When government fails, blame media

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and ....
"I still like and admire George W. Bush," writes Scott McClellan, ..... Scott McClellan was given information to relay to the press about the Valerie Plame
http://www.amazon.com/What-Happened-Washingtons-Culture-Deception/dp/1586485563

McClellan's book is ranked 11. Not bad considering he was part of the problem with trying to convince the media the Bush administration was not lying, then turned around and blamed the media for not doing their job uncovering the facts. We all know how I feel about the media. At least part of the media when they decide to cover anything but the troops and the veterans no matter what news is breaking about what is happening to them. Print media is doing a better job of informing the public than broadcast media does. I suppose it's not very entertaining to film a family at the grave site of a veteran who committed suicide because the wound inflicted in combat was never taken care of. If this was reality, then how can you explain reality TV ratings? They just use it as an excuse to cover useless self gratifying celebrities acting like idiots instead.

Years after the first stories began to be printed in the Washington Post and Hartford Courant regarding the deplorable conditions the PTSD wounded were returning to, there are some in this country preferring to attack the media for reporting on this. The government failed the veterans and their families but instead of facing this fact, people on the loyalist right spend countless hours attacking the media instead of the cause of the suffering they report about. What does this serve? Does it serve the veterans or does it serve the White House?

When organizations join together to get to the bottom of what happened they are also attacked for doing it. Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth joined forces and filed a law suit against the VA to provide care for the wounded veterans and get some accountability. This law suit uncovered emails from Dr. Katz regarding suicide and attempted suicide data they knew about but were releasing other figures instead of factual ones. When these emails supported the CBS report, CBS was attacked and so were the two organizations suing the government to provide the care they should have done automatically.

CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and VoteVets teamed up and filed a Freedom of Information Act order discovering the email sent by Norma Perez from Temple Texas VA to the mental health staff about the need to provide diagnosis other than PTSD then added in the issue of the cost associated with caring for PTSD veterans. Again, the organizations were attacked along with the media reporting on what happened.

We've read the editorials in the newspapers across the country and in hundreds of blog headlines, all attacking the reports instead of the problems. Do these people think the suffering is not real? Do they think the facts reported on are not supported by evidence? Do they think the VA and the DOD would be making all kinds of changes following these reports if the reports were not the truth?

This weekend I heard all of this attacked instead of the problem itself. One speaker at a conference said he spoke with Dr. Katz and the CBS report was wrong. Another speaker at the conference said that there were enough psychologist and psychiatrist in Central Florida as far as he knew, but he was speaking to a lot of people who have been having problems with getting appointments at the VA for mental health care. While most of the speakers in the sessions were telling the truth and facing the facts so that the problems could be corrected, others were attempting to minimize all of it. If there were enough psychologist and psychiatrists, then you would not have the need of private psychologists and psychiatrists donating their time free of charge as part of Give An Hour.

Psychiatr News May 16, 2008Volume 43, Number 10, page 11© 2008 American Psychiatric Association

APA Teams With Give an HourAPA has announced its partnership with Give an Hour, a national network of mental health professionals who volunteer their services to members of the military, veterans, and their families. APA urges members to visit <http://www.giveanhour.org/> and fill out a brief form to join the Give an Hour network. Once accepted, psychiatrists are asked to commit to giving one hour a week to an individual or family seeking help through the program for at least a year.
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/43/10/11-b

Keep in mind this was a NAMI convention and all about mental health. American Psychiatric Association joined forces with Give An Hour for a reason. The reason they are willing to give up money they usually receive for this time every week would not be happening if the VA and the DOD were doing their jobs and had no problems delivering care. This mental health convention was filled with consumers, a classy term for patients, and professional mental health care providers, yet some of these professionals are either way behind on data and information, or they were lying. I want to believe they are just uninformed. There could be no reason for defending the government otherwise.

Attacking Congress for funding the VA would make no sense otherwise. It would increase research and increase the funds to provide more time and mental health workers into the system. So why defend this not being done unless they really believe what the administration has been telling them all these years? I cannot find it easy to understand someone working in mental health defending harm being done when they have made their careers in providing care. The professionals at the top of the food chain have a reason to cover up what they did because not carrying out the agenda of the administration would have cost them their jobs and now they got caught for what they did in following their orders to do it. People lower on the food chain have no reason to cover up for the higher ups unless they simply don't know the facts. We have no idea what kind of information their bosses are giving them. We have no idea what other publications they read but apparently they are not reading anything from the APA.

Back to the defenders attacking the media in daily life, again, we have no idea what they are reading but they cannot be reading any of the obituaries. They cannot be watching CSPAN when it covers the hearings in Washington. They cannot be living with this everyday. If the media they do pay attention to are not providing them with the facts, then they are under the delusion the rest of the media has been lying.

One case in point which infuriates me to this day is Bill O'Reilly and Retired Col. Hunt on FOX, No Spin Zone. I was sent a copy of the show when O'Reilly and Hunt were denying the fact PTSD diagnosed troops were being sent back into combat on medications. They not only denied this was happening they were making fun of the fact this would be a harmful thing to do to the rest of the troops. O'Reilly and Hunt managed to inform the viewers of this popular show that none of this was happening while the rest of us were hearing from the DOD the admission it was being done. Not only did O'Reilly and Hunt come off like idiots, so did their viewers. Were they uninformed or were they lying? Was O'Reilly uninformed about homeless veterans when he denied there were homeless veterans or was he lying? It is his job to be informed. The facts came out of the government he was defending and telling his viewers this was not real. O'Reilly then had to admit there were homeless veterans, but passed off this condition as a matter of drug addicts and alcoholics, in other words, putting out the "who cares" attitude they deserve to be the way they are.

When suicides began to be reported because families trying to save the lives of others came forward to tell their stories, they were attacked. Their suffering was diminished to being a tiny fraction of the troops and not worth paying attention to. PTSD veterans and active military were attacked and blamed for what was happening to them. Some attacked them for trying to get out of service, being cowards and not wanting to serve, anything that would reduce the emotional tug at the heart for the rest of the nation. It never entered their mind that most of the men and women who committed suicide did it back home, when they were out of the dangers of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Perhaps the best indication of attacking the media was after the Washington Post reported on the conditions of Walter Reed. Hundreds of blog posts popped up attacking the Post instead of facing the fact these reports were real. So real in fact that the DOD was forced to do something about it. When it comes to facts, some people in this country would rather be uninformed so they can go off on their merry way believing the government is doing their jobs and the media, when they do bother to do these investigations are on some kind of witch hunt. In other words, when the government fails, blame the media. Don't try to fix what's wrong unless you happen to need it.


Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington