Deployment for citizen soldiers takes the whole family

Military families feel alone, live as if bad news is imminent
By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Beacon Journal staff writer
July 16, 2012

Becky keeps her house a little cleaner when her husband is serving in Afghanistan, just in case.

She knows the odds of her husband dying or suffering a serious injury are small, yet the specter of a knock on the door haunts the edges of her consciousness.

So she clears the clutter from the kitchen table. She learns how to fix the lawn tractor. She handles the finances and takes out the garbage and lets her daughters kill their own spiders.

She wants her family to be able to run the household alone.

Just in case.

That kind of cautiousness is just one of the realities of sharing family ties with a member of the 1 percent, the proportion of the American population serving in the military.

For six months, Becky and the couple’s two daughters had to survive on the family’s savings while his military paycheck was delayed by complications with the transfer of Guard members to the regular Army. Even when the first check finally arrived, it was half what he makes when he’s home and working his regular job.

Becky, who volunteers at her church’s missions pantry, suddenly found herself on the receiving end.
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Iraq vet who hit officer says he drank to “forget”

Iraq vet who hit Springfield Township officer says he drank to “forget”
By Jim Carney
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published: July 15, 2012

Michael Plemons concedes that he had been drinking before he drove in a dark area along South Arlington Road near his home in March 2011.

He has denied little about that terrible evening.

As he steered his heavy-duty pickup, with its driver-side headlight out, between police cruisers parked on each side of the road — strobes flashing — he went left of center and hit something. It was an officer in a dark uniform with no reflective vest in an area with no street lighting.

He drove a little farther, turned around and, police say, he came back to see what he had hit.

On the pavement was Springfield Township police officer Mark Dodez, then 32, a 12-year police veteran and father of two young daughters. He is now partially paralyzed from the waist down.

Plemons tested positive for alcohol — 0.289, or three times the legal limit. He had previous traffic arrests, including four that were alcohol-related.

But there were aspects of Plemons’ life that generally were not known as his case came to trial.

He was an Iraqi war veteran.

“I took an oath to defend this country, against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he said. “I never thought I would be the enemy.”
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Former homeless veteran lands $4M government contract for Arlington National Cemetery

Former homeless veteran lands $4M government contract
By IKE WILSON
The Frederick (Md.) News-Post
Published: July 12, 2012

FREDERICK, Md. — Allen Edwards, CEO of EBA Enterprises Inc. and a veteran who was once homeless, recently landed a $4 million federal government contract to do construction work on the Arlington National Cemetery visitors center.

The award is the largest job Edwards has won since he started his Service-Disabled Veteran Owned HUB Zone-certified small business in 2004, he said.

EBA Enterprises Inc. has four employees, but the company is using about 30 subcontractors, many of whom are veterans, to install chillers for heating and air-conditioning systems, ductwork, ceiling and tiles, and do landscaping work at the visitors center, Edwards said.
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Auditors Say Billions Likely Wasted in Iraq Work

If your member of congress was in office when all of this was going on and they are now complaining about the "deficit" ask them why they didn't complain back then. That's the problem with most voters. Paying attention to what they allowed to happen would prevent them from getting away with it today! They want to cut everything we need but had no problem with this? They want to allow firefighters and cops to have to take minimum wage while risking their lives instead of doing something to help? They want us to go without help getting health insurance to cover us when we get sick and have nothing to replace what they complain about? They allow massive layoffs of public workers at the same time they want to make sure the "job creators" keep tax welfare without them having to do anything for it? This is why I do not trust politicians on either side. One side is just as bad as the other.

Auditors Say Billions Likely Wasted in Iraq Work
Jul 14, 2012
Associated Press
by Robert Burns

WASHINGTON - After years of following the paper trail of $51 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to rebuild a broken Iraq, the U.S. government can say with certainty that too much was wasted. But it can't say how much.

In what it called its final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds on Friday spelled out a range of accounting weaknesses that put "billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation" in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history.

"The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known," the report said.

The auditors found huge problems accounting for the huge sums, but one small example of failure stood out: A contractor got away with charging $80 for a pipe fitting that its competitor was selling for $1.41. Why? The company's billing documents were reviewed sloppily by U.S. contracting officers or were not reviewed at all.

With dry understatement, the inspector general said that while he couldn't pinpoint the amount wasted, it "could be substantial."

Asked why the exact amount squandered can never be determined, the inspector general's office referred The Associated Press to a report it did in February 2009 titled "Hard Lessons," in which it said the auditors - much like the reconstruction managers themselves - faced personnel shortages and other hazards.

"Given the vicissitudes of the reconstruction effort - which was dogged from the start by persistent violence, shifting goals, constantly changing contracting practices and undermined by a lack of unity of effort - a complete accounting of all reconstruction expenditures is impossible to achieve," the report concluded.
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PTSD Marine Iraq Veteran felt like a "zombie" on medication

PTSD Marine Iraq Veteran felt like a "zombie" on medication
by Chaplain Kathie
Iraq veteran Nick Wright said medications made him feel like a "zombie" among other things needing to be addressed. We know that medications do help level things so that therapy can work but Wright also said "It's just a Band-Aid." Medications for PTSD may numb the emotional pain but they do not heal it. That is the biggest problem with most of the "treatments" the DOD and the VA are using.

After 40 years of researching Combat PTSD, experts had discovered a long time ago what is necessary in healing it is addressing the whole veteran. Mind, body and spirit.

This is more of a wound to the spirit, the same spirit/soul that lives within the human mind. Forgetting about healing it first has taken us backwards. Telling them to pop pills that leave them numb allows PTSD to gain more control so they end up needing stronger drugs, more prescriptions for more of them and when they fail to relieve the veteran, they turn to other substances. After all if medication is what they need according to the VA, and they are not working, well then, something out there must. Right?

Hell no!

For Vietnam veterans trapped in Combat PTSD hell, medications are something they've learned to live with because of how long it was allowed to live within them untreated. Even they have been helped by addressing the whole veteran and a lot of what they have been suffering from has been healed so they can live a better quality of life. When you talk to them, you understand how it breaks their hearts that younger veterans are not getting what they need today so they don't have to suffer like them 30 years from now. None of it has to happen.

The sooner PTSD is addressed, the sooner it breaks down. The longer it goes on untreated, more of the core of the veteran breaks down. It hits every part of their lives.

Area veteran trying to find his own way out of war's
Posted: 07/16/2012
Oroville Mercury Register.com

CHICO -- Nearly 5,000 U.S. troops lost their lives in Iraq, but veterans groups estimate 60 times that many may have their transitions back into civilian life disrupted by symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

In 2007, Chico resident Nick Wright left the Marine Corps after three tours in Iraq, and stepped into a quagmire of emotional issues he is still trying to sort out five years later.

Except for a few counseling sessions with a veterans group shortly after coming home, he has tried to control his symptoms by relying on an inner strength.

"I feel the only thing that can change me is me," said Wright.

Wright has rejected alcohol and drugs -- even prescription drugs offered free by the government -- believing they only mask symptoms, and often lead to even deeper emotional problems.

"I'll have a beer now and then. Hell, I've earned the right," he said. "But I never want PTSD to be an excuse for addiction or domestic violence -- or sinking so low I might take my own life."

Like many warriors freshly diagnosed with PTSD, Wright was prescribed medications to control flashbacks and help him sleep.

"I took them for a couple of months, but felt like a zombie," he said. "I felt stupid. I had no motivation.

"It's just a Band-Aid," Wright said.

Wright still refuses to discuss emotional issues with Veterans Administration counselors. Since coming home, he has minimized his contact with the outside world -- a way of life he said returning troops call "bunkering down."

"PTSD has been around for centuries, they just called it something else," Wright said.

"I don't think anyone really understands it."

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Imagine that! He doesn't think anyone understands it? Well maybe the people he has been turning to don't but there is an enormous Army understanding Combat PTSD all too well.

For a start there is Point Man International Ministries "walking point since 1984" and treating Combat PTSD the way it needs to be treated first. Spiritually with understanding, compassion, experience and leading the way out of this darkness. They've been there. Most are still there living with PTSD but it lost the ability to destroy them. You probably never heard of them other than on this blog with occasional posts because they do not spend millions on public relations campaigns any more than they ask for millions of dollars from the general public. Most of the Out Post leaders for Veterans and Home Front leaders for families take money out of their own pockets to help others just like them and it works.

I am part of Point Man for this reason. While the experts I trust have been researching Combat PTSD for 40 years, I've only been doing it for 30, plus living with it married to a Vietnam Veteran. We've heading into our 28th anniversary. He is the reason I do what I do. He's also the reason why I know none of the suffering we're seeing has to happen.

If you want to know more about Combat PTSD, go to PTSD Videos at the top of Wounded Times Blog. It will open to Hero After War, one of the videos I created years ago. There are more PTSD videos on it including the one I made for Point Man International Ministries.

Some people hear the word "ministries" and think of someone hitting them over the head with a Bible instead of holding out a hand to help them. Point Man does not try to convert anyone. We just want to stop veterans from feeling like "zombies" and start to live again!