Veterans Advocates Want Accounability

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
May 26, 2014

Memorial Day is a great day to remember the price paid to obtain and retain our freedoms. It is even a better day to remember the truth, the whole truth no matter how painful it is.

In an interview Advocates Want Someone To Be Accountable For Veterans' Care Aaron Glantz said "Well, I think that the issue that people have with Secretary Shinseki is not that these scandals are necessarily his fault. It's more that he's been in this chair as Secretary of Veterans Affairs for six years now and has not done anything about these problems, which are of long-standing. So 2007, 2009, 2012 we had Inspector General's reports saying that the VA was cooking the books on how long veterans actually were waiting. So these problems are not new."

He's right. These problems are not new and they have not improved enough. Why? Because no one has been held accountable including members of Congress. Advocates tried to hold other heads of the VA responsible but we failed. People tend to forget that there have been many battles fought for the sake of our veterans during every war. The most troublesome came when the troops were sent to fight two wars yet no one thought about making sure the VA was ready for any of the wounded coming home.

The numbers from the Vietnam War were well documented so advocates knew what was coming. We looked back at the history of the real longest war this nation fought while reporters decided the official start of Afghanistan was more important than the first to die in Vietnam.

According to the Vietnam Memorial Wall "First battlefield fatality was Specialist 4 James T. Davis who was killed on December 22, 1961" while it also listed "The first American soldier killed in the Vietnam War was Air Force T-Sgt. Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr. He is listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having a casualty date of June 8, 1956. " As for the last, "The last pilot casualty in the country of Vietnam occured during the Embassy evacuation in Saigon, William C. Nystal and Michael J. Shea both died on the helicopter on April 30, 1975 approaching the USS Hancock in the China Sea (both are located at 1W, 124). The last pilot killed in the Vietnam war was Air Force helicopter pilot Second Lieutenant Richard Vandegeer who was killed on Koh Tang Island, Cambodia. This occured during the Mayaguez incident when his helicopter crashed on May 15, 1975. It is concidered the last combat action of the Vietnam War."

There you can see that calling the war in Afghanistan "the longest war" causes many of us to tear up.

The youngest Vietnam KIA is believed to be Dan Bullock at 15 years old.
The oldest person on the Wall is Dwaine McGriff at 63 years old.
At least 5 men killed in Vietnam were 16 years old.
At least 12 men killed in Vietnam were 17 years old.
There are 120 persons who listed foreign countries as their home of record.
At least 25,000 of those killed were 20 years old or younger.
More than 17,000 of those killed were married.
Veterans killed on their first day in Vietnam 997 (unconfirmed)
Veterans killed on their last day in Vietnam 1,448 (unconfirmed)
Number of Chaplains on the Wall -- 16 (2 Medal Of Honor)
Number of Women on the Wall -- 8 (7 Army, 1 USAF - 7,484 served)
There are 226 Native Americans on the Memorial.
There are 22 countries represented on the Memorial.
Most common name on the Memorial "Smith" with 667 veterans.
The most casualties for a single day was on January 31, 1968 ~ 245 casualties.
The most casualties for a single month was May 1968, 2,415 casualties were incurred.

We knew those numbers. We knew the numbers for Afghanistan because of how long Russia was there. We knew what was predicted about sending troops into Iraq because of the interviews done after the Gulf War when Dick Cheney used the term "quagmire" to explain why the decision was made to not invade Iraq and when General Norman Schwarzkopf said it would be like "a dinosaur stuck in a tar pit."

Reluctant to pursue unwinnable battles, he backed President George HW Bush's decision not to move on Baghdad and remove Saddam from power. Schwarzkopf's agreement to allow the Iraqis to use what had been no-fly zones proved fatal to the growing domestic resistance movements against Saddam. He later said: "Had we taken all of Iraq we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit." Although he supported President George W Bush's subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was severely critical of Bush's defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's extensive use of reservists and private contractors, and, when the casus belli of weapons of mass destruction proved false, he warned against ignoring the responsibilities of an occupying power.

But the VA was not made ready to care for the wounded by body or mind. According to American Federation of Government Employees, there were 1,516 Veterans Service Representatives working for veterans in January of 2003 but only 1,392 working in 2007. Ironically that was reported by Aaron Glantz for IPS in 2007.

We started screaming! No one heard us. We screamed about the lack of mental healthcare when 148,000 Vietnam veterans made the trip to the VA for help with PTSD for the first time knowing two wars would cause a rise in their need. Chris Roberts reported this on El Paso Times in 2007. "In the past 18 months, 148,000 Vietnam veterans have gone to VA centers reporting symptoms of PTSD "30 years after the war," said Brig. Gen. Michael S. Tucker, deputy commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He recently visited El Paso." But when they came for help, there was less help to care for them.

We want accountability because we've seen the problems. We also want it because we have seen what works and the flip side of the story too many times. We're greedy! We want the same help available for all of our veterans and their families. We know we can do better because it has already been done.

Hold people accountable but don't stop with the people in the chair today. We have to look back all the way with truthful eyes or we will repeat more mistakes and neglect more successes. They deserve the best we have to offer them since they did their best for us.