Ft. Hood victims and survivors deserve answers

Ft. Hood victims and survivors deserve answers
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 2, 2013

Lawmakers are pushing for Fort Hood families to have justice but no one seems to be asking what should be included in all of what they deserve. This is good for a start but far from fulfilling what they are owed.

Lawmakers to file bill to give benefits for Ft. Hood victims
KVUE News
by JESSICA VESS
September 2, 2013

KILLEEN, TX -- A group of lawmakers is filing new Legislation this week to get benefits for the victims of the Fort Hood shooting.

Senator John Cornyn and Congressmen John Carter and Roger Williams are presenting a bill called the "Honoring the Fort Hood Heroes Act." It would give both military and civilian victims the same status that was given to the victims of the September 11th attacks.

The fight for those rights has been building over the past year.

160 victims and their families released a 14-minute video last year asking for help.

To get more benefits, the Government must agree to change the status of the shooting. It's currently labeled as workplace violence, not an act of terror.
read more here

Widow of N. St. Paul native killed at Fort Hood speaks out
KARE 11 News
Boua Xiong
September 2, 2013

NORTH ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Kham Xiong had a way with people. In eighth grade he charmed himself right into Shoua Her's heart.

"He always knows what to do to make me happy and he was very caring and loving," Her said.

The two married right after high school in 2004 and dreamed of having kids, a big house, and a military career. Four years ago Xiong moved Her and their three kids from North St. Paul to Fort Hood, Texas to pursue his dream.

Xiong was getting ready for his first deployment when Her got word about a shooting on base. "I immediately texted Kham and he didn't reply back and I called and he didn't pick up so I started to get worried," she said.
read more here

Now let's look back at the beginning and how the press has reported this. First we begin with the reports from CNN on the Fort Hood massacre.

On November 5, 2009 at 6:14 pm CNN reported these highlights.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Source: Slain gunman identified as Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan (wrong)
NEW: One of the dead was a civilian police officer, official says
NEW: Senator says she was told soldiersere filling out paperwork to go overseas
More than one shooter may have been involved, Fort Hood spokesman says
(CNN) -- Eleven people plus a gunman were dead and 31 wounded after the gunman opened fire Thursday on a soldier-processing center at Fort Hood, Texas, officials said.

November 5, 2009 9:24 p.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Suepect in shootings wounded but alive, Army official says
Source: Gunman identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist
Senator: Hasan was "upset" about scheduled deployment to Iraq (wrong)
Shooting happened in building that is one of last stops before soldiers deploy

(CNN) -- At least one soldier opened fire on a military processing center at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday, killing 12 and wounding 31 others, officials at the Army base said.

PBS did a report that caught my attention since I had been on Fort Hood for a visit a few months before this happened. Several soldiers and family members were complaining about the lack of proper mental health treatment. It was bad before this day however considering Hasan was in fact part of the "treatment" they were getting, even with the attitude he had, no one was asking how many he treated got worse afterwards because of what he said to them or if gave proper medications.

Major Hasan was trained by the military to address combat trauma for our troops. Keep that in mind. If he kept getting bad reviews for how he treated soldiers, what was he telling them? Did he even know anything about PTSD considering he was trained around the same time they were still kicking out soldiers for "personality disorders" instead of PTSD? Did he end up involved with any of the soldiers who ended up committing suicide or trying to end their own lives?

If you think it isn't possible for him to play some kind of twisted mind game then you need to know what he was saying in 2007.

"It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims," he said during the PowerPoint presentation before his supervisors and other mental health staff members, according to the paper.

"US military doctors had worried that the suspected gunman in the Fort Hood shootings was "psychotic" and unstable but did not seek to sack him, National Public Radio reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed officials." But somehow none of this got tied into the fact that Ft. Hood had 10 soldier suicides in 2009 before this and "the second-highest of any Army post."
Sgt. Justin "Jon" Garza was one of them.

"While he was AWOL, Garza threatened to kill himself with a shotgun. Military personnel took him to Ft. Hood's Darnall Army Medical Center. Psychiatrists there diagnosed him with an adjustment disorder and depression and sent him home with his best friend, a fellow soldier. He was put on a Monday-through-Friday suicide watch. Eleven days later, on July 11 -- a Saturday -- Garza was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head."

This is how they were reporting about Hasan taking guesses instead of knowing any basic facts as it turned out.

An Army psychiatrist is suspected in the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, and the rampage is raising questions about whether there's enough help for the helpers, even though it's unclear whether that stress or fear of his pending service in Afghanistan might be to blame. An uncle of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan said Saturday that Hasan was deeply affected by his work treating soldiers returning from war zones. "I think I saw him with tears in his eyes when he was talking about some of patients, when they came overseas from the battlefield," Rafik Hamad told The Associated Press from his home near the West Bank town of Ramallah.

Fort Hood Shooting: A Closer Look at Soldiers and PTSD

Fort Hood, the site of Thursday's horrific attack on U.S. soldiers, was the focus of a NOW on PBS report about American troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Many of the thousands of U.S. troops discharged from the Army each year suffer from PTSD and say they lack the vital care they need. The Army claimed these soldiers were let go due to pre-existing mental illnesses or because they were guilty of misconduct. But advocates argue this was a way for the Army to get rid of "problem" soldiers quickly, without giving them the treatment and benefits to which they're entitled.

In our online coverage, NOW interviewed two Fort Hood soldiers about the personal trauma they experienced while fighting in Iraq.

That day I posted this.

Aftermath of Fort Hood shootings may be worse

As the news reports kept coming out today about the carnage at Fort Hood, my greatest fears were not for today, but for the next few months ahead. No one is talking about "secondary stressors" and this needs to be addressed quickly.

There are crisis teams heading there according to the press briefing by Lt. Gen. Robert Cone. This is one of the best things they can do. I spent months taking this kind of training and it is very thorough. The issue that we need to be concerned about is when there are thousands of soldiers, combat soldiers with multiple tours, many of them are dealing with mild PTSD. Mild PTSD is not that hard to cope with. They live pretty normal lives while covering up the pain they have inside. Many even cope well the rest of their lives but many do not. Like a ticking time bomb, PTSD rests waiting to strike if untreated. It waits for the next traumatic event and then mild PTSD turns into PTSD on steroids.

These are the soldiers that will need the greatest help as soon as possible.

These bases are very well secured. That makes the soldiers and their families feel safe. Think about going into combat and then making it home alive where you are supposed to be safe. Then having this happen.

"Francheska Velez, 21, from Chicago, was filling out paperwork when Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on the Texas base. She had only just returned from a tour in Iraq three days before, coming back early because she was pregnant, her father Juan Velez told Fox News Chicago. She was expecting a baby boy in May, he said." She was heard screaming for her unborn baby.

"Staff Sgt. Amy Krueger decided she was willing to put her life at risk for her country the instant a second airplane crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. "We looked at each other and knew, and the next day we were in the recruiter's office," recalled Kristin Thayer, who watched the attack with Krueger in a commons area at a college in Sheboygan. "Anything it took, anything our country needed of us, even if that meant giving our lives."

Among the dead were two VA employees. "Russell G. Seager, Ph.D., a 51-year old nurse practitioner at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee was killed in the deadly attack. He was a captain in the reserves." Juanita L. Warman, 55, a nurse practitioner at VA's medical center in Perry Point, Md. She was a lieutenant colonel in the Maryland National Guard, with two daughters and six grandchildren. She wanted to help female soldiers

There was a lot of guessing going on back then. Two psychiatrist were questioning Hasan's involvement with soldiers.

"First, I'd get a list of all the patients he'd ever treated and get in contact with them," said Dr. Thomas P. Lowry, a psychiatrist who served two years as a doctor in the Air Force and then held the top psychiatry positions at four hospitals before retiring in 1999. It's important to know how the doctor's former patients perceived him and understand the care they received, he said.

Dr. Jonathan Shay, who spent 20 years as a Veterans Affairs Department psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of combat trauma before retiring last year, said some of Hasan's former patients might worry that the stories they shared in therapy sessions could have contributed to the doctor's state of mind, or even feel some responsibility for the killings.

This has to be the only time Jonathan Shay has been wrong but it was based on what the media was reporting at the time. What else could he think considering no one ever thought someone feared to be psychotic would ever be able to "treat" soldiers or even more absurd, hate them and still be in that position.

Or that this was possible.

In late December 2004, one of the officers overseeing Army Maj. Nidal Hasan’s medical training praised him in an official evaluation as a qualified and caring doctor who would be an asset in any post.

But less than a week later, a committee at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center that oversees student performance met behind closed doors to discuss serious concerns about Hasan’s questionable behavior, poor judgment and lack of drive.

Disconnects such this were a familiar pattern throughout Hasan’s lengthy medical education in the Washington area, according to information gathered during an internal Pentagon review of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, and obtained by The Associated Press.

The review has not been publicly released, but the emerging picture is one of supervisors who failed to heed their own warnings about an officer ill-suited to be an Army psychiatrist, according to the information.

After all this is the type of things they do when they do really care.

Capt. John Gaffaney, 56, a psychiatric nurse. But according to varying eyewitness accounts, Gaffaney either picked up a chair and threw it at Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused killer, or physically rushed him from across the room.

Army Maj. Gen. Lie-Ping Chang, commander of the reserve force to which Gaffaney belonged, said that two eyewitnesses recounted how the reservist threw a folding chair and "tried to knock (Hasan) down or knock his gun down." Chang included this account in an essay submitted to USA Today.

Army Reserve Col. Kathy Platoni, a clinical psychologist who served with Gaffaney, said she was told that he rushed Hasan to within inches before being shot several times.

Platoni said she comforted Gaffaney as he lay dying in a building nearby where soldiers brought him after he was mortally wounded, ripping off pieces of their uniform to use as pressure bandages or tourniquets to stem his massive bleeding from multiple wounds.

“I just started talking to him and holding his hand and saying, ‘John, you're going to be OK. You're going to be OK. You've just got to fight,’” Platoni recalls.

He died shortly after that, she says. "I was still yelling, 'John, don't go. John, don't go.’”

But less than a year later Fort Hood was reporting "Four soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas died over the week. In all four cases, it appears the soldiers, all decorated veterans from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, took their own lives, according to Christopher Haug, a Fort Hood spokesman."

Then there was Staff Sgt. Josh Berry, wounded when the shooter opened fire inside a crowded medical building at the sprawling Army post in Texas.

While he was not one of the 13 soldiers who lost their lives or the 32 others who were struck by bullets, Josh Berry struggled through years of pain and suffering caused by the attack before he couldn't handle it anymore, family members said. The Mason native committed suicide on Feb. 13, 2013.

How many more committed suicide because of this? How many were discharged because of what Hasan did? How many lives were changed forever because of how much the military itself failed them? So many questions still needing answers and too few trying to find what real justice should be.