President Obama speaks at VFW Convention

President Obama announces job training services for veterans
BY LAURA MYERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Posted: Jul. 23, 2012

RENO -- President Barack Obama on Monday announced an overhaul of U.S. job training services for veterans returning home from war, saying it's still too tough for America's fighting men and women to find jobs despite the skills they learned in the military.

"We're going to set up a reverse boot camp," Obama said, addressing the annual convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars. He said it would provide job training, education and help starting new business for veterans in order to step up their "career readiness."

"Our American veterans have the skills America needs," Obama said to warm applause from several thousand veterans in the Reno-Sparks Convention Center. "It's still too hard for our folks to find work, especially our young veterans" returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama said he also signed into law a veterans jobs skills act to help speed credentials and certification in job specialties veterans learned in the military to help them get work at home.
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When Mitch" McConnell gave this speech in 2010, his priority was to make Obama a one term president. His list of things to do did not include taking care of the men and women serving this nation in two wars, taking care of the veterans already back home, taking care of the National Guards and Reservists needing jobs or anything else military families needed. Making Obama a one term president was the goal of the GOP elected to run the affairs of this nation. So what did they do? They cut budgets getting rid of a most of the jobs veterans usually take in public service as firefighters, police officers, teachers and other jobs so they can still be of service to their communities. They they complained about the unemployment rate they just voted to increase so they could "cut the deficit" at the same time most Governors didn't use their share of the stimulus money to keep veterans on the job.

Watch this video clip of McConnell and you'll see why it has been so bad for veterans in the last two years. While commercials down here in Florida talk about the unemployment rate at 8% for the "last three years" they fail to mention that in 2009 it was still the Bush budget and what they love to forget is the fact that while Presidents come up with their own thoughts on the budget the end result always comes from CONGRESS!!!!!!!

They control the money but love to blame the guy in charge no matter who it is so while Democrats complained about the Bush budget again the end result came from the people each state elected.

7,800 veterans as human guinea pigs may finally get justice

VA Must Disclose Veteran Drug Test Documents
By ANNIE YOUDERIAN

(CN) - Veterans won another court order requiring the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to hand over more documents about its Cold War-era drug experiments on thousands of Vietnam veterans.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in Oakland, Calif., said the documents requested were "squarely relevant" to the claim that the government failed to adequately notify veterans of the chemicals they were exposed to and what that exposure might do to their health.

The Army and the CIA, with the help of Nazi scientists, used at least 7,800 veterans as human guinea pigs for testing the effects of up to 400 types of drugs and chemicals, including mescaline, LSD, amphetamines, barbituates, mustard gas and nerve agents, the Vietnam Veterans of America and individual soldiers claim in a 2009 class action.

The government covered up the true nature of its experiments, which began in the 1950s under code names such as "Bluebird," "Artichoke" and "MKUltra."

In "Project Paperclip," the Army and CIA allegedly recruited Nazi scientists to help test various psychochemicals and develop a new truth serum using its own veterans as test subjects.

"Over half of these Nazi recruits had been members of the SS or Nazi Party," according to the class action. "The 'Paperclip' name was chosen because so many of the employment applications were clipped to immigration papers." read more here

Heavy combat puts service members at high suicide, PTSD risk

Utah study: Heavy combat puts service members at high suicide, PTSD risk
Military Research shows sending a small, all-volunteer military into combat repeatedly has ‘enormous implications,’ U. dean says.
By Kristen Moulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published 1 hour ago • Updated 1 minute ago

The more severe combat a warrior experiences, the more likely he or she is to later attempt suicide, new research at the University of Utah’s National Center for Veterans Studies shows.

It might seem like common sense, says David Rudd, the center’s scientific director and the dean of social and behavioral sciences, but it had never before been empirically validated, he says.

"This has enormous implications," says Rudd, who will discuss his research with the Congressional Veterans Caucus in Washington on Tuesday and at the American Psychological Association conference in August.

It shows there are ramifications when a nation sends a small, all-volunteer military into combat over and over and over again, he says.

"The severity of your psychiatric injury, the severity of your symptoms is clearly, undeniably tied to the severity of your combat exposure."

Moreover, it puts to rest the notion that warriors become more resilient, more comfortable the longer they are in combat. That’s a bromide sometimes used by those who dismiss combat as a cause because, after all, roughly half of suicides occur among military members who never leave the United States.

"It makes it hard to argue the case anymore that, ‘Hey, people who haven’t deployed are trying to kill themselves," says Rudd. "Yes, they are, but … it’s a separate issue. What this paper helps articulate is there are two different populations of people."

For those in his study who saw heavy combat, the findings are stark: 93 percent qualified for a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and nearly 70 percent had attempted suicide.
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When it feels terrible to love them

When it feels terrible to love them
by Chaplain Kathie
Wounded Times Blog
July 23, 2012


When it feels terrible to love them it is because we just don't understand Combat PTSD.

Christopher Thomas, of Helmsman Studios is directing a movie on combat PTSD called Terrible Love.

He emailed me about questions he had, so I called him back after I took a look at his promo and we talked for a long time. I was impressed by what I saw but more impressed by the passion in his voice and the important questions he wanted answers for.

One of the questions was "What do we have to do first?" Point blank my answer was that since we are so far behind on helping our veterans, we have to go to the families first if we are ever going to catch up. Most of the emails and phone calls I receive come from the families first and then the veterans they care about.

My job is to get them to understand what Combat PTSD is, what it does, why they act the way they do so they don't feel so lost, frustrated, hopeless and alone, and then what they can do to help someone they love. I tell them that when the veteran comes home from combat, it's our battle to fight for them, not against them.

I did it. We're heading into our 28th anniversary and have been together for 30 years. I know how hard it is and everything else that comes with it. Even knowing what I knew it was almost impossible to stay in the worst of times, so it is very painful to think about these families with little or no knowledge to help them get through it.

One of the reasons I am with Point Man International Ministries is to help the families as well as the veterans. The outreach and support we give doesn't cost much money at all. I crunched some numbers for the State of Florida and discovered if I traveled all over this state for an entire year reaching the 1.6 million veterans' families it would cost about $100,000 including the car I'd have to buy (example Chevy Equinox about $30,000), tolls, gas, food, lodging, printing and my time. But this wouldn't cost the state of Florida a dime considering how many veterans groups are in this state claiming to be addressing the needs of our veterans and collecting millions in donations every year. They could all pitch in.

PTSD can harm families of veterans is an article about a family and how this hits the entire family. My book For The Love of Jack is about living with it for 18 years and was published 10 years ago when I self published it right after 9-11-2001 when no one was talking about Combat PTSD simply because I saw all of this suffering coming. Remembering what it was like when I met my husband and there was nothing to help me help him was my motivation. Basically every family I help is because I know how they feel. It sucks!

It sucks the life out of you even now with information overload. These families end up turning to Facebook and overnight experts telling them some nonsense passing it off as advice and support. When a wife posts about what she considers emotional abuse, the response is usually to get a divorce instead of explaining the difference between true emotional abuse and what seems like it because of the symptoms of Combat PTSD, what a flashback does or even why they act the way they do.

Symptoms of PTSD that tend to be associated with C-PTSD include problems regulating feelings, which can result in suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or passive aggressive behaviors; a tendency to forget the trauma or feel detached from one's life (dissociation) or body (depersonalization); persistent feelings of helplessness, shame, guilt, or being completely different from others; feeling the perpetrator of trauma is all-powerful and preoccupation with either revenge against or allegiance with the perpetrator; and severe change in those things that give the sufferer meaning, like a loss of spiritual faith or an ongoing sense of helplessness, hopelessness, or despair.

But the fly by night "experts" offer the same advice they'd offer anyone never once addressing the fact that combat is not what everyone else goes through any more than they address the different levels of it or what the difference is between mild PTSD, full blown PTSD, secondary stressor and secondary PTSD.

We are the ones that calm them down or fire them up. Support them and help them to see they are not evil or we treat them as if they are worthless. We either stand by their side to help them get help or help them to become homeless. We save them when they try to commit suicides or find them when they succeeded.

We end up holding the guilt when we failed to stay or give them what they needed when we only did the best we could at the time because some hack gave us bad advice and made it all worse. Our love for them does not have to feel terrible.

If you've given up because the site you trusted turned out to be a lot of BS, don't give up. Do what I did and continue to do. Only go to the real experts to get the answers.

If we are ever going to undo the damage done when they come home, the families have to come into all of this right now. The suicides and attempted suicides go up because the DOD and VA are pushing failed programs they have finally admitted they cannot prove they work so this battle is in our hands.

Failing Veterans

What Others Say: Failing veterans
Those who served deserve better
Jul 20, 2012
This editorial appeared July 19 in the Pensacola News Journal.

A recent report shows we are failing our veterans, especially those returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Specifically, the Institute of Medicine recommended that soldiers returning from war be screened for post-traumatic stress disorder at least once a year. Officials there also said more research is needed to see if the treatment for the disorder is working.

An Associated Press story said it’s estimated that as many as 20 percent of the people deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have symptoms of PTSD. That could be more than 500,000 of the 2.6 million deployed. Equally troubling is the statistic that only about half of those diagnosed with PTSD seek treatment. The others don’t pursue treatment because they fear it could jeopardize their careers.

Clearly more needs to be done for these young people who have served bravely, many in fierce combat where they have killed the enemy or where they have seen their comrades wounded, maimed or killed. Those types of traumatic events can trigger PTSD.

The report also suggested treatment isn’t reaching those who need it most, or if it’s working at all.
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