Mark Fiore better advocate for veterans than the DOD or the VA

You have got to watch this cartoon from the mind of Mark Fiore.

The Surge at Home
Cartoon by Mark Fiore November 29, 2007

Click here: The Surge at Home


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Mark Fiore is an editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a web site featuring his work.

I have to say this was a great job. A cartoonist managed to put together a better video than the DOD ever could on what our troops face when they come home. Maybe they should have hired him when they were putting together the crap video of Gilgamesh.
Ok! I admit it. I am still angry over this. It still gets to me the VA came out with this cartoon to address PTSD in our troops coming back. I still wonder how much they paid for it. I'd also like to know how they did it because, I may be bias but I think mine are better than this cartoon! They should have just used this Ouchy one because it was a lot more informative.
I have a feeling this was the work of Daniel Cooper.

Top VA Official: Bible Study "More important than doing [my] job."Posted on: September 5, 2007 - 11:08am by Aaron Glantz

new article on Inter Press News Service on a complaint brought by Veterans for Common Sense and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The groups are demanding an FBI investigation of Daniel Cooper, President George W. Bush's Undersecretary for Benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Their complaint stems from an appearance Cooper made in a fundraising video for the evangelical group Christian Embassy, which carries out missionary work among the Washington elite as part of the Campus Crusade for Christ.

In the video, Cooper says of his Bible study, "it's not really about carving out time, it really is a matter of saying what is important. And since that's more important than doing the job -- the job's going to be there, whether I'm there or not."Since Cooper was appointed the head of the Veterans Benefits Administration, the number of veterans waiting on their disability claims has increased dramatically, from 325,000 in 2002 to 600,000 today.
http://www.warcomeshome.org/content/top-va-official:-bible-study
-%2526quot%3Bmore-important-doing-%5Bmy%5D-job.%2526quot%3B

This is how they were selling this video.

gilgamesh
Online course materials outlining the epic of Gilgamesh and its historical setting.
novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/eng251/gilgameshstudy.ht... - 31k - Similar pages
http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/eng251/gilgameshstudy.htm

Gilgamesh at VA Free Government Information (FGI)
I'm not exactly sure what to say about this new training video on the VA website ... The Epic of Gilgamesh. Clinical Practice Guidelines for Post-Deployment ...
freegovinfo.info/node/810 - 23k - Similar pages
http://freegovinfo.info/node/810

A Short Discussion of the Influence of the Gilgamesh Epic on the Bibleby
Brenda W. Clough

In the course of the research for HOW LIKE A GOD I’ve done a lot of reading on Mesopotamian legend. This is a brief discussion of the Gilgamesh epic as it relates to the Old Testament. It was originally written on the fly in response to an on-line question, and turned out so relatively cogent that I saved it.

The most well-known parallel between the epic and the Bible is of course the story of the Flood, in Genesis 6-7. This is essentially equivalent to the story that Utnapishtim, the Sumerian Noah, tells to Gilgamesh on Tablet XI. Even the way the narrative is laid out is similar – the gods put a bug in Utnapishtim’s ear; a description of how the ark is built (“daubed with bitumen,” a common glue or mortaring agent in Mesopotamia); everyone piles in, and it starts to rain. When it’s over, Utnapishtim releases a dove, then a swallow, and finally a crow, however – an interesting change of detail.

However, the section of the Bible that really seems linked to Sumerian mythology is the book of Ecclesiastes. The writer of that book informs us, in Eccl. 12:9-10, that in the course of composing it he read widely, presumeably everything that he could get his hands on in those days before inter-library loan and the Internet. From internal evidence it’s obvious that he read some version of the epic of Gilgamesh. It’s fascinating to see that the story, already very ancient by Biblical times, circulated so widely in the Middle East.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (in the Revised Standard version) runs, “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.” This appears in fragmented form in Tablet V column ii of the epic. (If you want to look at the tablets in English translation the best one is by John Gardner.) It was apparently a common proverb in the Middle East, and you can easily find equivalents all over the place in literature. It’s even in KING LEAR someplace. The one that I remember is from BEOWULF, “Bare is back without brother behind it.” (Alliteration’s artful aid, what?)

go here for the rest but you get the idea now.
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/gilgam.htm