Open letter to Senate Veterans Affairs Committee

Dear Senator Sanders, The House and Senate have failed our troops and our veterans!


More and more leave military service while both houses refuse to hold anyone accountable for what is done to them while they are in. You guys hold hearings while families hold dead veterans in their arms screaming "why" when these men and women survived combat but could not find one reason to live one more day.

These are the facts

Comprehensive Solider Fitness increased suicide warning ignored by the DOD and Congress held no on accountable. The program passed off as Resilience Training, which replaced Battlemind failed these men and women. Each year we read headlines of the rise in suicides at the same time we read leaders saying they were doing something about it. The Congress turned around, renewed contracts, funded research that was passed off as new without ever once acknowledging the studies were already done in the last 40 years and never once asked for the money back when the results were this deplorable.

Just because OEF OIF Veterans, the first internet generation of war fighters have made the news, that does not mean any of this is new. Look up the records of what veterans all the up to the Gulf War came back to and finally learn the truth.

Has Congress ever once noticed that with the implementation of the Suicide Prevention reporting an increase in calls, no one asked why with all the other things the government has been doing in "preventing" PTSD? What about Suicide Prevention Fund had a surplus?

Or that this is the kind of "training" they have been doing?

Staff Sgt. Victoria Gettman, a lab technician instructor at Fort Sam Houston, told The Huffington Post that she was among 800 soldiers from the 264th Medical Battalion undergoing resilience training on Sept. 26. Almost all of the soldiers were fresh out of boot camp and in training for their first job in the Army.

After a 45-minute talk on how to cope with stress, the officer in charge turned the stage over to a chaplain for the sometimes controversial "spiritual fitness" part of the session.

No one was held to account for any of this.

When will Congress once and for all ask what works? When will all of you take a look at how we ended up with this?

Veterans 7% of population 22% of suicides yet we are expected to believe our government has been addressing it?

Senator Sanders I know you just took over as Chairman, but you have to get your staff to actually learn about what is real, what works, what is a waste of money and what families are going through if you are ever going to do anything meaningful to save their lives!