The nation's top official for veterans affairs told reporters in Anchorage on Memorial Day that his agency can and must do a better job of reaching military veterans.
BY LISA DEMER
LDEMER@ADN.COM
ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki pauses for a chat with Fred "Bulldog" Becker IV of the Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club after a Memorial Day ceremony May 30, 2011, at the Veterans Memorial on the Delaney Park Strip. Shinseki attended the downtown event and delivered the keynote address at the Fort Richardson National Cemetery observance. He was also scheduled to fly to Bethel and Kwigillingok on his Alaska trip hosted by Sen. Mark Begich.
The nation's top official for veterans affairs told reporters in Anchorage on Memorial Day that his agency can and must do a better job of reaching military veterans.
Eric Shinseki, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, is in Alaska for several days at the invitation of U.S. Sen. Mark Begich. He spoke to a crowd of hundreds Monday at Fort Richardson National Cemetery.
During his time here, he's meeting with veterans in Anchorage. And he's traveling with Begich, a Democrat from Anchorage who is on both the Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees, to Bethel and the village of Kwigillingok.
Shinseki noted that Alaska has the highest concentration of veterans in the country, with 17 percent of the state population identified as such. Some 77,000 veterans live in Alaska.
Shinseki is a retired Army general who served as Army chief of staff from 1999 to June 2003. He clashed with then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the planning of the war in Iraq over how many troops were needed, calling for several hundred thousand soldiers during postwar occupation, many more than Rumsfeld wanted. Some military leaders have said since then that Shinseki was right.
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