Nice. From CREW's site:

This is an outrage.

CREW and VoteVets.org released an e-mail (May 1, 2008) obtained from a Veterans Affairs (VA) employee directing VA staff to refrain from diagnosing soldiers and veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

by Michael Leon (via mal contends)

Madison, Wisconsin —Vietnam-era Navy veteran Keith Roberts (1968-71) is an honorably discharged Navy airman who feels betrayed by his government, specifically the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the U.S. Dept of Justice, for its self-conscious and successful efforts to financially ruin and imprison him.

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:

The Kentucky News-Enterprise has a piece this week on jailed Wisconsin veteran, Keith Roberts.

Sister takes up brother’s fight for freedom

By JOSHUA COFFMAN

RADCLIFF —Sally Harrod is crunching numbers that stretch beyond her job as an accountant. She oversees a legal fund for her brother in two legal cases regarding benefits he sought as a Navy veteran.

Keith Roberts, 60, is in a Minnesota federal prison, convicted of fraudulently receiving electronic funds from the department of Veterans Affairs. ...

Harrod, her family members and other veterans’ advocates ... fear the VA sought retribution against Roberts for seeking decades of back pay for post-traumatic stress disorder and criticizing the agency’s slow response to approve or deny his medical claims. ...

And, once it is all settled, she hopes her family can help veterans in similar situations.

“It’s unbelievable to all of them,” she said. “If they can do it to my brother, they can do it to anyone at any time.”

Today is the innocent and jailed Wisconsin Navy veteran Keith Roberts' birthday.

And Roberts (1968-71) is celebrating it back in the general population in a federal prison in Minnesota, as his wife reports that he has been released from solitary confinement, and is working on a supplemental brief, ordered to be filed with the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, while Roberts' parents, who are in their 80s and unable to travel to Minnesota, hope to see their son before they die.

Writes Mrs. Roberts in an e-mail:

An innocent and reportedly depressed Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968-71) suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and serving a four-year sentence for wire fraud since March 2007, has for reasons unclear been moved and caged in solitary confinement in a federal prison in Minnesota for almost a month, according to the veteran's wife.

Roberts was targeted by the US Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA) in 2003-05, and became the central figure in an Alice-in-Wonderland tale, after U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic of Wisconsin and top VA officials schemed to convict Roberts’ of fraudulently receiving VA benefits (by wire transfer as the VA requires).

Despite hostility from high quarters of the VA, Roberts may be again granted the benefits for which he is federal prison for receiving.

U.S. Atty Biskupic is the same U.S. Atty who infamously prosecuted an innocent Wisconsin woman in a political prosecution, and several innocent Wisconsin citizens for voter fraud in apparent service to the electoral needs of the national GOP.

The conduct of Stephen Biskupic, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (2002 - present) has generated two prominent reactions.

As arguably the most controversial U.S. Atty in Wisconsin history, Biskupic has drawn both praise and angry denunciation for his prosecutions of:

- The proven-innocent Georgia Thompson (see also Biskupic tried to 'squeeze' Georgia Thompson)

- Several overturned “voter fraud” cases (see also Voter-Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals)

This is no misunderstanding.

The VA and DoJ know what they did.

The VA and DoJ indicted and convicted an innocent Wisconsin Navy veteran who blew the whistle, in arguably obnoxious tones of voice, on the VA engaging in one instance of fraud, and the VA's general bureaucratic stall-and-let-the-veterans-die-before-collecting-on-their-claims-policy.

Now comes the latest exculpatory evidence on U.S. Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968–71), a Wisconsin citizen who became a political and legal VA target because he would not keep his mouth shut.

- Lee Rayburn for a full hour discussing the Keith Roberts obscenity - [Give the radio show's file some time to load, hour-long show.]

Madison, Wisconsin — Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1969-71) sits in a federal penitentiary in Minnesota, serving a 48-month sentence since March, awaiting news from the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit of his appeal for his conviction on federal wire fraud.

Madison, Wisconsin — Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1969-71) sits in a federal penitentiary in Minnesota, serving a 48-month sentence since March, awaiting news from the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit of his appeal for his conviction on federal wire fraud.

The honorably discharged veteran’s criminal conviction is based upon the U.S. Dept of Justice’s assertions, made through the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Stephen Biskupic, that Roberts lied about his relationship with and his actions pertaining to a fellow Navy airman who was crushed to death by a C-54 transport aircraft in a Feb. 1969 accident at a Naval airbase in Naples, Italy.