Veterans For America

The Army needs outside help to figure out why its suicide rate is rising and how to remedy the growing problem in the ranks. A $50 million, five-year study will be launched, involving thousands of interviews of soldiers and study in what Army Secretary Peter Geren called a “landmark undertaking.” The work, to be done with the National Institute of Mental Health, is vitally important as suicide rates in the Army have climbed steadily since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Only a fraction of the 115 soldiers who committed suicide last year had a prior diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Illinois National Guard Maj. Tammy Duckworth once wondered why there were so many handicapped parking spots outside her National Guard Armory — thinking that if Soldiers are handicapped, they don’t belong in the Army or the Guard. Now, four years after a rocket propelled grenade took her legs in Iraq, the Black Hawk pilot knows exactly why those handicapped parking spots are there and why there are so many. The National Guard has carried a massive share of the burden of current deployment policies. Duckworth is now the director of Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.

More National Guard members are deployed nearly constantly to war, where even healers are targeted by the enemy, leading to a continually expanding field of wounded veterans. What’s needed now, more than ever, is post-war help for our veterans and their families: “no one should underestimate the need” as untreated or under-treated mental health wounds will cause a “cascading set of consequences” for the veterans, their families and our communities.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, perhaps the most revered religious leader in Iraq, warned U.S. officials that any security pact approved by his country must respect Iraqi sovereignty. This basically means the Iraqis are tired of the U.S. using Iraqi territory to launch raids on targets in neighboring countries, as happened earlier this week in Syria. And what of all the Iraqis who are being held in U.S. custody?

Meanwhile, violence is gripping Afghanistan and hitting hard in the capital of Kabul, where an explosion ripped through the Ministry of Information and Culture. U.S. military planners, who have long warned that not enough resources were in place to win the war in Afghanistan as operations in Iraq had the effect of diverting troops and money, now think they may need more than double the number of extra troops they had originally sought. U.S. military planners are now apparently asking for as many as 20,000 or more troops. 

Senator Barack Obama is urging state elections officials to make an extra effort to count all military absentee ballots, even while many are expected to be cast in favor of his rival, Senator John McCain. Obama’s campaign sent a letter to the top election official in every state urging that no effort be spared to count every military ballot.

Not every endorsement is touted by the presidential candidates, and odds are this one won’t be either.

Ashwin Madia is a veteran of the Marine Corps and the Iraq war and he’s running in a hotly contested Congressional race in Minnesota. So why is the National Republican Congressional Committee, running ads that have darkened Madia’s skin? Is this the way to treat anyone, let alone a war veteran? The NRCC stands by the ad, which Madia has called “deplorable.”