via mal contends -
Madison, Wisconsin - Keith Roberts awaits the decision of his appeal before a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit as he sits in a federal prison in Minnesota because the United States government said he did not tell the truth about his service in the Navy.

Veterans are assumed under the Veterans Judicial Review Act of 1989 to be (as they often are) in an diminished capacity to tell the full truth of the circumstances they encountered that contributed to their suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The many stressors that would lead to the granting of disability benefit payments need to be rigorously documented to the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs' (VA) satisfaction, thus the VA claims process propagated under administrative rules is non-adversarial and paternalistic for the veterans.

Update: On a related note, see the NYT's Herbert's column on the new proposed GI Bill: "Politicians tend to talk very, very big about supporting our men and women in uniform. But time and again — whether it’s about providing armor for their safety or an education for their future — we find that talk to be very, very cheap."

via mal contends

The U.S. Dept of Veterans of Affairs (VA) has gone down the toilet.

This is what happens when the VA adopts the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) Dr. Sally Satel ethos that veterans need to just get over it, and not be enabled in a 'culture of trauma'.

From South Carolina, Paul Alongi reports:

So when does incompetent, lying, and cowardly behavior make one a Vince Lombardi?

Having lied their way to war, and disgraced the sacrifice and courage of American troops in the field, now the war cheerleaders are saying that the chickenhawks are Vince Lombardi incarnate.

Hey fella, if you want to lie and cheat your way to a war and a disastrous occupation, that's not fine. But don't drag Lombardi's name into it.

You're out of your depth, so crawl back to the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute, and posture about war from these safe and comfortable confines.

"I want to call them the Lombardis of this war," said Brookings analyst Michael O’Hanlon, who seems to know even less about football than war.

O'Hanlon is referring to the Surge architects who, he claims, have achieved their objective of bringing about Iraqi political reconciliation through the escalation of American troops.

See the video at ThinkProgress of these chickenhawks congratulating themselves.

"At the NEOCON-run VA, the first rule of PTSD treatment is to not talk politics (meaning anything that is negative about the war is TABOO) ...," writes Robert L. Hanafin, Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired.

Hanafin's piece in Veterans Today shines a light on the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) that has become almost as politicized as the Dept. of Justice.

Nothing, not even the treatment of returning troops, is safe from the rightwing, pro-war-at-any-costs ideology of this administration.

Hanafin quotes from a VA "fact sheet" on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): “Families should minimize exposure to anxiety-arousing media related to the war. News programs often emphasize fearful content and frightening images to create a 'story.' Watching a lot of TV news programs, for example, can create needless distress. "