(At Least) 22,000 Suicide Calls

Actually the number is probably higher - 22,000 identified themselves explicitly as vets. Over 55,000 called the special line set up through the VA in its first year of operation. Some are friends and family of vets, which makes sense, as watching someone close struggle with PTSD or worse must be unbearable. These statistics are gruesome.

Calls to the VA’s hotline more than doubled this calendar year going from a total of about 21,000 in January to more than 55,000 by the end of June, averaging about 250 calls a day.

Out of 55,469 calls that the VA’s suicide hotline has received in the last year, 22,044 callers identify themselves as veterans. Callers can remain anonymous if they choose. About 3,000 (2,966) identified themselves as a family member or friend of a vet. Six hundred (621) said they were on active-duty. The VA rescued 1,221 callers with emergency responders while 2,911 received help in what the VA calls a “warm transfer.” More than 4,500 (4,592) callers were referred to a VA suicide prevention coordinator in their local area. The VA says they don’t know of any individuals who committed suicide after using the 1-800-number. A spokesperson for the VA told CBS News that “there are none that we are aware of that have occurred when they called the hotline.”

We simply don't know that answer, and I would gather that it's probably too hopeful.

This hotline was set up in 2007, after Democrats like Harry Mitchell urged its implementation after seeing the sorrowful statistics on veteran suicides.

A recent RAND Corporation study found that nearly 20 percent, or about 300,000 veterans out of the approximately 1.64 million who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently suffer from major depression or post traumatic stress disorder. A news report last November by CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian discovered that in 2005 more than 6,200 veterans had committed suicide at a rate twice that of non-veterans. A series of internal VA emails, which were exposed earlier this year, confirmed CBS’ findings as well as revealed that about 1,000 vets seeking care from the VA attempt suicide every month for a total of about 12,000 a year.

(CBS and NPR have been very good at tracking the story of veteran suicides)

So now we have 20%, at a minimum, of our soldiers coming home with PTSD or some mental health issue, and around 2% driven to thoughts of suicide, 1% driven to actually attempt it, and about half that succeeding in the attempt. That is an epidemic.

The VA's efforts to offer help to troubled veterans is fine, but if they diagnosed these cases during soldier's tours and on discharge rather than hiding the scope of the problem, they wouldn't have to hire hundreds of mental health professionals as call screeners to inadequately address the problem on a suicide hotline. This is a textbook example of how early detection in health treatment saves lives and money. But the VA's modus operandi is to avoid diagnoses at the outset, because then we would have to factor the human toll into the real cost of war.

It's really heartbreaking but there is a better way which requires minimal competence at the VA.

Military Declares War On Obama, VoteVets

The close relationship between top officials in various branches of the military and Veterans Administration has been disturbing for some time now. If two unrelated events today are any indication, they're about to reach the breaking point.

First off, the Army's public affairs unit is broadcasting pathetic Obama smears from milbloggers, contravening direct orders from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to stay out of partisan politics:

The Army's public affairs office publishes a daily roundup of Army-related news called "Stand To" -- named for the set of procedures combat units do just prior to dawn, when they go to full alert for a possible enemy attack. The daily wrapup contains links to mainstream media articles, Army press releases, foreign media stories and blogs. It's similar to the Defense Department's Early Bird -- but much briefer, and obviously more focused on the Army.

Tuesday's edition contained an entry under "WHAT'S BEING SAID IN BLOGS" that struck me as unusual -- both for its headline and its patent political bias:

Obama: World peace thru surrender (KDIHH)

This is coming from a military address, and they're broadcasting partisan political statements. It's the digital equivalent of showing up to a partisan event in full uniform, as far as I'm concerned.

This appears like yet another example of the unusually cozy relationship which has developed over the last generation or so between the military and the right wing of American politics -- an unhealthy development, to say the least.

Last time I checked, soldiers and civilian officials didn't swear an oath to either political party or to their current president. Rather, they swear their fidelity to the Constitution, and the ideals it embodies, including the subordination of the military to civil authority. Adm. Mullen is right: As we enter a contentious election year, where issues of national security are likely to dominate the debate, the military needs to stay on the sidelines.

But they are not staying on the sidelines, and the next example shows that their partisanship is having real-life consequences, more concerned with making a political point than saving a veteran's life.

The VA rejected an Afghanistan veteran's disability claim for PTSD last month, citing his membership in VoteVets.org as a reason for the denial.

Staff Sergeant Will King retired from the Army in late 2003, after serving in both the first Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. As one of the first troops into the Afghan theater after 9/11, Will had been awarded a Bronze Star after participating in fierce fighting in the Shah-e-Kot Valley in March 2002 [...]

As the months turned to years after his retirement, however, Will started having problems as the Iraq War dragged on. Depressed and unable to sleep, he thought it might be PTSD. Because, as those who study PTSD know, this is perfectly normal: The symptoms of PTSD frequently have a delayed onset that can take months or years to fully materialize. That's why, in April 2007, Will filed a claim with the VA for combat-related PTSD. The VA eventually agreed with Will and diagnosed him with mild PTSD. But Will felt like his condition was worse than that. And to boot, he thought it was getting worse. So Will appealed, and filed another disability claim with the VA in November 2007: He felt his symptoms were serious enough to warrant an increase in his disability rating from "mild" to "moderate."*

Unfortunately for Will, the VA denied his claim six months later, in May 2008. And while I won't challenge the VA's ultimate decision (I'm not a doctor), I find it repulsive that they cited Will's membership in VoteVets.org as a reason to deny his claim [...]

Faced with the fact that Will was unemployed, occasionally suicidal, and failing out of school, the VA had to come up with a reason to deny Will's claim that his PTSD was worthy of a higher disability rating. To do that, they minimized (his) "troubles." Then, they brought up his membership in VoteVets.org:

"you are currently involved with VoteVets.org"

"you are currently involved with a veteran's advocacy group and have traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with and lobby members of Congress on behalf of this organization"

The VA then used his membership with VoteVets.org to tell Will:

"you are actively involved and able to control and manage your symptoms sufficiently to engage in activities required by your involvement."

This soldier is not even a high-profile member of VoteVets, just someone who spent 2 days with them in Washington several months ago. I don't know what's more troubling - that the VA KNOWS who shows up to political rallies (must be that new panopticon they've been testing), or that they're willing to use participation in an organization as the reason for denying care to the sick. We send these soldiers off to war to supposedly defend Constitutional freedoms, and then when the soldier upon returning home tries to exercise one, namely the freedom of speech, he is denied treatment.

The mission creep of multiple branches of the military from a nonpartisan force which carries out orders to a partisan arm of the Republican National Committee endangers democracy. It has no place in the culture or organization of the military, and it must be denounced whenever it rouses itself. This is completely outrageous.

Support The Troops' Drug Habit

It's just touching what this government does for our men and women we send into battle. If they have concerns about the overextended tours of duty, or the multiple deployments, or the lack of body armor or safety equipment, and the undefined mission, our boys in uniform get the best blue pills money can buy:

For the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medicines are intended not only to help troops keep their cool but also to enable the already strapped Army to preserve its most precious resource: soldiers on the front lines. Data contained in the Army's fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials say.

At a Pentagon that keeps statistics on just about everything, there is no central clearinghouse for this kind of data, and the Army hasn't consistently asked about prescription-drug use, which makes it difficult to track. Given the traditional stigma associated with soldiers seeking mental help, the survey, released in March, probably underestimates antidepressant use. But if the Army numbers reflect those of other services — the Army has by far the most troops deployed to the war zones — about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were on such medications last fall. The Army estimates that authorized drug use splits roughly fifty-fifty between troops taking antidepressants — largely the class of drugs that includes Prozac and Zoloft — and those taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien.

And if the combination of psychotropic drug use and the horrors of a war zone prove too much for them upon return to the states, that's OK - they just stick them in the back of the base by the firing range:

FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Army Sgt. Jonathan Strickland sits in his room at noon with the blinds drawn, seeking the sleep that has eluded him since he was knocked out by the blast of a Baghdad car bomb.

Like many of the wounded soldiers living in the newly built "warrior transition" barracks here, the soft-spoken 25-year-old suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. But even as Strickland and his comrades struggle with nightmares, anxiety and flashbacks from their wartime experiences, the sounds of gunfire have followed them here, just outside their windows.

Across the street from their assigned housing, about 200 yards away, are some of the Army infantry's main firing ranges, and day and night, several days each week, barrages from rifles and machine guns echo around Strickland's building. The noise makes the wounded cringe, startle in their formations, and stay awake and on edge, according to several soldiers interviewed at the barracks last month. The gunfire recently sent one soldier to the emergency room with an anxiety attack, they said.

"You hear a lot of shots, it puts you in a defensive mode," said Strickland, who spent a year with an infantry platoon in Baghdad and has since received a diagnosis of PTSD from the military. He now takes medicine for anxiety and insomnia. "My heart starts racing and I get all excited and irritable," he said, adding that the adrenaline surge "puts me back in that mind frame that I am actually there."

It's like they're TRYING to create another generation of strung-out homeless veterans.

Support the Troops

I finally got around to seeing The Ground Truth last night, part of my mini-Iraq documentary film festival I've put together on Netflix (become my movie friend!). Because much of the film is devoted to how these soldiers tried to put their lives together once they returned home, through bouts of depression and PTSD, through divorce and anger and arrests for disorderly conduct, it was fitting that this study was released today.

Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war deployments stretch on. At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said Thursday [...]

"We see a lot of things that are going on in the war which do contribute — mainly the longtime and multiple deployments away from home, exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons and a force that's very, very busy right now," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general.

"And so all of those together we think are part of what may contribute, especially if somebody's having difficulties already," she told a Pentagon news conference.

The tricks that the military uses to get out of treating these soldiers are recounted in The Ground Truth. They'd offer treatment but only if you stayed on the base away from your family after returning home from a year in Iraq. They'd ask you if you had PTSD, and if you said no, you'd end your rotation, but if you said yes, you'd stay in Iraq. These were the allegations, and considering that the VA Secretary related PTSD to football injuries the other day, and that VA officials were pressuring their colleagues not to diagnose the disorder to save money on veterans health care, I believe every word of it.

I guess that veterans aren't treated particularly well after any war; go all the way back to the Bonus Marchers if you don't think so. They're broken down in basic training, taught to be dehumanized and desensitized to killing, used on the battlefield and then expected to be stowed away like any other munition. But they're people, changed by war, and without some care and treatment those without the strongest constitutions find it hard to adapt. This is a residual cost of war and these suicides should be treated as casualties. Furthermore, any future war should include this blight as a part of the calculus for making the decision.

And if anyone starts to make the argument that these men and women would have committed suicide anyway, as some make to the soldiers in the film, they can kiss my ass.

Put A Band-Aid On Your Brain And Get Back Out There!

This is really an unforgivable statement by VA Secretary James Peake.

On the topic of [post-traumatic stress disorder], Peake questioned if the condition is being overdiagnosed, considering the mental health services available to those in the armed forces.

"I worry about labeling all these kids coming back," he said. "Just because someone might need a little counseling when they get back, doesn't mean they need the PTSD label their whole lives." [...]

VA secretary Peake suggested some of the concern about post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury has been overblown.

Many of the brain injuries are serious but some of them are akin to what anyone who played football in their youth might have suffered, Peake told Guinn.

I played football as a kid. Even played in Veterans Stadium in Philly one time. Interestingly, I never woke up in a cold sweat screaming that the enemy was on my tail, nor have I ever put a gun in my mouth while crying because I couldn't take the signals my brain was sending me.

This is disgraceful. Concussions at the high school level of football and above are pretty serious, but TBI is on a whole other level. It's a severe medical condition that requires constant treatment, otherwise you get another generation of veterans living on the streets. Dismissing TBI and PTSD is symptomatic of a belief that troops are sausage, merely existing to be ground up. And that's the message from the Bush Administration since their series of wars began, and that's how McCain would "lead," too.

This guy Peake should resign.

This Is My Favorite Week Ever

In the comments of my last post at Hullabaloo, Jemand von Niemand ran through some of the week's highlights.

On May 15th, the Senate cast a near-unanimous vote to reverse the Federal Communication Commission's December 2007 decision to let media companies own both a major TV or radio station and a major daily newspaper in the same city. (freepress.net)

On May 16th... Bush used a private visit to King Abdullah’s ranch here Friday to make a second attempt to persuade the Saudi government to increase oil production and was rebuffed yet again. (NYT)

The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage on May 15th ... invalidat[ing] virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. (LA Times)

On May 14th, about 100 House Republicans refused to vote for more war funding, voting 'present'... Democrats were able to increase their 'no' vote number on funding from 141 to 149; the bill failed...

Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans... This might actually be the most remarkable piece of the votes today; conservative Democrats agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for educational benefits for veterans. (Matt Stoller)

On May 16th, Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official who never had Democratic support to win confirmation, withdrew his nomination on Friday. Bush "reluctantly accepted" von Spakovsky's request, the White House said. (sfgate.com)

Hell of a week, huh, Bootsie? And there are thirty more to come.

Not even a mention of Travis Childers' win in a Mississippi House seat that has caused Republicans to despair of a landslide loss in the fall.

Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia and former leader of his party’s Congressional campaign committee, issued a dire warning that the Republican Party had been severely damaged, in no small part because of its identification with President Bush. Mr. Davis said that, unless Republican candidates changed course, they could lose 20 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate.

“They are canaries in the coal mine, warning of far greater losses in the fall, if steps are not taken to remedy the current climate,” Mr. Davis said in a memorandum. “The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than it was in 2006.”

And let me give you another one to add to the list. Remember that Missouri voter ID scheme that Digby wrote about earlier in the week? Turns out the State Senate refused to consider it.

In a victory for all voters, Missouri lawmakers ended this year’s legislative session without a final vote on legislation that could have prevented up to 240,000 Missourians from voting. The proposed change would have altered Missouri’s constitution, allowing for strict citizenship and government-issued photo ID requirements that would make Missouri one of the toughest states in the country for eligible, law-abiding citizens to register to vote or cast a ballot.

“I am relieved that I will be able to vote this fall,” said Lillie Lewis, a St. Louis city resident, “I’ve been voting in every election since I can remember, but if I needed my birth certificate, that would be the end of that. I hope this is the last we hear of this nonsense.” Lillie Lewis was born in Mississippi, but the state sent her a letter stating they have no record of her birth.

Birdell Owen, a Missouri resident who was displaced by hurricane Katrina, also voiced her relief. “I should be able to participate in my democracy,” she said, “even if Louisiana can’t get me a copy of my birth certificate. I’m glad Missouri politicians had the sense to protect my right to vote.”

Oh, and Series of Tubes Ted Stevens might lose his Senate seat after 50-odd years.

We're seeing an entire political party's collapse happen before our eyes, and in many of these cases a strong citizen-led movement, aided by leadership in the political sphere, has been decisive. There are two things at work here. One, you have a conservative movement that has been horrible for the country and created all these terrible policies which have made us less safe, less economically secure, and weakened in the eyes of the world. And you have a vibrant progressive movement that has been able to broadcast these failures widely. Consider what we've learned in the last month or so:

• The Defense Department embedded "military analysts" as propaganda engines inside US media with the full knowledge of the White House, mainlining the Pentagon message directly to the public with the imprimatur of independent media voices.

• The politicized show trials scheduled to crop up at Guantanamo during the fall election have been delayed because of the amount of perversions of justice employed by interrogators. The top DoD adviser to military commissions has been barred from participating in them because of evidence of bias, and one detainee had his charges dropped because torture was used (authorized by the Secretary of Defense), making the testimony inadmissable. Meanwhile the US is planning a huge new prison in Afghanistan, suggesting that indefinite detentions of masses of prisoners will continue.

• Domestic spying in the United States has spiked at a time when actual terrorism prosecutions have decreased, a massive violation of citizen privacy with no material benefit in stopping crime.

• The US government routinely injects psychotropic drugs into detainees to keep them sedated during deportation flights. , in violation of international human rights standards.

• An official at the VA told his staffers to stop diagnosing returning soldiers with PTSD, in an attempt to lower the costs of permanent disability payments. Many leaders in Washington, including Sen. Obama, are demanding an investigation.

The Republicans are wasting away because of more than just bad branding. It's because over the last eight years they've taken the country we know and done something terrible to it. And despite media blackouts and whitewashes, Americans intuitively know this, and are reaching to alternative media sources to discover more. The historically high wrong-track numbers have a basis in economic struggles, but I believe just as much in this loss of faith in what we've become as a country in the Age of Bush. And no amount of cajoling or re-branding is going to lure people back to the GOP. Not this year. Not after all this.

It's going to take years to repair the damage, and the Republicans will be all too happy to sabotage those efforts as the opposition and pin the blame on their opponents. It's what they do. For now, however, it's time to bask in the glow of the demise of the Republican Party, and work very hard to restore America's trust in their government and the ability to move forward.

Failing Veterans

Some of the greatest legacies, costs and tragedies of war often go unseen and unexamined. Every day hundreds of thousands of homeless veterans sleep on the streets. PTSD and other maladies go untreated and lead to breakdowns of individuals and families. And now, a report from as psychiatric researcher suggests that you can double the deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan if our pathetic record on mental health care continues.

The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

It's a problem of access and a problem of lack of consideration of mental health as a serious challenge.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

Insel echoed a Rand Corporation study published last month that found about 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post- traumatic stress disorder or depression, and only half of them receive treatment. About 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought in the two wars since October 2001, the report said. About 4,560 soldiers had died in the conflicts as of today, the Defense Department reported on its Web site.

You're talking about 4,500 Americans who have served their country susceptible to pain and suffering and death from self-inflicted wounds. And the Pentagon did NOT dispute the figures.

And look, the future for those with untreated PTSD is not bright even if they don't commit suicide. The disorder makes it hard to hold a job, relate to family and friends, and generally lead a normal life. Maybe 300,000 returning soldiers are at risk.

Hilzoy has more.

Some things in life are hard. But getting the number of vets who get minimally adequate treatment over 50% is not one of them. You train the doctors. If those treatments cost more, you provide the money. You do what you need to do to make sure that when someone walks in the door looking for help, s/he finds it.

It's also not that hard to think of ways of raising the number of vets who actually seek help above 50% of those who need it. I think there are good reasons why soldiers should not have the same expectations of confidentiality as civilians, especially during wartime. (We really, really do not want soldiers who are actively psychotic, for instance. Likewise, soldiers with persistent homicidal fantasies.) But as of now, if they are still in the military, they have to deal with the knowledge that their command will find out that they have sought counseling, unless they seek counseling outside normal military structures, which is (I believe) forbidden. Many of them believe that this will affect their careers, and while I'm sure some of them are wrong, I'm equally sure that others are right.

We know how to treat people suffering from PTSD, too. There is research in the area that needs to be advanced. I don't need to tell you - Ilona Meagher has told this story repeatedly. What's lacking is the political awareness of the severity of the issue. And Thomas Insel has provided it.

Moreover, this must be factored into the costs of future wars. When we head 10, 20, 30 years down the road and have another generation of homeless and mentally ill veterans on our streets, and the question is raised of another pre-emptive war where the evidence is sketchy and the rationale suspect, will anyone add to the debate "You're consigning tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of our sons and daughters to a life of endless suffering, even suicide" without expanding our commitment to mental health treatment, which could be part of a more expansive health care system in general, one that would pay for itself and cover our citizens at far higher levels than we currently do. We're conditioned to think about the defense budget as only weapons systems and private contractors. THIS is the defense budget too. In fact, it's the only unfunded part.

Will anyone raise this? Or will this be another forgotten cost, played out in scattered headlines in newspapers for years to come?

There's almost nothing left in this country that isn't in crisis, but veteran's mental health care most certainly is. This demands immediate attention.

From Academia To Psychology

This is the second time in as many days that John W. McCain has dismissed the real concerns of real people who are struggling, suffering and dying in service to policies he wholeheartedly supports.

You might remember that McCain threw out a concept for a summer gas tax holiday to ease the burden on those paying high prices at the pump (a buck-eighty at a time for a 10-gallon tank... why, that'll end poverty in our time!). It was roundly criticized for providing little to no stimulus for working families, especially when contrasted with his desire to massive cut corporate tax rates. It'd also eliminate every highway construction job in America for three months and cause a spike in gas prices in September right before the election. So to say it was an unserious proposal is pretty on the mark.

Today, McCain tried to explain the rationale for his plan.

I think psychologically, and a lot of our problems today are psychological, confidence, trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, the ability to keep our own home, this might give them a little psychological boost. Let's have some straight talk, it's not a huge amount of money. A little psychological boost, that's what I think it would help.

It must be comforting to the single mother who can't survive on the minimum wage, or the steelworker who just got laid off, that they were offered a psychological boost. Because that's really the whole problem, right? Apparently McCain is taking the Green Lantern theory of geopolitics into the economic arena. Since he analogizes everything to a basic contest of will, it makes sense. We're apparently going to fight the economy through steely-eyed resolve, and improve people's lives through sheer force of command. Never mind the structural inequality problem, or the deregulation that led to a crumbling financial marketplace, or the credit crunch which has led to decreased consumer spending and a wave of bankruptcies, or the massive uptick in foreclosures (I love how McCain thinks the ability to keep one's own home is a "psychological problem" and not, you know, an "I don't have the cash" problem). It is the height of condescension to write off economic struggles as nothing more than something going on inside the heads of the unwashed masses.

I'll tell you what, though. McCain's right about one thing. The country is experiencing major psychological problems. Only thing is that they come from hundreds of thousands of sick veterans who were traumatized during his endless war in Iraq.

Some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries, a new study estimates.

Only about half have sought treatment, said the study released Thursday by the RAND Corporation.

"There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Terri Tanielian, the project's co-leader and a researcher at the nonprofit RAND.

"Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation," she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The 500-page study is the first large-scale, private assessment of its kind — including a survey of 1,965 service members across the country, from all branches of the armed forces and including those still in the military as well veterans who have left the services.

Its results appear consistent with a number of mental health reports from within the government, though the Defense Department has not released the number of people it has diagnosed or who are being treated for mental problems. The Department of Veterans Affairs said this month that its records show about 120,000 who served in the two wars and are no longer in the military have been diagnosed with mental health problems. Of the 120,000, approximately 60,000 are suffering from PTSD, the VA said.

We're going to see deeply disturbed Iraq and Afghan war vets on our streets for decades. It's the residual cost of an unnecessary war that did not make us any safer. McCain's present to them is to deride the question of the initial invasion as an academic argument, and by describing the very real economic pain they feel as just "psychological." The fact that he wants to throw military families out of their housing is just a cherry on top.

Somehow, after this set of statements, we're not all talking about how McCain is an elitist. With this kind of corrupt thinking, I can tell you he's certainly not elite.

UPDATE: Barack Obama, of course, wants to give veterans the care and respect they deserve, and also pull our troops out of a dangerous and counter-productive situation in Iraq, just like a SNOB!!!!1!

Things That Make Me Scream

• Iraq war veterans have to take the step of suing the Veterans Administration and its recently-resigned Administrator Jim Nicholson over them being denied disability pay and proper mental health treatment. These bastards are actually trying to classify PTSD symptoms as "pre-existing" conditions. Right, from that other war they fought at home in Arkansas.

• Executives from Purdue Frederick, the company that marketed OxyContin as a cure-all for pain years after they recognized it was horribly addictive and ruining the lives of thousands of Americans, got a slap on the wrist from a federal judge, with no prison time and a fine that sounds hefty ($634 million) until you realize that the bulk of it will be absorbed by a company that raked in tens of billions selling OxyContin over the years. The worst part is that the judge clearly was sympathetic to the idea of putting these bastards (I seem to be fixated on that word today) behind bars, but...

In announcing the unorthodox sentence, Judge James P. Jones of United States District Court indicated that he was troubled by his inability to send the executives to prison. But he noted that federal prosecutors had not produced evidence as part of recent plea deals to show that the officials were aware of wrongdoing at the drug’s maker, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn.

That evidence is pretty available and supported in Barry Meier's book on the subject, so I'm guessing the prosecution just dropped the ball... or, given that this is the Bush Justice Department we're talking about...

• An NBC correspondent received $30,000 for a speech in which he proceeded to attack John Edwards on personal grounds. Not only is it unethical to accept speaking fees, how can this correspondent ever go back and report on Edwards again, knowing what we know?

• On a related front, this is three years old but I never knew this story, and it fits in with the idea of the press choosing sides in political fights:

An edgy moment of own-expense laughter is the best that reporters and an about-to-drop-out presidential hopeful can hope for, as a campaign enters what everyone knows is its final hours.

Hence, candidate -- and media critic -- Howard Dean reacted with humor Tuesday in Milwaukee as journalists presented him with a long-sleeve white T-shirt. It carried the motto "Establishment Media" in front, and a slogan swiped from Dean in the back: "We Have the Power, Dean Press Corps 2004."

Losers.

• Here's another story that this media which is so concerned about picking winners and losers is missing: the US government is poisoning Americans by providing FEMA trailers to the citizens of the Gulf Coast which have unacceptable levels of formaldehyde inside. The real outrage here is that TWO YEARS after Hurricane Katrina, people are still living in FEMA trailers.

That's about all I can stand right now...

Saving a Buck at the Expense of the Ill

It was always assumed that the reasons so many contractors have been used in the occupation of Iraq is that it's a sop to the Halliburtons of the world. Another unexplored side effect is that the veteran's health care system becomes less burdened with caring for hundreds of thousands more shell-shocked soldiers, saving billions for the federal treasury. The other side of that is that the contractor employees, who participate in the same war zone and feel the same effects, get thrown into the wasteland of the private for-profit health care system, where their treatment is woefully inadequate, as the great T. Christian Miller explains in a classic LA Times investigation. For all its faults, this is why I still subscribe to the Times, because you can get in-depth studies of the margins of the American condition.

Samuel Walker saw combat in Iraq firsthand: He was splattered with human flesh and shrapnel in a dining hall when a suicide bomber blew himself up just a few feet away.

When Walker got back to the U.S., he brought some of the battlefield home with him. He heard phantom screams in broad daylight, smelled gunpowder that wasn't there. A loud noise would send him into a defensive crouch. He'd been eating French fries in the mess hall at the time of the blast, and the sight of a McDonald's restaurant now brought back violent memories.

Two doctors diagnosed Walker with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, directly related to his close encounters with violence in Iraq.

But Walker was not a combat soldier. He was a civilian recreation supervisor for KBR, the largest contractor in Iraq. And instead of getting the medical and counseling help he sought, Walker, a U.S. Army veteran, found himself caught in a morass of red tape and rejected insurance claims.

A Times investigation of a taxpayer-financed insurance system, based on reviews of scores of cases, has found a pattern of repeatedly blocked claims for treatment of psychological injuries sustained by civilian workers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The private system isn't set up to handle psychological distress like PTSD. It's bad enough that our soldiers aren't getting the care they deserve for the soul-shattering effects of combat; these contractor employees can't even come close to getting the attention and treatment they need.

Though contractors claiming psychological problems made up about 4% of nearly 1,400 serious reported injuries from 2003 to 2005, such workers accounted for 13% of the cases fought out in courtrooms.

In fighting claims, the insurance companies have relied on doctors with questionable expertise, according to court records and claimants' attorneys.

In one case, an insurance company psychiatrist who specialized in pharmacological research broadly dismissed psychology as "baloney." In another, a psychologist hired by insurance giant American International Group, or AIG, for his supposed expertise in PTSD had seen only 10 to 15 cases in a decade of practice.

The companies have disputed some cases in which their own doctors determined that workers were suffering psychological damage, court records show.

Simply put, the insurance industry will fight tooth and nail against doing its job. Every battle they win saves them millions, and they can weather a protracted lawsuit far more than an individual who is suffering. As long as they can stop providing any money to people in need, they come out on top. The inhumanity of it all is just devastating.

In the interim, the worker's compensation system for contractors working in foreign areas should be overhauled as long as these workers are forced to toil in combat zones. But this is happening in the larger context of the overall health care debate. And while I think the insurers will fight as hard as they can to maintain the status quo, and consequently their existence, ultimately I do think they will lose and we will see universal single payer health care in this country before long. Because you cannot give the image to anyone in this country of a PTSD sufferer back from Iraq having to go to court to get his insurer to pay off on their coverage, and have anyone look at that image think that this is the best we can do.