Veterans For America

VA advance funding may be coming, which would help speed care and planning of care for our injured veterans. It might help iron out the problems in VA programs like the one that provides recovery coordinators to severely injured veterans. The program was designed to help these veterans and their families navigate the bureaucracy and treatment options but is understaffed and underpublicized, meaning not even all of the veterans who qualify for it know the program is available. Only 100 days into the new administration, but there’s reason to hope more improvements in care for our veterans are coming.

We should continue to expect more injured veterans returning from war, too many with the signature injury of contemporary combat: PTSD. The pain and symptoms are even worse than before.

Helping military families move — because “military kids get a raw deal.” Bills to provide protection to Guard and Reserve members in Oregon?

Iraq’s prime minister says a key leader of the Sunni insurgency has been arrested. At the same time, Iraq is failing to maintain its own military equipment, despite billions of dollars spent by the US to make Iraq’s security forces self-sufficient. As with Iraq, so too with Afghanistan, says Gen. David Petraeus. And then there’s Pakistan. It will likely get bloodier before it gets better.

The allegedly toxic burn pits our troops were exposed to in Iraq are now legal matters in seven separate class-action lawsuits filed in seven states against military contractor KBR Inc., and its parent company Halliburton. And what of the water at Camp Lejeune, N.C.?

Stimulus spending is coming to the DoD, as nearly one billion dollars in new National Guard projects around the country are announced.