VFA News Analysis: September 24, 2008

More questions are raised about just how successful the “surge” in Iraq has been. Using satellite data and demographics, scientists lay out the evidence that Iraq is becoming not more peaceful but more ethnically stratified — potentially leading the way to more Shiite-Sunni violence in the country.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said up to three more combat brigades will be able to go to Afghanistan starting in the spring — but no sooner, an indication of just how stretched U.S. forces are by the ongoing fight in the original war against those who plotted the Sept. 11 attacks as well as the ongoing war in Iraq. Yet the Taliban are expected to launch an offensive in the winter, well ahead of those planned troop increases. What’s more, the war in Afghanistan has for weeks been threatening to widen into northwestern Pakistan, where Pakistanis claimed Tuesday that they shot down a U.S. military drone. 

The National Guard, which is paying a high price for our continued deployment policies, mourned seven of its own killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq. We are pouring more of our brave Guard citizen-Soldiers into Iraq constantly — ringing up a lot of pain for tomorrow. A pilot study of post-traumatic stress among our National Guard members who have served in Iraq finds “significant” PTSD. The available statistics are troubling.

Congress appears to have defied the odds by reaching agreement in five days on a $605 billion defense policy bill that includes a 3.9 percent military pay raise and a number of benefit improvements. “We are going to finish that before we leave here,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

New VA policy gives new weight to the pain of traumatic brain injury (TBI), a signature wound in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At last, a serious injury is given the serious attention it deserves.

Two military advisors to Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, say an Obama administration will be better for the military and its veterans. Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, points to his biography to woo military and veterans voters.

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