Rocky's News & Views/United We Stand

Israel and Iran

2008-05-08T02:32:00.000-04:00

With Iran racing forward with its nuclear program, Israel now believes the Islamic Republic will master centrifuge technology and be able to begin enriching uranium on a military scale this year, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The new assessment moves up Israel's forecasts on Teheran's nuclear program by almost a full year - from 2009 to the end of 2008. According to the new timeline, Iran could have a nuclear weapon by the middle of next year.

Iran, a senior defense official said on Tuesday, had encountered numerous technical obstacles on its way to enriching uranium but was now on track to master the technology needed to enrich uranium within six months.

Israel is also concerned that Teheran is developing a cruise missile that can evade interception by the Arrow, the IDF's anti-ballistic missile defense system. Iran is suspected of having smuggled Ukrainian X-55 cruise missiles and using them as models for an independent, domestic project. A cruise missile, which flies at low altitudes to dodge radar detection and interception, could be used to carry a nuclear warhead.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel had the ability to create the tools needed to ensure its continued existence. Hinting at Iran, Olmert said that nothing in the world could undermine or bring an end to Israel's existence.

In a speech to a Keren Hayesod group, Olmert said, "I am asking that you take this with you and tell it to your communities everywhere - the people of Israel are strong, the State of Israel is strong, there is no enemy that can destroy us."

"We will not place ourselves in a position where anyone will, in an effective manner, threaten us with destruction, because if there was one thing that has changed since the establishment of the State of Israel 60 years ago until today, it is not that here the Jews are safe in every situation, in every condition and that there will not be any dangers," Olmert said. "There are also dangers here, like in many other places.

"But here, my friends, the Jewish people can fight, and when it needs to, it fights, and when it fights, it wins."

Last week, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz said during a visit to the US that Teheran would likely achieve control of the technology to enrich uranium for an atomic bomb within a year.

In the past, the consensus in the intelligence community was that Iran had encountered technical difficulties with fuel enrichment and that its attainment of nuclear capability was much further off, Mofaz said, but a recent IDF Military Intelligence assessment showed that the Islamic Republic could go nuclear before the end of the decade.

Also Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned that more nations would follow the examples of Iran and North Korea and work to develop nuclear weapons. He said that the possibility that Syria was building a weapons-capable nuclear reactor before the IAF destroyed it on September 6 showed that NATO must find an answer to ballistic missile threats.

"The nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea threaten to set in motion a domino effect that will be difficult to contain," de Hoop Scheffer said in a speech at a missile defense conference at the Czech Foreign Ministry.

"If there is a serious suspicion that in Syria there was a facility in the making, it only increases the arguments... for finding a collective answer to a ballistic missile defense threat," the NATO chief said.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said last month that the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor would have produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs within a year of becoming operational.

"The number of states that possess ballistic missiles is already growing, slowly and surely," de Hoop Scheffer said. "The proliferation of ballistic missiles is a reality that concerns us all."

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OUTLAWING THE PIG

2008-05-07T11:31:00.000-04:00

Outlawing the Pig

By Janet Levy
FrontPageMagazine.com | 5/2/2008

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B4D7EA5D-074C-4D34-AB04-71E9354504CB

The practice of political correctness may soon be tallying another casualty: the pig. Increasingly, as America and the rest of the Western world continue accommodating Muslim religious demands, pork food products are being singled out for removal from dining tables and pig-related trinkets banished from the desks of office workers.

If this continues, good ol' American food, such as barbeque replete with hot dogs and ribs and the typical American breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausage, might be seen as the equivalent of political poison. Could outright censorship of pig depictions in drawings, pig references in literary works and pig portrayals in movies be far behind? Could the well-known, cartoon figure Porky Pig become a cultural embarrassment of our unenlightened past as we fear to utter the "P" word?

Though the notion may seem more appropriate for a comedy routine, an increasing number of pig-related incidents, accommodations and Muslim demands in recent years points to an uncertain future for our porcine friend and its place in our economy, culture and our culinary traditions.

In October of 2005, the United Kingdom, clearly further along on the road to dhimmitude due to its proportionally large and more radical Muslim population, banned piggybanks as promotional gifts from its banks. At about the same time, government social welfare offices called for the removal of all pig paraphernalia, including pig calendars, toys and accessories from employee desks. These new regulations were ostensibly implemented so as not to offend Muslim patrons.

Meanwhile, in the United States in 2007, several school districts removed pork products from their cafeteria offerings. Dearborn, Mich., schools banned pork completely to avoid the possibility that Muslims students might unknowingly eat it. The district later added special halal foods to its menu to cater to the demands of its Muslim population. An elementary school in San Diego that offers Arabic, single-gender classes and Muslim-only organized prayer, no longer offers pork to any of its students. And in Oak Lawn, Ill., where the administration is debating elimination of Christmas holiday celebrations, pork has already been banished from the school lunchroom.

Orthodox Jews, who follow kosher laws that prohibit the consumption of pork, have never demanded such special considerations for their chosen dietary habits nor have Jews feared accidental pork ingestion. They privately moderate their consumption according to their religious observances and often consume food prepared at home according to prescribed regulations.

Contrast this to how Muslims and their dietary habits are treated. In April 2007, a 13-year-old middle school prankster was suspended and his behavior labeled a hate crime for placing a bag with a ham steak on the lunch table of a group of Muslim students. That same month, Muslims started a Facebook group, "Fight Against Pork in Frito-Lay Products." The more than 1,800 participants sought to pressure the company to remove pork enzymes from its cheese seasonings.

Last year, Somali Muslim employees at a St. Louis Park, Minn. Target store refused to handle pork products, citing religious reasons. Target made special allowances for Muslim employees, who now scrutinize customer purchases and can call for assistance when a pork product appears at their check stand. Presumably, the Muslim employees knew they would be encountering bacon and pepperoni pizza when they signed on for their jobs and have no problem collecting a salary paid out of profits from pork sales.

In 2007, the Year of the Pig, an imam in Taipei complained after receiving a greeting card from Taiwan's foreign minister depicting celebrating pigs. When "Year of the Pig" postal stamps were issued, the Taiwanese government cautioned citizens about using them on letters and parcels to Muslim friends or to Muslim countries. That year, China banned pig images and the mention of pigs in television advertisement to avoid offending the country's Muslims.

This year, the popular story, The Three Little Pigs, was banned in a primary school in the United Kingdom as the school's administration thought references to pigs might offend Muslim pupils. Another school removed all books containing stories about pigs, including the talking pig 'Babe' from classrooms following complaints from Muslim parents. In 2007, a UK church school production of The Three Little Pigs was renamed The Three Little Puppies to maintain multi-cultural sensitivities. Ironically, the pig is mentioned often in the Koran as a derogatory reference to Jews.

In further accommodation to Muslims, Fortis Bank in the Netherlands and Belgium dropped its pig mascot. Knorbert the pig was eliminated after seven years with a statement from a bank spokesperson that "Knorbert does not meet the requirements that the multicultural society imposes on us."

A recent BBC report described how pork butchers are gradually being put out of business as Turkey adopts a more fundamentalist Muslim character. Pork slaughterhouses are being closed in record numbers to accommodate shariah law countrywide.

In 2004, a Muslim-owned investment company, Arcapita (formerly Capital Crescent Investments) acquired the 1,200-unit Church's Chicken chain. In 2005, Arcapita, with a net income of $70.5 million and assets worth $1.2 billion (2004), enjoined a franchisee from selling pork products. In correspondence with the franchisee, the corporate owners cited violation of shariah law as the reason for prohibiting the sale of bacon, ham and sausages. The restaurant owners were thereby forced to surrender to corporate demands and operate under shariah law.

Where will this end? Will "Animal Farm" be banned at our high schools and university campuses? Will the words "pork barrel spending" and "porker" be eliminated from the vernacular? Will Piggly Wiggly supermarkets be forced to change its name and re-brand its products? This could all be quite amusing if the implications weren't so grave.

The pig is an icon of American culture, a culinary tradition and an important component of our economy. While high grain prices and competition from Chinese imports are recognized as the two greatest threats to the industry, hog producers could be overlooking a larger threat to their livelihood looming on the horizon.

Pork production is a vital part of the U.S. economy, producing more than 22 billion pounds of meat annually, contributing almost $40 billion to the GNP and employing more than 500,000 workers in pork-industry related jobs. In addition, important pork co-products include heart valves, skin grafts for burn victims, gelatin, plywood, glue, cosmetics and plastics. At 28% of total world production, the U.S. is the second largest pork producer after China, which produces close to 50% of the world total. Pork ranks third in U.S. meat production behind beef and chicken and average yearly per capita consumption is about 50 pounds.

If the momentum to alter America's dining habits and cultural traditions to suit Muslim religious habits continues, American liberty, freedom and culture could actually be threatened. Laughable though it may seem on the surface, Arab petrodollar profits have the heft to use an economic, backdoor approach to implement shariah law in the United States against the will of the public. As Arab Muslims continue to heavily invest in our economy, they will continue to force submission to shariah law and undermine our democracy, individual rights and religious freedom. We must be vigilant and aware of this threat and act against it vigorously and immediately.

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ACT for America
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456
www.actforamerica.org

America THE REPUBLIC

2008-05-05T05:24:00.002-04:00

TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS
By Rocky

These words should be familiar to every American but how many give thought to what they really mean? Simply put, the United States of America is a REPUBLIC. We were founded as a Republic and a Republic we remain today, yet, few people give much thought to that these days and I wonder if it is even taught in schools today. From observing what my 13 year old daughter is taught in school, especially in American History and Civics classes, I am appalled at what they are not taught. For example, kids today, at least in the schools that my kids attend, are not taught about the Constitution, the very core of our laws and government, the document on which this nation was founded. In realizing that I began to wonder just how many adult Americans know about our form of government and just how far from it’s original origin we, as a nation, have began to stray?

Today, just about everything on the news is about the upcoming election, about “party politics”, i.e. debates and mud-slinging. We hear little about issues, at least to the point of how we, as a nation, are to solve the problems that threaten our very existence. What is this “party politics” any way?

Founded as a Republic, our nation is suppose to be “of the people, for the people and by the people”, yet, “We, the People”, have very little to say about any thing. Granted, you can say that we have elected representatives who speak for us, but do we? Do they really speak for us or do they speak in terms of the “Party line”? How many representatives do you know that vote as you wish them to vote rather than how their particular Party votes? That, to me, is one, if not the number one problem, of the many problems we face in this country. The people have no voice in reality. Our nation was not founded on parties, in fact, there is nothing in the Constitution that speaks of parties.

Our Representatives each must take an oath of office. That oath states that they swear, before God and the people, that they will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies. We, the People must not allow our elected Representatives to take that oath lightly! However, it appears that we have become so complacent in this regard that that is exactly what we are doing. This oath is a contract, if you will, between our elected Representatives and We, the People. This oath tells us that our Representatives will protect our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution. I fear, in fact, I know that they are not, nor are the courts, including the Supreme Court.

The recent passage of the gun bill which allows the government to block the sale of gun to veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prime example. This newly passed law, which was not passed by majority vote of the full Congress but only a partial representative body thereof during the Christmas break, allows the government, mainly the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, to label those veterans with PTSD as “mentally defective”. PTSD is not medically considered as a mental disorder, per se, but is rather listed in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual, DSM IV, the manual by doctors to make medical and mental diagnosis, as an anxiety disorder. Anxiety does not make one “mentally defective”. If it did a great number of our law enforcement personnel, judges, politicians, major business executives, actors and people in ordinary jobs would also fall under this category and be banned, by this new law, from buying a gun. This law is, in my opinion, also, unconstitutional.

The courts have yet to ascertain just what is meant by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, and whether or not said Amendment extends the rights of individuals to bear arms or just the state organized militias.

Pointing out that interest in the “character of the Second Amendment right has recently burgeoned,” Justice Thomas, concurring in the Court’s invalidation (on other grounds) of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, questioned whether the Second Amendment bars federal regulation of gun sales, and suggested that the Court might determine “at some future date . . . whether Justice Story was correct . . . that the right to bear arms ‘has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic.’ ”

Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 937–39 (1997) (quoting 3 Commentaries Sec. 1890, p. 746 (1833)). Justice Scalia, in extra–judicial writing, has sided with the individual rights interpretation of the Amendment. See Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation, Federal Courts and the Law, 136–37 n.13 (A. Gutmann, ed., 1997) (responding to Professor Tribe’s critique of “my interpretation of the Second Amendment as a guarantee that the federal government will not interfere with the individual’s right to bear arms for self–defense”).

To me, it is clear that until such time as the Constitution is further amended and said amendment ratified pursuant to Constitutional Law that the Constitution means just what it says and is written in such form as to allow even a individual with limited education to understand its meaning. In that regard here is what the courts say:

The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary, as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction, and no excuse for interpolation or addition. — Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat 304; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat 419; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat 419; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet 10; Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U.S. 139; Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U.S. 662; Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1; Edwards v. Cuba R. Co., 268 U.S. 628; The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655; (Justice) Story on the Constitution, 5th ed., Sec 451; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, 2nd ed., p. 61, 70.

To disregard such a deliberate choice of words and their natural meaning, would be a departure from the first principle of constitutional interpretation. "In expounding the Constitution of the United States," said Chief Justice Taney in Holmes v. Jennison, 14 U.S. 540, 570-1, "every word must have its due force and appropriate meaning; for it is evident from the whole instrument, that, no word was unnecessarily used, or needlessly added. The many discussions which have taken place upon the construction of the Constitution, have proved the correctness of this proposition; and shown the high talent, the caution and the foresight of the illustrious men who framed it. Every word appears to have been weighed with the utmost deliberation and its force and effect to have been fully understood. — Wright v. United States, 302 U.S. 583 (1938).

The courts are not without duty to keep our elected Representatives in check when they step on the rights of the states and individuals. It is the duty of the courts to protect the Constitutional rights of every American citizen.

The courts are not bound by mere forms, nor are they to be misled by mere pretences. They are at liberty — indeed, are under a solemn duty — to look at the substance of things, whenever they enter upon the inquiry whether the legislature has transcended the limits of its authority. If therefore, a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is a palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of thye courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution. — Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 661.

The recent law passed by our Representatives has yet to be challenged in the courts, however, it is my opinion that such a challenge is in order. Our Representatives must be mindful that “We, the People” are not going to continue to sit by and allow them to just walk all over us, at least I hope that is the case. If it is not, if “We, the People continue to be complacent we may soon find that our liberty and freedom, that we so cherish, is gone.

We give much attention to the freedom and the human rights of peoples in foreign lands. Our government, is ever ready to speak out against any government who dose not grant religious and political freedom to it’s people, yet, if we are paying attention, if we are mindful of what is happening in our own country we see such freedoms slipping away from us almost daily.

The First Amendment of our Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting as establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof”, yet we have seen it come to pass where Congress has done just the opposite, and they want to take it even further and take “One nation under God” from the Pledge to our flag and, thus, “to the Republic for which it stands.” Are we going to sit by and allow that to happen? I surely hope not! The Constitution clearly states that our Representatives, our government, is to remain out of the business of religion. Yet, if that religion happens to be Muslim our government goes out of its way to protect the rights and laws as established by the Islamic writings.

Wake up America!! Wake up before it is too late, before we begin asking ourselves the question, is this a dream, when our own government takes away what freedoms we have left.

More Distrubing News for America

2008-05-03T10:36:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Gaubatz: Islamic Manual in Falls Church, Virginia Calls on Muslims to Attack Olympians, Kill Priests and Nuns, Wage War on All Christians

http://theneinblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/gaubatz-islamic-manual-in-falls-church.html

Dave Gaubatz has posted a very disturbing discovery regarding a Jihad manual being sold at the Halalco Supermarket in Falls Church, Virginia. As Dave explains it on his Kids&Terrorism Blog:

"On 29 April 2008, I shopped at Halalco to verify the book is still available. It is located in the "Jihad" section of the bookstore. The manager 'Tariq' can show you the book and it is available for $12.95.

Following are some of the quotes:

1. "It is, in short, time to identify the enemy and declare the Jihad. Identify the enemy. Declare the Jihad. define its parameters. Indicate its opening statements. Delineate its outcome and indicate its end".

2. "The enemy is not merely a personnel but a method, a deen, with its Temples, the banks; with its holy places, the Stock Exchanges of the world; and its false scriptures, the data banks of figures, these magical millions and billions that hold the world's poor to ransom for the sake of a small elite of kafir power brokers, their core jewish, their allies the lawless Christians. It is with these the war must be waged".

3. "He who equips a fighter in the way of Allah, or looks after a fighters family at home is as good as one who fought".

4. "Priests in their churches, unlike recluse worshipping monks, should, of course be killed without any exception. Nuns along with Monks, deserve killing even more".

5. "No one has yet contemplated the impact of one destroyed Stock Exchange or Central Bank Archive".

6. "Not taking the jews and Christians as friends, not following their deen, not submitting to bid'a, neither its holidays (National Days, etc), nor in habits, not entering their places of worship, nor participating in their festivals-all this is vital in the prelude to the attack of a new Jihad."

7. "Strike at the time least expected. It follows that one should also strike at the place not expected. By extension, in light of the current situation, one may strike at several centres all at the same time, thus causing havoc in the enemy and in their response".

8. "One thing is certain-if the kuffar accept us and approve of us and claim they can live alongside us, then we have lost our Islam. The whole body-worshipping mushrik cult of Olympic fire worshipping sport is something unacceptable"."

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ACT for America
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456
www.actforamerica.org

Gas Prices Compared To. . .

2008-04-28T07:06:00.000-04:00

All these examples do NOT imply that gasoline is cheap; it just illustrates how outrageous some prices are....

You will be really shocked by the last one!
(At least, I was...)

Compared with Gasoline......
Think a gallon of gas is expensive?

This makes one think, and also puts things in perspective.

Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 ... $ 10.32 per gallon

Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ..........$ 9.52 per gallon

Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 ..... $ 10.17 per gallon

Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 ......... $ 10.00 per gallon

Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 . $ 33.60 per gallon

Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 .. $ 178.13 per gallon

Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 .. $ 123.20 per gallon

Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 ....... . $ 25.42 per gallon
Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 ....$ 84.48 per gallon

And this is the REAL KICKER...

Evian water 9 oz $1.49..$21.19 per gallon! $ 21.19 for WATER and the buyers don't even know the source

(Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)
Ever wonder why printers are so cheap?
So they have you hooked for the ink.
Someone calculated the cost of the ink at...............
(you won't believe it....but it is true........)
$5,200 a gal. (five thousand two hundred dollars)

So, the next time you're at the pump,be glad your car doesn't run on water, Scope, or Whiteout, Pepto Bismol, Nyquil or God forbid, Printer Ink!

Just a little humour to help ease the pain of your next trip to the pump...

And - If you don't pass this along to at least one person,
your muffler will fall off!!

Gas Prices

2008-04-28T06:09:00.001-04:00

Sent to me by a friend,

If they are equal partners than why are we still paying so much for gas? One would believe that Exxon is already gleaning 50% of the profits by selling the oil back to itself in the US. Plus the fact that as the worlds largest producing and exporting company they would have a say as to the cost of a barrel of crude.

About Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery (SAMREF)

SAMREF is an equally owned joint venture between Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) and Mobil Yanbu Refining Company Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation).

Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) is the worlds largest oil producing and exporting company and was established by Royal Decree in 1988 to assume the responsibilities of its predecessor, Aramco that has a history dating back more than 70 years.

Exxon Mobil Corporation is a global energy company with a history dating back more than 132 years and which conducts business in 140 countries on every continent throughout the world.

SAMREF is a complex refinery which was formed for the development, construction, ownership and operation of crude oil refining facilities in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. Following the construction and start-up of the facilities, it commenced operations on November 15, 1984.

Obama - From the Canadian Free Press

2008-04-27T10:14:00.001-04:00

Some interesting questions raised from this article in my opinion, questions that need to be answered before election time!

The Canadian Free Press
The Real Obama Story Exposed!
By JB Williams Monday, April 14, 2008

Other than the honor of holding the most far left voting record in the U.S. Senate as a freshman law maker and former black activist from Chicago who has spent the last twenty years supporting the anti-American, anti-white hate sermons of Rev. Wright, we know very little about Barrack Hussein Obama… until now!

Agent of Change

The Obama campaign is centered on the simple notion of change. But what kind of change are we talking about here? The Obama campaign has remained vague about the specific kinds of change in their agenda, barking platitudes from the stump without offering any real information.

Obama has been even more vague about any methods for producing that change and on the rare occasion when a news reporter might ask the right question, Obama mumbles and stumbles off into more empty platitudes or storms off the stage as if the questions were not fair.

But the Obama agenda and methods for change may finally be coming into focus…

Letter from Africa

In a letter received from American missionaries who have spent the last twelve years living and serving in Africa, the Agent of Change comes into focus.

The letter opens with “Thanks for sending out an alert about Obama. We are living and working in Kenya for almost twelve years now and know his family (tribe) well. They are the ones who were behind the recent [2007] Presidential election chaos here. Thousands of people have been displaced by election violence (over 350,000) and I don’t know the last count of the dead.”

The letter goes on, “Obama, under “friends of Obama” gave almost a million dollars to the opposition campaign who just happened to be his cousin, Raila Odinga, who is a socialist trained in East Germany. He has been trying to bring Kenya down for years and the last president threw him in prison for trying to subvert this country!”

Then the missionaries make their biggest statement, “What we would like you to know is what the American press has been keeping a dirty little secret. Obama IS a Muslim and he IS a racist and this is a fulfillment of the 911 threat that was just the beginning. Jihad is the only true Muslim way.” This message comes from American missionaries who have been working among Muslim groups for the last twenty years, the last twelve among Obama’s tribe (family) in Kenya.

The assertions made by this missionary group are astounding. But the assertions raise questions which are even more astounding.

The letter further states, “He is not an American as we know it. Please encourage your friends and associates not to be taken in by those that are promoting him. It is world wide jihad. - By the way, his true full name in Kenya is Barrack Hussein Muhammad Obama.”

Americans learned that Obama is indeed a racist when they learned that he and his family have been spending their Sunday’s with the racist Rev. Wright for the last twenty years. But Obama has repeatedly denied being a Muslim, despite his father being a Muslim and his time spent in a Muslim school in Jakarta.

Obama is not the only agent of change candidate

Obama’s cousin Raila Odinga also ran as the agent of change candidate in Kenya 2007, as you can see on his campaign web site. As an East German trained socialist, and son of a well-known socialist father, Raila Odinga pursues heavy handed socialism in Africa. But like his comrade cousin in America, he uses the acceptable guise of Democratic Socialism in that pursuit.

Numerous historical accounts exist and a summation of those reports appears at Wikipedia.

- Raila was charged with treason and was detained without trial for six years.[2]

A biography released in July 2006 suggested that Raila was more involved in the coup than previously thought. After its publication, some MPs called for Raila to be arrested and charged,[3] but the statute of limitations had already passed and, since the information was contained in a biography, Raila could not be said to have openly confessed his involvement.[4]

Released on February 6th, 1988, he was rearrested in September, 1988 for his involvement with the Kenya Revolutionary Movement (KRM),[5] an underground organization pressing for multi-party democracy in Kenya, which was then a one-party state.

Raila was released on June 12th, 1989, only to be incarcerated again on July 5th, 1990, together with Kenneth Matiba, and former Nairobi Mayor Charles Rubia.[6] Raila was released on June 21st, 1991, and in October, he fled the country to Norway alleging government attempts to assassinate him.[7] - - -

Today, Odinga is co-president of Kenya…

Election Fraud

The claim of election fraud before an election is even held has become a common tool of socialists around the world, including Democratic Socialists here in the U.S. Used to force their way into the political arena where they would otherwise be unwelcome, it allows them to assert that the “will of the people” was subverted and thereby use the power of the violent masses to force change.

In the case of Obama’s cousin in Kenya, he was successful in forcing his way to a co-presidency by these means. However, as the missionaries report - in the chaotic violence led by Raila Odinga supporters, “not one mosque was burned down, but hundreds of churches were burned down, some with people in them, burned alive.”

Further Investigation

The claims made in the letter from the missionaries would be damning to the Obama campaign here in the states, to say the least. If true, these statements would not only end Obama’s quest for the Oval Office, but his political career on the whole.

Before jumping to any conclusions, such powerful claims demand further investigation and upon such further investigation, here’s what I found.

In numerous international reports from Kenya to the BBC in England, these claims hold up very well. In a post titled Barack Obama Lauded by Marxists, the writer discloses even more connections and information beginning with “Unsurprisingly, Marxists from Africa to the Americas are lauding young Barack Obama as their “agent of change." 
There are reasons why Barack Obama enjoys the support of international thugs like his cousin in Kenya, Chavez in Venezuela and Ahmadinejad in Iran. They share a common view of what kind of changes are appropriate for America and the world. They also share common ground in the methods they use to force such changes.

A source familiar with Kenyan politics warns Americans to look into Barack’s Kenyan connections before they leap:   "--Raila Odinga is of the Luo tribe to which Obama’s late African-Arab Muslim father belonged. Obama’s older brother still lives there; Abongo ‘Roy’ Obama is a Luo activist and militant Muslim who argues that the black man must liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture. Sound a lot like a Sunday sermon from the Rev. Wright?

He urges his younger brother, Barack, to embrace his African heritage, which he has. Barack Obama has a Kenyan grandmother and several African brothers and sisters as well. The Obama connections with both international thugs and international socialism, is beyond dispute.

What About All that Obama Campaign Money?

Obama has set historical records in campaign fund raising. But where is all that money coming from since it can’t be coming from the “poor” American citizens he claims to represent?

For starters, Obama’s campaign site asks donors “which country” they are from, openly indicating that campaign contribution to the Obama campaign are coming from all over the world, not just all over America. The Obama campaign MUST disclose which countries he is receiving campaign contributions from and why…

Just as Obama through his “Friends of Obama” organization sent almost a million dollars to support his cousin’s campaign for socialist power in Kenya, it appears very likely that socialists and anti-American thugs are also participating in the American election process by sending foreign funds to the Obama campaign here in the states.

Short of forced full disclosure from the Obama campaign, it is not easy to establish the money trail beyond any reasonable doubt.

Fortunately, Obama has been campaigning as a “full disclosure agent of change.” So his campaign and his minions should have no objection to immediate full disclosure regarding where all that campaign money is coming from, specifically out of the country.

In Closing the First Part in this Series

Though this story provides a much needed glimpse into who Barack Hussein Muhammad Obama really is, it raises far more questions than answers, questions that MUST be asked of and answered by the Obama campaign. Without public pressure to do so, the leftist MSM will never ask such questions and the Obama campaign will not offer any answers.

The people truly have a right and a desperate need to know who this man is. They will have to force the MSM to ask the questions if they hope to find out the answer and hopefully, they will do so before the man is sitting in the Oval Office!

2008-04-27T07:23:00.000-04:00

ORANGE COUNTY ( CALIFORNIA ) NEWSPAPER

This is a very good letter to the editor. This woman made some good points. For some reason, people have difficulty structuring their arguments when arguing against supporting the currently proposed immigration revisions. This lady made the argument pretty simple. NOT printed in the Orange County Paper....................

Newspapers simply won't publish letters to the editor which they either deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with the philosophy they're pushing on the public.. This woman wrote a great letter to the editor that should have been published; but, with your help it will get published via cyberspace!

New Immigrants

From: "David LaBonte"

My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to "print" it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined.

Dave LaBonte (signed)

Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register :

Dear Editor:

So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in thei r new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.

They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.

Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity. Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France and Japan None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here.. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.

And here we are in 2006 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.

And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty , it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.
(signed) Rosemary LaBonte

KEEP THIS LETTER MOVING. FOR THE WRONG THINGS TO PREVAIL THE RIGHTFUL MAJORITY NEEDS TO REMAIN COMPLACENT AND QUIET!! LET THIS NEVER HAPPEN!!

2008-04-25T05:57:00.001-04:00

Europe facing radicalization over the Web
OLIVIER GUITTA

http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/04/20/europe_facing_radicalization_over_the_web/5616/

A few months ago Bernard Squarcini the head of the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), the French equivalent of the FBI, told the French daily Libération regarding Islamic radicalization: "An ideological transformation can be done in three months on the Web. An individual can at night auto-radicalize himself via the Web and get in touch with leaders of terrorist organizations." This assessment shows how dire the situation is in Europe when it comes to al-Qaida's use of the Web.

Al-Qaida uses the web for four different tasks: propaganda; communication, mostly to instruct those in the field; training future combatants, a kind of online university of terrorism; and to send messages to the enemy, mostly to the West.

For instance, one of the most popular jihadist sites in France is one which translates books on the jihad in French and gives lessons on urban guerilla tactics. (This site got more than 3 million visits from France alone). Another Web site explains how to get weapons in the West (hide, assemble and breakdown) and how to manufacture bombs from products found in supermarkets.

The propaganda primarily targets youngsters. Some of them join the virtual jihad or "webtifada", i.e. cyber criminality.

In March 2006, the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Exterieure), the French equivalent of the CIA, tracked down a forum where jihadists recruited hackers to destroy "infidels'" Web sites and government sites. The jihadists recommended: "If you can't slash their throats, then at least destroy their sites." And on May 15, 2006 the Metz, France police arrested a young man who, under the alias Yanis, had attacked 1,161 sites including 710 linked to the Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Fortunately in Europe, even though the number is growing only a minority is actually joining the virtual jihad. According to Louis Caprioli, ex-boss of the anti-terror unit of the DST, the number of French volunteers in Iraq is in the tens. Confirming this, expert Walter Akmouche states that statistically, to get one jihadi, you must contact an average 45,000 people.

Which vehicle do the jihadis use on the Web? According to the DST, the chat room Paltalk is regularly used to hide operations. They also use Instant Messaging services such as Messenger or Skype and "dead e-mail boxes" which allow them, with the username and password, to retrieve unsent messages. But they also exchange information and coded files on forums devoted to soccer, music or any topic totally unrelated to Islam.

It is important to note that to access true terrorist sites; one has to be an insider and needs to know the real number-coded URL address, which often changes.

Also after years of research, al-Qaida has developed software called "Secrets of Mujahedin," that allows secure exchange in Arabic on electronic networks. It has allegedly been in use for over a year on clandestine forums close to al-Qaida, especially for jihadist groups in Iraq and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. This has been a formidable weapon for al-Qaida and numerous intelligence services and private companies have been trying to break it.

How is Europe facing this threat? First by closely monitoring jihadist Web sites. For instance, last year, Holland devoted 10 million euros (about $15 million) to fighting extremism. Thus, more than 150 Internet sites broadcasting extremist ideology were the subject of complaints and were restricted.

In France, about 30 potentially dangerous sites are monitored by some units of the UCLAT (Unité de Coordination de la Lutte antiterroriste), the French counterterrorism coordination unit. Software allows them to trace back the origin of a server or the IP address of a user and if they act fast, they can trace the network and use it against the Islamists using it. For instance, the recent monitoring of a forum allowed the unit to trace a couple of Salafist groups in the suburbs of Paris that were recruiting jihadis and organizing their trip.

One of the main problems facing European authorities is that simply shutting down Web sites is not very efficient since these sites just end up operating under new names.

European countries are also using the legal tool to fight al-Qaida's use of the Web in Europe. In a first, a Swiss court last summer sentenced several individuals including the widow of the killer of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan's Northern Alliance's leader killed by al-Qaida on September 9, 2001, and her boyfriend, for having created and operated four Web sites and chat rooms for extremist propaganda and exchange of information by terrorist groups.

European authorities are taking this issue very seriously. On Feb. 1, France's interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie told the French daily Le Figaro that the use of the Web by terrorists was "one of my major concerns, and one of the priorities assigned to the [security] services. This requires additional material, forces specialized in fighting cyber-criminality, legal resources. I want us to be able to stop the terrorist propaganda, find the operational networks, track them down and prevent them from acting."

--

Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACT for America
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456
www.actforamerica.org

VETERAN SUICIDES

2008-04-24T09:15:00.001-04:00

April 22, 2008
In Federal Suit, 2 Views of Veterans’ Health Care
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes. com/2008/ 04/22/washington /22vets.html? ref=todayspaper
SAN FRANCISCO — The Department of Veterans Affairs is struggling to meet the skyrocketing demand for medical services as an unanticipated flood of former soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan seek help along with a parallel surge of claims from aging Vietnam veterans, according to both sides in a trial that opened Monday in federal court here.

The lawsuit was brought by two groups, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, seeking to force the government to streamline its procedures for treating former soldiers, particularly those suffering from combat trauma and other mental health problems.

Opening arguments painted sharply different pictures of the department’s success. The veterans groups said the department was ignoring a mental health crisis and was so swamped that former soldiers were dying needlessly. The defense countered that the country’s largest medical care system was adding the personnel needed to cope.

“Our ultimate goal is guaranteed health care, timely health care, timely decisions on disability payments,” Gordon P. Erspamer, the lead lawyer representing the two veterans groups, said in an interview.

“The system is choking on the claims; the delays are unconscionable,” Mr. Erspamer said.

The trial, before Judge Samuel Conti, an Army veteran of World War II, does not seek monetary damages but asks the court to appoint a special master or otherwise intervene to make the department run more efficiently.

Claims for help from the department jumped 25 percent in recent years, hitting 838,000, Richard G. Lepley said in his opening statement for the government.

The defense said the jump was generated by a combination of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, where head injuries that can lead to stress problems are a signature issue, as well as an upswing of Vietnam veterans seeking help for medical conditions associated with aging. News coverage from the current wars has also led to new mental health problems among Vietnam veterans, said Kerri J. Childress, a spokeswoman for the veterans department in Palo Alto, Calif.

“I don’t think anybody had any idea how long the war was going to go on,” Ms. Childress said, referring to Iraq. She added that there was no way to fully anticipate the demand for medical care from Vietnam veterans.

The department is falling short of its goal of addressing claims within 125 days, saying that it was now closer to 180 to 185 days, Mr. Lepley said. But he said the department had added 3,700 mental health care professionals in the last two years, bringing the total to 17,000, and started a program where anyone feeling suicidal could get attention within 24 hours and a follow-up appointment within two weeks, he said. The program started last summer, he said, so it is too new to measure its effectiveness.

Over all, there are 6,600 suicides per year among the 25 million veterans of all wars, representing about one in five suicides in the country, Ms. Childress said. There are an estimated 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the 7.8 million veterans treated by Veterans Affairs, she said. The suicides tend to be more frequent among older veterans, she said, citing statistics from data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number — 126 suicides a week, higher than the 120 published in previous studies — was in a December e-mail message from Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health services for Veterans Affairs, to Dr. Michael J. Kussman, the under secretary for the Veterans Health Administration in the department. Mr. Erspamer displayed the message in his opening argument.

The department has long been reluctant to release specific numbers regarding suicides or suicide attempts, lawyers for the veterans groups said. “We certainly think there was a cover-up in some sense,” said Heather Moser, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

A second department e-mail message from Dr. Katz shown at the trial starts with “Shh!” and refers to the 12,000 veterans per year who attempt suicide while under department treatment. “Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?” it asks.

Katz Resignation Requested

2008-04-24T07:32:00.000-04:00

AKAKA CALLS FOR RESIGNATION OF VA MENTAL HEALTH OFFICER KATZ OVER ALLEGED COVERUP OF VETERANS’ SUICIDES

http://www.veterans .senate.gov/ public/

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI), Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, called for the resignation of Dr. Ira Katz, Mental Health Officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs, following reports that Dr. Katz was involved in efforts to cover up the number of veterans attempting suicide. Akaka sent his request by letter to Dr. Michael Kussman, VA’s Under Secretary for Health.

“Dr. Katz’s personal conduct and professional judgment have been called into question. I believe veterans, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, would be best served by his immediate resignation,” said Akaka.

Dr. Katz is VA’s Deputy Chief Patient Care Services Officer for Mental Health.

Chairman Akaka’s letter is enclosed below:

Dear Dr. Kussman:

I am writing to request the resignation of Dr. Ira Katz, Deputy Chief Patient Care Services Officer for Mental Health.

Dr. Katz’s personal conduct and professional judgment have been called into question by his response to the mental health needs of veterans, and in particular to veteran suicides. I believe veterans, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, would be best served by his immediate resignation.

America ’s veterans deserve mental health care of the highest quality. Many veterans returning from combat have complex mental health needs, and VA must be fully able to meet those needs. VA cannot be complacent in its efforts to prevent veteran suicide. I look forward to working with you to provide veterans with the best services possible.

Don't Ignore Your Kids Actions, Moods ect.

2008-04-21T06:39:00.001-04:00

South Carolina Student Planned to Bomb High School - Chesterfield High

Posted: 20 Apr 2008 10:21 PM CDT

Ryan Schallenberger, 18, was arrested Saturday after his parents called police when 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate was delivered to their home in Chesterfield and they discovered the journal.

A high school senior, Schallenberger had collected enough supplies to carry out the bomb attack and detailed the plot in a diary that included maps of the building and admiring notes about the Columbine killers.

The teen planned to make several bombs and had all the supplies needed to kill dozens at Chesterfield High School, depending on where the devices were placed and whether they included shrapnel, Lear said. Ammonium nitrate was used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people.

“The only thing left was delivering the bombs,” the police chief said.

Schallenberger kept a journal for more than a year that detailed his plans for a suicide attack and included maps of the school, police said. The writings did not include a specific time for the attack or the intended targets.

He also left an audio tape to be played after he died explaining why he wanted to bomb his school. Lear wouldn’t detail what was on the tape except to say Schallenberger was an angry young man.

From The Herald Online - Rock Hill S.C.

The parents of 18-year-old Ryan Schallenberger became concerned after 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate were delivered to their house Saturday, authorities said. They then found a lengthy journal with maps and details of a planned attack the teen called “Columbine III.” That’s when they called police.

The senior at Chesterfield High School, about 65 miles southeast of Rock Hill, was arrested and jailed, charged with making bomb threats. Authorities say more charges could come today.

Officers believe Schallenberger planned to act alone — all the journal entries and descriptions of plans are written with singular pronouns.

“He seemed to hate the world. He hated people different from him — the rich, boys with good-looking girlfriends,” Lear said.

Police found bomb-making materials in the Schallenberger family’s home Saturday evening, Chesterfield Police Chief Randall Lear said. They also confiscated the journal and an audiotape they said Schallenberger planned to leave behind after the attack. Lear wouldn’t say what was on the tape, but said he believes his department intercepted a serious threat.

“There’s no doubt about it that he planned to go off,” Lear said. “He had everything he needed to do what he said he was going to do. From all indications, he had no plans of coming out of it alive.”

His parents could not be reached for comment.

Officers and bomb-sniffing dogs searched the Schallenberger’s property until sundown on Saturday, and the State Law Enforcement Division used a helicopter to fly over the area, looking for anything suspicious. Officers called off the search when it got dark and started again Sunday morning.

By Sunday night, they hadn’t discovered any guns or other weapons that belonged to Schallenberger or anything else they considered suspect.

In his writings, Lear said Schallenberger wrote that he admired the two teens who killed 12 students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, Lear said.

Investigators interviewed friends and casual acquaintances of the teen, sending tremors through the town of 1,500 on Sunday, the nine-year anniversary of Columbine.

“People are rattled,” Lear said, adding that fear was amplified because Schallenberger’s actions never hinted at something like this. “We never had a problem with him, as far as I know. He never even had any school discipline. He didn’t wear black clothing.”

2008-04-09T06:02:00.002-04:00

This is posted here just as I posted it on our Ranger website and other military sites and now I share my thoughts with you the American public.

I am sick of hearing about the media making so much out of a few civilians getting killed in war zones; about how our military is killing innocent people, no murdering them, it more how they put it. Well in war people get killed, the innocent along with the guilty, what ever and whoever the innocent are.

We know not to kill babies who are not carrying weapons or women who are simply walking along minding their own business, unless their business is to aid the enemy, that we are meant to kill, in some for or fashion.

Do our enemies care about the killing of innocents, theirs or ours, hell no they don't but does our media rant and rave about that? Hell no they don't. How about the innocent civilian workers who were killed recently in the Green Zone? What does our media say about that? Little, very little that's what! You might hear about it once or twice on the evening news but then it is over and you hear no more about it.

When you are engaged in a war everyone who is not in the same uniform as you is suspect and could be a danger so, hell yes, we watch them and if they appear to be doing, or going to do, something that might cost an American life then blow them the hell away! Is it better to wait and see if they kill one of our own before you act?

How many politicians, or members of the media, do you think would walk down the middle of and Iraqi street and not shoot if they felt, in anyway, their life was threatened? Not many, but, then, they may not shoot at all they may just simply attempt to talk them to death.

That is what they, especially the politicians, do to us, they talk us to death with bullshit and call it justifiable. They lie to us, they steal from us, they send us in harms way and then call us murders if we kill someone who happens to be an innocent, something, most often, discovered after the fact.

If on the other hand they kill us they say, "Oh we are so sorry we lost another American life in this war on terror." The terror I feel does not come from an enemy in Iraq, Afghanistan or any other foreign country but from the ones right here in our own back yard. The ones that I fear the most are now up for election for President of this country. They spend millions, may billions when you total it all up, and for what, so they can feed us more bullshit and tell us we should like it!?!

Why didn't the government put President Truman on trial for mass murder when he ordered the A Bomb dropped during WWII, did he not kill hundreds of thousands of "innocent" people, women, children and non combatants? Was that different than a soldier killing someone who they felt in their own mind was going to kill them? Murder is one thing but killing in a war out of fear of being killed is quite another. I can tell you and I know most of you know this to be fact that know me, in Nam if I thought anyone, and I mean anyone, was going to kill me or one of my team they were dead, plain and simple, end of story now let's move on to the next mission!

You can not send troops into harms way day in and day out, one tour after another and not expect those troops to live in constant fear, fear that will cause them to, sometimes, make mistakes and kill an innocent person. Hell, I am not in a war zone but I can tell you that if you approach my house in a threatening manner I will blow you to hell and back! Why you might ask? I will tell you why, simply because I don't know who to trust anymore! I don't trust our government as far as I can throw them, I don't trust the people around me as they are so bad off financially up here where there are no jobs that I don't know if they are coming to rob me or not. I don't trust the cops because I know that since I am a Vietnam vet they don't trust me not to be insane, on drugs or mentally defective. So what is one to do anymore?

I am to the point that I am coming to believe that all that I was taught as a child was nothing more than a lie. I use to have faith in our government, in our press, in what I was told on the evening news, yet, now I have learned that if I do I am a fool as it is not truth I am hearing but someones version of the truth, what ever that may actually turn out to be. Now even when I hear truth I am suspect of it as how do I "really" know that it is true.

Fox says that we have to look to many sources to determine what is true but which one of those sources is really truth and which are just smoke screens to cover up another lie? Do any of us really know any more? The only things that I know to be true anymore is that I love my family, this includes my war brothers, I love my country, rather I love what it use to stand for and what it is meant to stand for, and I love the fact that I am not to old to still shoot when I need to; that truth may not be truth for many more years. I ask you, what do you trust, I mean really trust anymore? Am I going totally insane? Am I the only one who feels this way? From talking to some of you on the phone and from reading emails from others of you, I think not. I think I am sane and that my fears are justified. I think some of you, if not most of you, have many of the same fears that I do.

I heard yesterday that Bush and the Canadian government made an agreement that if civil disturbances were to happen in either country that troops from either country could and would come to the aid of the other. If that is true then does that mean that if large protest were to occur in this country and we did not have enough troops (National Guard) to put it down, which, since most of our National Guard are in Iraqi or elsewhere, we would not, that we could have Canadian troops patrolling our streets? If that happened who would they call innocent and who would defend us against them? Would they be and remain friendly or would they take the opportunity to take us over seeing that we could not defend ourselves? Something to think about isn't it? Was what I heard truth, or lie? Does anyone know for sure? Is this something Bush would do? Who the hell knows anymore?!? Some say, "oh that could never happen" yet, does anyone remember that we were at war with Canada in past history, just like we were with what we know today as the free nations of the world, i.e. England, France, Germany, Japan etc.? Have we not witnessed, in our life time those we considered friends turn their backs on us? Have we not witnessed those who have sworn to stand with us turn and leave us standing pretty much alone?

We are being destroyed from within and there are those that are waiting for the opportunity to strike from without and from within. The want to take our guns, they are already taking our land, our homes, our individual security and freedoms. What is to stop them from taking it all? Not much! Yet, we are so consumed with who is murdering who in foreign lands, who is playing war fairly that we don't even see what is happening right in front of our faces. Is this not the intent of all this bullshit to begin with? Sleeper cells be damned the only ones asleep around here is the majority of the American people!

WAKE UP AMERICA! OUR CHILDREN MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RECOVER FROM WHAT WE DO OR DO NOT DO NOW!

2008-03-30T16:12:00.002-04:00

Entry for March 30, 2008

Truth....censored from the public???Please, learn all you can before you vote...

Goverment Health Care, Goverment Bailing out the Stock Market..make me nervous about the future!!!!

This video, ready to be shown on 60 minutes, BUT WAS NOT for political reasons. The conclusions reached are both frightening, and in the long run, devastating to this country's ability to survive if the current level of spending continues at the present rate.

NO MATTER WHAT POLITICAL PARTY YOU MIGHT BELONG TO THIS INVOLVES US ALL SO PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND COME VOTING TIME AT ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT!
THIS IS TRULY SOMETHING TO LOOK AT---PRETTY SCARY WORLD!?!
PLEASE WATCH THIS.

(NOT SHOWN ON 60 MINUTES)

The US Comptroller General THE HEAD OF THE GPO.US Government Immorality
{Click Below or cut and paste into your browser}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs

VA DENTAL COVERAGE

2008-03-30T10:37:00.001-04:00

This is a heads up, thought you might be interested.
Here is a News Flash from VA Watchdog dot Org: http://www.vawatchd og.org/08/ nf08/nfMAR08/ nf032908- 1.htm
More dental coverage sought for vets

March 28, 2008
NEWS-SUN STAFF REPORT
http://www.vawatchd og.org/08/ nf08/nfMAR08/ nf032908- 1.htm
Veterans with service-connected disabilities would get expanded dental coverage under bipartisan legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Highland Park.

The "Make Our Veterans Smile Act" (House Resolution 5595) was co-introduced by Kirk and fellow Navy Reserve intelligence officer U.S. Rep. Chris Carney, D-Pa.

Currently, only 100 percent disabled, homeless or prisoner-of- war veterans are eligible for dental benefits. The bill, if signed into law, expands dental coverage to any service-connected disabled veteran, regardless of disability rating starting Jan. 1, 2009.

"We need to ensure that those who wore the uniform, risked their lives and sacrificed so much are appropriately cared for," Kirk said Thursday. "We won a great victory for area veterans when we saved the North Chicago VA Hospital from closing. But the commitment the government makes to help care for disabled veterans is incomplete without addressing their dental needs."

According to the Veterans Administration, 258,000 veterans currently are eligible for dental benefits. More than 2.5 million additional disabled veterans would receive coverage under the Kirk-Carney bill.

In Illinois, coverage would expand from nearly 5,000 veterans to more than 60,000 veterans, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Legislation is on Thomas, here... http://thomas. loc.gov/

Type in H.R. 5595.

Legislation printed below:

------------ --------- ----

Make Our Veterans Smile Act of 2008 (Introduced in House)

HR 5595 IH

110th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 5595

To amend title 38, United States Code, to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide dental care to veterans with service-connected disabilities, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 12, 2008

Mr. CARNEY (for himself and Mr. KIRK) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs

A BILL

To amend title 38, United States Code, to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide dental care to veterans with service-connected disabilities, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Make Our Veterans Smile Act of 2008'.

SEC. 2. PROVISION OF DENTAL CARE BY SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS TO VETERANS WITH SERVICE-CONNECTED DISABILITIES.

(a) Provision of Care- Section 1712(a)(1)(G) of title 38, United States Code, is amended by striking `rated as total'.

(b) Authority To Provide Care by Entering Into Contracts- Section 1703(a)(7) of such title is amended by striking `section 1712(a)(1)(F) ' and inserting `section 1712(a)(1)'.

(c) Effective Date- The amendments made by subsections (a) and (b) shall apply with respect to outpatient dental services and treatment, and related dental appliances, furnished on or after January 1, 2009

REVELATIONS AND MORE REVELATIONS

2008-03-30T10:29:00.000-04:00

New Revelations in Haditha Case -- Rumsfeld Set Up Shadow "Body" to Oversee Investigations

Family Security Matters
Richard Thompson
March 27, 2008

Revelations by top Marine Generals, that former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, set up a shadow ''body'' composed of high-ranking administration officials to oversee the Haditha investigations, could prove to be the most damning evidence of the political motivations and influence over the ongoing prosecutions of Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, USMC, and other combat Marines involved.

Lawyers representing Marine LtCol Jeffrey Chessani uncovered the existence of the extraordinarily unusual oversight body.

The hysteria and media firestorm over Abu Gharib and the Pat Tillman investigations led to fear of a similar media reaction to the Haditha incident, causing the military's civilian bosses to set up this shadow oversight body. This extraordinary action politicized the military justice system and was a clear signal to top generals that they were expected to hold individuals criminally responsible. The investigation turned into a quest for a prosecution -- not justice.

The Marines are being prosecuted for their house-to-house battle to ferret out ambushing insurgents on November 19, 2005. The insurgents fired upon the Marines while hiding amongst woman and children. The ensuing firefight resulted in the deaths of 15 civilians -- a result the insurgents wanted to happen.

Details of the battle and the civilian deaths were dutifully reported throughout the chain of command. The chain of command, including the top generals, all concluded this was a tragic and unfortunate consequence of urban warfare, but the Marines were justified in their actions of defending themselves.

Months later, however, a known al Qaeda propaganda operative instigated an inflammatory Time Magazine article written by reporter Tim McGirk -- later proven to be false -- calling the deaths of the civilians a ''massacre.'' The military initiated at least three investigations as a result.

Proof that this entire investigation has been a politically motivated quest for a prosecution rather than justice is supported by several details of the investigations, including:

An admission by the Director of the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (''NCIS'') that over 65 investigators were assigned to the case, which in his opinion was the largest investigative effort in Department's history.
Formation of ''Legal Team Charlie'' composed of military lawyers reassigned from other units and reserve officers activated for the purpose of prosecuting this case--all highly unusual.
The Secretary of Navy countermanded a determination by General James Mattis, USMC, that Colonel Stephen Davis, USMC, LtCol Chessani's regimental commander, would receive a Non-Punitive Letter of Caution, which would not be part of his permanent record. Gen Mattis' decision was overridden by the Navy Secretary, who ordered a Letter of Censure, a more severe punishment, which effectively ended this fine Marine officer's career. As the consolidated convening authority in all the Haditha investigations, General Mattis' decision, under normal circumstances, would be absolute and final.
It's deeply troubling that the desire to appease the liberal anti-war press and politicians has led to the prosecution of innocent Marines for purely political purposes. These prosecutions will become a scandal of historic proportions unless terminated by independently minded and virtuous military judges.

An Undue Command Influence motion had already been filed on behalf of the combat Marines., and LtCol Chessani's lawyers intend to file its own Undue Command Influence motion on his behalf. Further startling events will be revealed at that time.

Even though LtCol Chessani was not personally present at the scene of the ambush on November 19, 2005, the Marines responding were in his battalion: the Third Battalion, First Infantry Regiment -- one of the most decorated battalions in our nation's history, and the pride of the second Battle of Fallujah. Thus, LtCol Chessani is charged with ''dereliction of duty'' and ''orders'' violations. Despite his 20 years of loyal service in defense of his country, he faces a maximum punishment of three years in prison, dismissal (an officer's equivalent of a dishonorable discharge), and the loss of his retirement benefits. Of course, his wife and six children ranging in ages from 3 months to 8 years old, made untold sacrifices as he left them to defend us on foreign shores as well.

URL: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/challenges.php?id=1387053

give peace a chance you say? Don't sound like it!

2008-03-30T10:24:00.000-04:00

'Peace' Advocates Playing Dirty

HUMAN EVENTS
by Katie O'Malley
Posted 03/27/2008

Once content to thump drums and dig deep for chants that rhyme, the ''peace'' movement's foothold on the public soapbox has slipped. The peaceniks -- ANSWER, MoveOn.org, Code Pink and the rest -- are in the midst of very public identity crisis. They are facing, for the first time, visible and vocal opposition to both their words and their methods. And it has made them angry….very angry….angry enough to (pause for dramatic effect) use violence as an option!

As organizations have come together to face them in the streets (and have successfully released the left's stranglehold on activism and the media) the lefties have revealed their inner violent streak to which they have always proclaimed an immunity.

We have certainly seen incidents of violence within the misnamed ''peace'' movement since its inception decades ago. These lovers of dialogue and group hugs have bombed buildings (just ask Obama's ''acquaintance'' William Ayers of the Weather Underground), stormed institutions and screamed vile and evil comments to Vietnam Veterans, since they first began their activism. In Ayers memoir, ''Fugitive Days,'' he goes so far as to write, ''I don't regret setting bombs. I didn't do enough.” At least he is honest about it.

His disturbing perspective and the inherently un-peaceful legacy of the 1960s peace movement has been enthusiastically embraced by the newest generation, tutored by the aging hippies of yore.

A steady uptick in violence against the military has been unfolding in recent months. The recruiting station in Washington, DC at 14th & L, the site of a storming and trashing on February 15, received additional overtures of ''peace'' last week when rocks were thrown at the windows and the exterior of the building, DC Metro police and counter protestors there to support the recruiters, were covered in red paint lobbed at them. What happened to daisies? They don't stain and they don't hurt!

The Times Square recruiting station in New York was the site of a bombing on March 6. Recruiters in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Texas and Tennessee have all been the recipients of this special kind of leftist love in the last 12 months, just to name a few. Counter protestors in Berkley have not received hugs and love, but instead have been shoved and hit with signs proclaiming ''Give Peace a Chance.''

Even the peace and tranquility of a church on Easter Sunday is not immune to their inherent anger and their willingness to put shock value and confrontation above dialogue and communication. A group calling themselves ''Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War'' interrupted Chicago's Cardinal George's Easter homily and threw fake stage blood on themselves and fellow churchgoers while denouncing the war in Iraq.

In the narcissistic mind of the antiwar left, even the most holy and meaningful gift of resurrection does not trump the need for relevance and attention. Shouldn't Catholic schoolgirls be railing against hemlines?

My own experience covering the left has provided a multitude of examples missing peace in the peace movement. I used to embrace the chance to bring my children to events to give them real world opportunities to hear diverse opinions first hand, unfiltered by the press or even their mother. It has added a great deal to our dinner table conversations over the years. It impressed upon them that views, however divergent from our own, come from real people with real passions.

Recent events and the escalation of violence on the left have, unfortunately, made me unwilling to provide them with this opportunity for the foreseeable future. My children have been on the receiving end of some of the most profane, hate-filled language known to man. They have been physically threatened, signs ripped from them and shredded, flags snatched from their hands. Simply put, the peaceniks are too violent to be around my children.

I can also tell you that the mail I get from the left is anything but peaceful. I am certain that the physical positions they suggest I emulate give me far too much credit for my flexibility. I am confident that not one of their suggestions is a sanctioned yoga pose.

This past week, the length to which the left will go has been further exposed and shows how personal and violent they become when they lose the spotlight. No longer content to lob bombs and projectiles at institutions of ''the man,'' these embracers of peace have developed a comfortable pattern of physically assaulting their ideological opponents.

This week, Ann DeWalt, 82, was found guilty of harassment for kicking a 33-year-old Iraq war veteran in the back during a January 19 vigil. In a calculated and desperate move, the left has is adept at using the young and the elderly to do their dirty work, secure in the knowledge that the media, the authorities and even the victims themselves will be more reluctant to pursue charges. I believe Saddam called them ''human shields.''

More chillingly, last weekend a man attending a Chester County Peace Movement (CCPM) peace vigil in West Chester, Pennsylvania, assaulted a citizen journalist and blogger. At 12:10 PM, blogger ''Skye'' was videotaping an exchange between opposing groups. As the conversation gets both animated and heated, she shifts her filming position to capture all parties involved. The shot is abruptly cut when a fist flies at her face, she is slapped and the camera is jammed into her face. Not satisfied by the first blow, he strikes her a second time.

Nearby police intervened and the party involved was quickly pointed out by the victim and witnesses. The officer requested the suspect's cooperation in the investigation. During his ''refusal,'' this lover of peace took his physical abuse past shoving a woman and shoved the officer. He was rewarded with handcuffs and removal.

Skye frequently attends events throughout the Northeast to document the multilayered story via video and stills and our paths have crossed several times. In my experience, I have known her to be respectful, professional and downright cheery. She works diligently to capture both the pro-troop and the anti-war sides of rallies.

Where are the feminists denouncing a man in their midst using his physical power to try cower a woman? Of course I am still waiting for feminists to address Bill's approach to fringe benefits.

Where are the pithy chants touting love? Where are the hugs?

I can't help but wonder when the lefties will give peace a chance.

URL: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25729

Islam, the religion, the cult, the system

2008-03-27T07:00:00.000-04:00

Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a beard for all the other components.

Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called "religious rights."

When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to "the reasonable" Muslim demands for their "religious rights," they also get the other components under the table. Here's how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007)).

As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness:

United States -- Muslim 1.0%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1%-2%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population.

They will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. (United States).

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris -- car-burnings). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam -- Mohammed cartoons).

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 10-15%

After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:

Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%

After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%

100% will usher in the peace of "Dar-es-Salaam" -- the Islamic House of Peace -- there's supposed to be peace because everybody is a Muslim:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 99.9%

Of course, that's not the case. To satisfy their blood lust, Muslims then start killing each other for a variety of reasons.

"Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel. -- Leon Uris, "The Haj"

It is good to remember that in many, many countries, such as France, the Muslim populations are centered around ghettos based on their ethnicity. Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. Therefore, they exercise more power than their national average would indicate.

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat.. www.frontline.org.za/books_videos/sti.htm

Gas War LET'S START ONE!!

2008-03-20T04:12:00.003-04:00

Ever notice how one gas station will have one price for gas and the one right across the street from it will be a penny or so cheaper? This is called price war, so why not start a big one and get the price of gas down? Makes sense to me and it is worth a try, afterall what do we have to lose? Nothing that's what! Here is how it can be done.

THIS IS NOT THE 'DON'T BUY' GAS FOR ONE DAY, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $1.30 PER GALLON, OR LESS.

This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this please.

Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy gas on a certain day' campaign that was going around last April or May!

It's worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!

I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action. The oil companies just laughed at that "DON'T BUY GAS ON CERTAIN DAYS" because they knew we wouldn't continue to 'hurt' ourselves by refusing to buy gas.

It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join in in creating a price war between oil companies.

By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.48 for regular unleaded in my town.

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, or even $2.50 we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace...not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.

The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas, but we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to 30 people, plus, placing it on all my blogs and the various veteran sites I post on. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) .. and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers.

If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all!

If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people and get the ball rolling, then like a snowball rolling down hill it will begin to grow bigger and bigger just like a rumor or gossip does in the real world.

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this message and game plan out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 to 10 days days!!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you ! Acting together we can make a difference. Veterans Unite! Hopefully the rest of the people will follow suit and the gas war will be on.

If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE, OR LOWER AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK. WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO LOSE BY TRYING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. DOING NOTHING WILL GET US LIKE RESULTS. . . NOTHING!

KEEP IT GOING AND GOING AND GOING. . . .!

Gas War LET

2008-03-20T04:12:00.001-04:00

Vietnam vets, once again, left behind and forgotten!

2008-03-19T07:38:00.002-04:00

STIGMA KEEPS MANY NEW VETS FROM SEEKING MENTAL
HEALTH CARE. As you read the article below you can see where, once again, Vietnam veterans are being left behind, cast aside and, for all intents and purposes forgotten in the VA system.

I have nothing against today's young soldiers getting help, immediate help, as that is what they deserve and earned through their service to our country, but what about those of us who have been waiting for years for such help as this article reports? How many of us have died awaiting such help? How many of us will continue to wait and die before the VA and other government officials say, "Hey, what about the Vietnam vets, without whom we may have never known about PTSD and it's effect on soldiers in the first place?"

Thousands of Vietnam veterans are waiting, and many have been waiting and fighting for their just benefits and adequate treatment for untold numbers of years, and still we wait for the VA to do the right thing. Since our war was an unpopular war, one that Congress chose to walk away from, we are considered a pain in the side, to be nice, to the VA and Congress who now rallies around the young soldiers of today but pays little, to no, attention to the plight of Nam vets. We still continue to fight for our just benefits and treatment, but in addition, it is we who initiated the fight for veteran to receive treatment and compensation for PTSD. Today the powers that be speak of traumatic brain injury due to explosions, bombs, do they consider or even give thought to the fact that bombs, booby traps and the like were, also, utilized in Vietnam, thus, we too, and likely do, suffer from traumatic brain injury? Once again we are all but forgotten! When will this disgrace end? Will it only come to an end after we are all dead and gone. Seems to be the most likely scenario!

NOTE: All Emphasis added by

Rocky

Waiting room fills with young vets

Meredith May
Chronicle Staff Writer

Four years after the start of the war in Iraq, Dr. Karen Seal took a job at the San Francisco VA Medical Center to work in the liver clinic, treating patients with hepatitis C.

She noticed the veterans in the waiting room. Most of them were from the Vietnam era, in their 60s and older.

But over the months, the faces began to get younger. The waiting room was starting to fill with young men in their late teens and 20s, the first trickle of Bay Area soldiers emotionally and physically injured by the war.

Seal, a primary care physician, began working with them, taking their medical histories and directing them to the right care.

"At the time, I had never heard of PTSD," Seal said. (Can you believe any doctor working at any VA hospital, especially after 4 years as stated above, had never heard of PTSD!?! )

Now she knows how post-traumatic stress disorder contributes to the alcohol addiction and depression she sees in many of her patients.

She made referral after referral to the mental health wing of the VA hospital, but heard from colleagues that those initial patients never made it. It was too much of a stigma - especially in military culture - to walk across the campus to the mental health ward.

So Seal and colleagues got an idea. What if there were a special clinic just for Iraq war veterans that combined primary care and mental health checkups in a nonjudgmental setting? (Emphasis added - note the "just for Iraq War veterans"!)

There were only a few other places in the country that do such a thing - the Department of Defense has a one-stop veterans clinic in Washington, and there was a similar one in Seattle, but it took anyone from the first Gulf War to the present. (Again, nothing mentioned here about Nam vets.)

Finally, in April 2007, San Francisco VA opened a clinic just for Iraq war veterans, calling it the Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom Integrated Care Clinic.

"Now, we see three to seven veteran men, and one or two women, a week," Seal said.

Visitors can drop in and be seen by a primary care doctor and a combat stress specialist. They are screened for post-traumatic stress, depression, alcoholism, and brain injury. If they need help readjusting into civilian life, there's someone to assist with that.

About 1 in 5 is discovered to have post-traumatic stress, but now only 15 percent miss their appointments with mental health workers.

"This job is a gift," Seal said. "To be able to tell them it's normal to jump when they hear a balloon pop or to get nervous on a crowded bus. I can tell them that a lot of their buddies are experiencing the same things."

E-mail Meredith May at mmay@sfchronicle.com.
(Original article posted by VA Watchdog)

Private Health Verses VA Health Care

2008-03-16T07:27:00.002-04:00

Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, has joined a growing list of those pushing to privatize VA healthcare.

Filner has called for a "VA card" that can be used at private healthcare providers. (see article below)

This concept has been pushed by Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN), Ranking Member on the House Vets' Committee and Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), Member of the Senate Vets' Committee.

Neither Buyer or Craig are known as friends of veterans. Has Filner joined that list?

What is Filner thinking? He isn't!

For every veteran that leaves to VA system, that system becomes smaller and weaker. When small enough, it will cease to exist.

Filner's job is to help properly fund the VA so it can care for the needs of all veterans, not to help them go anywhere they want for care.

Filner has been known to engage his mouth before he engages his brain...so, maybe he'll rethink this. I certainly hope so.

For more on privatizing the VA, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=privatize+privatizing&op=or

Story here... http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Vetera
ns+ask+for+more+care&articleId=4f1b751d-1947-42bf-ae87-5a441d2c21f1

Here is a question that I pose, note the bold portion above, if the VA cease to exist then who, what branch of government, pays the disability compensation benefits to veterans and survivors? Will the private hospitals do this? No, they will not, so who does? If no government agency steps up to do this then do VA disability benefits also cease to exits just like the VA? Could happen, then what?

A Look At Our Future, Our Children's Future and Our Grandchildren's Future

2008-03-14T06:20:00.002-04:00

Please take the time to watch this video as it is very important to us all especially our children and their children!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQ

(cut and paste into your browser it is worth the time)

FBI's Islamic Sensitivity Training Program

2008-03-13T09:21:00.000-04:00

The FBI believes its agents still aren't sensitive enough to Muslims and their culture, so the bureau has extended by "a few weeks" its Islamic cultural "enrichment" training program, WND has learned.

During a recent outreach event at a Washington-area mosque, FBI officials also reassured a large turnout of concerned Muslims that the bureau is not profiling Arabs and Muslims for terrorism, and has made investigating alleged "hate crimes" against them and other minorities "the second-highest priority in the criminal division of the FBI." [emphasis added].

Among the officials who attended the Feb. 8 "town hall meeting" at the large ADAMS Center mosque were Timothy Healy, deputy assistant director for FBI intelligence, and Dave Bennett, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington field office.

The officials said terrorism is "not a new phenomenon" limited to Muslims, and they cited abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph as an example of a Christian terrorist.

While they said they are concerned about the threat from "homegrown terror" perpetuated by second-generation Muslim immigrants, the officials assured the Muslim audience they are no more concerned about such homegrown attacks than they are "about bank robberies," and are not targeting the Muslim community for special surveillance.

One official offered that FBI headquarters has extended the bureau's Arabic curriculum, which includes Muslim culture, by "a few weeks" to expose agents to Islam and cultivate a better understanding of the faith.

"We all need to learn and understand each other," he said, adding that the Muslim sensitivity program is part of basic training for agents.

"One of the things that the FBI believes in is diversity," he said. "Diversity is important."

To that end, he says the bureau is "under a hiring push this year" and is heavily recruiting Muslim agents. The FBI wants to hire 900 FBI agents and 2,000 professional support staff, including Arabic translators, by Sept. 30. [emphasis added and note: why does the FBI routinely reject Christians and Jews who are fluent in Arabic who apply to be translators?]

"One of the things that we are critically seeking are special agents and support staff who are Arabic speakers," he announced to the audience at the ADAMS mosque, which was founded and funded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has been one of the top distributors of Wahhabist anti-Semitic and anti-Christian dogma.

"We also need folks who, candidly, are familiar with Islam," the official said. "We're learning, many of us. And I've had many conversations with Muslims, and I've learned quite a bit. I'm a Roman Catholic, and there are so many similarities I have learned between Islam and Christianity that was a surprise to me." [emphasis added].

ADAMS Center is not the only Muslim Brotherhood-tied organization where the FBI has recruited agents. In September, it also set up a recruitment booth at the annual Islamic Society of North America convention. Just four months earlier, federal prosecutors named ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror fundraising case, and listed it as a member of the U.S. branch of the radical Brotherhood.

What's more, the agency is advertising for agents in ISNA's magazine "Islamic Horizons," as well as on the website of the Saudi-backed Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which has supported Hamas and other known terrorists.

Last November, Lebanese former FBI agent Nada Prouty was arrested and pleaded guilty to charges in connection with a Hezbollah espionage investigation.

As WND first reported, the FBI summarily rejected some 90 Jewish Arabic speakers who after 9/11 applied to become translators and language specialists at the FBI's New York field office.

As WND also first reported in 2003, national Arab-American and Muslim leaders have made presentations at an FBI training course on civil rights at the Washington offices of the FBI, and at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., as part of "Enrichment Training Sessions" for new special agents there.

In addition, the imam of a large Manhattan mosque has lectured veteran counterterrorism investigators at the FBI's New York field office about misinterpretation of the meaning of jihad in the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

The sensitivity training program, denounced by some active and former agents, was mandated after the 9/11 attacks by FBI Director Robert Mueller.

FBI headquarters defends the program as a way to reach out to the Muslim community in America.

"I hate the word 'sensitivity' training," said FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell. "I would call it an awareness training relative to cultural issues."

Mueller has met several times with Arab and Muslim groups since 9/11. He even agreed to be the keynote speaker at the American Muslim Council conference in Washington – a move that drew fire from AMC critics, who note the group has sung the praises of Islamic terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and was headed by al-Qaida fundraiser Abdurahman Alamoudi, now serving time in federal prison on terror charges.

"Mueller should lead the FBI in this war, and leave the sensitivity sessions to the human resources department or CNN," complained retired FBI special agent Don Lavey, who served 20 years in the bureau's counterterrorism unit.

"Let's just hope the director is leading the charge in this war against terrorism with an equal amount of zeal that he shows for cultural sensitivities," added Lavey, who claims Mueller is so politically correct he refuses to use "Islamic" and "terrorism" in the same sentence.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

American Congress for Truth
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456
[url]member@americancongressfortruth.org[/url]

[url]http://www.americancongressfortruth.org[/url]

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

2008-03-13T07:27:00.000-04:00

The Bottom Line

Following is an article written by Jim Cash Brig. Gen Retired USAF and comments by two men. Take time to read this if you care about the future of America.

"This is one of the most profound articles that I have ever read about this Presidency, this era and this so-called war. Everything this man says makes perfect sense.

No matter your politics, you owe it to yourself to read and pass on so we all are informed of what's going on in our world!

Another assessment of where the US stands in relation to the Middle East problems, this one is from the guy who had his finger on the nuclear trigger for three years as head of our defense and response complex buried under Cheyenne Mountain at Colorado Springs. He was the only person who could initiate a nuclear attack after advising the sitting president of a missile launch by our enemies and our need to respond. No political or civilian type in the US had more knowledge about day to day military actions around the world. Everyone should find quiet time to read this. As far as I am concerned, it is exactly the direction we should go and the consequences of not doing so are well thought out."

John R. (Jack) Farrington Major General, USAF (Retired)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Middle East Imperative
BY: JIM CASH, Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret.

I wrote recently about the war in Iraq and the larger war against radical Islam, eliciting a number of responses. Let me try and put this conflict in proper perspective.
Understand, the current battle we are engaged in is much bigger than just Iraq. What happens in the next year will affect this country and how our kids and grandkids live throughout their lifetime, and beyond. Radical Islam has been attacking the West since the seventh century. They have been defeated in the past and decimated to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover. But they can never be totally defeated. Their birth rates are so far beyond civilized world rates that in time they recover and attempt to dominate again.
There are eight terror-sponsoring countries that make up the grand threat to the West. Two , Saudi Arabia and Pakistan , just need firm pressure from the West to make major reforms. They need to decide who they are really going to support and commit to that support. That answer is simple. They both will support who they think will hang in there until the end, and win. We are not sending very good signals in that direction right now, thanks to the Democrats.
The other six, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya will require regime change or a major policy shift. Now, let's look more closely.

Afghanistan and Iraq have both had regime changes, but are being fueled by outsiders from Syria and Iran We have scared Gaddafi's pants off, and he has given up his quest for nuclear weapons, so I don't think Libya is now a threat.

North Korea (the non-Islamic threat) can be handled diplomatically by buying them off. They are starving. That leaves Syria and Iran. Syria is like a frightened puppy. Without the support of Iran they will join the stronger side. So where does that leave us? Sooner, or later, we are going to be forced to confront Iran, and it better be before they gain nuclear capability.
In 1989 I served as a Command Director inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex located in Colorado Springs, Colorado for almost three years. My job there was to observe (through classified means) every missile shot anywhere in the world and assess if it was a threat to the US or Canada. If any shot was threatening to either nation I had only minutes to advise the President, as he had only minutes to respond.

I watched Iran and Iraq shoot missiles at each other every day, and all day long, for months. They killed hundreds of thousand of their people. Know why? They were fighting for control of the Middle East and that enormous oil supply. At that time, they were preoccupied with their internal problems and could care less about toppling the west. Oil prices were fairly stable and we could not see an immediate threat. Well, the worst part of what we have done as a nation in Iraq is to do away with the military capability of one of those nations. Now, Iran has a clear field to dominate the Middle East, since Iraq is no longer a threat to them. They have turned their attention to the only other threat to their dominance, they are convinced they will win, because the US is so divided, and the Democrats (who now control Congress and may control the Presidency in 2008) have openly said we are pulling out.

Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran , which they will obviously do if we pull out? It is not the price of oil we will have to worry about. Oil WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE to this country at any price. I personally would vote for any presidential candidate who did what JFK did with the space program---declare a goal to bring this country to total energy independence in a decade.

Yes, it is about oil. The economy in this country will totally die if that Middle East supply is cut off right now. It will not be a recession. It will be a depression that will make 1929 look like the "good-old-days". The bottom line here is simple. If Iran is forced to fall in line, the fighting in Iraq will end over night, and the nightmare will be over.

One way or another, Iran must be forced to join modern times and the global community. It may mean a real war---if so, now is the time, before we face a nuclear Iran with the capacity to destroy Israel and begin a new ice age. I urge you to read the book "END GAME" by two of our best Middle East experts, true American patriots and retired military generals, Paul Vallely and Tom McInerney. They are our finest, and totally honest in their assessment of why victory in the Middle East is so important, and how it can be won. Proceeds for the book go directly to memorial fund for our fallen soldiers who served the country during the war on terror. You can find that book by going to the internet through Stand-up America at www.ospreyradio.us or www.rightalk.com
On the other hand, we have several very angry retired generals today, who evidently have not achieved their lofty goals, and insist on ranting and raving about the war. They are wrong, and doing the country great harm by giving a certain political party reason to use them as experts to back their anti-war claims.

You may be one of those who believe nothing could ever be terrible enough to support our going to war. If that is the case I should stop here, as that level of thinking approaches mental disability in this day and age. It is right up there with alien abductions and high altitude seeding through government aircraft contrails. I helped produced those contrails for almost 30 years, and I can assure you we were not seeding the atmosphere. The human race is a war-like population, and if a country is not willing to protect itself, it deserves the consequences. Nuff-said!!!

Now, my last comments will get to the nerve. They will be on politics. I am not a Republican. And, George Bush has made enough mistakes as President to insure my feelings about that for the rest of my life. However, the Democratic Party has moved so far left, they have made me support those farther to the right. I am a conservative who totally supports the Constitution of this country. The only difference between the United States and the South American, third world, dictator infested and ever-changing South American governments, is our US Constitution.

This Republic (note I did not say Democracy) is the longest standing the world has ever known, but it is vulnerable. It would take so little to change it through economic upheaval. There was a time when politicians could disagree, but still work together. We are past that time, and that is the initial step toward the downfall of our form of government.

I think that many view Bush-hating as payback time. The Republicans hated the Clinton's and now the Democrats hate Bush. So, both parties are putting their hate toward willingness to do anything for political dominance to include lying and always taking the opposite stand just for the sake of being opposed. JUST HOW GOOD IS THAT FOR OUR COUNTRY?
In my lifetime, after serving in uniform for President's Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush I have a pretty good feel for which party supported our military, and what military life was like under each of their terms. And, let me assure you that times were best under the Republicans.

Service under Jimmy Carter was devastating for all branches of the military. And, Ronald Regan was truly a salvation. You can choose to listen to enriched newscasters, and foolish people like John Murtha (he is no war hero), Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Michael Moore, Jane Fonda , Harry Reid, Russ Feingold, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and on-and-on to include the true fools in Hollywood if you like. If you do, your conclusions will be totally wrong.

The reason that I write, appear on radio talk shows, and do everything I can to denounce those people is simple. THEY ARE PUTTING THEIR THIRST FOR POLITICAL POWER AND QUEST FOR VICTORY IN 2008 ABOVE WHAT IS BEST FOR THIS COUNTRY. I cannot abide that. Pelosi clearly defied the Logan Act by going to Syria , which should have lead to imprisonment of three years and a heavy fine. Jane Fonda did more to prolong the Vietnam war longer than any other human being (as acknowledged by Ho Chi Minh in his writing before he died). She truly should have been indicted for treason, along with her radical husband, Tom Hayden, and forced to pay the consequences.
This country has started to soften by not enforcing its laws, which is another indication of a Republic about to fall. All Democrats, along with the Hollywood elite, are sending us headlong into a total defeat in the Middle East, which will finally give Iran total dominance in the region. A lack of oil in the near future will be the final straw that dooms this Republic. However, if we refuse to let this happen and really get serious about an energy self-sufficiency program, this can be avoided. I am afraid, however, that we are going in the opposite direction. If we elect Hillary Clinton and a Democrat controlled congress, and they carry through with allowing Iran to take control of the Middle East, continue to refuse development of nuclear energy, refuse to allow drilling for new oil, and continue to do nothing but oppose everything Bush, it will be over in terms of what we view as the good life in the USA .
Now, do I think that all who do not support the war are un-American -- of course not. They just do not understand the importance of total victory in that region.

Another failure of George Bush is his inability to explain to the American people why we are there, and why we MUST win. By the way, it is not a war. The war was won four years ago. It is martial law that is under attack by Iranian and Syrian outside influences, and there is a difference.

So, what do I believe? What is the bottom line? I will simply say that the Democratic Party has fielded the foulest, power hungry, anti-country, self absorbed group of individuals that I have observed in my lifetime. Our educational system is partially to blame for allowing the mass of America to be taken in by this group. George Bush has done the best he can with the disabilities that he possesses.

A President must communicate with the people.And, I would tell you that Desert Storm spoiled the people. Bush Senior's 100-hour war convinced the people that technology has progressed to the point that wars could be fought with no casualties and won in very short periods of time. I remember feeling at the time, that this was a tragedy for the US military. To win wars, you must put boots on the ground. When you put boots on the ground, soldiers are going to die. A President must make the war decision wisely, and insure that the cause is right before using his last political option. However, CONTROLLING IRAN AND DEMOCRATIZING THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE ONLY CHOICE IF WE ARE HELL-BENT ON DEPENDING ON THEM FOR OUR FUTURE ENERGY NEEDS.

Jimmy L. Cash, Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret.
Lakeside , Montana 59922

"I'll tell you what war is all about, you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting." Gen. Curtis LeMay

YOUR VA BENEFITS AND DIVORCE

2008-03-12T08:39:00.001-04:00

West Virginia Legislators Introduce Disabled Veterans’ Benefits Protection Bill

State Representatives; Stan Shaver, Scott Varner, Randy Swartzmiller, and Robert D. Beach are all members of the West Virginia Legislature. And all four of these West Virginia politicians are sponsors of House Bill 2546, legislation designed to protect veteran’s disability compensation from any consideration as a third party award in state divorce courts. H.B. 2546 was introduced January 9, 2008 and referred to the Committee on Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security and Finance.

Shaver Varner Swartzmiller Beach

sshaver@mail.wvnet.edu svarner@mail.wvnet.edu rswartzmiller@hotmail.com rbeach@mail.wvnet.edu

H.R. 2546 reinforces existing federal legislation USC, Title 38, Veteran’s Benefits, §5301(a). This federal statute was written by Congress to protect veteran’s benefits from third party awards under any legal process whatsoever. However, in spite of the strong wording of 5301, many state divorce courts nationwide routinely violate Title 38, by awarding alimony or spousal support based solely on a disabled veteran’s disability compensation. The passage of H.R. 2546 would put an end to this questionable practice in the Great State of West Virginia.

Operation Firing For Effect is requesting all West Virginia residents contact their representatives and urge them to support and pass H.B. 2546. You will find contact information for all West Virginia legislators at this link;

http://www.legis.state.wv.us/Contact/capmail.cfm

Or contact the House Clerk; Gregory M. Gray, Room 212M, Bldg. 1, State Capitol Complex, (304) 340-3200. Tell Mr. Gray that Operation Firing For Effect asked you to call in support of H.B. 2546.

Operation Firing For Effect commends State Representatives Shaver, Varner, Swartzmiller, and Beach for their actions to improve and protect the disability benefits earned by our men and women in uniform.

In an effort to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding concerning H.B. 2546, below you will find the legislation text in its entirety.

H. B. 2546

(By Delegates Shaver, Varner, Swartzmiller and Beach)

[Introduced January 9, 2008; referred to the

Committee on Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security then Finance.]

A BILL to amend and reenact §48-5-510 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended; to amend and reenact §48-7-101; to amend and reenact §48-8-103; and to amend and reenact §48-8-105, all relating to excluding disability income received by a veteran from the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs for service related injuries from any calculation used to determine spousal support.

Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:

That section §48-5-510 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, be amended and reenacted; that §48-7-101 be amended and reenacted; that §48-8-103 be amended and reenacted; and that §48-8-105 be amended and reenacted, all to read as follows:

ARTICLE 5. DIVORCE.

§48-5-510. Consideration of financial factors in ordering temporary relief.

(a) In ordering temporary relief under the provisions of this Part 5, the court shall consider the financial needs of the parties, the present income of each party from any source, their income-earning abilities and the respective legal obligations of each party to support himself or herself and to support any other persons. Provided, That disability income received by a veteran from the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs for service related injuries is not income for purposes of this article.

(b) Except in extraordinary cases supported by specific findings set forth in the order granting relief, payments of temporary spousal support and temporary child support are to be made from a party's income and not from the corpus of a party's separate estate, and an award of such relief shall not be disproportionate to a party's ability to pay as disclosed by the evidence before the court: Provided, That child support shall be established in accordance with the child support guidelines set forth in article thirteen of this chapter. Provided, however, That the corpus of the estate of a veteran receiving disability income for service related injuries cannot be used as a means of replacing the value of the disability income.

ARTICLE 7. EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF PROPERTY.

PART 1. MARITAL PROPERTY DISPOSITION.

§48-7-101. Equal division of marital property.

(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, upon every judgment of annulment, divorce or separation, the court shall divide the marital property of the parties equally between the parties.

(b) Nothwithstanding any other provision of this code to the contrary, disability income received by a veteran from the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs for service related injuries shall not be considered as property for the purposes of this article.

ARTICLE 8. SPOUSAL SUPPORT.

§48-8-103. Payment of spousal support.

(a) Upon ordering a divorce or granting a decree of separate maintenance, the court may require either party to pay spousal support in the form of periodic installments, or a lump sum, or both, for the maintenance of the other party. Payments of spousal support are to be ordinarily made from a party's income, but when the income is not sufficient to adequately provide for those payments, the court may, upon specific findings set forth in the order, order the party required to make those payments to make them from the corpus of his or her separate estate. An award of spousal support shall not be disproportionate to a party's ability to pay as disclosed by the evidence before the court. Provided, That disability income received by a veteran from the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs for service related injuries is not income for purposes of this article. Nor can the corpus of the estate of a veteran receiving disability income for service related injuries cannot be used as a means of replacing the value of the disability income.

(b) At any time after the entry of an order pursuant to the provisions of this article, the court may, upon motion of either party, revise or alter the order concerning the maintenance of the parties, or either of them, and make a new order concerning the same, issuing it forthwith, as the altered circumstances or needs of the parties may render necessary to meet the ends of justice.

§48-8-105. Rehabilitative spousal support.

(a) The court may award rehabilitative spousal support for a limited period of time to allow the recipient spouse, through reasonable efforts, to become gainfully employed. When awarding rehabilitative spousal support, the court shall make specific findings of fact to explain the basis for the award, giving due consideration to the factors set forth in section 8-103 one hundred three of this article: Provided, That disability income received by a veteran from the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs for service related injuries shall not be considered as income nor for purposes of this article. Nor can the corpus of the estate of a veteran receiving disability income for service related injuries be used as a means of replacing the value of the disability income. (b) An award of rehabilitative spousal support is appropriate when the dependent spouse evidences a potential for self-support that could be developed through rehabilitation, training or academic study.
(b)(c) The court may modify an award of rehabilitative spousal support if a substantial change in the circumstances under which rehabilitative spousal support was granted warrants terminating, extending or modifying the award or replacing it with an award of permanent spousal support. In determining whether a substantial change of circumstances exists which would warrant a modification of a rehabilitative spousal support award, the court may consider a reassessment of the dependent spouse's potential work skills and the availability of a relevant job market, the dependent spouse's age, health and skills, the dependent spouse's ability or inability to meet the terms of the rehabilitative plan and other relevant factors as provided for in section 8-103 one hundred three of this article.

NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to exclude disability income received by a veteran from the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs for service related injuries from any calculation used to determine spousal support.

Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from the present law, and underscoring indicates new language that would be added.

http://www.legis.state.wv.us/Bill_Text_HTML/2008_SESSIONS/RS/Bills/hb2546%20intr.htm

To review TITLE 38, U.S. Code, Veterans Benefits, §5301(a) in its entirety, visit;

http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/search/display.html?terms=Title%2038,%205301%20(a)&url=/uscode/html/uscode38/usc_sec_38_00005301----000-.html

If you would like to know more about this subject, visit;

http://jerebeery.com/5301%20Club.htm

Jere Beery

OFFE Public Relations Director

jerebeery@aol.com

COST OF WAR

2008-03-12T07:39:00.000-04:00

Care for Injured Vets Raises Questions

By BRADLEY BROOKS

Associated Press Writer

12:33 PM CST, March 6, 2008

BAGHDAD

The number of wounded soldiers has become a hallmark of the nearly 5-year-old Iraq war, pointing to both the use of roadside bombs as the extremists' weapon of choice and advances in battlefield medicine to save lives.

About 15 soldiers are wounded for every fatality, compared with 2.6 per death in Vietnam and 2.8 in Korea.

But with those saved soldiers comes a financial price -- one veterans groups and others claim the government is unwilling to pay.

Those critics also say that the tens of thousands of soldiers wounded in Iraq are part of a political numbers game, one they say undermines the medical system meant to care for them.

The most frequently cited figure is the 29,320 soldiers wounded in action in Iraq as of Thursday. But there have been 31,325 others treated for non-combat injuries and illness as of March 1.

"The Pentagon keeps two sets of books," said Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard and an expert on budgeting and public finance whose newly published book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," was co-authored with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

"It is important to understand the full number of casualties because the U.S. government is responsible for paying disability compensation and medical care for all our troops, regardless of how they were injured," Bilmes said.

Veterans Affairs predicts it will treat 330,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009 -- a 14 percent increase over the 2008 estimate of 263,000 -- at a cost of nearly $1.3 billion.

For the 2009 budget, the White House requested $93.7 billion for the VA, including $41.2 billion for medical care for all veterans -- not just those from Iraq and Afghanistan. That's an increase of $2.3 billion over the current budget.

But critics say that is not enough for a system that has a backlog of about 400,000 pending medical claims and complaints, especially in mental health care.

The VA "will not request enough resources to care for the troops -- and in fact this is precisely what has happened in the past three years," said Bilmes.

Cynthia Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, rejected accusations that the government is trying to hide or obscure the number of wounded soldiers by placing the total in two categories on its Web pages.

"Both of the Web sites have equal importance. They are just counting different things," Smith said. "Neither is more prominent than the other."

James Peake, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, said that funding for VA medical care requested for next year is "more than twice what it was seven years ago" before operations in Afghanistan started.

But Bilmes says the VA is hoping to offset some of the costs through increased fees and co-payments -- putting more of the burden for health care costs back on soldiers.

"That is the thing that sticks in the gullet, the fact they're hoping to raise $2 or $3 billion through their fees, which is what we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan in about three days," she said. "For three days of fighting, we could not charge these vets a higher co-payment."

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, an advocacy group based in Washington, said the VA's budget request for 2009 also does not pay adequate attention to chronic problems facing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, such as drug and alcohol addictions.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in San Francisco held the first hearing in a class-action lawsuit filed by two vet groups, including Sullivan's, against the VA alleging their neglect in treating suicidal soldiers. The lawsuit asks that the VA immediately screen and treat all potentially suicidal veterans.

According to VA research obtained last month by The Associated Press, 144 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide from the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 through the end of 2005. Statistics from 2006 and 2007 were not yet available.

Dr. Gerald Cross, a VA official, said during this week's lawsuit hearings that 120,000 vets from Iraq and Afghanistan using VA care have potential mental health problems, and that nearly 68,000 have potential post-traumatic stress disorder.

In November, President Bush signed legislation directing the VA to improve its mental health training for staff and do a better job of evaluating and treating veterans.

Peake, in a telephone interview, emphasized new efforts in mental health. He said the VA has "changed the access standard. If you present with a mental health issue, you'll be screened within 24 hours."

Peake said he recognized the need to make changes within the VA -- particularly in the disability claims system which he said dates back to 1945 -- saying that "it is time to review and simplify and modernize our disability system, but that will take work with Congress."

In response to the backlog in pending claims, Peake said, some 3,100 new claims-processing jobs have been opened. He acknowledged, however, that it takes "about two or three years to train somebody to be top notch in terms of being able to develop a claim and adjudicate it."

Not all wounded soldiers leave the battlefield for good.

A roadside bomb that sent shrapnel through Fred White's hands and legs did enough damage to require four operations and six months of physical therapy. White, then an Army specialist who was wounded early in the war while protecting a convoy, is now a chief warrant officer, piloting Black Hawk helicopters.

The wounds that left White missing most of his middle finger on his right hand, nerve damage and broken bones in his left hand and shrapnel that is still lodged in his legs and left wrist were not treated in a VA facility.

Once evacuated from Iraq, he got treatment at the U.S. military hospital in Landsthul, Germany, near the Ramstein air base. He then went to Brooke Army Medical Center on Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio because there was a hand specialist there.

Despite his wounds, White made it through pilot's school and passed a few extra tests to ensure the damage to his hands would not affect his ability to fly a Black Hawk.

White's mother, who made a career of the Army, was disabled in a non-combat accident while serving, and he witnessed her struggles in dealing with the system.

"My biggest thing for the VA is they need to remember what their purpose in service is. These vets, they've already served their country, they've already sacrificed," he said. "There is no reason they should have to fight twice."

" - George Washington
The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation."

Our Water - What are we really drinking???

2008-03-10T07:14:00.000-04:00

AP probe finds drugs in drinking water By JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press Writers
Sun Mar 9, 5:03 PM ET

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

How do the drugs get into the water?

People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The wastewater is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.

"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Members of the AP National Investigative Team reviewed hundreds of scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants and interviewed more than 230 officials, academics and scientists. They also surveyed the nation's 50 largest cities and a dozen other major water providers, as well as smaller community water providers in all 50 states.

Here are some of the key test results obtained by the AP:

_Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

_Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

_Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

_A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

_The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

_Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The federal government doesn't require any testing and hasn't set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven't: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

Some providers screen only for one or two pharmaceuticals, leaving open the possibility that others are present.

The AP's investigation also indicates that watersheds, the natural sources of most of the nation's water supply, also are contaminated. Tests were conducted in the watersheds of 35 of the 62 major providers surveyed by the AP, and pharmaceuticals were detected in 28.

Yet officials in six of those 28 metropolitan areas said they did not go on to test their drinking water — Fairfax, Va.; Montgomery County in Maryland; Omaha, Neb.; Oklahoma City; Santa Clara, Calif., and New York City.

The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that "New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" — regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.

In several cases, officials at municipal or regional water providers told the AP that pharmaceuticals had not been detected, but the AP obtained the results of tests conducted by independent researchers that showed otherwise. For example, water department officials in New Orleans said their water had not been tested for pharmaceuticals, but a Tulane University researcher and his students have published a study that found the pain reliever naproxen, the sex hormone estrone and the anti-cholesterol drug byproduct clofibric acid in treated drinking water.

Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only Albuquerque; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Va.; said tests were negative. The drinking water in Dallas has been tested, but officials are awaiting results. Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.

The AP also contacted 52 small water providers — one in each state, and two each in Missouri and Texas — that serve communities with populations around 25,000. All but one said their drinking water had not been screened for pharmaceuticals; officials in Emporia, Kan., refused to answer AP's questions, also citing post-9/11 issues.

Rural consumers who draw water from their own wells aren't in the clear either, experts say.

The Stroud Water Research Center, in Avondale, Pa., has measured water samples from New York City's upstate watershed for caffeine, a common contaminant that scientists often look for as a possible signal for the presence of other pharmaceuticals. Though more caffeine was detected at suburban sites, researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe was struck by the relatively high levels even in less populated areas.

He suspects it escapes from failed septic tanks, maybe with other drugs. "Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail," Aufdenkampe said.

Even users of bottled water and home filtration systems don't necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry's main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems.

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe — even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

For example, in Canada, a study of 20 Ontario drinking water treatment plants by a national research institute found nine different drugs in water samples. Japanese health officials in December called for human health impact studies after detecting prescription drugs in drinking water at seven different sites.

In the United States, the problem isn't confined to surface waters. Pharmaceuticals also permeate aquifers deep underground, source of 40 percent of the nation's water supply. Federal scientists who drew water in 24 states from aquifers near contaminant sources such as landfills and animal feed lots found minuscule levels of hormones, antibiotics and other drugs.

Perhaps it's because Americans have been taking drugs — and flushing them unmetabolized or unused — in growing amounts. Over the past five years, the number of U.S. prescriptions rose 12 percent to a record 3.7 billion, while nonprescription drug purchases held steady around 3.3 billion, according to IMS Health and The Nielsen Co.

"People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that's not the case," said EPA scientist Christian Daughton, one of the first to draw attention to the issue of pharmaceuticals in water in the United States.

Some drugs, including widely used cholesterol fighters, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic medications, resist modern drinking water and wastewater treatment processes. Plus, the EPA says there are no sewage treatment systems specifically engineered to remove pharmaceuticals.

One technology, reverse osmosis, removes virtually all pharmaceutical contaminants but is very expensive for large-scale use and leaves several gallons of polluted water for every one that is made drinkable.

Another issue: There's evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.

Human waste isn't the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.

Water sampled downstream of a Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.

Other veterinary drugs also play a role. Pets are now treated for arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergies, dementia, and even obesity — sometimes with the same drugs as humans. The inflation-adjusted value of veterinary drugs rose by 8 percent, to $5.2 billion, over the past five years, according to an analysis of data from the Animal Health Institute.

Ask the pharmaceutical industry whether the contamination of water supplies is a problem, and officials will tell you no. "Based on what we now know, I would say we find there's little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health," said microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

But at a conference last summer, Mary Buzby — director of environmental technology for drug maker Merck & Co. Inc. — said: "There's no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they're at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms."

Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.

Also, pharmaceuticals in waterways are damaging wildlife across the nation and around the globe, research shows. Notably, male fish are being feminized, creating egg yolk proteins, a process usually restricted to females. Pharmaceuticals also are affecting sentinel species at the foundation of the pyramid of life — such as earth worms in the wild and zooplankton in the laboratory, studies show.

Some scientists stress that the research is extremely limited, and there are too many unknowns. They say, though, that the documented health problems in wildlife are disconcerting.

"It brings a question to people's minds that if the fish were affected ... might there be a potential problem for humans?" EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson told the AP. "It could be that the fish are just exquisitely sensitive because of their physiology or something. We haven't gotten far enough along."

With limited research funds, said Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a greater emphasis should be put on studying the effects of drugs in water.

"I think it's a shame that so much money is going into monitoring to figure out if these things are out there, and so little is being spent on human health," said Snyder. "They need to just accept that these things are everywhere — every chemical and pharmaceutical could be there. It's time for the EPA to step up to the plate and make a statement about the need to study effects, both human and environmental."

To the degree that the EPA is focused on the issue, it appears to be looking at detection. Grumbles acknowledged that just late last year the agency developed three new methods to "detect and quantify pharmaceuticals" in wastewater. "We realize that we have a limited amount of data on the concentrations," he said. "We're going to be able to learn a lot more."

While Grumbles said the EPA had analyzed 287 pharmaceuticals for possible inclusion on a draft list of candidates for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said only one, nitroglycerin, was on the list. Nitroglycerin can be used as a drug for heart problems, but the key reason it's being considered is its widespread use in making explosives.

So much is unknown. Many independent scientists are skeptical that trace concentrations will ultimately prove to be harmful to humans. Confidence about human safety is based largely on studies that poison lab animals with much higher amounts.

There's growing concern in the scientific community, meanwhile, that certain drugs — or combinations of drugs — may harm humans over decades because water, unlike most specific foods, is consumed in sizable amounts every day.

Our bodies may shrug off a relatively big one-time dose, yet suffer from a smaller amount delivered continuously over a half century, perhaps subtly stirring allergies or nerve damage. Pregnant women, the elderly and the very ill might be more sensitive.

Many concerns about chronic low-level exposure focus on certain drug classes: chemotherapy that can act as a powerful poison; hormones that can hamper reproduction or development; medicines for depression and epilepsy that can damage the brain or change behavior; antibiotics that can allow human germs to mutate into more dangerous forms; pain relievers and blood-pressure diuretics.

For several decades, federal environmental officials and nonprofit watchdog environmental groups have focused on regulated contaminants — pesticides, lead, PCBs — which are present in higher concentrations and clearly pose a health risk.

However, some experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body.

"These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations. That's what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects," says zoologist John Sumpter at Brunel University in London, who has studied trace hormones, heart medicine and other drugs.

And while drugs are tested to be safe for humans, the timeframe is usually over a matter of months, not a lifetime. Pharmaceuticals also can produce side effects and interact with other drugs at normal medical doses. That's why — aside from therapeutic doses of fluoride injected into potable water supplies — pharmaceuticals are prescribed to people who need them, not delivered to everyone in their drinking water.

"We know we are being exposed to other people's drugs through our drinking water, and that can't be good," says Dr. David Carpenter, who directs the Institute for Health and the Environment of the State University of New York at Albany.

____

We As Veterans Need To Act Today To Stop This Action

2008-03-09T07:28:00.003-04:00

OPPOSE S2674/HR5509 Which Discriminate Against Disabled Veterans Oppose S2674/HR5509 Which Discriminate Against Disabled Veterans Take Action!

Please send the following message to your elected officials and candidates for office --

As a disabled veteran and your voting constituent, I am most concerned with the provisions of Senator Burr's America's Wounded Warrior Act (S 2674) and Representative Buyer's Nobel Warrior Act (HR 5509), which would drastically change the disability compensation system for America's veterans. These bills are loosely based on the recommendations of the President's Commission on Care for America's Wounded Warriors (Dole/Shalala Commission), but the specifics of these bills would do great harm to these veterans in the following ways:

* Offset VA Disability Compensation by Social Security when the veteran ages 65.

* Apply to all currently discharging veterans AND any veteran under VA's current compensation system who files a subsequent claim for additional benefits.

* Once under the new system the veteran cannot return to the current system.

* Protection for ratings in effect for 10 or more years would no longer apply.

* Would require the VA Secretary to examine or consider:
(a) "the extent to which disability compensation may be used as an incentive to undergo treatment"
(b) "the appropriate injuries to be covered under the new disability rating system"
(c) "age" as a determining factor when considering average loss of earnings capacity

* Amends the law to provide the Secretary with authority to adopt and apply a rating schedule for "specific injuries." This provision would expressly limit VA authority over the Rating Schedule and places the authority in the hands of Congress. If the Congress can not correct the Sustained Growth Rate formula of Medicare Law how can we expect the Congress to do any better with the much more complex Disability Rating Schedule?

* Provides for a quality of life payment, but only for those enrolled in the "new" compensation system.

* Allows or suggests: That VA "may take into account the effect on potential future earnings caused by the age of the veteran at the time a disability rating is assigned." This provision would allow VA to compensate an older veteran at a lower percentage of disability than a younger veteran for the exact same disease or injury. Is this not age discrimination?

* Provides that
(a) "as frequently as [the VA] considers it appropriate, [the VA] must reevaluate and ... adjust the disability rating for any veteran receiving compensation;"
(b) the VA "must ... take into account any adjustments in the rating schedule that occurred since the last assignment of a rating;"
(c) The frequency of reevaluations would be determined by an examining physician. This places physicians back in the rating business, allows for frequent "adjustments" to a veteran's rating based on perceived improvement, and further allows reductions based on a change in the rating criteria even when no improvement in the disability is shown.

For these reasons, among others, I strongly urge you to oppose S2674/HR5509 and any other legislation which is detrimental to and/or discriminatory against this nation's veterans.

This action could drastically harm our benefits as we know them today!!!

MOTHERS OF DEATH

2008-03-04T16:29:00.000-05:00

Worshippers of Death
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
The Wall Street Journal

March 3, 2008; Page A17

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

How should Western democracies fight against an enemy whose leaders preach a preference for death?

The two basic premises of conventional warfare have long been that soldiers and civilians prefer living to dying and can thus be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed; and that combatants (soldiers) can easily be distinguished from noncombatants (women, children, the elderly, the infirm and other ordinary citizens). These premises are being challenged by women like Zahra Maladan. Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.

Late last month, a young female bomber was shot as she approached some shops in central Baghdad. The Iraqi soldier who drew his gun hesitated as the bomber, hands raised, insisted that she wasn't armed. The soldier and a shop owner finally opened fire as she dashed for the stores; she was knocked to the ground but still managed to detonate the bomb, killing three and wounding eight. Had the soldier and other bystanders not called out a warning to others -- and had they not shot her before she could enter the shops -- the death toll certainly would have been higher. Had he not hesitated, it might have been lower.

As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."

Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?

The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.

We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.

Mr. Dershowitz teaches law at Harvard University and is the author of "Finding Jefferson" (Wiley, 2007).

2008-03-04T15:41:00.000-05:00

Who Looks Foolish, Alamo Heroes or Us?
By Chuck Baldwin
March 4, 2008

This column is archived at
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2008/cbarchive_20080304.html

During this week back in 1836, the Alamo fell. For more than 13 days,
186 brave and determined patriots withstood Santa Anna's seasoned
army of over 4,000 troops. To a man, the defenders of that mission fort
knew they would never leave those ramparts alive. They had several
opportunities to leave and live. Yet, they chose to fight and die.
How foolish they must look to this generation of spoiled Americans.

It is difficult to recall that stouthearted men such as Davy Crockett
(a nationally known frontiersman and former Congressman), Will Travis
(only 23 years old with a little baby at home), and Jim Bowie (a
wealthy landowner with properties on both sides of the Rio Grande)
really existed. These were real men with real dreams and real
desires.

Real blood flowed through their veins. They loved their families and
enjoyed life as much as any of us. There was something different
about them, however. They possessed a commitment to liberty that
transcended personal safety and comfort.

Liberty is an easy word to say, but it is a hard word to live up to.
Freedom has little to do with financial gain or personal pleasure.
Accompanying Freedom is her constant and unattractive companion,
Responsibility. Neither is she an only child. Patriotism and Morality
are her sisters. They are inseparable; destroy one and all will die.

Early in the siege, Travis wrote these words to the people of Texas:
"Fellow Citizens & Compatriots: I am besieged by a thousand or more
of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. . . . The enemy has demanded a
surrender at discretion, otherwise the garrison are to be put to the
sword . . . I have answered the demand with a cannon shot & our flag
still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or
retreat. . . . VICTORY OR DEATH! P.S. The Lord is on our side. . . ."

As you read those words, remember that Travis and the others did not
have the A.C.L.U., P.E.T.A., People for the un-American Way, and the
National Education Association telling them how intolerant and
narrow-minded their notions of honor and patriotism were. A hostile
media did not constantly castigate them as a bunch of wild-eyed
extremists. As school children, they were not taught that their
forefathers were nothing more than racist jerks.

The brave men at the Alamo labored under the belief that America (and
Texas) really was "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
They believed God was on their side and that the freedom of future
generations depended on their courage and resolve. They further
believed their posterity would remember their sacrifice as an act of
love and devotion. It all looks pale now.

By today's standards, the gallant men of the Alamo appear rather
foolish. After all, they had no chance of winning--none. However, the
call for pragmatism and practicality was never sounded. Instead, they
answered the clarion call, "Victory or death!"

Please try to remember the heroes of the Alamo as you watch our
gutless political and religious leaders surrender to compromise and
political correctness. Try to recall the time in this country when
ordinary men and women had the courage of their convictions and were
willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom and independence.

One thing is certain: those courageous champions at the Alamo did not
die for a political party or for some "lesser of two evils" mantra.
They fought and died for a principle, and that principle was liberty
and independence. So did the men at Lexington and Concord. That is
our heritage.

Today, however, our national leaders are in the process of turning
America over to the very forces that the Alamo defenders gave their
lives resisting. On second thought, do they look foolish, or do we?

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editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be
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(c) Chuck Baldwin

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Our Government Should Be Ashamed!!!

2008-03-03T14:44:00.000-05:00

Every senator and member of the house should be ashamed of letting things like this happen. Yet, it goes on daily within the Veterans Affairs with people making decisions that either cannot pour it out of boot, allowed to deny the laws of chemistry, or they get their cash bonuses based on denials of Veterans claims.

Korean DMZ Veteran David Hill was given 18 months to live with two cancers that are approved as associated with the herbicide Agent Orange. David proved beyond any doubt he did serve along the DMZ for months. Veterans Affairs denied him compensations because David arrived two months after the Department of Defense (DoD) stated they quit using the herbicides. Our Veterans Affairs totally discounting and denying the proven toxic half-life of these herbicides in their denial of David’s claim. Even more germane to the issue, not only did David have two cancers associated with the herbicide exposures but after leaving the DMZ and at discharge from service, David was diagnosed with pustular acne. A scientific hallmark of exposures to these dioxins, dioxin-like furan isomers, and polychlorinated biphenyl's (PCB’s) that some of their isomers fall in the category of dioxin isomers. David had no such pustular acne before he served on the Korean DMZ.

Veterans Affairs or their raters or there judges should not have the power to say that any half life study must have been accomplished in South Korea and along the DMZ. Half life in chemistry is what it is; by the toxicology experts or the world or our nation - not what the US Veterans Affairs says it is.

All of this would be impossible just to be some multiple coincidence when judged by any sane person even without the mythical congressional mandate of the "benefit of the doubt shall be given to the Veteran."

To add insult to injury and pour rock salt into the open and festered wound of our dead and dying Veterans from government toxic chemical causations; the congressional civilian herbicide bill for the exact same issues and conditions is four times as long for inclusive dates than what is given the Veteran. In this case, David would have been inside the inclusive dates for civilian awards for compensations by two years and there could have not been this nonsensical and obscene denial by Veterans Affairs.

David passed away on February 9, 2008 leaving a widow, Sheila, and a minor son with his claim still unresolved that so many of our Veterans and their surviving spouses must face. The continual anti-veteran and abusive treatment of our nations Veterans by Veterans Affairs with congress doing little if anything to squelch this 40 year tide of abuse must stop. Now his widow must get back at the end of the line and start the process all over with mounds of Veterans Affairs paper work, which will result in even more years of denial until someone comes to their senses. Meanwhile she will go without the financial support needed that was created by our own government in David’s premature death.

I pointed out this very case in Congressman Filners office as an example when I presented our suggestions to reduce the backlog of claims. Yet, nothing was done in this obvious abuse of power.

I have posted at the bottom the fax numbers and addresses of the Veterans Affairs Committee in the House. Please send either my letter or your own as to the despicable treatment of this Veteran and the insistence that this widow be given her benefits immediately. Also include your own congressperson and senators as well.

When I talked to David he knew he was not going to survive but wanted my help in trying to get his claim approved before he died for his wife and son. I failed, even though I brought it up to the head guy of Veterans Affairs in Congress. Now the widow is asking what can be done, if anything. Until congress and the media address these issues of the mistreatment and abuse of power I believe there is nothing that can nor will be done as Veterans Affairs remains unchallenged with a broken and decayed system of total abusive power with no retribution for their actions.

Any media or reporters wanting to follow up on this story and how "To Care for Him Who Have Borne the Battle and For His Widow, and His Orphan is nothing but a sick Veterans Affairs joke - please contact the widow at: sheila708@wildblue. net

The same for anyone in congress that gives a darn how our Veterans are actually treated.

Charles Kelley

DMZ Vietnam 67-68

The Toxic Chemical Corridor

I would also add here a sentiment send in by one of our own group, a former Captain and chopper pilot in Vietnam after to listening the the subcommittee hearings. And I think all of us can agree here.

"...On the issue of V.A. Compensation, once again the Senate held hearings on V.A. compensation and of course several so-called "experts" addressed our needs. This is bullshit.

In order to adequately address our needs the Senate Committee should hear from those of us who receive the compensation, not some expert who is on a compensation rate nowhere near ours.
I would add here also from those that have to fight to the death to receive anything at all and in many cases do not make it prior to death and then the dutiful widow based on a promise to her dead husband; "not to give up," continues the fight against the number one enemy of our military - The United States Government! Unfortunately the congress wants to hear from those that have never fought in these battles or suffered the indignities of Veterans Affairs and their Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) type of activities.

Veterans who receive compensation are the ones who should be testifying!

And if a so-called "expert" testifies it should only be after the "expert" has had to live on the same rate of compensation that we receive. Try to live on that for a year and see how much debt they have accumulated! They certainly won't be saving much, if any.

I am so sick and tired of someone else speaking for me I could just spit! These people have absolutely no idea how far our compensation doesn't go. So who do they ask to testify? An "expert" that lives on salaries/compensati on most likely in the 6 figure income range."

Members of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs

Bob Filner
2428 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-8045
Fax: (202) 225-9073

Corrine Brown
2336 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-0123
Fax: (202) 225-2256

Vic Snyder
1330 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: 202-225-2506
Fax: 202-225-5903
E-mail: snyder.congress@ mail.house. gov

Steve Buyer
2230 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5037

Cliff Stearns
2370 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone (202) 225-5744
Fax (202) 225-3973

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
331 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2801
Fax: (202) 225-5823
stephanie.hersethsa ndlin@mail. house.gov

Jerry Moran
2202 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
P: (202) 225-2715
F: (202) 225-5124

Richard H. Baker
341 Cannon House Office Building
Washington DC 20515
Phone: 202-225-3901
Fax: 202-225-7313

Harry E. Mitchell
2434 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2190
Fax: (202) 225-3263

John Hall
1217 Longworth House Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5441
Fax: (202) 225-3289

Henry E. Brown, Jr.
1124 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3176
Fax: (202) 225-3407

Jeff Miller
1535 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, Washington DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4136
Fax: (202) 225-3414

Phil Hare
1118 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5905
Fax: (202) 225-5396

Michael R. Doyle
401 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: 202-225-2135
Fax: 202-225-3084

John Boozman
1519 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4301
Fax: (202) 225-5713

Ginny Brown-Waite
414 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: 202-225-1002

Shelley Berkley
405 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-4708
Phone:(202) 225-5965
Fax: (202) 225-3119
Toll free: (877) 409-2488

John T. Salazar
1531 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-4761
202-226-9669 (fax)

Michael R. Turner
1740 Longworth Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-6465
Fax: (202) 225-6754

Brian P. Bilbray
227 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: 202-225-0508
Fax: 202-225-2558

Ciro D. Rodriguez
2458 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4511
Fax: (202) 225-2237

Joe Donnelly

Longworth House Office Building 1218
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3915
Fax: (202) 226-6798

Doug Lamborn
437 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4422
Fax: (202) 226-2638

Gus M. Bilirakis
1630 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
ph: 202-225-5755
fx: 202-225-4085

Jerry McNerney
312 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-1947
Fax: (202) 225-4060

Zachary T. Space
315 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
ph: (202) 225-6265
fax: (202) 225-3394

Vern Buchanan
1516 Longworth HOB
Washington DC 20515
ph: (202) 225-5015
fx: (202) 226-0828
Tim Walz
1529 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: 202-225-2472
Fax: 202-225-3433

Non Member fighting for Veterans

Steve Kagen M.D.
1232 Longworth House Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5665
Fax: (202) 225-5729

Are We Being Set Up For Attack Again?

2008-03-01T07:29:00.000-05:00

9/11 Redux: 'Thousands of Aliens' in U.S. Flight Schools Illegally

Former FAA Inspector: TSA's Enforcement of Post-9/11 Laws 'Basically Nonexistent'

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4353991&page=1

By BRIAN ROSS, VIC WALTER and ERIC LONGABARDI
Feb. 27, 2008

Thousands of foreign student pilots have been able to enroll and obtain pilot licenses from U.S. flight schools, despite tough laws passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, according to internal government documents obtained by ABC News.

"Some of the very same conditions that allowed the 9-11 tragedy to happen in the first place are still very much in existence today," wrote one regional security official to his boss at the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration. [emphasis added]

"Thousands of aliens, some of whom may very well pose a threat to this country, are taking flight lessons, being granted FAA certifications and are flying planes," wrote the TSA official, Richard A. Horn, in 2005, complaining that the students did not have the proper visas.

Under the new laws, American flight schools are only supposed to provide pilot training to foreign students who have been given a background check by the TSA and have a specific type of visa.

But in thousands of cases that has not happened, according to the documents and current and former government officials involved in the program.

"TSA's enforcement is basically nonexistent," said former FAA inspector Bill McNease, in an interview for ABC News' "World News With Charles Gibson." [emphasis added]

McNease, who retired last year, says in one year alone, 2005, he found some 8,000 foreign students in the FAA database who got their pilot licenses without ever being approved by the TSA. [emphasis added]

"And a flight school wants the money to teach 'em. And they are gonna teach 'em how to fly and get their ratings, and then they just slip through the cracks," McNease said.

In another internal e-mail obtained by ABC News, Monty Thompson, an official in the TSA Flight School Inspections section, complained in 2005 to his bosses in Washington, "I fear we are 'danger close' to losing sight of the mission and the intent of the 'Flight School Security' provisions."

The new laws were passed after it was learned that all of the 9/11 hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, who were involved in flight operations had trained at U.S. flight schools with improper visas. [emphasis added]

Cultural Jihad

2008-02-28T06:22:00.000-05:00

The story below ran yesterday in The Australian Higher Education publication. We share it with you because such requests for unreasonable accommodations are being repeated over and over again in the countries of Western Europe, and are slowly becoming more commonplace here in America.

In the story below, Muslim students want classes to be rescheduled to fit in with their prayer timetables, as well as separate male and female eating and recreational areas established.

Imagine the havoc wreaked on society if our public universities were to accommodate such unreasonable requests as these from Muslims. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, etc., etc. etc., would then rightfully step up and ask for unreasonable accommodations for their beliefs as well. Yet it seems that, not only are more and more Muslims around the world requesting - even demanding - such accommodations, it is clear they believe they have every right to such accommodations.

Simultaneously, it does not seem to occur to these Muslims that requests like those in the story below blatantly infringe on the rights and beliefs of other students, professors and staff. Or if it does, the attitude is that the rights and beliefs of others must give way to the practice of their Islamic faith.

Which begs this question: Why?

Why do these Muslims believe they have the right to subordinate the rights and beliefs of others? While we cannot read their minds, it is reasonable to conclude that such a belief emanates from the Qu'ranic doctrines of Islamic supremacy and forceful subjugation of all other beliefs to that supremacy.

After all, if you accept what the Qu'ran and the Hadith teach about the supremacy of Islam and Allah, about not only the right but the duty of Muslims to forcefully subordinate all other beliefs to Islam and Allah, then it is perfectly logical to conclude that you have the right to demand accommodations for your beliefs that subordinate the beliefs of everyone else to yours.

This is the theological rationale and justification for Islamic Jihad, whether by violence or "Cultural Jihad" - the subversion and ultimate conquering of a society from within by means other than physical violence. For what is Jihad but the call to subjugate "infidels" to the "supreme" religion of Islam and Allah?

It is one reason why sociologists and authors who are studying the migration of Islam around the globe regularly note that most Muslims do not "assimilate" in societies to which they migrate that are not Muslim. Even when they are in a small minority in a society, it is not uncommon for Muslims to demand special accommodations that no other religious belief in that society would demand.

Therefore, even if a Muslim denounces "terror" and the concept of "jihad," but at the same time demands unreasonable accommodations for his beliefs that result in the direct subordination of the rights and beliefs of others to his Islamic beliefs, he in effect acts as a "warrior" for Islamic jihad, whether he acknowledges it or not.

And as the Brits have learned, the more a society submits to these demands, the more emboldened the militant Muslims become and the more demands they make. Small wonder the Archbishop of Canterbury recently stated that the imposition of sharia law in Great Britain was "unavoidable" and necessary for "social cohesion."

In submitting to militant Muslim demands for accommodations for their beliefs, a society communicates to the militant Muslim that he is correct and that his belief in the supremacy of Islam and Allah is justified. This is why submitting to cultural jihad is every bit as dangerous as submitting to violent jihad.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Muslims want unis to fit prayer time

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23269447-12332,00.html

Richard Kerbaj and Milanda Rout | February 25, 2008

MUSLIM university students want lectures to be rescheduled to fit in with prayer timetables and separate male and female eating and recreational areas established on Australian campuses.

International Muslim students, predominantly from Saudi Arabia, have asked universities in Melbourne to change class times so they can attend congregational prayers. They also want a female-only area for Muslim students to eat and relax.

But at least one institution has rejected their demands, arguing that the university is secular and it does not want to set a precedent for requests granted in the name of religious beliefs.

La Trobe University International chief officer John Molony said several students had approached the Bundoora institution about rearranging class times to fit in with daily prayers.

Mr Molony said the university was attempting to "meet the needs" of an increasing number of Muslim international students, including doubling the size of the prayer room on campus.

La Trobe University International College director Martin Van Run said that although it was involved in discussions with the Muslim students who had made the requests, the university was not planning to change any timetables.

"That would seriously inconvenience other people at the college and it is not institutionally viable," he told The Australian. "We are a secular institution ... and we need to have a structured timetable."

Mr Van Run said that Saudi students were fully aware that the university was secular before coming to study there. "They know well in advance the class times," he said.

A spokesman for RMIT University would neither confirm nor deny reports that Muslim students had requested timetable changes.

One university source told The Australian that the requests by Muslim international students for timetable changes included a petition.

"Some of the students would prefer that lecture times were organised so it would be easy for them to attend prayers," he said. "But it wouldn't be a good precedent to set."

Islamic leaders yesterday backed the push by Muslim students to have their lectures arranged to accommodate prayer sessions, but said such a move would be essential only for congregational Friday prayers.

Female Muslim leader Aziza Abdel-Halim said yesterday it was a religious duty for those who followed Islam to preach with their fellow believers on Fridays.

But the former senior member of John Howard's Muslim reference board said there was nothing in Islam that indicated men and women be segregated when it came to educational activities.

"There's nothing in Islam that says there should be complete segregation, especially in educational institutions," said Sister Abdel-Halim.

She said afternoon prayers for Muslims - Zhohor, at 1.10pm, and Asr, at 4.50pm - could be performed until 10 minutes before the following daily prayer, so it was more appropriate to alter prayer times than lecture schedules.

"It's reasonable to ask for the lectures to be shifted around on Friday," Sister Abdel-Halim said. "But if it's going to cause havoc with the timetable, I don't think it's really feasible to ask for every single prayer to be catered for."

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ACT for America
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456
www.actforamerica.org

Doing The Right Thing

2008-02-19T08:59:00.000-05:00

Joseph Galloway: Doing right by the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan

SUNDAY, February 17, 2008

If a society is judged by the way it treats its military veterans, then we who live in the richest nation in the world and those who lead us should be condemned for our shameful neglect and callous disregard for those who defend us.

When 15 million Johnnies came marching home from World War II, a package of benefits enacted in 1944 and signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt was waiting for them, extending assistance for education, unemployment and the purchase of a house or a business.

More than half of those who served in World War II - 8 million of the 15 million veterans of that war - signed up and had their college tuitions or technical school fees paid by Uncle Sam. They also received monthly checks to cover housing and food.

It was expensive, but for every dollar the U.S. government spent on educational benefits for WWII veterans, the government recouped between $5 and $12 in taxes paid on the higher incomes earned by college graduates, says the Congressional Research Service.

Veterans of Korea and Vietnam got sharply limited benefits, and received only monthly checks for college education, and small checks at that: The government no longer paid for tuition.

By 1985, with an all-volunteer military and America at peace, Congress enacted an even more limited educational benefit, the Montgomery GI Bill. A young soldier now is required torequest future college benefits upon enlistment, and also must agree to contribute $100 a month from his or her pay during the first year of service.

In return, upon discharge, he or she can apply through the Veterans Administration for 36 months of support for college, but the checks are capped at $1,100 a month, and in reality they average about $800.

That was little enough 23 years ago, but it was considered sufficient for troops who'd served in peacetime. But that $1,100 is worth about half of what it was in 1985 - and college expenses have risen much faster than retail prices have.

What's more, this isn't peacetime: We've been at war for the last six years, and we may remain at war for years to come. Many of today's young veterans have served two or three or more combat tours in Afghanistan and/or Iraq. Some of them arrive on campus missing an arm or a leg, or suffering from brain injuries or PTSD.

They want to get on with their lives and build a better future by getting the college education that they weren't ready for, or that their families couldn't afford, when they finished high school.

Sen. James Webb, D-Va., a Vietnam veteran, has been doggedly pursuing passage of a new GI Bill aimed at helping these new wartime veterans get that education by giving them much the same educational benefits that were extended to their grandfathers after WWII.

Under his bill, which has attracted three dozen other sponsors, the government would resume paying full college tuition for these veterans for a period linked to their times in uniform, but for no more than 36 months or four academic years. Every eligible college veteran also would receive a check for $1,000 a month to help cover living expenses.

This would cost the government about $2 billion a year, which is about what we're presently spending every 36 hours in Iraq.

President George W. Bush and the Pentagon oppose any such improvement of this miserly benefit for our young veterans. Why? The president says it would cost too much and be too hard to administer, and he's threatened to veto Webb's bill if it ever passes.

The Pentagon says that if you offer more realistic college benefits, too many troops might decide to leave at the end of their enlistments and take advantage of it. And that, they say, would only make it even harder to find and enlist enough recruits to man our wars.

Those arguments against doing the right thing for college veterans are, in the case of our "wartime president," about what I've come to expect of a man whose support for our troops has never extended past strutting through the latest photo op on a military base or an aircraft carrier.

The argument of the Pentagon bean counters - who in the best tradition of former Vietnam-era defense secretary Robert Strange McNamara know the cost of everything and the value of nothing - may be accurate.

However, it is cruel, callous and uncaring in the extreme not to give our troops any hope of a life beyond endless deployments for fear that they might opt for an education over the simple joys of killing and dying far from home.

Three former presidents, a dozen U.S. senators including Webb, several Supreme Court justices, 36 Nobel Prize recipients, several university presidents and millions of American veterans got a leg up from previous GI Bills.

We owe our newest combat veterans no less. Write, call or e-mail your senators and your representative in Congress and ask for their votes in favor of Jim Webb's new GI Bill.
If George W. Bush vetoes so modest a gesture of gratitude to the young veterans who've given so much in the wars of his making, then we can add hypocrisy and shame to the long list of sins that are the hallmarks of his presidency.

More about Joe Galloway:
http://www.national infantryfoundati on.org/advisor_ galloway. shtml

http://www.mcclatch ydc.com/galloway / (contact)

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Contributed,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(ret)

Inside Vietnam TONIGHT!!!

2008-02-18T06:28:00.001-05:00

National Geographic Channel Goes "Inside the Vietnam War"

How did the United States' mission to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia escalate into our country's longest war? Which military strategies failed and which succeeded? What did our servicemen experience on the battlefields? This President’s Day, National Geographic Channel (NGC) transports viewers back to the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War, providing a fresh, personal, in-depth look at a decades-old struggle with Inside the Vietnam War, a landmark three-hour television event debuting Monday, February 18, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Inside the Vietnam War takes you inside covert operations, gives you a seat at the military strategy table, and lets you witness the toll of war through the eyes of the soldiers who had their boots on the ground and the pilots who undertook dozens of death-defying missions. The program also includes testimonials from more than 50 Vietnam veterans, archival audio and video footage, and never-before-seen photos.

NGC has is carried by all of the nation’s major cable and satellite television providers, making it currently available to more than 67 million homes. For more information, please visit www.nationalgeographic.com/channel.

Disabled Vets Don't Miss Out!!

2008-02-17T07:55:00.000-05:00

Liberty Tax Service Files Free Returns For Taxpayers Who Don't Meet Regular Filing Requirements

Business Wire

If you are eligible for a payment, all you have to do is file a 2007 tax return. Liberty Tax Service is offering to prepare tax returns at no charge for select taxpayers who have no tax liability. Low income workers, or those who receive Social Security benefits or veterans' disability compensation, pension or survivors benefits received from the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2007 will be eligible to receive a payment of $300 ($600 on a joint return) if they had at least $3,000 of qualifying income.

Qualifying income includes Social Security benefits, certain Railroad Retirement benefits, certain veterans' benefits, and earned income, such as income from wages, salaries, tips and self-employment. While these people might not normally be required to file a tax return because they do not meet the filing requirement, they must file a 2007 return in order to receive a rebate.

"Liberty Tax Service wants to help people who do not normally have to file a return get the rebate they are entitled to receive. Many people who receive Social Security and veterans benefits are likely to overlook this opportunity to get the stimulus payment. Last year, over 30 million taxpayers missed the telephone excise tax credit that was due to them. We don't want that to occur with the tax stimulus package," states John Hewitt, CEO of Liberty Tax Service. "Liberty is known for our commitment to give back to the communities that support our company. This is just another way we can help out."

Liberty Tax Service will be mounting a public awareness campaign to ensure that everyone entitled to a stimulus payment is alerted. Anyone who has questions can e-mail taxrebates@libertytax.com for more information. Representatives from Liberty Tax Service are available to comment on this program as well.

About Liberty Tax Service

Liberty Tax Service is the fastest growing retail tax preparation company in the industry's history. Founded in 1997 by CEO John T. Hewitt, a pioneer in the tax industry, Liberty Tax Service ( www.libertytax.com ) has prepared over 5,000,000 individual income tax returns and currently operates over 2,700 offices throughout the United States and Canada.

Liberty Tax Service provides computerized income tax preparation, electronic filing, and refund loans. With an emphasis on customer service including audit assistance, a money back guarantee and free tax return checking, Liberty Tax Service is well known for its strong commitment to its client base.

With 39 years of tax industry experience, Hewitt stands as the most experienced CEO in the tax preparation business, having also founded Jackson Hewitt Tax Service (NYSE: JTX).
-------------------------

by Larry Scott
VA Watchdog dot Org

Those Who Stand Against US

2008-02-11T07:54:00.001-05:00

The City Council in Berkeley and now in Ohio and other cities around the nation support the movements such as Code Pink. To see what Code Pink is about take a look at the video below. These are the people who are standing against America. In my opinion they are no better than the enemies of our Nation that we fight around the world. They are terrorist just as much as those who bears arms against us. They simple use words and mind games to poison the minds of the unsuspecting, the unknowledgeable, the young and naive. This is the enemy within and they must be watched closely, very closely. These are also part of the group who protest military funerals around the nation with the Westborough Baptist Church group, those the Patriot Guard, America Forward, Gathering of Eagles and Eagles Up stand against.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmdrkmtkCw4

Justice May Be Served

2008-02-11T06:58:00.001-05:00

Six Guantanamo detainees will face death penalty
Military prosecutors moving forward with cases against those accused of having central roles in the Sept. 11 terror attacks
By William Glaberson

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Monday, February 11, 2008

Military prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty for six Guantánamo detainees who are set to be charged with having central roles in the Sept. 11 attacks, government officials who have been briefed on the charges said Sunday.

The officials said the charges would be announced at the Pentagon as soon as today and were likely to include numerous war-crimes charges against the six men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has described himself as the mastermind of the attacks.

A Defense Department official said prosecutors were seeking the death penalty because "if any case warrants it, it would be for individuals who were parties to a crime of that scale."

The officials spoke anonymously because no one was authorized to speak about the case.

A decision to seek the death penalty would increase the international focus on the case and present new challenges to the troubled military commission system.

"The system hasn't been able to handle the less complicated cases it has been presented with to date," said David Glazier, a former Navy officer who is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Among the other five suspects who will be charged are detainees who officials say were coordinators and intermediaries in the plot, including a man labeled the "20th hijacker" who was denied entry to the United States in the month before the attacks.

Under the rules of the Guantánamo war-crimes system, military prosecutors can designate charges as capital when they present them, and it is that first phase of the process that is expected this week.

The military official who then reviews them, Susan Crawford, a former military appeals court judge, has the authority to accept or reject a death penalty request.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Sunday.

Some of those briefed on the case have said the prosecutors view their task, to seek convictions in the Sept. 11 attacks, as a historic challenge. A special group of military and Justice Department lawyers has been working on the case for several years.

If the detainees were to be convicted on capital charges, any execution would not be carried out for many months or even years, lawyers said, in part because a death sentence would have to be scrutinized by civilian appeals courts.

The military justice system provides for execution by lethal injection in death sentence convictions. But the U.S. military has rarely executed a prisoner in recent times — the last military execution was in 1961.

One official who had been briefed on the case said the charges were expected to be lodged against six detainees at Guantánamo, including Mohammed, who reportedly presented the idea of an airliner attack on the United States to Osama bin Laden in 1999 and then coordinated its planning.

The official identified the others to be charged as Mohamed al-Kahtani, the man officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi Binalshibh, accused of being the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of al Qaeda; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Mohammed, who has been identified as Mohammed's lieutenant for the 2001 operation; Baluchi's assistant, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi; and Walid bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the hijackers.

The military commission system has been beset by legal challenges and practical difficulties almost from the start, when it was set up in an order by President Bush in November 2001.

Although officials have spoken of charging 80 or more detainees with war crimes, only one case has been completed, and that was through a plea bargain.

Tom Fleener, an Army Reserve major who was until recently a military defense lawyer at Guantánamo, said that bringing death penalty cases would bog down the system.

He noted that many legal questions remain unanswered at Guantánamo, including how much of the trials will be conducted in secret proceedings; how the military judges will handle any evidence obtained through coercive tactics; and whether the judges will require experienced death penalty lawyers to take part in such cases.

"Neither the system is ready, nor are the defense attorneys ready to do a death penalty case in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba," Fleener said.

Terror For Children

2008-02-11T06:46:00.001-05:00

Poison cake kills Iraqi children
By Jim Muir
BBC News, Baghdad

The UK government has flown antidote medicine to the Middle East after some Iraqis became seriously ill from eating cakes laced with the poison thallium.
Two of the victims, both children, died after eating cake delivered to a military club in Baghdad.

Others are being treated in hospital in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

It is the first time the deadly toxin has been used since the downfall of Saddam Hussein, whose regime used it to kill its opponents.

At least two of the poison victims, the secretary of the Iraqi air force club and his daughter, are critically ill in Amman.

They and half-a-dozen other patients suffering from thallium poisoning were flown from Baghdad to Amman as the necessary treatments and antidotes were not available in Iraq.

Britain responded to a request for help from the World Health Organization and medication was flown out.

Lethal poison

Thallium is a lethal poison much used by Saddam Hussein's regime against its opponents. It has not surfaced since his overthrow.

It is an ideal assassin's tool, being tasteless and easy to administer, and its effects take some time to appear.

It then causes a lingering and painful death. An antidote known as Prussian Blue can be effective if taken quickly.

An investigation is under way in Baghdad, but the affair remains shrouded in mystery. The manager of the air force club told the BBC he believed it was carried out by conspirators with a grudge against the club's administration.

In what appeared to be a goodwill gesture, a former official delivered two cakes laced with thallium.

They were taken home by two officials and eaten by their families, who all fell ill.

Vets Commission Reccomendation Updates

2008-02-09T04:35:00.001-05:00

VFW Wants Dole/Shalala Recommendation Blocked

Creating separate system is an injustice to all disabled veterans

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2008--The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. is urging the leadership of four key congressional committees to block attempts to create a separate disability system that would have the Department of Veterans Affairs compensate veterans with similar wounds differently based on their age.

"There is no difference between a 22-year-old shot in the leg on Iwo Jima 63 years ago this month and a 22-year-old shot in the leg in Iraq yesterday," said VFW National Commander George Lisicki, a Vietnam veteran from Carteret, N.J. "To compensate them differently based solely on age, and using the rational that this new generation is more deserving than older veterans, is an injustice, and violates every fundamental rule of fairness that Americans hold dear."

The recommendation in contention was made by the President's Commission on Care for America's Wounded Warriors, which was co-chaired by retired Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala. The Dole/Shalala Commission was chartered in March 2007 as the administration's response to the outpatient housing debacle at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Four months later, the commission published a 149-page report with six broad recommendations.

The VFW wants more attention paid to the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission that Congress chartered in 2004 to study the benefits that compensate and assist veterans and their survivors for disabilities and deaths attributable to military service. After thousands of interviews and almost three years of research – including major studies by the Institute of Medicine and the Center for Naval Analysis – it published a 562-page report in October 2007 that included 113 detailed recommendations.

"The Dole/Shalala Commission's mandate was not to make broad generalizations and sweeping recommendations that would throw out a disability compensation system that has served millions of veterans extremely well over the years," said Lisicki. "Dole/Shalala was good, but it wasn't that good, and it certainly wasn't thorough enough to be touted as the 'cure-all' for all the VA's problems."

The VFW national commander is very concerned that a major change in the way the VA conducts business may be forced upon America's veterans without any opposition.

"The VFW is 100 percent against compensating veterans with the same injuries differently because of their age," said Lisicki, who voiced the VFW's opposition yesterday in a letter to the leadership of the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services and Veterans Affairs. [Read letter]

VFW Washington Office Executive Director Bob Wallace is now tasked to ensure the VFW's position is conveyed to and understood by the administration and Congress.

"How our nation properly cares for, and then fairly compensates our disabled veterans or their surviving family members are the only issues on the table, and that's why we are calling on Congress to thoroughly evaluate the recommendations made by both commissions" said Wallace, also a Vietnam veteran.

"Everyone wants to do what's best for our troops and for our veterans – to include all the members of both commissions – but what we absolutely must not do is create conditions that could cause the VA to fail in its primary mission," he said. "The VA is a national resource for disabled veterans. As an institution, it must survive, not just for the next 10 years, but for the next 100 years."

-------------------------
VA Watchdog dot Org

American Legion Scammers or Not?

2008-02-09T04:15:00.000-05:00

American Legion Trying to Scam Vets?

U.S. Postal Inspectors Investigate Whether American Legion Letter Was a Mistake Or a Scam

By JOSEPH RHEE

U.S. postal inspectors have been asked to investigate whether the American Legion tried to trick veterans into signing up for membership in the Legion.

In a mailing last year to 800,000 former members, the American Legion said their "benefits as a veteran of the United States Armed Forces have lapsed" and that the only way to "reinstate these important benefits" was to pay $20 to reinstate their American Legion membership.

Under U.S. law, veterans benefits do not lapse over time, and the American Legion now acknowledges the letter, signed by Legion National Adjutant Robert Spanogle, was "a serious mistake."

A retired Air Force major, Robert Hanafin, has filed a complaint of mail fraud with postal inspectors after becoming outraged by what he viewed as a deceptive letter designed to scare people into rejoining the American Legion.

According to Hanafin, "Any veterans organization that uses any such low-down scams to increase membership deserves to stay in the 19th century."

With more than three million members, the American Legion is the largest veterans organization in the country.

American Legion spokesperson Joe March told the Blotter on ABCNews.com that the language was the fault of an outside contractor who neglected to make clear that the lapsed benefits in question were actually American Legion membership benefits.

March said an "electronic editing mistake" by the contractor omitted the "American Legion" reference.

March said the Legion apologized for the error and that "we acted promptly and immediately sent out a correction letter."

Maj. Hanafin, however, said he doesn't buy the American Legion's explanation that the first letter was a mistake.

He points to specific language in the letter that states the benefits were given "in accordance with a special act of Congress."

According to Hanafin, "The disservice they are doing to America's veterans...goes far beyond shameful."

-------------------------

posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

right to Bear Arms

2008-02-09T02:08:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A majority of Congress on Friday urged the Supreme Court to side with gun owners in an upcoming case testing whether an individual has a guaranteed right to bear arms.

Lawmakers want the Supreme Court to end a Washington, D.C., ordinance that prevents legal handgun ownership.

The bipartisan group of senators and representatives signed on to a legal brief supporting a challenge by District of Columbia residents to own a handgun for protection in their home.

The justices hold oral arguments March 18, and could provide a landmark ruling on a legal question that has largely gone answered since the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791.

In their "amicus" brief, 55 senators and 250 representatives urged the high court to strike down the district's ordinance that prevents citizens from legally owning a handgun.

"We're talking about law-abiding folks -- like you and me -- who cannot exercise their rights simply because of the city they live in," said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana. "Our founders didn't intend for the laws to be applied to some folks and not to others. They didn't mean for the laws to apply at some times and not others."

Tester made his remarks in a conservative think-tank speech, along with a co-sponsor, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

Don't Miss
Supreme Court to rule on right to bear arms
Sixty-eight Democrats in the House and nine in the Senate were joined a larger Republican bloc filing the brief.

The case is the most closely watched this Supreme Court term, and legal and political experts say it has already ignited a fierce social debate this election year.

The issue is one that has polarized judges and politicians for decades: Do the Second Amendment's 27 words bestow gun ownership as an individual right, or is it a collective one -- aimed at the civic responsibilities of state militias -- and therefore subject to strict government regulation?

The amendment states, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

District leaders had urged the high court to intervene, saying refusal to do so could prove dire.

A group of 18 Democratic members of the House last month filed their own amicus brief, supporting the district. Led by Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pennsylvania, the lawmakers said the proper venue for deciding gun-control measures is in Congress, not the courts.

"Whether the regulation or prohibition of a particular weapon implicates the preservation or efficiency of a 'well-regulated militia,' over which Congress has responsibility, is precisely the kind of question best left to the political branches to resolve," they said.

A federal appeals court in March ruled the handgun ban to be unconstitutional, as well as a provision that rifles and shotguns -- which are legal to own in the district -- be kept in the home unloaded, and fitted with trigger locks or disassembled. The rifle regulations are not currently at issue before the Supreme Court.

The district's 31-year-old law has prevented most private citizens from owning and keeping handguns in their homes.

Chicago and and Washington are the only major U.S. cities that have such sweeping handgun bans. Courts have generally upheld bans of semiautomatic weapons and sawed-off shotguns in other cities.

Several district residents first challenged the law, some saying they wanted to do something about being constant victims of crime.

Key plaintiff Shelly Parker told CNN recently she wanted the right to have a handgun for peace of mind, and act as a responsible gun owner.

"In the event that someone does get in my home, I would have no defense, except maybe throw my paper towels at them," she said "So, I would just like the comfort of knowing at least that I could have a gun if I feel I need one."

Groups that filed supporting briefs include the National Rifle Association and Disabled Veterans for Self-Defense.

Gun Control Bill

2008-02-07T07:52:00.001-05:00

House Bill 3095 (provisions governing firearms possession by persons
who have been involuntarily committed)

Substitute offered in the House on February 5, 2008, to properly
identify and refer to the appropriate sections of law governing firearms
possessions by persons who have been involuntarily committed. This act also
mandates that the a court shall notify both the Department of
Licensing and the appropriate federal criminal background agency in conjunction
with the Brady handgun violence prevention act for either the loss or
restoration of rights. In addition this act provides procedures for
notification for loss of right to posses firearms for involuntary
commitment.

The substitute passed in the House by voice vote on February 5,
2008, to properly identify and refer to the appropriate sections of law
governing firearms possessions by persons who have been involuntarily
committed. This act also mandates that the a court shall notify both the
Department of Licensing and the appropriate federal criminal background
agency in conjunction with the Brady handgun violence prevention act
for either the loss or restoration of rights. In addition this act
provides procedures for notification for loss of right to posses firearms
for involuntary commitment.
http://www.washingtonvotes.org/Legislation.aspx?ID=57473

More Legal Escapeism on the Behalf of Feds

2008-02-06T15:42:00.000-05:00

This is not what they told us when we enlisted!!!!
Rocky

Links sent by: James starjm50@yahoo. com

All Vet orgs should join the is lawsuit

Lawsuit mentioned in article by: http://www.veterans forcommonsense. org/
also see this article

http://www.veterans forcommonsense. org/files/ VFCS/Proceedings VAFeb2008. pdf

Veterans not entitled to mental health care, U.S. lawyers argue

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

http://www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2008/ 02/05/MNQLUQ4IS. DTL&hw=Veterans&sn=001&sc=1000

Veterans have no legal right to specific types of medical care, the Bush administration argues in a lawsuit accusing the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to some troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The arguments, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, strike at the heart of a lawsuit filed on behalf of veterans that claims the health care system for returning troops provides little recourse when the government rejects their medical claims.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is making progress in increasing its staffing and screening veterans for combat-related stress, Justice Department lawyers said. But their central argument is that Congress left decisions about who should get health care, and what type of care, to the VA and not to veterans or the courts.

A federal law providing five years of care for veterans from the date of their discharge establishes "veterans' eligibility for health care, but it does not create an entitlement to any particular medical service," government lawyers said.

They said the law entitles veterans only to "medical care which the secretary (of Veterans Affairs) determines is needed, and only to the extent funds ... are available."

The argument drew a sharp retort from a lawyer for advocacy groups that sued the government in July. The suit is a proposed class action on behalf of 320,000 to 800,000 veterans or their survivors.

"Veterans need to know in this country that the government thinks all their benefits are mere gratuities," attorney Gordon Erspamer said. "They're saying it's completely discretionary, that even if Congress appropriates money for veterans' health care, we can do anything we want with it."

The issue will be joined March 7 at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti, who denied the administration' s request last month to dismiss the suit. While the case is pending, the plaintiffs want Conti to order the government to provide immediate mental health treatment for veterans who say they are thinking of killing themselves and to spend another $60 million on health care.

The suit accuses the VA of arbitrarily denying care and benefits to wounded veterans, of forcing them to wait months for treatment and years for benefits, and of failing to provide fair procedures for appealing decisions against them.

The plaintiffs say that the department has a backlog of more than 600,000 disability claims and that 120 veterans a week commit suicide.

In his Jan. 10 ruling that allowed the suit to proceed, Conti said federal law entitles veterans to health care for a specific period after leaving the service, rejecting the government's argument that it was required to provide only as much care as the VA's budget allowed in a given year. A law that President Bush signed last week extended the period from two to five years.

In its latest filing, however, the Justice Department reiterated that Congress had intended "to authorize, but not require, medical care for veterans."

"This court should not interfere with the political branches' design, oversight and modification of VA programs," the government lawyers argued.

They also said the VA "is making great progress in addressing the mental health care needs of combat veterans." Among other things, they cited a law passed in November that required the department to establish a suicide-prevention program that includes making mental health care available around the clock.

The VA has hired nearly 3,800 mental health professionals in the last two years and has at least one specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder at each of its medical centers, the government said.

Since June, government lawyers said, the VA has had a policy that all veterans who seek or are referred for mental health care should be screened within 24 hours, that those found to be at risk of suicide should be treated immediately, and that others should be scheduled for full diagnosis and treatment planning within two weeks. A new suicide-prevention hot line has been responsible for "more than 380 rescues," the lawyers said.

Erspamer, the plaintiffs' lawyer, was unimpressed.

"Nowhere do I see any explanation of what kind of systems they have in place that deal with suicidal veterans," he said. "There's no excuse for not spending the money Congress told them to spend on mental health care and leaving $60 million on the table when people are going out and killing themselves."

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle .com.

http://sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2008/ 02/05/MNQLUQ4IS. DTL

VA Budget

2008-02-05T07:23:00.001-05:00

VA to boost spending on combat vets by 21%

By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Feb 4, 2008 21:53:48 EST

After a year of news reports about a stubborn backlog of 400,000 disability benefits claims and combat veterans turned away from immediate mental health care, the Department of Veterans Affairs unveiled a proposed fiscal 2009 budget that would boost spending on programs for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by 21 percent and cut the disability claims backlog by 24 percent.

Spending on benefits and programs for the estimated 333,000 VA beneficiaries who are veterans of the current wars would increase by $216 million, to a total of $1.27 billion, over the current year. The 2009 budget also would include $3.9 million for mental health care services, a 9 percent increase over the current fiscal-year budget.

All told, VA is seeking $93.7 billion for fiscal 2009, with most of it going toward health care and disability compensation. Discretionary funding — mostly health care — would make up $47.2 billion of the budget, while $46.4 billion would go toward mandatory funding for compensation, education benefits, home loan guarantees, pensions and other benefits programs.

“If you look at health care, it’s more than double it was seven years ago,” said VA Secretary Dr. James Peake, praising the Bush Administration’s request for funding.

The request totals $3.4 billion more than this year’s budget, which was $6.6 billion more than in fiscal 2007 — after Congress added $3.7 billion to President Bush’s original request.

One of the biggest issues facing VA is overwhelmed case workers who can’t keep up with the thousands of new benefits claims that continue to pour in.

Rita Reese, principal deputy assistant secretary for management, said VA plans to increase the number of fulltime case workers from 14,857 to 15,570. She said the budget plan aims to reduce the disability claims backlog to 298,000 by the end of fiscal 2009, a drop of 24 percent.

She said the average length of time required to rule on an initial benefits claim will drop from the current 180 days to about 145 days, a 21 percent improvement over 2007.

One aspect of the VA budget proposal that is likely to draw controversy is a renewed call for an increase in pharmacy co-payments for veterans in the lowest priority patient groups, Priority 7 and 8 — a proposal that in the past has drawn criticism from veterans’ groups and rejection from Congress.

The co-pay would rise to $15 from the current $8 for Priority 7 and 8 veterans, who are considered “middle class” but may have incomes as low as $28,000. Most have medical conditions that are not service-connected.

One of the largest funding boosts for any single program category in the 2009 budget plan would be for long-term noninstitutional care, mainly home care, which would rise to about $762 million, a 28 percent increase over this fiscal year.

The 2009 VA budget plan also envisions the completion of a pilot program being conducted in collaboration with the Defense Department of a new disability evaluation system for wounded warriors at major medical facilities in the Washington, D.C., area.

That initiative is designed to eliminate the duplicative and often confusing elements of the current disability process of the two departments. The pilot program features one medical examination according to VA protocols and a single disability rating determined by VA.

Contract - Helpful or Harmful

2008-02-05T05:55:00.000-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 30, 2008

VA Awards Contract for Disability Benefits Studies
Virginia Company Awarded Contract

WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has awarded a $3.2 million contract to Economic Systems Inc. of Falls Church, Va., to develop information relating to possible changes in the composition of disability payments to disabled veterans.

“This contract is further evidence of VA’s commitment to review the full range of benefits and programs to ensure today’s disabled veterans receive the help they have earned,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake.

The contact is based upon recommendations of the Dole-Shalala Commission, which issued its final report in July 2007, and the October 2007 final report of the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission.

The contractor will provide its findings in August. Economic Systems Inc. will address three basic research questions in two studies. One study will examine the nature and feasibility of making “long-term transition payments” to service members separated from the military due to disability while those veterans undergo rehabilitation.

A second study will provide information on the appropriate levels of compensation necessary to compensate for any loss in earnings capacity caused by service-incurred or service-aggravated conditions. It will also provide information on potential “quality of life” payments called for by both studies.

Another Disgraceful Action

2008-02-04T17:56:00.001-05:00

Way to go Montel and thank you for years of service... Shame on FOX & CBS. Fox and most News shows don't care about the truth or the real issues & news
It's about ratings & celebrities. ... every vet should call their local stations and complain about
celebrity news.... who cares which celebrity is pregnant? is arrested? married? NO Spin zone..Indeed. .what a Joke.

CBS TV Distribution confirmed Wednesday it will end production on the syndicated yakker at the end of this season. CBS plans to offer stations a "Best of Montel" package for the fall that will feature segs from throughout the show's run.

Fate of "The Montel Williams Show" was sealed when key Fox-owned stations opted not to renew it for the 2008-09 season. But a number of other stations had cleared the show for next season, prompting CBS to offer the "Best of" package. The rerun package is sold on an all-cash basis, which is a boon to stations that had been handing over 3½ minutes of barter ad time per seg to CBS for the firstrun episodes.

"Stations continue to embrace Montel and the message of social responsibility that has been the cornerstone of his show," said CBS TV Distribution prexy and chief operating officer John Nogawski.

Williams, a former military officer, launched his yakker in New York and a handful of other markets in 1991. Show was picked up for national distribution by Viacom the following year

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Parkertwo [mailto:parkertwo@ roadrunner. com]
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 7:32 PM
To: Undisclosed- Recipient: ;
Subject: Montel Williams Loses Job after Defending Troops on Fox News

Montel Williams Loses Job after Defending Troops on Fox News
by Brandon Friedman
Wed Jan 30, 2008 at 11:39:14 PM PST
For just over three minutes on Saturday morning, TV talk show host Montel Williams owned the hosts of Fox and Friends. A former Marine and Naval officer, Montel lectured the stunned hosts on the stupidity of spending air time on the death of Heath Ledger, rather than covering the war in Iraq. It was a spectacle rarely seen on live cable television, as Montel exposed and condemned both tabloid "news" shows and much of American culture for what they have each become: shallow and greedy.

Three minutes into this awkward segment on Fox, one host cut off Montel in order to go to a commercial. Montel did not return after the break. Four days later, after 17 years as a television host, Montel lost his job. Variety reported on Wednesday that the

Fate of "The Montel Williams Show" was sealed when key Fox-owned stations opted not to renew it for the 2008-09 season.

Here is the video: on the site link attached http://www.dailykos .com/story/ 2008/1/31/ 23326/1083/ 699/446791
::
I have no idea whether Montel already knew his show wasn’t going to be renewed, and thus felt emboldened to cut loose on the air, or whether his firing was a result of his actions on Saturday. Either way, Montel Williams exhibited courage this week that few in the television industry ever will. And for that, American troops around the world stand with him. We support him not only because he stood up for the troops, but because he did it on Fox News—a station that has done more damage to the U.S. military since 9/11 than any other.

Montel Williams is an American patriot. Though he left the military years ago, he has never forgotten "his" troops.

For that we salute and thank you, Montel. Best of luck with whatever you choose to do next.

Mexican Denistry

2008-02-02T17:56:00.000-05:00

OUR VETERANS AND MEXICAN DENISTRY
BY: ROCKY STONE

Under current VA Regulations a veteran can not get dental care at a VA facility unless that veteran is either 100% Service Connected, a former Prisoner of War (POW) or has sustained a dental injury, which must be noted in the veteran’s military medical records, while in service. This regulation causes thousands of veterans each year to go without needed dental care unless they have private insurance that covers their dental needs or they go to one of the many Mexican dental clinics which offer cut rate prices for dental work.

In a recent article by Robin Emmett, published in Reuters and MSNBC News stories, Feb. 1 2008, the author speaks about the thousands of Americans who seek dental care across the border in dental clinics, many of which are located in areas of high crime created by the drug wars. These clinics are, also, noted to have poor hygiene; yet, due to the high cost of dental treatment in the U.S. many Americans forego the risk of becoming victims of crime, a disease or infection to seek dental treatment that is affordable in Mexico. Sadly, many of these Americans are retired military veterans who can not, due to regulation, receive dental care at the VA dental clinics located within the VA hospitals across the nation.

One such veteran is 62 year old Al Undiemi, a retired Sergeant First Class with 21 ½ years service in the U.S. Army. Al, a veteran of the Vietnam War, who was one of six survivors from his platoon, along with this writer, from the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the Battle for Hill 875 in 1967, retired from the Army in 1988. Upon his retirement, Al was never advised by the military that he could seek medical attention from the VA. Recently, Al has been plagued with various medical problems, including a tooth ache, the inability to breathe, swallow, and properly digest his food, constant heart burn and other problems; therefore, acting upon my advice, Al sought assistance from the VA Medical Center located in Temple Texas.

“I told the doctors what my symptoms were the first time I went to the VA”, Al states, “and the doctor told me that it might be my tooth causing my problems.” The doctor informed Al that he might go to a civilian dentist and get his tooth pulled. “I told the doctor that I could not afford to go to a civilian dentist as my only income was my military retirement and social security and that I had no insurance. The doctor told me I could go to Mexico and have my tooth pulled,” Al states.

Al once again returns to the VA after having been given antibiotics on his first trip in an attempt to clear up the infected tooth but to no avail. Still suffering from multiple symptoms and the throbbing tooth ache Al relates, “I went back to the VA the 2nd time and was once again told by the VA staff to go to Mexico and get my tooth pulled. I was given more antibiotics, which were not doing me any good and which I was paying for under the Tri-Care program for retired veterans. The medications were costing me money each month but I was getting no help for my problem, my tooth.”

In Jan. 2008 Al, once again returns to the VA Medical Center in Temple Texas still suffering from the pain and symptoms caused by his infected tooth. Once again when Al sees the doctor and nurse he had seen previously Al was given the same medical advice. “Once again the doctor tells me to go to Mexico and get my tooth pulled,” relates Al. “The doctor told me that I needed to get my tooth pulled as soon as possible or my health would get worse and that I could even die from my infected tooth, but they could not help me at the VA due to regulations, that I had to be 100% disabled or a former POW to get dental treatment at the VA.”

One of the nurses, who had seen Al at the VA Medical Center, told him of her husband who was a retired Air Force veteran who had to go to Mexico for his dental work due to not being able to get it done at the VA in which she worked. Another nurse at the VA told Al of her daughter who she took to Mexico to get dental work done. This nurse related to Al that her daughter received work that would have cost approximately $4000 in the U.S. for $1400 in Mexico. All of these VA employees suggested that Al go to Mexico for his dental needs.

The cost of dental care in the U.S. is on the rise due to the cost of operation, insurance and supplies. The cost is come prohibited to more and more Americans daily. Dentist in Mexico are flocking to the border towns where Americans are crossing the border daily for dental care. The cost of dental care in the U.S. can be four times that in Mexico.

The dental care in Mexico does not come without risks. Many of the hundreds of dental clinics, ranging from dingy dives to posh parlor like establishments, popping up in border towns such as Ciudad Juarez, El Paso, Del Rio and Laredo, just to name a few are located in areas that requires patrons to travel through areas infested with prostitutes, drug dealers, gang members and petty thieves. It stands to reason that these types will haunt the areas where dental clinics are located as they realize that Americans with money in their pockets will be traveling across the border to seek dental care.

Then there is, also, the risk of infection caused by unsanitary conditions noted in some of these clinics. Health standards are not like those required in the U.S. and many of these fly-by-night clinics are not, perhaps, even run by certified dentist with the appropriate training. There is no way for the unsuspecting American to know just who it is that is working on their teeth.

This brings us to legal consideration, who is legally responsible if something goes wrong? The Mexican dentists are not required to be covered by the insurance dentist in the U.S. are required so if something goes wrong U.S. citizens will probably have no legal recourse. There are American dentist in Mexico conducting business but I doubt they carry any insurance either. One such dentist is Joe Andel and his wife Jessica. “We’ve gone from a handful of patients when we started 2 ½ years ago to 150 new patients a month”, said Joe in his interview with the author of the Reuters article. Joe and his wife own the Rio Dental clinic in Ciuded Juarez which uses U.S. labs to make the crowns used in their practice. Joe states that he will even pick up his patients at the El Paso airport to get their business. Joe states that he has treated people from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii.

The fact that American citizens are going to Mexico is due to our economic situation here in the U.S. and there is little that can be done about that, although it is a shame that the richest country in the world has it’s people going to a foreign county for health care services, and not just dental. However, in this writer’s opinion, who is a Vietnam veteran himself, it is a crime that our American veterans are forced by our economic situation to resort to such action. Our veterans who have served this country with honor should be taken care of when they need medical and/or dental care but that is simply not happening. Our retired veterans, all with over 20 years of service to our nation, are left out when it comes to receiving dental care from the Veterans Administration. They can not even go to the VA Dental Clinics and pay for dental care, they must seek it elsewhere, even, it appears, in Mexico.

Our nation should insist that our veterans are cared for. It is to our veterans and active duty military personnel that we owe our freedom. Do we care so little for their contributions to our nation’s security that we send them into a foreign land to seek dental health care? Do we care so little about our veterans that we as a nation will stand by and watch them forced, due to their economic situation, into the alley ways and crime infested streets of a foreign land to get the care they should be provided in U.S. VA hospitals? It appears that is the case. Fellow citizens this says to us, the veterans of this country that our nation does not care once our active service is over.

Those individuals who aspire to join the military and serve their nation are watching what is happening to our veterans. These young citizens may decide that they do not wish to be treated the way our veterans are treated when they become veterans, thus, may chose not to serve. What happens to our nation when no one joins the military? Do we go back to the draft? Do we go to mandatory service in the military for a specific number of years? This is already being talked about in Congress. A Bill has already been introduced making it mandatory to serve in the military and covers everyone from the ages of 18 to 42.

It is time for our nation’s leaders to wake up; it is time for our nation’s people to wake up and realize that without the military we will lose all that we have. If we as a nation do not insure that our nation’s veterans are taken care of then we may soon be lost as a free people. People are watching you who serve in the Congress and Senate, we are watching how you treat those who serve us all and continue to keep us free. As our military and veterans go so goes our nation.

Agent Orange BVA Decisions

2008-02-02T17:52:00.001-05:00

from Col Dan

AGENT ORANGE ASSOCIATED DISORDERS APPROVED BVA DECISIONS OUTSIDE OF VIETNAM

Lot of good AO info at: http://www.2ndbatta lion94thartiller y.com/Chas/ LinkToxicChemica l.htm

Go to web site below: BVA DECISIONS OUTSIDE OF VIETNAM

http://www.2ndbatta lion94thartiller y.com/Chas/ guambva.htm

IN ORDER BELOW OF:

GUAM - DIABETES TYPE II

Thailand - malignant lymphoma

Okinawa - PROSTATE CANCER

News on Personality Disorder Discharges

2008-02-01T19:07:00.001-05:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Col. Dan,

As you know, there have been numerous cases of pre-existing personality disorder discharges. I was glad to see this email that I received this morning and wanted to pass it along:

GA Committee: Just received confirmation from Senator Feingold's office that H.R. 4986, The FY 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, did, indeed, include S. 1817 (H.R. 3167), Proper Administration of the Discharge of Members of the Armed Forces for Personality Disorder. S. 1817 was offered as an amendment to both H.R. 1585 and H.R. 4986 by Senator Obama, and it was accepted by unanimous consent. It appeared in both the vetoed H.R. 1585 and the signed H.R. 4986 as Section 597. Therefore it is now law. Note that in Parts (a) (2) (C) and (D), it mandates policies and measures prohibiting discharges for personality disorder and that those "who may have been so separated from the Armed Forces should be provided with expedited review by the applicable board for the correction of military records."

Ron Scott, Chair

SEC. 597. REPORTS ON ADMINISTRATIVE SEPARATIONS OF MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES FOR PERSONALITY DISORDER.
(a) Secretary of Defense Report on Administrative Separations Based on Personality Disorder-
(1) REPORT REQUIRED- Not later than April 1, 2008, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives a report on all cases of administrative separation from the Armed Forces of covered members of the Armed Forces on the basis of a personality disorder.
(2) ELEMENTS- The report required by paragraph (1) shall include the following:
(A) A statement of the total number of cases, by Armed Force, in which covered members of the Armed Forces have been separated from the Armed Forces on the basis of a personality disorder, and an identification of the various forms of personality disorder forming the basis for such separations.
(B) A statement of the total number of cases, by Armed Force, in which covered members of the Armed Forces who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001 have been separated from the Armed Forces on the basis of a personality disorder, and the identification of the various forms of personality disorder forming the basis for such separations.
(C) A summary of the policies, by Armed Force, controlling administrative separations of members of the Armed Forces based on personality disorder, and an evaluation of the adequacy of such policies for ensuring that covered members of the Armed Forces who may be eligible for disability evaluation due to mental health conditions are not separated from the Armed Forces on the basis of a personality disorder.
(D) A discussion of measures being implemented to ensure that members of the Armed Forces who should be evaluated for disability separation or retirement due to mental health conditions are not processed for separation from the Armed Forces on the basis of a personality disorder, and recommendations regarding how members of the Armed Forces who may have been so separated from the Armed Forces should be provided with expedited review by the applicable board for the correction of military records.
(b) Comptroller General Report on Policies on Administrative Separation Based on Personality Disorder-
(1) REPORT REQUIRED- Not later than June 1, 2008, the Comptroller General shall submit to Congress a report evaluating the policies and procedures of the Department of Defense and of the military departments relating to the separation of members of the Armed Forces based on a personality disorder.
(2) ELEMENTS- The report required by paragraph (1) shall--
(A) include an audit of a sampling of cases to determine the validity and clinical efficacy of the policies and procedures referred to in paragraph (1) and the extent, if any, of the divergence between the terms of such policies and procedures and the implementation of such policies and procedures; and
(B) include a determination by the Comptroller General of whether, and to what extent, the policies and procedures referred to in paragraph (1)--
(i) deviate from standard clinical diagnostic practices and current clinical standards; and
(ii) provide adequate safeguards aimed at ensuring that members of the Armed Forces who suffer from mental health conditions (including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or traumatic brain injury) resulting from service in a combat zone are not separated from the Armed Forces on the basis of a personality disorder.
(3) ALTERNATIVE SUBMISSION METHOD- In lieu of submitting a separate report under this subsection, the Comptroller may include the evaluation, audit and determination required by this subsection as part of the study of mental health services required by section 723 of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act of 2005 (Public Law 108-375; 118 Stat. 1989).
(c) Covered Member of the Armed Forces Defined- In this section, the term `covered member of the Armed Forces' includes the following:
(1) Any member of a regular component of the Armed Forces who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan since October 2001.
(2) Any member of the Selected Reserve of the Ready Reserve of the Armed Forces who served on active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan since October 2001

Inga Guenther
Proud Army Wife of Scot
Proud Army Mom of Andrew
Proud Marine Mom of Clayton
www.militaryspouses forchange. com

In Harms Way from Our Own

2008-02-01T16:38:00.001-05:00

The U.S. Congress "to harm" Ignored.

U. S. Senate Background.

In 2008, despite the efforts of some, the U.S. Congress still treats
as an "incident to service" [1] the U.S. Senateâ€™s DOD "experiments
that were designed to harm" [7]! "III. Findings and conclusions" , "K.
DOD and DVA have repeatedly failed to provide information and medical
followup to those who participate in military research..." and "N.
Participation in military research is rarely included in military
medical records, making it impossible to support a veteranâ€™s claim for
service-connected disabilities from military research." By their
inaction Congress has approved the Reportâ€™s: "Introduction" A. "During
the last 50 years, hundreds of thousands of military personnel have
been involved in human experimentation and other intentional exposures
conducted by the Department of Defense (DOD), often without a
servicemember' s knowledge or consent.", B. "most Americans would agree
that the use of soldiers as unwitting guinea pigs in experiments that
were designed to harm them, at least temporarily, is not ethical." And
"Forward" C. " The findings and conclusions contained in this report
are those of the majority staff and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the members of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs." Chairman.

Thereby, DOD & VA Healthcare System to-date covered up are these
experiments and prevented is treatment as documented by the 1994 U.S.
Senate Report.[7] The disagreeing "views" resulted in the 2008
continuing on the general public is a version of the DOD Project 112
biological lessons learned.[8] This is by the 19 December 2006
established civilian "Biomedical Advanced Research and Development
Authority (BARDA)".[10] Under the cover of its "national security
missions", as it is for military personnel, withheld from the civilian
"guinea pigs" are the cause and effects of its "Biomedical Advanced
Research and Development" (R&D) Projects.

Order Ignored!

From 1953 the U.S. Senate "to harm" lessons learned were in direct
disobedience of the DOD Secretary's TOP SECRET order. Forty one (41)
years earlier it required the U.S. Senateâ€™s 1994 "servicemember' s
knowledge" and "consent". [3] 1953 known by the Secretary's of all
Services, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and their R&D Board. It was
"UNCLASSIFIED" in 1975. Nineteen (19) years later, during the U.S.
Senateâ€™s reported past 50 years, most of the "to harm" service records
were destroyed in a 1973 National Personnel Records Center (NPRC)
fire. Those that survived had all witnesses censored by Congressâ€™s
1974 Privacy Act! The "Veterans Right to Know Act" was proposed in the
2005 and H.R. 4259 [109th] 2006 Congress. It never became law.

The U.S. Supreme Court Did Not Know?

The 1987 U.S. Supreme Court Stanley decision [4] extends the coverage
of their 1950 Feres Case that a death by a military barracks fire was
an "incident to service" [1]. Stanley treats the 1958 DOD
"experiments. ..designed to harm" disobedience of the 1953 order [3] as
also an "incident to service"! To-date not accomplished is the Senate
Reportâ€™s correcting, "IV. Recommendations. G. The Feres Doctrine
should not be applied for military personnel who are harmed by
inappropriate human experimentation when informed consent has not been
given." A few in Congress made certain that the in-the-record
revealing evidence will not be addressed. The year following STANLEY
was the 1988 Veteransâ€™ Judicial Review Act. Established was the
Veteranâ€™s Legislative severely restricted, Article I Court. "The court
may not review the schedule of ratings for disabilities or the
policies underlying the schedule.", i.e., the order ignored "to harm"
R&D experimental effects and their causes! The Veterans Court Chief Judge's no teeth statement with his VA ignoring of the Courtâ€™s decisions! [6] The
Secretary of the VA was given Final Decision authority on these
issues. [9] Included is the power of NO APPEAL to this LEGISLATIVE
Veterans Court or to the independent U.S. Judicial Branch Courts. If
allowed an APPEAL, it is not part of the record at the Article I
Veterans Court. The evidence is also missing at the next level U.S.
Judicial Branch Article III, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

All Is In-The-Record!

Each Executive Branch (DOD, CIA & BARDA) Project completes the R&D
process. The prior lessons learned are reviewed. The then Scope of
Work defines what the experiment is "designed" to do. The how, where,
when and who is identified. The conducted researched cause and effects
are closely followed. From the results are developed safe production,
use, the needed for treatment and protection, e.g., the DOD
manufacturers handling of hazardous materials such as Depleted
Uranium, Agent Orange, the biological agents of Project 112 [8] and
the jet-engine noise levels of Project 7210 [2]. All is in the
Executive Branch record! Under the cover of national security the
revealing treatment evidence: 1. Is not cause identified in a
subjectâ€™s Medical History, so that they never the wiser become. The
deceived victimâ€™s "to harm" effects are not Medical History recorded,
therefore not addressed! Prevented is any follow up by independent
civilian and Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA) physicians. And 2. For veteransâ€™ the 64 years
of experiment specific injuries are not in the VA "schedule of ratings
for disabilities" [6]!

Why "may not review"?

May not be reviewed records prevent medical, administrative and
judicial "activities" that "would be detrimental to the accomplishment
of...mission. " This is by the still in 2008 reasoning of "it was
necessary to conceal these activities from the american public in
general, because public knowledge of the unethical and illicit
activities would have serious repercussions in political and
diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of
its mission." U.S. Supreme Court 1987 Stanley Case; Footnote 4, Page
688 on its proven 1958 CIA experiment on U.S. Army personnel. [4]

"Right to Know".

There now is no 64 years later "Veterans Right to Know". After they
complete Honorable Service despite the efforts of some Congress has
not given back to veterans their rights. Revealed would be the fewâ€™s
corrupt for the greater good of all. Accomplished by the end justifies
the "designed to harm" means. Carried out under the cover of our
nationâ€™s wars! A few key members in Congress, have dishonored those
that serve. Lost are those prior to service rights that convicted
rapists and murderers keep! [5]

Hold Responsible.

Now BARDA Experiments Conducted on You! Please, Hold Your Members in
the U.S. Congress Accountable! These U.S. Supreme Court and U.S.
Senate Documented Facts Are Internet Censored.[11] Passing this on to
Others So That They May Do the Same Would Be Appreciated. Thank You.

David H. Marshall

REFERENCES:

[1] U.S. Supreme Court, Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135, 146 (1950).

[2] USAF Project 7210 "A Compilation of Turbojet Noise Data", Bolt
Beranek & Newman, Inc. Cambridge 38, MA. Sound pressure levels for all
jet-engines in-service. Conducted at Wright Patterson Air Force Base,
Dayton, Ohio in 1952. 1954 logged in as the 401st report for that year
published as Report 54-401 July 1956

[3] DOD Secretary's 26 February 1953 NO non-consensual, human
experimentâ€™s Memo pages 343-345. George J. Annas and Michael A.
Grodin, "The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code; Human Rights in
Human Experimentation" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). In
Reference [8] as NOTES 72, 168 & 169.

[4] U.S. Supreme Court, June 25, 1987, U.S. V. Stanley, 107 S. Ct.
3054 (Volume 483 U.S., Section 669, Pages 699 to 710). In Reference
[8] Cited in Note 169.

[5] U.S. State Dept., "U.S. Report under the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights July 1994, Art. 7".

[6] Chief Judge Frank Q. Nebeker, State of the Court for Presentation
to the United States Court of Veterans Appeals Third Judicial
Conference October 17-18, 1994. In the Veterans Appeals Reporter.
www.firebase. net/state_of_ court_brief. htm Annual Judicial Conference
Transcript. www.goodnet. com/~heads/ nebeker

[7] U.S. Senate December 8, 1994 REPORT 103-97 "Is Military Research
Hazardous to Veterans' Health? Lessons Spanning Half a Century."
Hearings Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, 103rd
Congress 2nd Session. With NOTES 1 to 170. Committee Print - S. Print.
103-97.

[8] "Project 112 (Including Project SHAD) Home" chemical and
biological experiments; www. 1.va.gov/shad/

[9] United States Code (USC) Title 38, 511. Decisions of the
Secretary; finality. http://www.law. cornell.edu/

[10] "Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)" S-3678.

2008-02-01T07:27:00.000-05:00

Why is it that this is not discussed in the Presidential debates or elsewhere in political circles? Why is this not a part of the National News nightly until something is done about it? Why? Because the military, the VA and others who are responsible for the care of our soldiers do not want you, the American public to know about this. This is a cost of war just like the cost of the bombs and other munitions use to fight the enemy. Our soldiers mental health is a cost of war and the cost is becoming very high!
Rocky

Soldier Suicides at Record Level

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 31, 2008; A01

Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who was waiting for the Army to decide whether to court-martial her for endangering another soldier and turning a gun on herself last year in Iraq, attempted to kill herself Monday evening. In so doing, the 25-year-old Army reservist joined a record number of soldiers who have committed or tried to commit suicide after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I'm very disappointed with the Army," Whiteside wrote in a note before swallowing dozens of antidepressants and other pills. "Hopefully this will help other soldiers." She was taken to the emergency room early Tuesday. Whiteside, who is now in stable physical condition, learned yesterday that the charges against her had been dismissed.

Whiteside's personal tragedy is part of an alarming phenomenon in the Army's ranks: Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.

At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

The Army was unprepared for the high number of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued far longer than anticipated. Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe stress on the Army, caused in part by repeated and lengthened deployments. Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years. From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 -- the lowest rate on record -- the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006.

Last year, twice as many soldier suicides occurred in the United States than in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, the Army's top psychiatrist and author of the study, said that suicides and attempted suicides "are continuing to rise despite a lot of things we're doing now and have been doing." Ritchie added: "We need to improve training and education. We need to improve our capacity to provide behavioral health care."

Ritchie's team conducted more than 200 interviews in the United States and overseas, and found that the common factors in suicides and attempted suicides include failed personal relationships; legal, financial or occupational problems; and the frequency and length of overseas deployments. She said the Army must do a better job of making sure that soldiers in distress receive mental health services. "We need to know what to do when we're concerned about one of our fellows."

The study, which the Army's top personnel chief ordered six months ago, acknowledges that the Army still does not know how to adequately assess, monitor and treat soldiers with psychological problems. In fact, it says that "the current Army Suicide Prevention Program was not originally designed for a combat/deployment environment. "

Staff Sgt. Gladys Santos, an Army medic who attempted suicide after three tours in Iraq, said the Army urgently needs to hire more psychiatrists and psychologists who have an understanding of war. "They gave me an 800 number to call if I needed help," she said. "When I come to feeling overwhelmed, I don't care about the 800 number. I want a one-on-one talk with a trained psychiatrist who's either been to war or understands war."

Santos, who is being treated at Walter Reed, said the only effective therapy she has received there in the past year have been the one-on-one sessions with her psychiatrist, not the group sessions in which soldiers are told "Don't hit your wife, don't hit your kids," or the other groups where they play bingo or learn how to properly set a table.

Over the past year, the Army has reinvigorated its efforts to understand mental health issues and has instituted new assessment surveys and new online videos and questionnaires to help soldiers recognize problems and become more resilient, Ritchie said. It has also hired more mental health providers. The plan calls for attaching more chaplains to deployed units and assigning "battle buddies" to improve peer support and monitoring.

Increasing suicides raise "real questions about whether you can have an Army this size with multiple deployments, " said David Rudd, a former Army psychologist and chairman of the psychology department at Texas Tech University.

On Monday night, as President Bush delivered his State of the Union address and asked Congress to "improve the system of care for our wounded warriors and help them build lives of hope and promise and dignity," Whiteside was dozing off from the effects of her drug overdose. Her case highlights the Army's continuing struggles to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness and to make it easier for soldiers and officers to seek psychological help.

Whiteside, the subject of a Post article in December, was a high-achieving University of Virginia graduate, and she earned top scores from her Army raters. But as a medic in charge of a small prison team in Iraq, she was repeatedly harassed by one of her commanders, which disturbed her greatly, according to an Army investigation.

On Jan. 1, 2007, weary from helping to quell riots in the prison after the execution of Saddam Hussein, Whiteside had a mental breakdown, according to an Army sanity board investigation. She pointed a gun at a superior, fired two shots into the ceiling and then turned the weapon on herself, piercing several organs. She has been at Walter Reed ever since.

Whiteside's two immediate commanders brought charges against her, but Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the only physician in her chain of command and then the commander of Walter Reed, recommended that the charges be dropped, citing her "demonstrably severe depression" and "7 years of credible and honorable service."

The case hinged in part on whether her mental illness prompted her actions, as Walter Reed psychiatrists testified last month, or whether it was "an excuse" for her actions, as her company commander wrote when he proffered the original charges in April. Those charges included assault on a superior commissioned officer, aggravated assault, kidnapping, reckless endangerment, wrongful discharge of a firearm, communication of a threat and two attempts of intentional self-injury without intent to avoid service.

An Army hearing officer cited "Army values" and the need to do "what is right, legally and morally" when he recommended last month that Whiteside not face court-martial or other administration punishment, but that she be discharged and receive the medical benefits "she will desperately need for the remainder of her life." Whiteside decided to speak publicly about her case only after a soldier she had befriended at the hospital's psychiatric ward hanged herself after she was discharged without benefits.

But the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, which has ultimate legal jurisdiction over the case, declined for weeks to tell Whiteside whether others in her chain of command have concurred or differed with the hearing officer, said Matthew MacLean, Whiteside's civilian attorney and a former military lawyer.

MacLean and Whiteside's father, Thomas Whiteside, said the uncertainty took its toll on the young officer's mental state. "I've never seen anything like this. It's just so far off the page," said Thomas Whiteside, his voice cracking with emotion. "I told her, 'If you check out of here, you're not going to be able to help other soldiers.' "

Whiteside recently had begun to take prerequisite classes for a nursing degree, and her mental stability seemed to be improving, her father said. Then late last week, she told him she was having trouble sleeping, with a possible court-martial weighing on her. On Monday night, she asked her father to take her back to her room at Walter Reed so she could study.

She swallowed her pills there. A soldier and his wife, who live next door, came to her room and, after a while, noticed that she was becoming groggy, Thomas Whiteside said. When they returned later and she would not open the door, they called hospital authorities.

Yesterday, after having spent two nights in the intensive care unit, he said, his daughter was transferred to the psychiatric ward.

Whiteside left two notes, one titled "Business," in which her top concern was the fate of her dog. "Appointment for the Vetenarian is in my blue book. Additional paperwork on Chewy is in the closet at the apartment in a folder." On her second note, she penned a postscript: "Sorry to do this to my family + friends. I love you."

Staff writer Anne Hull contributed to this report.

Warning

2008-01-30T13:57:00.000-05:00

http://www.vva. org/veteran/ 0807/letters. html

PARASITE WARNING
I am writing to inform all Vietnam veterans about a potential health risk that they may have been exposed to while serving in Vietnam: the little-known danger from parasites.

My husband, who was otherwise healthy, passed away on January 20, 2006, from cholangiocarcinoma, cancer of the bile duct of the liver. It is very rare in the United States, but very prevalent in Vietnam and surrounding countries. There are two known causes of this type of cancer: from contracting hepatitis C and from ingesting a parasite from the water supply in Vietnam. My husband did not have hepatitis C; therefore, it was determined that his cancer derived from a parasite. I have received official notification from the VA that his death was service related, which is not something the VA determines without an overwhelming amount of evidence.

This cancer does not manifest itself until later in life, when you are between 60 and 70 years old. Once the symptoms occur, which usually include jaundice, it is very difficult to treat or beat. My husband was 58 years old when he passed away. If he had been informed that there was a possibility that he could have ingested a parasite while serving in Vietnam, he would have taken precautions to have his bile ducts examined, possibly extending his life. The parasite is long gone, but it left behind damaged cells, which developed into cancerous tumors in the bile ducts.

If you spent time in Southeast Asia and are having gastrointestinal issues for no apparent reason, please have your physician check for damage within the bile ducts. It may save your life.

Mrs. Edward S. (Pete) Harrison
Horseheads, New York

********** MORE INFO ON Cholangiocarcinoma at

http://www.emedicin e.com/med/ topic343. htm Partial Reprint below

The high prevalence of cholangiocarcinoma among people of Asian decent is attributable to endemic chronic parasitic infestation.

History: Symptoms may include jaundice, clay-colored stools, bilirubinuria (dark urine), pruritus, weight loss, and abdominal pain.

Causes: The etiology of most bile duct cancers remains undetermined. Currently, gallstones are not believed to increase the risk of CCC. Chronic viral hepatitis and cirrhosis also do not appear to be risk factors.

Infections
In Southeast Asia, chronic infections with liver flukes, Clonorchis sinensis, and Opisthorchis viverrini have been causally related to CCC.
Other parasites, including Ascaris lumbricoides, have been implicated in the pathogenesis.

Inflammatory bowel disease

A strong relationship exists between CCC and PSC. CCC generally develops in patients with long-standing ulcerative colitis and PSC.

The lifetime risk of developing this cancer in the setting of PSC is 10-20%. At increased risk are patients with ulcerative colitis without symptomatic PSC and a small subset of patients with Crohn disease.

Chemical exposures

Certain chemical exposures have been implicated in the development of bile duct cancers, primarily among workers in the aircraft, rubber, and wood finishing industries.

CCC occasionally has developed years after administration of the radiopaque medium thorium dioxide (ie, thorotrast).

Congenital diseases of the biliary tree, including choledochal cysts and Caroli disease, have been associated with CCC.

Other conditions rarely associated with CCC include bile duct adenomas, biliary papillomatosis, and alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency.

Col. Dan

Slap In The Face

2008-01-30T09:08:00.000-05:00

Slap In The Face
The Article below speaks to an issue that I have been speaking out about for quite sometime, that is, the VA not wanting veterans and active duty personnel to learn about their rights to compensation under the laws governing the VA Administration. This article speaks to the Army's part in this, what I call a conspiracy, between the VA and our military forces, but there is more to this story that what is spoken about here. The VA does not want older veterans, such as Vietnam Veterans, schooling the younger Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans on the how to's of filing claims for VA benefits, which they have earned via their service. Veterans of all wars and all branches must unite to put a stop to such practices (conspiracies)!
Rocky

Army Blocks Disability Paperwork Aid at Fort Drum

by Ari Shapiro

Morning Edition · Army officials in upstate New York instructed representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork last year. That paperwork can be crucial because it helps determine whether soldiers will get annual disability payments and health care after they're discharged.

Now soldiers at Fort Drum say they feel betrayed by the institutions that are supposed to support them. The soldiers want to know why the Army would want to stop them from getting help with their disability paperwork and why the VA— whose mission is to help veterans — would agree to the Army's request.

'A Worn Pair of Boots'

One disabled soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears retaliation from the military, says it feels like a slap in the face.

"To be tossed aside like a worn-out pair of boots is pretty disheartening," the soldier says. "I always believed the Army would take care of me if I did the best I could, and I've done that."

At a restaurant near Fort Drum, the soldier described his first briefing with the VA office on base. According to the soldier, the VA official told a classroom full of injured troops, "We cannot help you review the narrative summaries of your medical problems." The official said the VA used to help soldiers with the paperwork, but Army officials saw soldiers from Fort Drum getting higher disability ratings with the VA's help than soldiers from other bases. The Army told the VA to stop helping Fort Drum soldiers describe their army injuries, and the VA did as it was told.

It's unclear why the Army wanted to stop the soldiers from getting help with the disability paperwork. Cynthia Vaughan, spokeswoman for the Army surgeon general, says the VA was not doing anything wrong by helping soldiers at Fort Drum.

"There is no Army policy on outside help in reviewing and/or assisting soldiers in rewriting their narratives during the 10-day period which they have to review them," Vaughan says.

She says the officers who asked the VA to stop helping Fort Drum's soldiers were part of what the Army calls a "Tiger Team"— an ad-hoc group assigned to investigate, in this case, medical disability benefits.

According to Army spokesman George Wright, the Tiger Team thought the VA should not be helping soldiers with their medical documents. The Army delivered that message to VA officials in Buffalo, N.Y., who went along with the request, even though the VA's assistance complied with Army policy.

The Army declined to provide any information about the Tiger Team members' identities or their motivations in asking the VA to stop reviewing the soldiers' paperwork. However, private attorney Mara Hurwitt points out that the Army has a financial incentive to keep soldiers' disability ratings low.

"The more soldiers you have who get disability retirements, the more retirement pay is coming out of your budget," Hurwitt says.

Qualified to Help?

Another question is why the VA would go along with the Army's request.

Tom Pamperin, deputy director of the VA's compensation and pension service, believes VA officers are not qualified to help with soldiers' disability paperwork.

"We do not train our employees in the intricacies of the Defense Department's disability evaluation system, so we would feel that it would be inappropriate for our employees to apply VA standards to a Defense Department process," Pamperin says.

But Hurwitt argues the VA is more equipped than anyone to help soldiers with their paperwork.

"VA counselors understand the disabilities, what the different kinds of conditions are, how they should be properly described in the paperwork," Hurwitt says.

She points out that VA officials have to look at a soldier's medical history anyway to counsel him or her on VA benefits, which are separate from Army benefits.

"Really what it comes down to is you're just helping the soldier get what he's entitled to under law," Hurwitt says.

System 'Unfair'

This is just the latest in a string of controversies about disability payments for injured veterans.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who co-chaired President Bush's recent commission on veterans' care, says stories like this one show how the whole disability rating system is broken and needs to change.

The system is "fundamentally unfair," according to Shalala, "and that's the point about the need for reform in the system. It has to be reformed for everyone."
-------------------------

posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

Suicide by Tolerance

2008-01-30T07:20:00.000-05:00

Abraham Lincoln once wrote that if America were to ever fall, it would not be due to an enemy attacking us from without, but an enemy attacking us from within. Given his perspective of a nation torn asunder by the Civil War, his words are worth noting.

Islamic terrorism is, of course, a serious, global threat that we must – repeat, must – defeat. But there is another threat to our safety, security and liberty that we must also defeat – the threat of Cultural Jihad and how it is aided by the forces of “political correctness.”

Those of you who follow this issue closely know this is not new information. You know Cultural Jihad in Great Britain and France – aided by political correctness – is well advanced. You know it is on the march in Canada, to which the writer below refers, and it has taken root in America.

So it bears repeating, over and over, that we must be vigilant against the threat that lies within – a threat the writer below refers to as “Suicide by tolerance.” We must be vigilant to stand up and proudly defend the core values that produced the greatness of Western Civilization. For as another great American, Thomas Jefferson, wrote: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suicide by tolerance
National Post
Lorne Gunter
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=9bc47f81-355d-4802-b2dd-d6b1d7a809c2&k=30870

Walt Kelly, the cartoonist and satirist once had his famous character Pogo say, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

In the clash between the West and Islam, that is increasingly true. We are our own worst enemy.

Those of us who care about the survival of Western civilization occasionally rage about the way Muslim organizations feign outrage in the media at the tiniest slight. We grind out teeth when those organizations file human rights complaints against the writings of the likes of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. We warn against our governments permitting the implementation of shariah law and against the insidious teachings of radical imams at mosques and Islamic community centres on our own continent.

But really, could radical Islamists take over unless our elites let them?

True, the Alberta human rights complaint against Levant was brought by something called the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC), and the one against Steyn was initiated by the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), both of which make it look as if Muslims are behind these attacks on our free speech.

Yet would either grievance have gone anywhere in the absence of government-sponsored, tax-supported agencies that encourage vocal advocacy groups to lodge formal complaints against their foes, and then pay their way?

Imagine the fleeting lives of such complaints in the absence of laws -- passed by liberal Western politicians, not professional Muslim cause-pleaders --granting them legitimacy?

The Syed Soharwardys (ISCC head) and Mohammad Elmasrys (CIC boss) of the world might rail on to a sympathetic reporter or two about the indignations the Levants and Steyns are causing their religion, but without the backing of modern Western governments and the politically correct functionaries who pull their levers, open their money spigots and crack their whips, such complainants would be trees falling in the forest with no one there to hear. For most readers, listeners and viewers the response would be turn the page, switch the station, flip the channel.

It wasn't the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIRCAN) that sent chief CIBC economist Jeff Rubin for Muslim sensitivity training three years ago after a bank financial report offended the particularly pugnacious, litigious Muslim organization. It was Rubin's fearful, PC bosses at CIBC.

Yes, CAIR-CAN, the CIC and the ISCC delight in taking full advantage of the official avenues open to them to criticize and intimidate their foes, but they didn't create those avenues and there is little they could do if our governments and politically correct corporations decided to close them tomorrow.

The best example of what I mean surfaced this week from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency ( BECTA).

Shoo Fly publishers of Newcastle has produced a very innovative, interactive software version of the Three Little Pigs -- a 3D book designed to encourage young children to develop critical thinking abilities. It has won several awards, but was not approved by BECTA because "the use of pigs raises cultural issues." In particular, the company was told, "Judges would not recommend this product to the Muslim community," out of concern the pig images would be upsetting.

British papers were instantly filled with headlines such as "PC gone mad! Muslims devour Little Red Riding Hood."

But, of course, Muslims had done no such thing. Indeed, the Muslim Council of Britain told the Daily Telegraph, "We are not offended by that at all," and called on British schools to welcome the books.

I am not saying radical Muslims pose no threat to our way of life. Of course if fundamentalist Muslims had their way we would all become converts, or at the very least servile dhimmi living at the whim of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims who protested in the Western world two winters ago against the Danish cartoons of Muhammad were not driven by our own PC elites to take to the streets carrying signs with slogans such as "Death to those who dishonour the Prophet."

Still, their fundamentalist vision would go nowhere legally, culturally or politically without our governments, politicians, bureaucrats and experts bending over backwards to appear sensitive and reasonable.

Call it suicide by tolerance. The Western world with its institutions of democracy and the rule of law, with its advances in science and medicine, its progress in individual liberty, its historic devotion to reason and its developments in culture and the arts will disappear because its own elites could not be proud enough of its achievements to defend it from within.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACT for America
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456
www.actforamerica.org

NY Times - Trail of Death Articles

2008-01-28T10:32:00.000-05:00

TODAY and for the past two Sundays, The Times has devoted front-page play and pages of inside space to a continuing investigative series called “War Torn,” about veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan who have killed or been charged with killings after returning home.

It is an important and tragic subject to which an investigative team has devoted more than eight months of reporting, including research into local news reports and court records, and extensive interviews with some of the veterans, their families, victims’ families and law enforcement officials often sympathetic toward both the victims and their killers.

But The Times made some missteps at the beginning of the series, and critics have pounced, accusing it of demonizing veterans and exaggerating the problem even as some mental health professionals have thanked the newspaper.

The first part, which dominated the top of Page One on Jan. 13, featured a photo montage of 24 young men, some in military uniform, some in prison garb. The article began with the story of Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old plagued by nightmares from Iraq, who went looking for beer to help him sleep and wound up killing a gang member and wounding another with an AK-47 in a dangerous neighborhood.

“Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories,” the article said. “Taken together they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.”

The article said the newspaper had found 121 such cases, many of which appeared to involve “combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems.”

The Times was pointing out terrible examples of something the military itself acknowledges: large numbers of veterans are returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with psychological problems. And, as the initial article said, a Pentagon task force found last year that the military mental health system was poorly prepared to deal with this wave of distress.

The Times was immediately accused — in The New York Post and the conservative blogosphere, and by hundreds of messages to the public editor — of portraying all veterans as unstable killers. It did not.

But, the first article used colorfully inflated language — “trail of death” — for a trend it could not reliably quantify, despite an attempt at statistical analysis using squishy numbers. The article did not make clear what its focus was. Was it about killer vets, or about human tragedies involving a system that sometimes fails to spot and treat troubled souls returning from combat?

Finally, while many of the 121 cases found by The Times appeared clearly linked to wartime stresses, others seemed questionable. One involved a Navy Seabee accused of arranging her ex-husband’s murder during a bitter child custody battle, and another involved a soldier who was acquitted of reckless homicide in a car crash after a jury concluded that his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit and that many other accidents had happened on the same stretch of road.

Some readers wanted to know how the rate of homicides by veterans compared with the civilian rate. Several bloggers did back-of-the-envelope calculations and said the homicide rate for returning veterans was lower than the rate for the general population. So, what’s the problem, they wondered. I asked Martin T. Wells, a professor of statistical sciences at Cornell University, to take a stab at a comparative calculation. The homicide rate for returning combat veterans could be better or worse than the civilian rate, he determined, depending entirely on how many of the 1.6 million military personnel who have been deployed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars actually saw combat, a number the Pentagon does not have.

The journalists most responsible for the series — reporters Lizette Alvarez and Deborah Sontag and their editor, Matthew Purdy — argued against trying to make a comparison to civilian homicide rates. The military does not accept people with mental problems or records of serious crimes — the likeliest killers in the civilian population — so its rate is likely to be lower and the comparison irrelevant.

But they implicitly invited the comparison with a calculation of their own: Based primarily on news reports, their article said the number of homicides involving active-duty military personnel and new veterans was 89 percent higher in the six years since the wars began than in the six years before. And that increase came, the article said, even though “the American homicide rate has been, on average, lower.”

It seems analytically shaky to compare admittedly incomplete news reports from two periods and express the difference as a precise 89 percent — especially, as a Pentagon spokesman said in The Times, given that the news media may not have been as sensitive to the military status of accused killers in the period before the wars.

Purdy urged me not to get lost in the numbers as I looked at the first two articles. I agree with that, but I believe The Times tangled itself in numbers right at the start. Bill Keller, the executive editor, said the newsroom’s computer-assisted reporting unit normally screens articles with statistical analyses. Some of the problems might have been avoided if someone in the unit had read the first article before it was published. But Terry Schwadron, the editor who oversees the unit, which created a database for the 121 cases, said that did not happen. “I read the story in the paper, and I shared some concerns” with Purdy, he said.

Purdy defended the series. “It is an intimate exploration of a devastating cost of the war that merits national attention and focus but has not received it,” he said, because “it is playing out in one community at a time ... with no comprehensive attention from the military.”

Keller agreed. “I believe this series is an important public service that explores in riveting detail the emotional stresses war places on this important community and the problems the military faces in coping with those stresses,” he said.

The individual stories the series has told so far are indeed sad, powerful and important. One hopes they will goad the military to figure out what went wrong and what needs fixing.

But the questionable statistics muddy the message. A handful of killings caused by the stresses of war would be too many and cause for action. Sometimes, trying to turn such stories into data — with implications of statistical proof and that old journalistic convention, the trend — harms rather than helps.

The public editor serves as the readers' representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this section.
-------------------------

posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

2008-01-26T17:31:00.000-05:00

TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS
By Rocky Stone

These words should be familiar to every American but how many give thought to what they really mean? Simply put, the United States of America is a REPUBLIC. We were founded as a Republic and a Republic we remain today, yet, few people give much thought to that these days and I wonder if it is even taught in schools today. From observing what my 12 year old daughter is taught in school, especially in American History and Civics classes, I am appalled at what they are not taught. For example, kids today, at least in the schools that my kids attend, are not taught about the Constitution, the very core of our laws and government, the document on which this nation was founded. In realizing that I began to wonder just how many adult Americans know about our form of government and just how far from it’s original origin we, as a nation, are began to stray?

Today, just about everything on the new is about the upcoming election, about “party politics”, i.e. debates and mud-slinging. We hear little about issues, at least to the point of how we, as a nation, are to solve the problems that threaten our very existence. What is this “party politics” any way?

Founded as a Republic, our nation is suppose to be “of the people, for the people and by the people”, yet, “We, the People”, have very little to say about any thing. Granted, you can say that we have elected representatives who speak for us, but do we? Do they really speak for us or do they speak in terms of the “Party line”? How many representatives do you know that vote as you wish them to vote rather than how their particular Party votes? That, to me, is one of the main if not the number one problems we face in this country, the people have no voice in reality. Our nation was not founded on parties, in fact, there is nothing in the Constitution that speaks of parties.

Our Representatives each must take an oath of office. That oath states that they swear, before God and the people, that they will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies. We, the People must not allow our elected Representatives take that oath lightly, however, it appears that we have become so complacent in this regard that that is exactly what we are doing. This oath is a contract, if you will, between our elected Representatives and We, the People. This oath tells us that our Representatives will protect our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution. I fear, in fact, I know that they are not nor are the courts, including the Supreme Court.

The recent passage of the gun bill which allows the government to block the sale of gun to veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prime example. This newly passed law, which was not passed by majority vote of the full Congress but only a partial representative body thereof during the Christmas break, allows the government, mainly the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, to label those veterans with PTSD as “mentally defective”. PTSD is not medically considered as a mental disorder, per se, but is rather listed in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual, DSM IV, the manual by doctors to make medical and mental diagnosis, as an anxiety disorder. Anxiety does not make one “mentally defective”. If it did a great number of our law enforcement personnel, judges, politicians, major business executives, actors and people in ordinary jobs would also fall under this category and be banned, by this new law, from buying a gun. This law is, in my opinion, also, unconstitutional.

The courts have yet to ascertain just what is meant by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, and whether or not said Amendment extends the rights of individuals to bear arms or just a state organized militias.

Pointing out that interest in the “character of the Second Amendment right has recently burgeoned,” Justice Thomas, concurring in the Court’s invalidation (on other grounds) of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, questioned whether the Second Amendment bars federal regulation of gun sales, and suggested that the Court might determine “at some future date . . . whether Justice Story was correct . . . that the right to bear arms ‘has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic.’ ”

Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 937–39 (1997) (quoting 3 Commentaries Sec. 1890, p. 746 (1833)). Justice Scalia, in extra–judicial writing, has sided with the individual rights interpretation of the Amendment. See Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation, Federal Courts and the Law, 136–37 n.13 (A. Gutmann, ed., 1997) (responding to Professor Tribe’s critique of “my interpretation of the Second Amendment as a guarantee that the federal government will not interfere with the individual’s right to bear arms for self–defense”).

To me, it is clear that until such time as the Constitution is further amended and said amendment ratified pursuant to Constitutional Law that the Constitution means just what it says and is written in such form as to allow even a individual with limited education to understand its meaning. In that regard here is what the courts say:

The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary, as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction, and no excuse for interpolation or addition. — Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat 304; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat 419; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat 419; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet 10; Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U.S. 139; Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U.S. 662; Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1; Edwards v. Cuba R. Co., 268 U.S. 628; The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655; (Justice) Story on the Constitution, 5th ed., Sec 451; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, 2nd ed., p. 61, 70.

To disregard such a deliberate choice of words and their natural meaning, would be a departure from the first principle of constitutional interpretation. "In expounding the Constitution of the United States," said Chief Justice Taney in Holmes v. Jennison, 14 U.S. 540, 570-1, "every word must have its due force and appropriate meaning; for it is evident from the whole instrument, that, no word was unnecessarily used, or needlessly added. The many discussions which have taken place upon the construction of the Constitution, have proved the correctness of this proposition; and shown the high talent, the caution and the foresight of the illustrious men who framed it. Every word appears to have been weighed with the utmost deliberation and its force and effect to have been fully understood. — Wright v. United States, 302 U.S. 583 (1938).

The courts are not without duty to keep our elected Representatives in check when they step on the rights of the states and individuals. It is the duty of the courts to protect the Constitutional rights of every American citizen.

The courts are not bound by mere forms, nor are they to be misled by mere pretences. They are at liberty — indeed, are under a solemn duty — to look at the substance of things, whenever they enter upon the inquiry whether the legislature has transcended the limits of its authority. If therefore, a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is a palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of thye courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution. — Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 661.

The recent law passed by our Representatives has yet to be challenged in the courts, however, it is my opinion that such a challenge is in order. Our Representatives must be mindful that “We, the People” are not going to continue to sit by and allow them to just walk all over us, at least I hope that is the case. If it is not, if “We, the people continue to be complacent we may soon find that our liberty and freedom that we so cherish is gone.

We give much attention the freedom and the human rights of peoples in foreign lands. We, the government, is ever ready to speak out against any government who dose not grant religious and political freedom to it’s people, yet, if we are paying attention, if we are mindful of what is happening in our own country we see such freedoms slipping away from us almost daily.

The First Amendment of our Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting as establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof”, yet we have seen it come to pass where Congress has done just the opposite, and they want to take it even further and take “One nation under God” from the Pledge to our flag and, thus, “to the Republic for which it stands.” Are we going to sit by and allow that to happen? I surely hope not! The Constitution clear states that our Representatives, our government is to remain out of the business of religion.

Wake up America!! Wake up before it is too late and ourselves asking the question, is this a dream, when they take away what freedoms we have left.

Immigration Law of Mexico

2008-01-26T07:45:00.000-05:00

Write your Representatives today and tell them you want to adobt the Mexican immigration law and apply it to in the U.S.A.. . . it may just stop our illegal alien problem.

Mexico has a radical idea for a rational immigration policy that most
Americans would love. However, Mexican officials haven't been sharing that
idea with us as they press for our Congress to adopt the McCain-Kennedy
immigration reform bill.

That's too bad, because Mexico, which annually deports more illegal aliens
than the United States does, has much to teach us about how it handles the
immigration issue. Under Mexican law, it is a felony to be an illegal alien in Mexico.

At a time when the Supreme Court and many politicians seek to bring
American law in line with foreign legal norms, it's noteworthy that nobody
has argued that the U.S. look at how Mexico deals with immigration and
what it might teach us about how best to solve our illegal immigration
problem. Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign
visitors and immigrants are:

* in the country legally;

* have the means to sustain themselves economically;

* not destined to be burdens on society;

* of economic and social benefit to society;

* of good character and have no criminal records; and

* contributors to the general well-being of the nation.

The law also ensures that:

* immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;

* foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;

* foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country's
internal politics;

* foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or
deported;

* foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned
or deported;

* those who aid in illegal immigration will be sent to prison.

Who could disagree with such a law? It makes perfect sense. The Mexican
constitution strictly defines the rights of citizens -- and the denial of
many fundamental rights to non-citizens, illegal and illegal. Under the
constitution, the Ley General de Población, or General Law on Population,
spells out specifically the country's immigration policy.

It is an interesting law -- and one that should cause us all to ask, Why
is our great southern neighbor pushing us to water down our own
immigration laws and policies, when its own immigration restrictions are
the toughest on the continent? If a felony is a crime punishable by more
than one year in prison, then Mexican law makes it a felony to be an
illegal alien in Mexico.

If the United States adopted such statutes, Mexico no doubt would denounce
it as a manifestation of American racism and bigotry.

We looked at the immigration provisions of the Mexican constitution.
[1]
Now let's look at Mexico's main immigration law.

Mexico welcomes only foreigners who will be useful to Mexican society:

* Foreigners are admitted into Mexico "according to their
possibilities of contributing to national progress." (Article 32)

* Immigration officials must "ensure" that "immigrants will be useful
elements for the country and that they have the necessary funds for their
sustenance" and for their dependents. (Article 34)

* Foreigners may be barred from the country if their presence upsets
"the equilibrium of the national demographics," when foreigners are deemed
detrimental to "economic or national interests," when they do not behave like good citizens in their own country, when they have broken Mexican laws, and when "they are not found to be physically or mentally healthy."
(Article 37)

* The Secretary of Governance may "suspend or prohibit the admission
of foreigners when he determines it to be in the national interest."
(Article 38)

Mexican authorities must keep track of every single person in the country:

* Federal, local and municipal police must cooperate with federal
immigration authorities upon request, i.e., to assist in the arrests of
illegal immigrants. (Article 73)

* A National Population Registry keeps track of "every single
individual who comprises the population of the country," and verifies each individual's identity. (Articles 85 and 86)

* A national Catalog of Foreigners tracks foreign tourists and
immigrants (Article 87), and assigns each individual with a unique
tracking number (Article 91).

Foreigners with fake papers, or who enter the country under false
pretenses, may be imprisoned:

* Foreigners with fake immigration papers may be fined or imprisoned.
(Article 116)

* Foreigners who sign government documents "with a signature that is
false or different from that which he normally uses" are subject to fine and imprisonment. (Article 116)

Foreigners who fail to obey the rules will be fined, deported, and/or
imprisoned as felons:

* Foreigners who fail to obey a deportation order are to be punished.
(Article 117)

* Foreigners who are deported from Mexico and attempt to re-enter the country without authorization can be imprisoned for up to 10 years.
(Article 118)

* Foreigners who violate the terms of their visa may be sentenced to
up to six years in prison (Articles 119, 120 and 121). Foreigners who
misrepresent the terms of their visa while in Mexico -- such as working
without a permit -- can also be imprisoned.

Under Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony. The General Law on Population says,

* "A penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine of three hundred to five thousand pesos will be imposed on the foreigner who enters the country illegally." (Article 123)

* Foreigners with legal immigration problems may be deported from Mexico instead of being imprisoned. (Article 125)

* Foreigners who "attempt against national sovereignty or security" will be deported. (Article 126)

Mexicans who help illegal aliens enter the country are themselves considered criminals under the law:

* A Mexican who marries a foreigner with the sole objective of helping the foreigner live in the country is subject to up to five years in prison.
(Article 127)

* Shipping and airline companies that bring undocumented foreigners into Mexico will be fined. (Article 132)

All of the above runs contrary to what Mexican leaders are demanding of
the United States. The stark contrast between Mexico's immigration practices versus its American immigration preachings is telling. It gives a clear picture of the Mexican government's agenda: to have a one-way immigration relationship with the United States.

Let's call Mexico's bluff on its unwarranted interference in U.S.
immigration policy. Let's propose, just to make a point, that the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) member nations standardize their
immigration laws by using Mexico's own law as a model.

(Sent to me by a Vietnam Veteran, I pass it on as general information which was his intent. Thanks brother for the info!)

A Political Overlook

2008-01-26T07:05:00.000-05:00

In reading the information below please take note that there are 4 people listed here that are candidates for the highest office in our nation, the President of the U.S. and one person is currently the Speaker Of The House, the third highest office in our nation. What does this say about our government?

Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's
'Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians' for 2007
Washington, DC –Judicial Watch, the public
interest group that investigates and prosecutes
government corruption, today released its 2007
list of Washington's 'Ten Most Wanted Corrupt
Politicians.' The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

1. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY): In
addition to her long and sordid ethics record,
Senator Hillary Clinton took a lot of heat in
2007 – and rightly so – for blocking the release
her official White House records. Many suspect
these records contain a treasure trove of
information related to her role in a number of
serious Clinton-era scandals. Moreover, in March
2007, Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint
against Senator Clinton for filing false
financial disclosure forms with the U.S. Senate
(again). And Hillary's top campaign contributor,
Norman Hsu, was exposed as a felon and a fugitive
from justice in 2007. Hsu pleaded guilt to one
count of grand theft for defrauding investors as
part of a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.

2. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): Conyers reportedly
repeatedly violated the law and House ethics
rules, forcing his staff to serve as his personal
servants, babysitters, valets and campaign
workers while on the government payroll. While
the House Ethics Committee investigated these
allegations in 2006, and substantiated a number
of the accusations against Conyers, the committee
blamed the staff and required additional
administrative record-keeping and employee
training. Judicial Watch obtained documentation
in 2007 from a former Conyers staffer that sheds
new light on the activities and conduct on the
part of the Michigan congressman, which appear to
be at a minimum inappropriate and likely
unlawful. Judicial Watch called on the Attorney
General in 2007 to investigate the matter.

3. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID): In one of the
most shocking scandals of 2007, Senator Craig was
caught by police attempting to solicit sex in a
Minneapolis International Airport men's bathroom
during the summer. Senator Craig reportedly
'sent signals' to a police officer in an adjacent
stall that he wanted to engage in sexual
activity. When the police officer showed Craig
his police identification under the bathroom
stall divider and pointed toward the exit, the
senator reportedly exclaimed 'No!'' When asked
to produce identification, Craig presented police
his U.S. Senate business card and said, 'What do
you think of that?' The power play didn't
work. Craig was arrested, charged and entered a
guilty plea. Despite enormous pressure from his
Republican colleagues to resign from the Senate, Craig refused.

4. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA): As a member
of the Senate Appropriations Committee's
subcommittee on military construction, Feinstein
reviewed military construction government
contracts, some of which were ultimately awarded
to URS Corporation and Perini, companies then
owned by Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. While
the Pentagon ultimately awards military
contracts, there is a reason for the review
process. The Senate's subcommittee on Military
Construction's approval carries weight. Sen.
Feinstein, therefore, likely had influence over
the decision making process. Senator Feinstein
also attempted to undermine ethics reform in
2007, arguing in favor of a perk that allows
members of Congress to book multiple airline
flights and then cancel them without financial
penalty. Judicial Watch's investigation into this matter is ongoing.

5. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani
(R-NY): Giuliani came under fire in late 2007
after it was discovered the former New York
mayor's office 'billed obscure city agencies for
tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses
amassed during the time when he was beginning an
extramarital relationship with future wife Judith
Nathan in the Hamptons…' ABC News also reported
that Giuliani provided Nathan with a police
vehicle and a city driver at taxpayer
expense. All of this news came on the heels of
the federal indictment on corruption charges of
Giuliani's former Police Chief and business
partner Bernard Kerik, who pleaded guilty in 2006
to accepting a $165,000 bribe in the form of
renovations to his Bronx apartment from a
construction company attempting to land city contracts.

6. Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR): Governor
Huckabee enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls in
December 2007, which prompted a more thorough
review of his ethics record. According to The
Associated Press: '[Huckabee's] career has also
been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley
of questions about his integrity, ranging from
his management of campaign cash to his use of a
nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to
his destruction of state computer files on his
way out of the governor's office.' And what was
Governor Huckabee's response to these ethics
allegations? Rather than cooperating with
investigators, Huckabee sued the state ethics
commission twice and attempted to shut the ethics process down.

7. I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby: Libby, former
Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was
sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined
$250,000 for lying and obstructing the Valerie
Plame CIA leak investigation. Libby was found
guilty of four felonies -- two counts of perjury,
one count of making false statements to the FBI
and one count of obstructing justice – all
serious crimes. Unfortunately, Libby was largely
let off the hook. In an appalling lack of
judgment, President Bush issued 'Executive
Clemency' to Libby and commuted the sentence.

8. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL): A 'Dishonorable
Mention' last year, Senator Obama moves onto the
'ten most wanted' list in 2007. In 2006, it was
discovered that Obama was involved in a
suspicious real estate deal with an indicted
political fundraiser, Antoin 'Tony' Rezko. In
2007, more reports surfaced of deeper and
suspicious business and political connections It
was reported that just two months after he joined
the Senate, Obama purchased $50,000 worth of
stock in speculative companies whose major
investors were his biggest campaign
contributors. One of the companies was a biotech
concern that benefited from legislation Obama
pushed just two weeks after the senator purchased
$5,000 of the company's shares. Obama was also
nabbed conducting campaign business in his Senate
office, a violation of federal law.

9. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, who promised a new era of ethics
enforcement in the House of Representatives,
snuck a $25 million gift to her husband, Paul
Pelosi, in a $15 billion Water Resources
Development Act recently passed by Congress. The
pet project involved renovating ports in Speaker
Pelosi's home base of San Francisco. Pelosi just
happens to own apartment buildings near the areas
targeted for improvement, and will almost
certainly experience a significant boost in
property value as a result of Pelosi's
earmark. Earlier in the year, Pelosi found
herself in hot water for demanding access to a
luxury Air Force jet to ferry the Speaker and her
entourage back and forth from San Francisco
non-stop, in unprecedented request which was
wisely rejected by the Pentagon. And under
Pelosi's leadership, the House ethics process
remains essentially shut down – which protects
members in both parties from accountability.

10. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV): Over the last
few years, Reid has been embroiled in a series of
scandals that cast serious doubt on his
credibility as a self-professed champion of
government ethics, and 2007 was no
different. According to The Los Angeles Times,
over the last four years, Reid has used his
influence in Washington to help a developer,
Havey Whittemore, clear obstacles for a
profitable real estate deal. As the project
advanced, the Times reported, 'Reid received tens
of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions
from Whittemore.' Whittemore also hired one of
Reid's sons (Leif) as his personal lawyer and
then promptly handed the junior Reid the
responsibility of negotiating the real estate
deal with federal officials. Leif Reid even
called his father's office to talk about how to
obtain the proper EPA permits, a clear conflict of interest.

Judicial Watch is a 501(c)(3) non-profit
organization. Judicial Watch neither supports
nor opposes candidates for public office. For
more information, visit
www.judicialwatch.org.

Vets Commission Hearing

2008-01-25T19:56:00.000-05:00

Go to web site... can click on review various statements, can also listen to it live

http://www.veterans .senate.gov/ public/index. cfm?pageid= 16&release_id=11504&view=all

Hearing: Review of Veterans' Disability Compensation: Report of the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission
January,24,2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008 9:30am- Noon SD-562

Oversight hearing - Review of Veterans' Disability Compensation: Report of the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission.

Click Here to View Live Hearing

Panel I

Lieutenant General James Terry Scott (Retired), Chairman, Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission

Panel II

Mr. Todd Bowers, Director of Government Affairs, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

Gerald T. Manar, DEPUTY DIRECTOR NATIONAL VETERANS SERVICE VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES

Steve Smithson, DEPUTY DIRECTOR VETERANS AFFAIRS AND REHABILITATION COMMISSION THE AMERICAN LEGION

In our review of those discharged as unfit from 2000 through 2006, only about 1,500 of 83,000
were rated by DoD as 100 percent disabled and only 5,000 were rated as 50 percent or higher.

Partial reprint of statements by Lieutenant General James Terry Scott (Retired), Chairman, Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission

PTSD

We found that there is insufficient monitoring and coordination between VBA and VHA for veterans experiencing PTSD. An October 2007 IOM report on PTSD treatment (not reflected in our report) found that there is not even an agreed-upon definition of recovery and that there is not sufficient evidence of the efficacy of treatment modalities and pharmaceuticals.

Although there has been a lot of discussion about the extent that OEF and OIF service members experience PTSD, we noted that only some 1,400 service members had been found unfit for duty due to PTSD out of some 83,000 over the past seven years. This does not indicate that sufficient attention is being paid to this disorder.
The Commission believes that a holistic approach to PTSD should be established that couples compensation, treatment, and vocational assessment. We also believe that re-evaluation should occur every two to three years to gauge treatment effectiveness and encourage wellness.

Individual Unemployability (IU)

Veterans with service-connected disabilities rated 60 percent or more but less than 100 percent and who are unable to work due to their disabilities can be granted what is known as IU and be paid at the 100 percent rate. The number of such veterans has increased by 90 percent over the past few years causing considerable attention. We found that the increase is largely explained by the aging of the cohort of Vietnam veterans.

As the Rating Schedule is revised, specific focus should be given to the criteria for PTSD and other mental disorders so that IU does not need to be awarded so frequently. Currently, 31 percent of veterans with a primary disability of PTSD are awarded IU. Since incapacity to work is part of the criteria for a rating of 100 percent for PTSD and other mental disorders, it is not clear why many of these veterans are not rated 100 percent instead of IU.

*********
Concurrent Receipt

Regarding concurrent receipt of military retirement and VA disability payments, the Commission found these to be two different programs with entirely different missions. DoD retirement recognizes years of service and VA disability payments compensate for impairment in earnings and should compensate for impact on quality of life.

Over time, Congress should eliminate the ban on concurrent receipt for all military retirees and for all service members who are separated from the military due to service-connected disabilities. Priority should be given to veterans who separate or retire with less than 20 years of service and a service-connected disability rating greater than 50 percent or disability as a result of combat.

Payment offset should also be eliminated for survivors of those who die in service or retirees who die of service-related causes so that the survivors can receive both VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation and DoD Survivors Benefit Plan.
************ *

Our Commission's recommendations are in many ways similar to the intent of the Administration' s proposed legislation but we recommended stronger support for the families of those severely disabled and we would not restrict benefits such as family health care to those with serious injuries experienced in combat or combat-related circumstances. There is currently no commonly accepted or used definition for serious injuries but I feel that the definition proposed in the Administration' s proposal is too stringent. It is not clear to me that all veterans currently rated 100 percent would meet that proposed definition. In our review of those discharged as unfit from 2000 through 2006, only about 1,500 of 83,000 were rated by DoD as 100 percent disabled and only 5,000 were rated as 50 percent or higher.

We believe as a matter of principle that benefits should be based on the severity of disability, not on when or how the disability occurred.

Col Dan

ATTN: Male Veterans

2008-01-24T06:57:00.000-05:00

STUDY SHOWS AGENT ORANGE HARMED SEXUAL HEALTH OF MALE VIETNAM VETERANS
-- Higher dioxin exposure is associated with decreased testosterone
levels. -- "It is known that lower Testosterone levels are associated with
decreased sexual function, decreased muscle mass and strength,
infertility, increased fatigue, depression and reduced bone density."
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2006/2006-11-15-03.

Agent Orange Harmed Sexual Health of Male Vietnam Vets;
DALLAS, Texas, (ENS) - A toxic chemical contained in the herbicide
Agent Orange affects male reproductive health by limiting the growth of the
prostate gland and lowering testosterone levels, researchers have
found in a study of more than 2,000 Vietnam War Air Force veterans.

Published in the November issue of the journal "Environmental Health
Perspectives," the study indicates that exposure to TCDD, the most toxic
of the dioxin family of chemicals contained in Agent Orange, may
disturb the male endocrine and reproductive systems in several ways.

"Until now, we did not have very good evidence whether or not dioxins
affect the human reproductive system," said Dr. Amit Gupta, a urologist
at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the study's
lead author.

"Now we know that there is a link between dioxins and the human
prostate leading us to speculate that dioxins might be decreasing the growth
of the prostate in humans like they do in animals," he said.

Agent Orange is an herbicide that was developed for military use in
Vietnam to deny cover and concealment to enemies of the United States and
its allies.

The researchers found that veterans exposed to dioxin had lower
incidence rates of benign prostate hyperplasia, BPH, a disease that is caused
by an enlargement of the prostate.

Patients must strain to pass urine and they urinate frequently. BPH can
lead to complications such as an inability to urinate and urinary
tract infection.

Although the study found fewer incidences of disease, Dr. Gupta
cautioned that the finding should not be interpreted as a positive result.

"It may be construed that a decrease in the risk of BPH is not a
harmful effect, but the larger picture is that dioxins are affecting the
normal growth and development of the reproductive system," he said.

"Several effective treatments are available for BPH," Dr. Gupta said,
"and thus reduction of BPH by a toxic compound is not a desirable
effect."

Dr. Claus Roehrborn, professor and chairman of urology at UT
Southwestern and a study author, said, "We know that dioxin causes many endocrine
disturbances in the human body. The study indirectly proves that BPH
is an endocrine disorder."

The study was based on data from the Air Force Health Study, an
epidemiologic study of more than 2,000 Air Force veterans who were responsible
for spraying herbicides, including Agent Orange, during the Vietnam
War.

This group is called the Ranch Hand group because the spray program was
called Operation Ranch Hand.

A comparison group was made up of veterans who served in Southeast Asia
during the same time period, 1962-1971, but were not involved in the
spraying program and so were exposed to dioxins at levels equivalent to
the general population.

The veterans were interviewed and underwent physical examinations and
lab tests during six examination cycles. The first cycle was conducted
in 1982, so the veterans were followed for more than 20 years.

"We found that the risk of developing BPH decreased with increasing
exposure to dioxins in the comparison group," said Dr. Arnold Schecter,
professor of environmental sciences at the UT School of Public Health
Regional Campus at Dallas and a study author.

"The risk of developing BPH was 24 percent lower in the group with the
highest dioxin levels compared to the group with the lowest levels. In
the Ranch Hand group, the risk of BPH tended to decrease with increased
exposure to dioxins, but at extremely high exposure levels there was a
tendency for the risk to increase."

The study shows that higher dioxin exposure is associated with
decreased testosterone levels, Dr. Gupta said.

"It is known that lower testosterone levels are associated with
decreased sexual function, decreased muscle mass and strength, infertility,
increased fatigue, depression and reduced bone density," Dr. Gupta said.
"However, we could not conclude from this study that dioxin exposure
did lead to any of these adverse affects in the veterans in the study."

There has been a rise in disorders of the male reproductive tract over
the past several decades, including a decrease in sperm production by
almost 50 percent.

Scientists also have found a four-fold increase in testicular cancer,
and increases in the incidence of undescended testes and abnormality of
the urethra.

The reason for this increase is not known, but it is thought that these
disorders might be caused by environmental chemicals that are
estrogenic and have endocrine disrupting effects, Dr. Gupta said.

Dioxins are among the most toxic substances known and are thought to be
partially responsible for this increase in male reproductive tract
disorders. They are formed as byproducts of processes such as
incineration, smelting, paper and pulp manufacturing and pesticide and herbicide
production.

Humans are exposed to these chemicals primarily through consumption of
animal fat and dairy products. Babies are exposed to the highest levels
of dioxins through breast milk.

Dioxins are eliminated extremely slowly from the body and they tend to
stay in the body for up to several decades after exposure.

Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange have suffered serious and
life-threatening conditions. The Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes
prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, Type II
diabetes, Hodgkins disease, non-Hodgkins lymphoma and spina bifida as among
the diseases resulting from exposure to the herbicide.

The study points out the necessity to conduct additional environmental
studies of the impact of dioxins and other toxins on the male
reproductive system, the authors say. Previous research was largely based on
animal models.

http://www.vawatchdog.org/nfNOV06/nf111706-3.htm

Who Is Barack Obama?

2008-01-23T17:33:00.000-05:00

Who is Barack Obama?

Very interesting and something that should be considered in your choice.

If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scary to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States...better heed this and pray about it and share it.

We checked this out on "snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp

Who is Barack Obama?

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHIEST from Wichita, Kansas.

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii. When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya. His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia.

When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocate to Indonesia. Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta. He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school."

Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that he is not a radical.

Obam a's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned toKenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.

Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta.

Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he
DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.

Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag. While others place their hands over their hearts, Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches.

Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States.

Agent Orange Used Outside of Vietnam

2008-01-23T07:41:00.000-05:00

Listing of areas in which Agent Orange was sprayed by the DOD outside of Vietnam. This may be helpful in filing a VA claim for AO related conditions as proof of AO use if you are not a Vietnam veteran but served in one of this locations.

If can not link, cut and paste into browser:

http://www1.va.gov/agentorange/docs/Report_on_DoD_Herbicides_Outside_of_Vietnam.pdf

American Patriots - A MUST READ!

2008-01-22T17:24:00.000-05:00

Patriots, I direct your attention to one of the best articles I have read in many a year, hell, perhaps in my lifetime! This article, entitled "The Constitution of the United States", by Gene Owens, appears in this months Purple Heart Magazine, beginning on page 12. If you do not receive the Purple Heart Magazine ask around and see if you can find one. This is an article you don't want to miss. For those who may not be able to find a copy of the magazine I will be posting excerpts from the article on this site. Just to give an example I note the opening paragraph here:

"The United States shall guarantee every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion. . . . Here the Constitution, itself, defines what form of government it has given us -- a Republic!"
Gene Owens, Purple Heart Magazine,
January/Feburary 2008,
Vol. XLXIII, Number 1

It is obvious to me that the writer of this article is a learned man and one who has studyed the Constitution and Bill of Rights extensively. His article is very profound and, in my opinon, one that should be read by every American. He gives in his writing an education on the Constitution that is very much lacking in our schools today.

What if no one answered the call?

2008-01-22T07:17:00.000-05:00

What if no one comes when called?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDITORIAL: NEGLECT OF VETERANS UNCONSCIONABLE --

"If the American government and the American people continue
to break faith with the young men and women who have sworn
to defend them...then we can't be surprised when, if we call
on them to serve in the future, no one responds."

Every so often an editorial on veterans' issue "nails it." This is one of those.
For more editorials about veterans' issues, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...

http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=editorial&op=and

THE SUN CHRONICLE
EDITORIAL: Neglect of vets unconscionable

"To care for him who shall have borne the battle..."

Those words, from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, are quite literally carved into the walls of the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C.

With that kind of authority for its mission statement, the American people have every reason to expect that the VA and other government agencies would be unswerving in their devotion to the care and well-being of the men and women who have served in the nation's wars, especially those who have been wounded in combat.

But with numbing regularity over the past few years, the public has heard tales that demonstrate that America's veterans are being ill-served by many of those whose task it is to help them.

It was just a year ago that the Washington Post uncovered the shabby conditions and inadequate treatment wounded combat veterans were receiving at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington.

In February 2007, the Post reported on the dilapidated buildings, overworked and overextended staff and inadequate funding that plagued what should have been the crown jewel of the military's medical system.

The Post reported one veteran as saying: "We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it." Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months, went on to tell the newspaper, "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."

The Post's reporting caused a scandal and prompted congressional hearings and promises of quick action to remedy the situation. But recently reports have surfaced that care, both physical and mental, is still inadequate - not just at Walter Reed, but across the nation.

According to some studies, up to 30 percent of those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are believed to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, often requiring some mental health intervention. The suicide rate for Army veterans is above 17 percent per 100,000 people, the highest percentage in 26 years of record keeping.

Just this week, in Attleboro, a homeless Army reservist, who reportedly served tours of duty in Bosia and Iraq, was arrested and jailed without bail on charges he broke into a vacant factory building, where he started a small fire, evidently in an effort to stay warm.

And as America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq enter their seventh years, the number of homeless veterans is growing. There are 336,000 veterans of all wars in the United States who were homeless at some point in 2006, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

How did America come to fall so far short of its promises to those who volunteered to serve in its armed forces?

There are a number of reasons.

One is that no one in the administration that planned our current military involvement expected it to last as long as it has or to produce the number of casualties that it did.

Another is that in an administration that has made tax cuts a mantra, it is easy to squeeze dollars from programs - such as care for wounded veterans - that are out of the public eye.

But the neglect of those who have served their country honorably cannot be excused.

If the American government and the American people continue to break faith with the young men and women who have sworn to defend them - and who rightfully expect that the nation will help them when they return wounded in mind or in body- then we can't be surprised when, if we call on them to serve in the future, no one responds.
-------------------------

posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

New York Times Exposed As BS Artist

2008-01-16T14:29:00.000-05:00

From: Move America Forward
Subject: New York Times 'Killer Vet' Story Exposed as Erroneous by
Pro-Troop Group
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:53:50 -0800

January 14, 2008 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Mary Pearson: (916) 441-6197 or Email:
mary@MoveAmericaForward.org

EXCLUSIVE:

New York Times 'Killer Vet' Story
Exposed as Erroneous by Pro-Troop Group

SACRAMENTO- Move America Forward (website:
www.MoveAmericaForward.org), the nation's largest grassroots pro-troop organization, today
announced that after vetting the numbers cited by The New York Times in their
Sunday, January 13, 2008 story, "Across America, Deadly Echoes of
Foreign Battles," it became clear that the Times had engaged in demonstrably
erroneous and false reporting.

It took seven New York Times researchers to find 121 cases in which
veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in the United
States, or were charged with one, upon returning home to this country.

The Times made the false conclusion that: "Taken together, they paint
the patchwork of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of
death and heartbreak."

The Times documentation of 121 potential killings out of more than 1.5
million veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) and Operation
Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), divided by 6 years of conflict results in a
murder rate of just 1.34 incidents per 100,000 veterans per year.

That murder rate is far lower than the murder rate for the general
population, demonstrating that the experiences of military service -
including having served in Iraq and Afghanistan - actually made it less
likely for returning veterans to commit murder once they returned home,
than the general population.

Given a census-estimated population of the United States of 300,000,000
persons in this country as of October 2006, and FBI-compiled
statistics of 17,399 homicide offenders for 2006, the murder rate of the
general population was 5.80 offenders per 100,000 on average - and a rate of
approximately 7.67 per 100,000 for men.

Since all but one of the veterans cited by the Times who committed a
killing in the U.S. was male, the comparable rate is approximately 7.67
incidents of murder per 100,000 people among the general male
population, compared to just 1.34 incidents per 100,000 returning Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans (of both genders).

"It's obvious that the New York Times has an agenda of undermining the
missions of our troops in the War on Terror, so much so that they are
willing to resort to demonstrably false statistics to support their
anti-troop bias," said Melanie Morgan, Chairman of Move America Forward.

"The slander of our troops and veterans by the New York Times is
unfortunately all too familiar. We heard this kind of nonsense about our
returning veterans from Vietnam. It's the same insult, different war.

"Perhaps the shameful staff of The New York Times has run out of
war-time secrets to publish for America's enemies to read, because now
they've resorted to an all-out smear campaign of America's finest men and
women, who have served this country bravely and with distinction," Morgan
said.

In place of hard data to support their premise, The New York Times was
instead forced to devote almost the entire portion of 6,321 word
hit-piece to anecdotes of wrongdoing by individual veterans.

The New York Times even went so far as to trace back the phenomenon of
murderous veterans to Greek mythology to back up their assertions of
their report.

"The real mythology is the reporting by The New York Times," Move
America Forward's Melanie Morgan concluded.

________________________________________________

NOTE TO REPORTERS: Melanie Morgan and a delegation of staffers from
Move America Forward have just returned from a 10-day trip interviewing
U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait.

Mandatory Service Bill 393

2008-01-16T06:12:00.001-05:00

110th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 393

To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make permanent the favorable treatment afforded combat pay under the earned income tax credit, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 10, 2007

Mr. RANGEL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services, and in addition to the Committee on Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make permanent the favorable treatment afforded combat pay under the earned income tax credit, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.

(a) Short Title- This Act may be cited as the ..Universal National Service Act of 2007'.

(b) Table of Contents- The table of contents for this Act is as follows:

Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents.

TITLE I--NATIONAL SERVICE

Sec. 101. Definitions.

Sec. 102. National service obligation.

Sec. 103. Induction to perform national service.

Sec. 104. Two-year period of national service.

Sec. 105. Implementation by the President.

Sec. 106. Examination and classification of persons.

Sec. 107. Deferments and postponements.

Sec. 108. Induction exemptions.

Sec. 109. Conscientious objection.

Sec. 110. Discharge following national service.

Sec. 111. Registration of females under the Military Selective Service Act.

Sec. 112. Relation of title to registration and induction authority of Military Selective Service Act.

TITLE II--FAVORABLE TREATMENT OF COMBAT PAY UNDER EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT MADE PERMANENT

Sec. 201. Favorable treatment of combat pay under earned income tax credit made permanent.

TITLE I--NATIONAL SERVICE

SEC. 101. DEFINITIONS.

In this title:

(1) The term ..contingency operation' has the meaning given that term in section 101(a)(13) of title 10, United States Code.

(2) The term ..military service' means service performed as a member of an active or reserve component of the uniformed services.

(3) The term ..national service' means military service or service in a civilian capacity that, as determined by the President, promotes the national defense, including national or community service and service related to homeland security.

(4) The term ..Secretary concerned' means the Secretary of Defense with respect to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard, the Secretary of Commerce, with respect to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with respect to the Public Health Service.

(5) The term ..United States', when used in a geographical sense, means the several States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam.

(6) The term ..uniformed services' means the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, commissioned corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and commissioned corps of the Public Health Service.

SEC. 102. NATIONAL SERVICE OBLIGATION.

(a) Obligation for Service- It is the obligation of every citizen of the United States, and every other person residing in the United States, who is between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform a period of national service as prescribed in this title unless exempted under the provisions of this title.

(b) Forms of National Service- The national service obligation under this title shall be performed either--

(1) as a member of an active or reserve component of the uniformed services; or

(2) in a civilian capacity that, as determined by the President, promotes the national defense, including national or community service and service related to homeland security.

(c) Age Limits- A person may be inducted under this title only if the person has attained the age of 18 and has not attained the age of 42.

SEC. 103. INDUCTION TO PERFORM NATIONAL SERVICE.

(a) Induction Requirements- The President shall provide for the induction of persons described in section 102(a) to perform their national service obligation.

(b) Limitation on Induction for Military Service- Persons described in section 102(a) may be inducted to perform military service only if--

(1) a declaration of war is in effect;

(2) the President declares a national emergency, which the President determines necessitates the induction of persons to perform military service, and immediately informs Congress of the reasons for the declaration and the need to induct persons for military service; or

(3) members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps are engaged in a contingency operation pursuant to a congressional authorization for the use of military force.

(c) Limitation on Number of Persons Inducted for Military Service- When the induction of persons for military service is authorized by subsection (b), the President shall determine the number of persons described in section 102(a) whose national service obligation is to be satisfied through military service based on--

(1) the authorized end strengths of the uniformed services; and

(2) the feasibility of the uniformed services to recruit sufficient volunteers to achieve such end-strength levels.

(3) provide a mechanism for the random selection of persons to be inducted to perform military service.

(d) Selection for Induction-

(1) RANDOM SELECTION FOR MILITARY SERVICE- When the induction of persons for military service is authorized by subsection (b), the President shall utilize a mechanism for the random selection of persons to be inducted to perform military service.

(2) CIVILIAN SERVICE- Persons described in section 102(a) who do not volunteer to perform military service or are not inducted for military service shall perform their national service obligation in a civilian capacity pursuant to section 102(b)(2).

(e) Voluntary Service- A person subject to induction under this title may--

(1) volunteer to perform national service in lieu of being inducted; or

(2) request permission to be inducted at a time other than the time at which the person is otherwise called for induction.

SEC. 104. TWO-YEAR PERIOD OF NATIONAL SERVICE.

(a) General Rule- Except as otherwise provided in this section, the period of national service performed by a person under this title shall be two years.

(b) Grounds for Extension- At the discretion of the President, the period of military service for a member of the uniformed services under this title may be extended--

(1) with the consent of the member, for the purpose of furnishing hospitalization, medical, or surgical care for injury or illness incurred in line of duty; or

(2) for the purpose of requiring the member to compensate for any time lost to training for any cause.

(c) Early Termination- The period of national service for a person under this title shall be terminated before the end of such period under the following circumstances:

(1) The voluntary enlistment and active service of the person in an active or reserve component of the uniformed services for a period of at least two years, in which case the period of basic military training and education actually served by the person shall be counted toward the term of enlistment.

(2) The admission and service of the person as a cadet or midshipman at the United States Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, or the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

(3) The enrollment and service of the person in an officer candidate program, if the person has signed an agreement to accept a Reserve commission in the appropriate service with an obligation to serve on active duty if such a commission is offered upon completion of the program.

(4) Such other grounds as the President may establish.

SEC. 105. IMPLEMENTATION BY THE PRESIDENT.

(a) In General- The President shall prescribe such regulations as are necessary to carry out this title.

(b) Matter to Be Covered by Regulations- Such regulations shall include specification of the following:

(1) The types of civilian service that may be performed in order for a person to satisfy the person's national service obligation under this title.

(2) Standards for satisfactory performance of civilian service and of penalties for failure to perform civilian service satisfactorily.

(3) The manner in which persons shall be selected for induction under this title, including the manner in which those selected will be notified of such selection.

(4) All other administrative matters in connection with the induction of persons under this title and the registration, examination, and classification of such persons.

(5) A means to determine questions or claims with respect to inclusion for, or exemption or deferment from induction under this title, including questions of conscientious objection.

(6) Standards for compensation and benefits for persons performing their national service obligation under this title through civilian service.

(7) Such other matters as the President determines necessary to carry out this title.

(c) Use of Prior Act- To the extent determined appropriate by the President, the President may use for purposes of this title the procedures provided in the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 451 et seq.), including procedures for registration, selection, and induction.

SEC. 106. EXAMINATION AND CLASSIFICATION OF PERSONS.

(a) Examination- Every person subject to induction under this title shall, before induction, be physically and mentally examined and shall be classified as to fitness to perform national service.

(b) Different Classification Standards- The President may apply different classification standards for fitness for military service and fitness for civilian service.

SEC. 107. DEFERMENTS AND POSTPONEMENTS.

(a) High School Students- A person who is pursuing a standard course of study, on a full-time basis, in a secondary school or similar institution of learning shall be entitled to have induction under this title postponed until the person--

(1) obtains a high school diploma;

(2) ceases to pursue satisfactorily such course of study; or

(3) attains the age of 20.

(b) Hardship and Disability- Deferments from national service under this title may be made for--

(1) extreme hardship; or

(2) physical or mental disability.

(c) Training Capacity- The President may postpone or suspend the induction of persons for military service under this title as necessary to limit the number of persons receiving basic military training and education to the maximum number that can be adequately trained.

(d) Termination- No deferment or postponement of induction under this title shall continue after the cause of such deferment or postponement ceases.

SEC. 108. INDUCTION EXEMPTIONS.

(a) Qualifications- No person may be inducted for military service under this title unless the person is acceptable to the Secretary concerned for training and meets the same health and physical qualifications applicable under section 505 of title 10, United States Code, to persons seeking original enlistment in a regular component of the Armed Forces.

(b) Other Military Service- No person shall be liable for induction under this title who--

(1) is serving, or has served honorably for at least six months, in any component of the uniformed services on active duty; or

(2) is or becomes a cadet or midshipman at the United States Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, the United States Merchant Marine Academy, a midshipman of a Navy accredited State maritime academy, a member of the Senior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, or the naval aviation college program, so long as that person satisfactorily continues in and completes at least two years training therein.

SEC. 109. CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION.

(a) Claims as Conscientious Objector- Nothing in this title shall be construed to require a person to be subject to combatant training and service in the uniformed services, if that person, by reason of sincerely held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.

(b) Alternative Noncombatant or Civilian Service- A person who claims exemption from combatant training and service under subsection (a) and whose claim is sustained by the local board shall--

(1) be assigned to noncombatant service (as defined by the President), if the person is inducted into the uniformed services; or

(2) be ordered by the local board, if found to be conscientiously opposed to participation in such noncombatant service, to perform national civilian service for the period specified in section 104(a) and subject to such regulations as the President may prescribe.

SEC. 110. DISCHARGE FOLLOWING NATIONAL SERVICE.

(a) Discharge- Upon completion or termination of the obligation to perform national service under this title, a person shall be discharged from the uniformed services or from civilian service, as the case may be, and shall not be subject to any further service under this title.

(b) Coordination With Other Authorities- Nothing in this section shall limit or prohibit the call to active service in the uniformed services of any person who is a member of a regular or reserve component of the uniformed services.

SEC. 111. REGISTRATION OF FEMALES UNDER THE MILITARY SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT.

(a) Registration Required- Section 3(a) of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. 453(a)) is amended--

(1) by striking ..male' both places it appears;

(2) by inserting ..or herself' after ..himself'; and

(3) by striking ..he' and inserting ..the person'.

(b) Conforming Amendment- Section 16(a) of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 466(a)) is amended by striking ..men' and inserting ..persons'.

SEC. 112. RELATION OF TITLE TO REGISTRATION AND INDUCTION AUTHORITY OF MILITARY SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT.

(a) Registration- Section 4 of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 454) is amended by inserting after subsection (g) the following new subsection:

..(h) This section does not apply with respect to the induction of persons into the Armed Forces pursuant to the Universal National Service Act of 2007.'.

(b) Induction- Section 17(c) of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 467(c)) is amended by striking ..now or hereafter' and all that follows through the period at the end and inserting ..inducted pursuant to the Universal National Service Act of 2007.'.

TITLE II--FAVORABLE TREATMENT OF COMBAT PAY UNDER EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT MADE PERMANENT

SEC. 201. FAVORABLE TREATMENT OF COMBAT PAY UNDER EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT MADE PERMANENT.

(a) In General- Clause (vi) of section 32(c)(2)(B) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (defining earned income) is amended to read as follows:

..(vi) a taxpayer may elect for any taxable year to treat amounts excluded from gross income by reason of section 112 as earned income.'.

(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall apply to taxable years ending after December 31, 2006.

H.R. 393: Universal National Service Act of 2007

To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make permanent the favorable treatment afforded combat pay under the earned income tax credit, and for other purposes.
Overview

Summary

Other Info
Introduction

From Congresspedia:
The Universal National Service Act of 2007 (H.R.393) was introduced to the United States House of Representatives on January 10, 2007 by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). It proposed the requirement that all residents in the United States aged between 18 and 42 carry out national service, and be available for conscription during wartime. It would allow no deferments after age 20. ...
Bill Status
Sponsor:
Rep. Charles Rangel [D-NY]show cosponsors (2)
Cosponsors [as of 2007-12-10]
Rep. Yvette Clarke [D-NY]
Rep. James McDermott [D-WA]
Cosponsorship information sometimes is out of date. Why?
Bill Text:
Summaries (CRS)
Full Text
Status:
Introduced Jan 10, 2007
Scheduled for Debate -
Voted on in House -
Voted on in Senate -
Signed by President -
This bill is in the first step in the legislative process. Introduced bills go first to committees that deliberate, investigate, and revise them before they go to general debate. The majority of bills never make it out of committee. Keep in mind that sometimes the text of one bill is incorporated into another bill, and in those cases the original bill, as it would appear here, would seem to be abandoned. [Last Updated: Dec 9, 2007]
Last Action:
Feb 26, 2007: House Armed Services: Referred to the Subcommittee on Military Personnel.
Show All Related Votes
Other Titles:
-- Draft Reinstatement bill
Committee Assignments

This bill is in the first stage of the legislative process where the bill is considered in committee and may undergo significant changes in markup sessions. The bill has been referred to the following committees:
House Armed Services
House Armed Services, Subcommittee on Military Personnel
House Ways and Means

Contact Your Representative Today

2008-01-15T17:18:00.000-05:00

Please contact your Senator and congressman, and also Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators Bob Casey and Arlen Specter
to ask them to sponsor and introduce The Agent Orange Fair Compensation Act, which would:

Sample letter below

Re: Agent Orange Fair Compensation Act,

Dear Senator

Please sponsor and introduce The Agent Orange Fair Compensation Act, which would:

Amend title 38, United States Code, chapter 11, to clarify that an award
of benefits based on a regulatory presumption established pursuant to 38
U.S.C. 1116 after September 30, 2002, can be made effective earlier than
the date the regulatory presumption was established, in effect, to the
date of the first claim; and to clarify that the presumption of herbicide
exposure provided by 38 U.S.C. 1116(f) applies to veterans who served in
Vietnam on land or on Vietnam's inland waterways and to those who served
only in waters offshore or in airspace above. The determining factor will
be receipt of the Vietnam Service Medal, or the Armed Forces Expeditionary
Medal issued for service in the Vietnam War.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; REFERENCES TO TITLE 38, UNITED STATES CODE.

(a) Short Title- This Act may be cited as the `Agent Orange Fair
Compensation Act'.

(b) References- Wherever in this Act an amendment is expressed in terms of
an amendment to a section or other provision, the reference shall be
considered to be made to a section or other provision of title 38, United
States Code.

SEC. 2. CLARIFICATION OF AUTHORITY TO ESTABLISH PRESUMPTIONS BASED ON
HERBICIDE EXPOSURE; CONFIRMATION OF RETROACTIVE PAYMENT.

(a) Section 1116 is amended by adding at the end the following new
subsection: `(g) Presumptions established pursuant to this section shall
be considered to be presumptions established pursuant to the Agent Orange
Act of 1991. Awards based on such presumptions are subject to section 5110
of this title and shall not in any event be made effective earlier than
the effective date of the regulation establishing the presumption, but
must be made back to the date of first claim, whichever is later.

(b) Applicability- The provisions of section 1116(g) as added by this Act
apply to any determination made on or after the date of enactment of this
Act, or prior to it back to the date of first claim except as the
provisions of section 5110 apply, concerning a person's entitlement to
benefits administered by the Secretary.

SEC. 3. CLARIFICATION OF DEFINITION OF SERVICE IN THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM.

(a) Paragraph (f) of section 1116 is amended by adding to the end of that
paragraph the following: `For the purposes of this presumption, a veteran
will be considered to have served in the Republic of Vietnam if the
veteran was physically present on land in Vietnam, or on its inland
waterways, or if the veteran served only on the waters offshore or in
airspace above, and received either the Vietnam Service Medal or the Armed
Forces Expeditionary Medal for service in Vietnam.'.

(b) Applicability- The provisions of section 1116(f), as amended by this
Act, apply to any claim filed on or after February 6, 1991, that is still
pending on the date of enactment of this Act, including a claim to reopen
or revise a previously denied claim, and to any claim filed on or after
the date of enactment of this Act. A claim is pending if it has not been
the subject of a final VA decision granting or denying benefits, or if
such a decision is currently on appeal before a court. Previously open
claims closed subsequent to 2002 shall be reinstated in full. Benefits
will be paid to the date of first claim in all cases under this authority,
minus any previously paid claims, within the boundaries of section 5110.
In all cases under this authority, failure to file an appeal subsequent to
a denial after 2002 shall not interrupt retroactive benefits.

Sincerely,

Col Dan