Veterans United for Truth at War

Photo: Don Katz

Veterans United for Truth at War
Still Fighting


Thursday, April 3, 2008
By John McReynolds

More than a third of veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), yet only a tiny number of veterans’ hospitals treat the problem. In 2005, the Veterans Administration acknowledged a backlog of 350,000 disability claims. It is now estimated to be almost 600,000. What possible impact could be made on a national scandal like that by a handful of aging Korea and Vietnam vets on the Central Coast?

Last summer, led by three salty old guys from Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and San Luis Obispo, they filed suit. In January, they won their first victory.

“Our average age is 75,” guffawed Bob Handy, U.S. Navy (Ret.), of Santa Barbara. “We’re not afraid of the bastards. For a group of old farts like us to take on something like this is pretty unique. A lot of guys our age would be out vegetating.” Handy, 75, is chairman of the Santa Barbara-based Veterans United for Truth (VUFT). Sandy Cook of San Luis Obispo, 72, is vice chairman, and Russ Weed of Santa Maria, 75, is treasurer.

In a sitcom, Handy would be cast as an Irish bartender. His thatch of white hair spilling down to his gold-rimmed glasses, his plump rosy cheeks, and his jovial manner raise the suspicion that his mother was born in Ireland. She was. Treasurer Weed was a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force. He resembles Handy so closely that people confuse the two. Cook was a Lt. Colonel in the Army. His receding hairline and lantern chin give his face an aerodynamic look that, together with darkened lenses in his glasses, suggest an aging Uncle Duke of Doonesbury. All together, the trio looks like two Wilford Brimleys and a Jack Nicholson, and they are just as cantankerous. “We are war veterans who have come to believe that both serving military and veterans are being treated shamefully,” they thunder in their basic flyer. VUFT takes no stand on Iraq but pointedly calls for “truth in justification for war” along with truth in delivery of benefits. VUFT assembled in 2005 to lobby for veterans and to document reports of increasing strain on a military called to fight long-term foreign wars.

Group leaders met one another earlier in an unlikely venue for vets — the veterans caucus of the California Democratic Party. Handy is a party director representing the Central Coast. “In 2004, we started talking to officers and NCOs in all branches,” he explained. The vets heard heart-wrenching accounts of reservists’ difficulty in returning to their jobs after their tours, backlogs in approval of disability claims, delays in medical treatment, and PTSD cases misclassified as preexisting personality problems (a condition ineligible for Veterans Administration assistance), not to mention multiplying reports of suicides.

go here for the rest
http://www.independent.com/news/2008/apr/03/veterans-united-truth-war/