going after as much as she could. My depression had become a progressive disease, as it often does, and the drug and alcohol use I turned too in an attempt to hide my pain made it much worse. I was rapidly unraveling.
I believe the pressure I was causing with my “Reward” posters and the continuing theft from not only me but other companies in my building motivated Melvin to have his wife and father come forward with a computer they claimed to have purchased from me. According to court documents, Joe Pena “just happened” to drop by Melvin’s house and instantly recognized this computer as being the one that had been stolen from a company in my building. Now it looked like all computers, a white box with no labels or distinguishing marks on it. Joe, by the way, was still studying to learn how to read in an attempt to get a GED but he could tell this was the computer. (He still can’t read)
Now I was arrested and being charged with the felony of “receiving stolen goods”. More and more things would come up missing. Even the security cameras I had put up were being stolen though I did get a tape of a figure that sure looked like Joe stealing the one I had looking down into the garage area of the building. This camera was hidden in a remote area that no one would know about unless they were intimate with the building. Of course all those video tapes are gone now.
My mental state was getting progressively worse from the extreme drug use and sever depression. From what I am told I had given up on living and seemed to be purposely destroying everything I had built and been so proud of. One person and hospital records from St Charles psych ward, where I was admitted after being found in a parking lot crying and unable to tell my name, said I told them I was trying to die. I think that is true. Life meant nothing to me anymore.
While I was in this mental state my court appointed lawyer convinced me that if I pleaded no contest the judge might find me not guilty. I just wanted everything to be done. Of course that’s not how it goes. I was found guilty and given a sentence of work release and probation. By this time I am a mess. My secretary told me that one time I came to her door, wearing a wig and hat in an attempt to disguise myself. She said I was disappointed when she recognized me. What was left in my warehouse was being quickly stolen. The door to the back area, where my woodshop and most of my tools and remaining valuables were, had been literally unbolted and was laying on the ground. I had chained my bicycle in the alley at the warehouse to find the chain cut and it stolen the next day. I found out it had been pawned by Joe Pena at Liberal Loan, a pawn shop run by an old business associate, Jascha Chieveroni. Jasch had also been purchasing a large number of my security cameras from Joe and Melvin, which were displayed for sale, but back pedaled hard when I talked to him about it due to the legal ramifications.
I signed my divorce papers November 14, 2001. I packed as much as I could in the car I had purchased with money borrowed from my father in Texas. It was stuffed to the roof and there was barely room for me to get in the drivers seat. I tried to fix the brakes, which had not worked for weeks, with little success and headed out for my old home, Texas, where I was going too curl up like a dog that’s been beat too much and lick my wounds. I made it as far as Oklahoma when I fell asleep at the wheel. After rolling the car at eighty miles an hour and being flung out of the car, I died. I was brought back by the emergency medical team that responded but remained in a coma for a month.
It took me over a year to make it back to Toledo but I was still in bad shape. I suffered partial memory loss from the accident but have been able to recover most of it. When I first walked back into River East it caused a stir as they thought I was dead. Joe’s reaction was particularly strong as he told me to step out into the alley so he could kick my ass. Mary Ellen Potaralsky was also upset and would later claim to have put out a restraining order against me. Court records indicate none was ever issued. It’s hard to believe that she was my first employee when I started Westbrook Marketing twelve years previously. I had asked for financial records so I could complete my income taxes and she said they would only be released to an attorney.
When I went upstairs to survey what was left I began to understand the reaction. Later interviews with local business men would confirm that they had purchased thousands of dollars worth of equipment from Joe Pena, evidently with Mary Ellen’s knowledge. From what I have been able to ascertain the proceeds from those sales were never applied to my back rent and went into their pockets.
One of those business men, Les Ramler of Monroe Michigan said that Joe bragged to him while he was purchasing equipment that he had found $4,000 I had hidden in my area. This would sound right considering I had lots of cash from the $60,000 second mortgage but had become highly paranoid because of the drugs. That also is how much I had told others was in my wallet that had been stolen from my office.
I have been told that the thefts Joe was anxious to point his finger at me for continued even after I left the state. Joe is no angel and was on probation for repeated DUI’s and possession of cocaine. He was leaving the probation building as I was going in one day and laughed at me as he got in his car. “Thanks for buying me this car” he smugly told me. Melvin’s whole family has an extensive criminal history and his house was in the news a few months ago when two people entered it and fired bullets into the ceiling in an evident attempt to intimidate them over a drug matter.
A man I did business with became concerned when he learned I had hired Melvin. He told me that he had paid Melvin and Joe to clean up at his warehouse and shortly after that some airplane parts worth thousands of dollars came up missing and were probably sold for scrap metal.
For a period Joe, Melvin, and I got along and would go to places like the German American Festival together. They bragged to me about being paid to torch a house. Joe said he had put too much gasoline out and the house blew, burning Melvin’s brother Tim. Joe laughed because he said he was in the paper for saving Tim’s life when they claimed to be walking by the house when it blew up. Tim was hospitalized from the burns.
These are the people who trumped up charges against me and spread as many stories as they could to denigrate my reputation. Now I admit I gave them lots of ammunition but I never had a reason to steal, especially with thousands of dollars worth of product, equipment, and the cash from my second mortgage. I was liquidating everything and had become a depressed mess, just wanting to go away.
Now I am mad. I have been trying to make amends for the past but find it frustrating when the lies told by those who were stealing from me cloud the minds of the ones I wish to do right to. Because of my injuries I will never be able to run a company like I had when I was the second largest tenant at River East so I have nothing to gain other than a portion of my self respect from doing what is, in my mind, the right thing.
Among those things I wanted to do was to recover furniture I was refinishing for the attorney Jim Adray along with the parts of the desk I was building for him. This would be to complete the job he had paid for despite the fact he wrote it off and expects nothing.
There was a little desk I had refinished half of that would have absolutely no value to anyone but would help demonstrate my refinishing capabilities. This might allow me to generate enough work to augment my Veterans Disability pension.
It is frustrating when I want to display a semblance of honor and integrity to be blocked from doing so. To be not allowed to correct past mistakes, in at least a partial way, is surprising when it could save River East time and money. Over the last three years I have made repeated attempts to open a dialog with River East with no success. I have offered to clean up the mess left after everything was picked through. I offered to pay for its self storage. I wrote letters for presentation to the board and executive committee. I have received no response of any kind.
I have documented much of what is in this statement. My attorney, Chuck Boyk, suggested I try publicity such as the local television stations advocacy programs as a means of motivating River East prior to filing a lawsuit. Despite the fact that the value of any recoverable items is minute I will pursue this on principle.

I can be reached at 419-351-7332. My E-mail is bobcarver1@yahoo.com If you are interested in who I am now and my activities you can find a complete journal on my blog at http://walkedwithangels.blogspot.com
My mailing address is;
Bob Westbrook
Toledo, Ohio 43614

Creation Versus Evolution??

2006-02-18T18:46:00.000-08:00

I don’t KNOW that God exists. I hope he does and if so that he is allot nicer than many religions make him out to be. Living forever is a nice thought and we all tend to believe what is comforting to us. I really don’t get the creationists though. As a former fundamentalist pastor with a theology degree, I have an insight to how they think. I have watched them on their television programs try to “Scientifically” prove the world and universe is 5,000 years old by parading a variety of “experts” in front of the camera. Common guys. The light from the stars we see took millions of years to get here. Lets see what else I heard. Oh!! Try this one. God just made everything old to start with…and the stratified layers of soil and rock are from the great flood…and, and, and I give up. The list is too long. I began to wonder if being stupid is a requirement to be a Christian.
So I offer up my own theory. Gods not in a hurry. Time means nothing when you always have been and always will be. Why not think of him as a gardener who threw out the worlds and tossed out some seeds like amino acids and DNA or whatever. Then he would come around every billion years or so and see what happened. Hell, he could have made the universe zillions and zillions of times. I know he’d have to do something to keep from being bored. I get bored with a long day much less with forever on my hands.

Injustice

2006-02-17T19:10:00.000-08:00

I am again watching the show “Injustice” and it stirs my heart as it always will. There are too many kids I have seen sent up by the system, including myself, who should not have been. There was one in the Texas prison who I watched as he was “turned out” and traded like a cheap trinket. Sometimes I can remember his name. Not right now. He was a small kid who had been used by others to break into businesses by them lifting him up through windows they couldn’t fit through. He would then unlock the door to let them in. When it all fell apart the kid took the fall for them all, pushed into confessing by the police interrogators. He was a weak scared kid who wasn’t all there. I have known many like him who’s lives have been destroyed by unscrupulous justice officials ranging from police officers, prosecutors, and judges who were more interested in getting their numbers up than true justice. Sometimes it’s ambition, sometimes it’s laziness, sometimes it’s keeping the budget down, but always it is at the cost of innocence and truth. Good night. It is 11:30 at night. I just remembered the kids name. It is Wysong

Abbreviated timeline of the life of Bob

2006-02-13T19:00:00.000-08:00

This just scratches the surface,
Born on Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas. My father was a fighter pilot and my mother the local beauty. Their marriage was rocky to put it mildly with a divorce, remarriage and another divorce.

My fathers mother purchased my brother and I from mom. My dad went to Korea where he became an ace in the war.

Grandma couldn’t handle us and was sick so dad had to take us. I called my grandmother Mama. She was Mom to us, the first person I remember, the first one who showed us love. This stranger shows up and I am told this is my dad and my new mom and he took me away from Mama.

Dad was strict and beatings (spankings?) were regular. I was angry and couldn’t get along. We moved to Dayton where I was kicked out of kindergarten. Then we moved to Spain. Then we moved to England. Then we moved to Florida. Then we moved to San Antonio, Texas. There were never any real friends. I was the kid everyone picked on. I was always the one nobody wanted on their team.

At fourteen I took my first swing back at dad while being beaten again. That night I ran away from home, breaking into the high school where I lived while still attending class.

I was sent to live with my other grandmother back in the town I was born. There nobody knew me and I wasn’t chased and beaten like I had been in every other school I had attended.

I found a group who accepted me and had friends for the first time in my life. Unfortunately they were the “wrong” crowd but I worked to fit in. I smoked pot for the first time, I got drunk for the first time. Not wanting to be a virgin anymore (I never had a girl friend till I met my first wife) I went to the building downtown everyone in Big Spring knew was the whore house and had a not to memorable experience.

I still had no social skills but kept up an image of the wild James Dean type. I did more and more things to impress everyone that I was cool. Drugs and drinking were a central part of that. Stealing a car because I was drunk and didn’t want to walk home I was arrested. The judge gave me a choice. Go to prison or join the military.

On my seventeenth birthday I was taken from the jail and put on a bus for basic training in the Air Force. There my rebellion continued and I was set back to another class until I finally completed basic training.

Upon graduation I was sent to be trained as a crew chief on B-52 aircraft. I continued my drug use and was exhibiting extreme rebellion against all authority. After a year of this and with the end of the Vietnam war I was given an honorable discharge and told to go away.

I returned to Big Spring, jumping back into the drug crowd. I sold drugs and committed petty crimes until I was caught selling ground up aspirin as cocaine. This resulted in a sentence of ten years probation.

I quickly violated this probation by getting caught with a joint and entered the Texas prison system at nineteen. This was a violent wake up call. I became involved with a program called Operation Kick It” where I was taken under armed guard to high schools and civic organizations such as the Rotary Club. There I would tell my story to show kids the consequences of poor decision making.

This gave life meaning so, wishing to continue doing positive things I enrolled in Bible college upon my release from prison. There I fell in love for the first time and married the love of my life.

Graduating and receiving my ordination we moved to Toledo, my wife’s home town. There things were tough as we both tried to learn how to be married and survive.

In 1981 I fell out of a tree, breaking my neck and back and sustaining a concussion. This resulted in a drastic personality change, which no one, including the doctors, could explain. This resulted in our divorce which tore our hearts out.

The wife of a friend made advances while the divorce was in process. Alone and heartbroken I foolishly became involved. She divorced her husband and moved in with her two children. I resigned my positions in the church and married her to make things right. This was a big mistake. I should have taken a clue from her infidelity with her first husband but had to learn the hard way.

The next seventeen years were a yo yo of me leaving and coming back with her finding male companionship every time. I did desperate things to feed the kids but finally started two companies which were successful.

My drinking and drug use escalated. One night I broke into a fireworks stand and passed out on the fireworks I had piled up in the parking lot. I was sent back to prison with a two to ten year sentence. I stopped drinking and using drugs at this point.

Upon my release from prison I rebuilt both companies from scratch and renewed my relationship with Barb, the second wife. This was again rocky but I tried for the kids I loved. As the business grew it took more and more of my time till I was working eighty plus hours a week. This didn’t help things at home. I caught Barb having sex in the parking lot of the mall she worked at so I moved out of the house into my warehouse.

There I began a slide into madness fueled by extreme depression, drugs and alcohol, and a year long bitter divorce. Set up by an employee I had caught stealing I was convicted of receiving stolen goods, a felony. By this time I was delusional, hallucinating, and suicidal.

I left town, running from my conviction and wanting to return to my home town in Texas. I didn’t make it. Falling asleep in Oklahoma while driving I was flung from the car as it rolled at eighty miles an hour. I was pronounced dead at the scene but revived by the medics.

I was in a coma for a month and woke up with a traumatic brain injury and amnesia. My brother showed up and took me to St Louis where I eventually found my way to a brain injury rehab center. Just when I started getting the badly needed medical help I was extradited back to Toledo because I had violated my probation by being in a coma and not reporting.

The courts recognized I was in bad shape so simply continued my probation put me out on the street. At this time I did not recognize the streets I had driven for 25 years. I wandered around homeless looking for anything familiar and researching who I was at the library. As I worked to recover my memory the local ABC television station heard about me and ran a story, calling me Toledo’s John Doe.

Friends I knew I had but couldn’t remember came forward to help. This got me off the streets and greatly reduced my stress. Stress is debilitating for those with brain injury and in my case rendered me nonfunctional. Now I was able to work on getting my life together.

One of those who saw the TV show was my first wife. She called in to help. Meeting for the first time in twenty years we realized we had never stopped loving each other and remarried June 20 2004. She helps me with my disability.

This is a quick timeline which barely covers the life I have lived. I wrote this to help give a dim understanding to the growing number of those interested. There are many blanks which will be filled in when or if I ever get my books written.

Renewed inspiration

2006-02-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

2/11/06
I have had some of my inspirations renewed. I used to go “Blogging” where I would click the “Next Blog” button and it would randomly drop me on another blog. Many of them were in languages I couldn’t understand, several were porn that would drop all kinds of nasty spyware on my system, and some were just wacked out people who are truly frightening.
Then, I found this place that has something called “map stats” http://mapstats.blogflux.com/ that tracks who visits your blog, where they are from, and other cool stuff. In addition to that they have a registry where you can register your blog. The part I like is they physically read your blog and you must meet their standards to be registered. Standards are basic, no porn, no spam, and I think No Nuts though I can’t say for sure. I just read it two days ago so it is gone. Anyway I registered my walked with angels blog and then started looking through their directory of registered blogs.
It was refreshing to not have to wade through a ton of crap to find something decent. One of the spots I found belonged to the author John Scalzi at http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/. (I know there is a way to make it so you could just click on his name to go there but I don’t know how) Actually I found a poem he wrote on the public defenders site and it linked to his site. I went there to ask permission to put his poem, entitled Poor, on this and my other blog. In his blog he answered questions about agents and publishing books and that is what renewed my dream of making a difference by talking to thousands (or millions) through writing.
One of the things my dim mind has noticed is that most blogs have short entries instead of the lengthy discourses I have so I figure I will put in a few short ones like this.
Here's the poem, with the permission of John Scalzi
Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they're what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there's not an $800 car in America that's worth a damn.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends' houses but never has friends over to yours.

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won't hear you say "I get free lunch" when you get to the cashier.

Being poor is living next to the freeway.

Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.

Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn't mind when you ask for help.

Being poor is off-brand toys.

Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.

Being poor is knowing you can't leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.

Being poor is hoping your kids don't have a growth spurt.

Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn't have make dinner tonight because you're not hungry anyway.

Being poor is Goodwill underwear.

Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is your kid's school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.

Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.

Being poor is relying on people who don't give a damn about you.

Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.

Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger's trash.

Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw.

Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find someone you trust to watch your kids.

Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she'll probably just laugh at your clothes.

Being poor is hoping you'll be invited for dinner.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is your kid's teacher assuming you don't have any books in your home.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.

Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually stupid.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually lazy.

Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.

Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn't bought first.

Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that's two extra packages for every dollar.

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old.

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you're being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.

Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.

Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.

Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won't listen to you beg them against doing so.

Being poor is a cough that doesn't go away.

Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.

Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.

Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

Being poor is running in place.

Being poor is people wondering why you didn't leave.

Feed a Monster and it will eat you

2006-02-09T19:49:00.000-08:00

Here’s the latest thing to get me going. They just arrested a man for trying to abduct a fourteen year old girl. Now you would expect this guy to be some kind of low life living in squalor and drinking or using drugs all the time but nooo. This guy was a former mayor, a county commissioner, a volunteer at the 4H club, a good Christian, well respected, and on and on. Not at all what you would think a pervert would be. I was fascinated to see the reactions of those who knew him in the small towns of Hamler and Napoleon. Now let me put this in perspective.
Two girls are walking home from school and they notice a guy in a red Mustang following them. He drove around the block four times to come past them again and again. This freaked them out so she ran home. There she changed clothes and left to go to a friend’s house a half hour later. Gee, here’s this guy again. He follows her and at a nearby food market gets out of his car and calls to her “Come here little girl”. She ran and he chased her on foot for a short distance.
This girl is smart and appears to have learned how to act in such circumstances. She called 911 and was able to give a description of the guy, his car, and the license plate number. With that the police were able to obtain his picture and the girl was able to immediately pick it out from a line up of ten or so pictures. That sounds pretty concrete to me.
So here’s the deal. I was amazed at the number of people who knew him and refused to believe he did this. One nice old lady said “I think it’s a scam. He’s a nice Christian man. He can’t do something like this”. Another said in disbelief “Why would someone go to Toledo and chase a girl he didn’t know? That doesn’t make sense. No one would do that” insinuating this was a ridiculous story someone made up. Of course there were many who understood this guy probably was guilty but it still was hard for them to accept.
The fact is you never know what is under the surface. I have written before about the false face most present to the world. Every one of us has secrets. Deception is a part of all cultures. We all espouse the virtues of honesty but few practice what they preach. I am amazed by how few of us can see the reality that’s right in front of our eyes. We choose to see the world the way we want it to be or the way we were told it is. Despite all the evidence many are refusing to believe this man did this.
I would bet a thousand dollars that if they checked this guy, Steven Baden’s computer it would be full of porn. Now I’m a guy and like most guys it is hard for me not to look at stuff, especially when it’s everywhere on the internet. I do but fight it as much as I can. This is because I understand that if you feed a monster it grows stronger. One of the problems is you know that no one is looking so you can do this and nobody knows. There is the first deceit. Once you start doing something in hiding you are lying, you are putting up that false front. It starts out small. You know, it’s not a big deal, I’m not hurting anyone. When I said you are lying I mean you are lying to yourself. Then it moves easily to “I’m going to do this because I want to. No one will know and I don’t care. I like it”. The process can take years, even decades, but you are programming your brain. Soon you can’t look at a girl without your imagination going to work.
Steve Baden is a married man with two young boys. Who knows how long he fed his monster but it grew till it began to control him. Now he acts on this desire he has been nurturing. I would hope his being exposed, uncovered, will open his eyes to what he has allowed himself to become but I know this demon will not go away. If he doesn’t beat it down and starve it by self control it will grow strong and consume him again. Openness and honesty are the most powerful weapons we have. Think about it. If you knew there was a camera on you and the whole world was watching you would you act differently. We all put our best face forward when in a crowd. Nah, not really. We act to fit in with whatever crowd we are around and then change when with a different group. In my past I would go to church and be all religious and then go to the bar and be a very different person.
Since I died, was in a coma, and woke up I have revised my thinking and changed my priorities. I see things differently and I think allot more clearly. At least I think I do but who knows. What do you think?

Insanity is a contagious disease

2006-02-07T19:16:00.000-08:00

Insanity is a contagious disease.
What is the definition of insanity? The Encarta dictionary says it is 1.- The lack of reason or good sense. 2. – Legal incompetence or irresponsibility because of a psychiatric disorder.
Of course it is much more complex than this. For many of us the acts of Muslim extremists such as suicide bombings are insane but in their minds they are normal and they view the rest of us as insane. Sanity is therefore relative to the culture. Is there a standard for sanity that can apply to the whole human race? I doubt it.
So sanity boils down to what you believe. Belief is the most powerful thing we have. If we believe we can accomplish something the odds are greatly improved we will. If we believe it is impossible, it is. The problem with belief is that we all try to sway others to our way of thinking. Thus, like a contagious disease such as the flu, ideas and beliefs are spread through contact. Some are more contagious than others. Look at religion for an example. One man with an idea (or a “revelation”) can start an epidemic that spreads throughout the entire world. Just like viruses do, these beliefs evolve over time, sometimes until they only resemble what they began as. All religions develop sects or denominations which often wage war with each other.
With belief often comes blindness. As someone’s belief grows it begins to take over just like any disease will. A person’s paranoia can grow till it overwhelms all commons sense. At some point this will cross an invisible line to insanity.
I was fascinated to read in the news today the statement of an Imam regarding Islam and the riots connected with cartoons depicting Mohammed. He said that Islam is a religion of peace and then talked about how the insult to Mohammed should be avenged. He is so blind he evidently is unable to see the contradiction of his words in one statement.
I began to study the history of Islam and found that when Mohammed conquered Mecca, the place where he and his followers were cruelly tortured and killed he forgave and did not take vengeance. The quote of his words said “This day there is no reproof against you and you are all free. This day I trample under my feet all distinctions between man and man, all hatred between man and man.” He even pardoned those who had killed Hamazah, his uncle whom he loved, and ripped his body open even eating his liver. How different this is from what I see from his followers today.
The infections of thought that seem to be the most entrenched and lead to insanity are the ones based on hate. Whether it is the racism of Hitler and the Neo Nazis or the KKK it never dies like a virus that becomes immune to antibiotics. There will always be these infections brought by those who are adept at swaying others to their way of thinking. Just look at the small cults like the Jim Jones followers who committed mass suicide or Charles Manson crew who killed on his command. It’s not just religion. Look at the mafia and gangs who also kill and die for what they believe. Are they insane? I think so but who am I.

Criminal Injustice

2006-01-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

Just watched the new show, Injustice. This stirred up many memories and emotions. It was followed by a 20/20 piece on about a mother who used her daughter and the prosecutors to put her ex’s two sons in prison for a crime they never committed. This was a vindictive act during their breakup. There is no doubt that the system puts many in prison who are innocent. I have seen this personally many times and am a victim of this as well.
Understand that everyone wants to be recognized as doing their job well. Don’t you? Most of us strive to excel, especially when our future is predicated by that performance. You want a promotion? You want a raise? Do you want to be reelected? These are driving motivators and add to it the biggest motivator of all. What do your peers think of you? What about your friends? Don’t we all love the “Good Job. You showed them. Yeah buddy, let’s buy you a drink”. Clap you on the back and everyone likes you and is impressed. Top of the gang, you can walk with your head up high. Look at me, I’m good. So what lengths do you go to for this?
As in every aspect of the human equation there is a complex mix of things that influence our behaviors. So what is the prevailing attitude in our criminal justice system? It’s the good guys against the bad guys. We are righteous and they are the scum of the earth. Even if he didn’t do it he’s done lots of other things. I know he is bad so he deserves to be locked away. This attitude grows with time and is increased by the constant contact with the depredations and horrors of the criminal world.
I have seen good people become quickly jaded. In the Texas prison system I watched guards that were new to their job and fresh out of school come to work. Many of them wanted to help inmates become better people. They would be nice in a guarded way because after all we are convicts and they are taught to be on guard, which they should be. But it never took long for them to change, to be infected with the attitudes of their peers, the old school hardened guards, and the evil that always is there in the prisons. I would watch them change. Their language would evolve to match that of the inmates and the “your trash, fuck you” attitude would take over. Because of this the victims of the courts become the victims of the prison.
I would watch young kids, who made mistakes and could have been made better people, be horribly scarred, raped, killed, or become hardened hateful convicts. And the guards would hasten that and sometimes assist in this destruction of life. On top of that some of them were convicted of crimes they did not commit. Manipulated by unscrupulous prosecutors, who were more interested in how many notches they could carve into their guns than justice, into confessing to crimes they did not commit. Told that if they “copped a plea” they would get a lenient punishment and if they didn’t the book would be thrown at them.
So who are most often the victims of this? It is the younger inexperienced ones. It is those who are a little “slow”. The ones who have mental deficiencies, who are scared and easily intimidated. Those who are the practiced criminals, who have been in the system, know how things work and know how to work things to their advantage. The ones who have the greatest chance of being reformed and becoming contributing members of society are the ones who are screwed the most. They are sent to prison and are spiritually killed or learn to be much worse than they were.
How do I know this? What qualifies me to write of this? I have lived through it, I have experienced this personally. At 18 I was a troubled kid, wild and rebellious, a creation of my father and a very disrupted childhood. (Wait till I my book gets published. It’s quite a story) In a small west Texas town I had ground up some aspirin and Alka Seltzer and was selling it as cocaine to make a few bucks that I would spend on booze and a little pot. Pulled over while driving around drunk with some friends I gave the little foil packet I was going to try and get ten bucks for to one of those friends so he could hide it down his pants. He got scared and gave it to the cops telling them it was mine. Taken to jail a detective got out his little test kit and after swirling it around told me it was cocaine. After a few weeks in jail I was taken to court with no legal representation but the one provided by the court. I was told that if I plead guilty I would be given probation, which is what happened. Later my grandmother told me she had slipped a couple hundred bucks to the prosecutor to get me off. Easy money for him.
Probation is a trap because if you sneeze you will be sent to prison and there is no trial because you have already been tried and found guilty. I will be the first to admit I was a bad kid and definitely a trouble maker. About a year later the car I was in was pulled over. I had a joint in my pocket so it’s off to prison I go with a ten year sentence at 19. What Texas prison was like is another story that I will tell later. In prison I “found the Lord” and became a Christian. This gave me purpose and was a powerful motivator to change my life. I now wanted to do good and help others avoid the paths that led to my imprisonment. I was released on parole after three years and enrolled in a bible college where I was ordained upon graduation.
It was in this Bible College I met the love of my life. We got married and set out to change the world but things fell apart after I fell from a tee, breaking my back, neck, and sustaining a traumatic brain injury. Because of the drastic personality change caused by the brain injury we were divorced.
This tore both of our hearts apart and the emotional scars plagued us for twenty years. Then, through a miraculous chain of events stemming from my getting another brain injury, we were brought back together. We just remarried June 20, 2004. This is an amazing love story which I am also writing about.
Seventeen years after the divorce I had become a moderately successful business man having built two companies from scratch. After getting a large contract I took my company out to a bar to celebrate. (obviously I had fallen away from the Christian thing) After eight hours of drinking I headed home, lucky I didn’t hit somebody or drive into a ditch. There was a fireworks stand a block from my house so, still celebrating my success, I kicked the door in and piled up the fireworks in the parking lot. I don’t know if I couldn’t find my lighter to set them off or what but I passed out on them and a cop getting off his shift drove by and saw me. Bam, I’m in jail with a breaking and entering charge.
This time I could afford a lawyer but it didn’t matter. You see the criminal justice system is a close knit community, especially in a small town. These guys went to school together, they marry, they have kids, they go to their social groups, they invite each other over to dinner, they are friends or associates with an occasional rare exception. I was an ex con. I had a record, so I was the bad guy who belonged in prison. Despite catching the arresting officer lying on tape I was convicted. My lawyer would just mumble and had to be asked to speak up so the jury could hear several times.
Now Michigan law states that if someone is so intoxicated that he can’t think out his actions reasonably enough to have what they call criminal intent he is not liable for those actions. My lawyer seemed to just forget that despite it being rather obvious it applied to me. So I am given the maximum sentence allowable and go to prison with a two to ten year sentence.
This cost me everything. My second wife took over my companies for me and squandered everything on her new boyfriends. There was nothing left when I got out but all the records she had pulled from the filing cabinets and scattered on the office floor. That and the bills she didn’t pay. I rebuilt the companies from scratch again.
Nine years later I fell twelve feet from the pallet racking in my warehouse, knocking myself out, breaking two ribs, and sustaining a second traumatic brain injury with its resulting drastic personality change. I had renewed my relationship with the same wife who had screwed me over before but it was rocky. I caught her giving oral sex in the parking lot of the mall where she worked.
This led to a severe depression which was augmented by the Oxycontin pain medication I was taking for the broken ribs. Of course this is a highly addictive pain killer, just what I needed at the time. I moved out of the house and into my warehouse and began the year long bitter divorce. I was falling apart and began doing what many do in times like these. When alcohol didn’t make the pain disappear I added drugs to it and that escalated into a self destructive madness. Catching an employee stealing I file charges so he had his wife and dad go to the police with a stolen computer they said they purchase from me.
Now I am charged with another felony, the third one I have had. Of course the heinous nature of my previous crimes (sarcasm intended) made me a habitual criminal in the eyes of the court. By this time the drugs, alcohol, and depression had taken their toll. I was a basket case and was destroying everything I had built and was proud of. There is no question that I was no longer mentally competent. Because of the drugs I was hallucinating and close to being indigent. At one time I was admitted to the psych ward when I was found in a gas station parking lot crying and unable to tell my name.
At this time my court appointed attorney said I had no chance of winning and he told me that if I would plead no contest there was a good chance I might be found not guilty. He did say he couldn’t guarantee it, which covered his ass should there be future questions. I just wanted this to be over so I could run and hide from the hell my world had become and, trusting him, I followed his advise.
I was found guilty and sentenced to what is called work release, where you go to work during the day and return to your cell every night. Shortly after that sentence my divorce was finalized. I signed my divorce papers, and packing everything I valued and could fit in my car I left town to go back home in Texas. In my deranged mind I was going to hide out, take another identity, and rebuild my life thus escaping this misery I had created. On the way to Texas I fell asleep and drove off the road. This caused a horrific wreck where I was flung out the back window as the car rolled end over end at eighty miles per hour. I was first pronounced dead but was resuscitated in the emergency room. This put me in a coma and gave me another traumatic brain injury which caused severe memory loss. (The event which brought my first wife and I back together)
While in rehab at the Brain Injury Institute in St. Louis it was found that there was a warrant for my arrest in Toledo for violating the terms of my sentence. They contacted the same court appointed attorney who represented me for this last felony. He assured them that he would take care of the warrant so I could continue my rehabilitation. That never happened and I was extradited back to Toledo.
To sum this all up the term “Criminal Justice” is an oxymoron. I think Criminal Injustice would be a more accurate description. I have permanent disabilities from my injuries but am doing well with my lovely wife. I completed the terms of my probation and was released from it last month. Now I write when this brain works and do what I can to help others.
I want to share this story with as many as possible. You can help. If you click on the envelope at the bottom you can send this post to those you know. I greatly appreciate such help and thank you in advance. Bob

Shame

2006-01-04T21:47:00.000-08:00

Now I see another example of the bureaucrats who follow the letter of the law and don’t dare consider the spirit of the law or common sense. There is a young man who came to this country with his step granddad when he was eight years old. Step dad never completed the paper work and went back to Germany. The kid is now in high school and when he went in to the immigration to get his ID or something he was thrown into jail where he is today. He asked if he could finish the 2 credits he needs to graduate with his class and the judge won’t even give him bond. We have thousands of illegal immigrants in this country, many of them migrant workers, who receive benefits such as public education and medical services. This kid is not a criminal and not a threat but this is how we treat him. President Bush just granted citizenship to a Canadian so she could skate in the Olympics for the US. What hypocrisy. I am ashamed at this and would like to apologize as well as kick some bureaucrat ass. Perhaps if I kicked their butts till they could wear them as a collar around their necks the stench would help them see themselves. Nah, they only care about following the rules so they can get promoted or something.

2005-11-30T16:40:00.000-08:00

I wonder. As the brain tries to compensate for the damage done in a TBI it probably uses several methods. In a brain that has been, to use the words of Elvis, “All shook up” the range of damage will go from almost not there to nothing left at all. Sorry about the technical terms. So the brain is an extremely complex organism that relies on both neural pathways for a form of electronic communication and chemical communication. Chemical communication depends on the ability of the adjoining brain cells to detect the chemical releases aimed its direction.
I believe that the brain can repair the damage that is minuet and that other sections of the brain can take on the duties of a nonfunctional area. However this is a process that requires time and conditions to proceed successfully. Any physical repair possible will begin immediately. There is still debate on the brains ability to regenerate its tissue.
As the brain rewires itself it is focusing on the areas that are being asked to perform. As I was taught how to walk it took some weeks for another area of my brain to learn how to tell my right leg to move. This was because the therapist worked daily exercising that part of my brain. Then as I continued to try to walk, some times without assistance (to the consternation of the hospital staff) my brains ability to control my leg increased rapidly.
Now here’s the point. Our brains are incredible organisms that in their complexity employ uncountable delicate balances to operate properly. So if during the long rewiring process the survivor experiences mental stimulation in specific areas, will those areas, by being used more, become dominate thus causing imbalances in ones mental processes?
I suspect that some of the issues I have now are because, as I faced a world that was in many ways new to me, I was literally painting on a new canvas. The experiences I have endured are those that have helped to remodel my brain. There is no doubt that I am a very different person from who I was before. I don’t like all of who I am right now. It is my hope that as I continue to paint on this canvas of my life I will be able to more carefully choose the paint of my experiences, thus helping create a better me and balancing out the bad I’ve gone through.