Adding insults to the troops’ injuries

May 16, 2008

When U.S. troops serving develop PTSD, it’s a painful tragedy. When Veterans Affairs officials discourage PTSD diagnoses because it might cost too much money, it’s a genuine scandal.

VoteVets.org and CREW have done some great work on this, and news outlets are picking up on the story.

A psychologist who helps lead the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in Texas told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.
“Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out,” Norma Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended that they “consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder.”

VA staff members “really don’t . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD,” Perez wrote.

Adjustment disorder is a less severe reaction to stress than PTSD and has a shorter duration, usually no longer than six months, said Anthony T. Ng, a psychiatrist and member of Mental Health America, a nonprofit professional association.

Those diagnosed with PTSD can get about $2,500 a month in disability compensation, depending on the severity of the condition. Veterans diagnosed with adjustment disorder generally don’t get any disability payments.

VoteVets chairman Jon Soltz noted, “Many veterans believe that the government just doesn’t want to pay out the disability that comes along with a PTSD diagnosis, and this revelation will not allay their concerns.”

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, added, “It is outrageous that the VA is calling on its employees to deliberately misdiagnose returning veterans in an effort to cut costs. Those who have risked their lives serving our country deserve far better.”

They sure do.

Hilzoy added:

The idea that any vet returning with PTSD is getting inadequate treatment, and is being deprived of benefits to which s/he is entitled, for budgetary reasons is completely disgraceful. The right response to not having enough money to meet those needs is to ask for more, not to renege on our obligations.

I hate this sort of thing. I hate that these stories come out so often: Fort Bragg a few weeks ago, this today: one story after another about our shortchanging soldiers. Iraq and Afghanistan are no fun at all. The least we can do when people come home is not to make their lives harder for no good reason, especially not when they have been wounded, physically or psychologically. It’s just so wrong.

For what it’s worth, Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake said in a statement that Perez’s email was “inappropriate,” and added that Perez is “extremely apologetic.”

No one, however, has been fired. If the last seven-and-a-half years are any indication, Perez will probably soon get promoted. (Iraq war vet Brandon Friedman adds, “You’ll have to forgive me for not giving Secretary Peake the benefit of the doubt on this one.”)

The story that needs to get out to America is that It is impossible to “support our troops” in a meaningful way when they have been sent on a war of conquest based on lies.

Dur chimpfurher got a free pass on the neglect at Walter Reed – the MSM (including tweety) will give him a free pass on this too.

The lies about repugs being for “smaller government”, national security & defence”, and “fiscal conservatism” need to be smashed.

This will require that those that want change get organized and stop giving their money to the corporate masters that make this all possible – course, talk like this gets flamed and banned at the circle-of-links that proclaims themselves “advertise liberally.”

  • Stuff like this (perversely) makes me want to vote for someone other than Obama. Why? Because I don’t want a post-partisan era uniter, reaching across the barricades to unite conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, all into one big happy consensus singing “Michael Row the Boat Ashore”. I want a hard left wing avenging angel in the office, somebody who is going to appoint some pipe-hittin’ Special Prosecutors to go medieval on every conservative ass who has benefited from the culture of corruption created and maintained by conservative/Republican dominated politics over the past two decades.

    I don’t want forgiveness and redemption and a new resolve to move forward. I want heads rolling in every direction, I want guillotines in public squares all over America, I want to wake up and see Patrick Fitzgerald drinking orange juice in front of a pile of ears. I want a body count, goddamit. I want their asses. I want their heads. I want their balls. I want every subatomic particle of them shoved into a punishment box from the “Mirror Mirror” universe set on Extreme Agony, or, at the very least, I want extremely long hard jail sentences and lifelong disgrace for all these assholes, from the very top (Bush, Cheney, Rove, et al) on down through the ranks without stopping until we get to all the goddam media people who enabled, encouraged, and upheld all this bullshit for so long, and who are still doing it. “Rush/Rove: Cellmates in 09”. You put that on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt and like the guy in the dopey little glasses once said, I’ll buy THAT for a dollar… or twenty.

  • We mistreat the military by extending their tours, by stop-loss orders, and by calling up those who have already served, we give them a never-ending job in Bush’s pointless war of personal aggrandizement, and then we try to nickel and dime them on treatment for stress. I am ashamed of what we’ve become, and I blame Bush and the Republicans for it.

  • Looks the zampolits of the VA need to be sent to Iraq for a good lesson in PTSD.

    Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t look like a good idea to piss off well trained, traumatized combat soldiers with mental problems by playing word games.

  • MC CAIN LIES!!!! WANTED TO TALK TO HAMAS!!!

    Two years ago, in an interview with James Rubin for Sky News, Sen. John McCain expressed a willingness to negotiate with the terrorist group Hamas — the very group that McCain has been relentlessly using to smear Sen. Barack Obama over the last several weeks.

    Rubin has written an op-ed in Friday’s Washington Post about his exchange with McCain, and The Huffington Post has obtained exclusive video. Here’s the key excerpt:

    RUBIN: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

    McCAIN: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

    You can watch the video of the exchange over at HuffPo. Suffice it to say that this one stings for the McCain campaign, both because of the nature of the major flub and because it’s not the first time that the candidate’s words have come back to bite him. In fact, it has become quite common with McCain to act like he is holier than now, whether on Iraq or campaign finance or some other issue, only to be outed not only as fallible, like any other human (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), but also as cynical, hypocritical, conniving, and overly ambitious — in other words as just the kind of power-hungry career politician willing to say anything in the hopes of winning an election that Americans hate (which is not such a good thing).

    On the issue of Hamas, in particular, because this exchange between Rubin and McCain was caught on tape and it isn’t ancient history (just three years ago), this line of attack is now off the table for McCain and the hard right. They simply have no credibility on the issue. What’s more, by harping on Hamas from here on out, those on the right would only serve to remind Americans a) that McCain will flip-flop his positions for political convenience, and b) that McCain was recently in favor of reaching out to Hamas. To this end, it’s hard for me to think of anything else that could have emerged on this topic that could have been more detrimental to McCain.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/18/mccain-hamas-endorsement_n_97469.html

  • Dick Cheney’s war time profit should confiscated and used to pay for VA bnefits, since he lied to start the war to benefit his pocketbook. I hear it was $4 billion. That should be enough to pay for all the medical and education benefits for Iraq veterans.

  • Doc Nebula – understand your concern and I was very skeptical of Obama. Anyone that even gave the slightest appearance of being an avenging angel was run out of the campaign at the start.

    At least Obama has talked about investigations and holding criminals accountable. The real problem is that our only other real choice has declared “impeachment is off the table” and the criminals know they have a free-pass.

    I do wish we could find a way to unite people along their socio-economic interests – the politics of division will not go away.

    I can only hope that by talking to repugs and giving them a chance to work with a majority of dems, they will show themselves to be the corrupt tools they are.

    After all, they clearly broke each and every part of their “contract with America” and when they were given the keys to the car, smashed it.

    Of course, meaningful change will require that we stop giving money to the same corporations that underwrite the repugs/neocons and the “mighty wurlitzer”.

  • Danp, thank you so much. I couldn’t find it as I was searching and had no idea what C&P was.

    Most appreciated!!

    And, Doc, I am with you on the head rolling thing. There has to be severe consequences for trying to hijack this nation and without that, any old dictator can come in (as we have seen). I only hope they leave…for I fear they won’t.

  • Harold see thread downstairs – but am not afraid to call her what she is when it relates to the post. Gratefully, the is widespread recognition that America was not meant to be a monarchy of bush-clinton-bush-clinton.

    And it is just as simple as that.

  • I second ml johnston’s idea.

    Dick Cheney’s war time profit should confiscated and used to pay for VA bnefits

  • They take away the porn. They take away the benefits. They take away sanity.

    But they didn’t take away the guns?

    Beautiful.

  • Racer X – even better, how about we withhold the dollars that self-proclaimed liberals and progressives are giving to the corporations that enable the treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity?

    Is our problem the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars that on person has stolen or the MANY MORE BILLIONS AND BILLIONS that many more are stealing as a direct result of the MSM’s propaganda?

  • I hope the troops overseas are finding out about this. Not only are they fighting a war they didn’t have to but they are are constantly being denied their rightful due by skinflint neocon Republicans. May this be the moment the right-wing Republican – military connection gets severed permanently.

  • The Veteran’s Center in Temple, Texas, serves the Fort Hood community, home to the 4th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, two units that have seen at least 3 tours of heavy combat each in Iraq to date. According to the IVAW folks at Fort Hood who I know, approximately 30% of soldiers on-base suffer from PTSD. Rage issues surface in the fact they have the highest level of domestic violence in the Army. As one young troop I know told me, you don’t go to the Army or the VA if you really want help. As one psychologist told him, “We’re not here to help you, we’re here to make you deployable.”

    Nobody is getting out at the end of their enlistment now. Everybody gets stop-lossed, and most seem to believe that they are now in “for the duration.” Such a policy has never been used in the American military before, for so long as there has been an American military.

    Contributing to psychological stress is the fact that the soldiers see that the only way out of today’s “action Army” is a wheelchair or a casket. The husband of another friend of mine there is on his third tour in Iraq. His second tour ended when he was dead on the table for 20 minutes, following the total destruction of his Humvee by an advanced IED. After 6 months in the hospital, and with a 45% loss of hearing in one ear, he was declared “fit for service”, and returned to duty in time to be deployed. The Army told him they wouldn’t put him on the streets alone. Anyone who knows the slightest bit about firefights knows how easy it is to become separated in a fight. How would you feel, knowing you can’t hear on one side, thinking about your chances in a night time fight?

    The average age of these soldiers is 21-22.

    The good news is, the soldiers aren’t taking this lying down. Iraq Veterans Against the War has chapters on every base in every unit of the Army. They know that when the troops stop, the war stops. This was what really stopped Vietnam – when the Pentagon finally realized in 1971 that they had no “reliable” units left. The IVAW folks don’t want to destroy the military – they want to recapture its soul and restore its honor. Some of us who are veterans of the last soldiers’ war against war are helping them (which is how I know what I write about here).

    One percent of America is bearing 100 percent of the cost of this war. And the Republican scum who called them to service do nothing for them and actively work to harm them.

  • Little Bear (#1) said: The story that needs to get out to America is that It is impossible to “support our troops” in a meaningful way when they have been sent on a war of conquest based on lies.

    How wrong you are. It’s easy to “support the troops.” They know better than you what is what. As a matter of fact, in about a month, I’ll be giving you and the rest here a very concrete way to “support the troops” – all you’ll have to do is put your money where your mouth is.

  • My son came back from Iraq and has PTSD. They are saying it’s “generalized anxiety disorder” and he’s going to deploy again in the next two months or so… we are in for a big fight that we will probably lose FOR NOW. When he comes back from this deployment, it’s lawyers and our own mental health professionals (at our expense) to fight for his rights.

    I’m with DOC, time for pitch forks and torches, folks!

  • tell those whining hypochondriacs to suck it up. If George Hitler can sort of half give up golf maybe to support the war, the least these volunteers can do is take their untreated trauma like a man.

    why don’t they go live under the overpass in an appliance box like other self-respecting vets ? oh wait …. next they’ll be complaining about THAT.

    don’t they understand the cause they’re fighting for ? don’t they understand that they had to lose their minds, their legs and/or their lives to provide a photo-op for a half-wit failure ?

    they should all be charged with treason .. they make me puke. why do they hate america ?

    i’m so mad i’m getting up from my desk right this minute and doing something for the war effort.
    i’m going to give up turnips, some of the time.

    don’t thank me, pinkos. just watch and learn.

  • tom – don’t get your undies bunched – you don’t understand what I was trying to say.

    THE LYING LIARS THAT CREATED THIS MESS AND WANT 100+ YEARS OF WAR DON’T SUPPORT OUR TROOPS and this is certainly not about putting our money where our mouths are. This doesn’t take rocket science.

    This is about WITHHOLDING MONEY from the corporations that make this all possible – easy to research, easy to verify, and even easier to boycott.

  • timeoutofmind – better yet, go to applebees and have the blue plate special and then do some shoppin’ at walmart.

  • AlwaysHopeful@18 – I hope things work out for your boy and that you can successfully keep him from returning to Iraq.

    This war-of-choice is shit. Some member of the New Mexico National Guard – formed for DOMESTIC duty – are on their THIRD tours of duty. Disgraceful.

    I am with all those who’d like to see the Republicans held accountable for the havoc and wreck they’ve visited on our once-great country, but I doubt it will happen.

    We need a lot of passion to move ON with the Democratic administration next year and begin to right the many wrongs we face today.

    GO-bama!

  • I doubt these soldiers signed on for this shit…this is hardly what they were led to believe they were getting into. Supporting the troops means protecting them. They swore an oath to the constitution not to the DoD or Bush’s corporate buddies. It’s a shame that so few are stading up for the troops and saying we are not going to do this to them or allow you to do it to them anymore. They are human beings not bait. I personally don’t feel that they have been busy protecting America just Bush’s policies and it is a sad day when it is the troops themselves who are being forced to stand up and say we are not going to take this anymore. We should do better for them. We should protect are fighting force.

    It took false patriotism from these war cheerleaders to show the soldiers they were being used so these cheerleaders could feel like heroes while the soldiers did the dying. It’s a war for profits and oil or contractor money would have went protecting the troops. That’s how you support them.

  • As a disabled vet, I can say that it is all too true that the VA does not act as an enabler, but rather a barrier. It took me almost 6 years to receive a finding which accurately depicted my disabilities received in service– despite having full documentation available to them the entire time (The Board of Veteran’s Appeals changed VA’s decision based on no new evidence, but merely an appropriate reading of the documentation at hand).

    So, it is with real sadness that I read an e-mail like this, because it does match with the reality which I experienced. The VA throws up barriers, thinking that it will save money merely by getting veterans frustrated, forcing them to give up (And, actually, after a 3-year wait from sending in one form, I had figured that they had lost it, and had given up… it was only luck that it was still sitting out there).

  • For what it’s worth, Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake said in a statement that Perez’s email was “inappropriate,” and added that Perez is “extremely apologetic.”

    No one, however, has been fired. — CB

    Wouldn’t expect anything quite so drastic as a firing (snark) But what I’d like to know is: has her directive been rescinded?

  • Little Bear, I love your “name”. Are you trying to compensate for something? “Little” actually may apply to more than your IQ.

    Jimmy Carter Obama 08. Pacifists for big government. “I”m a victim, you’re a victim, we’re all victims”.

    The stout people who founded this country are spinning in their graves.

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