My son-in-law just returned from deployment in Iraq while expecting his next mission in Afghanistan soon, so this issue is near and dear to my heart:
Quote90,000 U.S. Battlefield Casualties, But Who's Counting?
Written by Kelley Vlahos
Tuesday, 10 November 2009 11:03
November 10, 2009 - Veterans Day arrives tomorrow, and with it, the anticipated harvest of heartbreaking anecdotes driving the press coverage and our ever wandering attention back to less desirable realities: the disfigured but persevering hero, the homeless warrior, the unemployable sergeant, the father or son or daughter who came home a stranger and cannot be reached.
Usually, there is nothing more powerful than a personal story to pound home the cost of eight years of war overseas, but I think today there is something even more disturbing to bear.
It’s the number 89,457.
As of Oct. 15, that’s how many American casualties there were in Iraq and Afghanistan since Oct. 7, 2001, when the Afghan war officially began. That includes a tire-screeching 75,134 dead, wounded-in-action, and medically evacuated due to illness, disease, or injury in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and 14,323 and counting in Afghanistan, or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).
That it may sound incredible â€" even unreal â€" is understandable. Early attempts to effectively count casualties (outside of battlefield fatalities) had been in earnest, then erratic, but finally dead-ended, frustrated by the Department of Defense, which has always been loath to break down and publicize the data on a regular basis.
One stalwart has always been Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to advancing the health and readjustment of returning soldiers and veterans. They’ve been diligently aggregating the statistics over time, and thanks to their diligent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, they can provide casualty reports at a level of detail not currently seen on the DOD’s publicly accessible Web site, DefenseLink.mil.
If we could access the data more easily, more people would know that 196 servicemembers took their own lives while serving in Iraq between March 2003 and Oct. 3, 2009, and there were 34 such suicides in Afghanistan. (These figures, of course, do not include the skyrocketing cases of suicides among all active-duty soldiers and veterans and cases of self-inflicted injury outside both war zones.)
More people would also know that 48,215 servicemembers had to be medically evacuated from the battlefield due to hostile and non-hostile injury, disease, and other medical issues since the beginning of the Iraq War. As of early October, 8.983 were evacuated for the same reasons from the war zone in Afghanistan.
What the DOD does say, is that as of Nov. 4, there were 13,880 servicemembers wounded in action in Iraq who had not returned to duty, while 2,619 had left Afghanistan under the same conditions. That number is climbing faster. According to the Washington Post on Oct. 31, more than 1,000 were wounded in Afghanistan in the last three months, accounting for one-third of the total American casualties in OEF overall.
Thus, the troops are coming home, but in drastically varied degrees of wholeness. In Vietnam, there was one soldier killed for every 2.6 wounded. The vast majority of soldiers are surviving their injuries today (approximately one killed in action for every 11.5 wounded in action, according to current stats for Afghanistan and Iraq), thanks to advanced body armor, better medevac transport, and mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. But in tens of thousands of cases, their journey has just begun.
No one should be surprised, then, to hear that some 454,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already sought medical care from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when they came home. That’s 40 percent of the total OIF/OEF veteran population, which is a number that is of course in flux, considering that the war has no end and veterans have five years to apply for care after the end of their service.
As of this summer, of those veterans who sought healthcare at the VA, 45 percent were diagnosed with a mental health condition, according to VA statistics. Twenty-seven percent of these had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Based on available resources from the DOD and research by the RAND Corporation, VCS estimates that an estimated 370,000 (or 19.5 percent of) veterans have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) thanks to the high rate of accidents, roadside bombs, and other battlefield explosions and events â€" plus repeated deployments â€" in the war. VCS also estimates that some 18.5 percent of veterans come home with PTSD.
"This is very, very serious. The numbers are . . . bad, OK?" said Paul Sullivan, the bulldog director of VCS. "The good news is veterans are asking for care, and it’s good care. The bad news is there is 454,000 of them."
That’s tens of thousands of men and women and affected families and communities that are all but missing from the mainstream news any other time of the year. Sullivan said this is partly the military’s fault for obfuscating the statistics and working to keep the agony of sacrifice in the shadows.
"It’s still the policy of the United States to minimize concerns about postwar health," said Sullivan. Take the issue of soldiers coming home with chronic health problems allegedly caused by the toxic open-air burn pits in theater. One look at the online discussion boards and it’s clear something over there went awry. Vets are headed to VA facilities in droves with symptoms ranging from respiratory distress to sleep apnea and irregular heart conditions, but the Pentagon still refuses to admit a connection to their wartime exposures.
"They treat it as a public relations issue, not a health issue," Sullivan said. "In our view, we are tired of the government lying, and we’re done with the PR."
Larry Scott, who runs VAWatchdog.org, an invaluable daily monitor of ongoing issues affecting the 23.4 million living U.S veterans, said the 89,457 figure relating to OIF/OEF casualties is valid â€" and ultimately overwhelming. "People just forget, they don’t realize there is an ongoing cost of war. Whether you agree with the war or not is not the issue. We have to be ready to pay the price."
Looking at it in monetary terms â€" more numbers â€" may seem cold, but again, it puts the taxpayers’ burden into shocking perspective. Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz have identified two scenarios in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War (2008). One scenario estimates a long-term cost of $422 billion to the federal government for veterans’ health care and disability compensation (given 1.8 million men and women deployed and troop levels falling below 55,000 by 2012). In the other scenario, the U.S. stays in Iraq and Afghanistan another eight years and 2.1 million men and women are deployed, with a price tag of $717 billion
Sullivan estimates that there are about 450,000 disability claims already filed with the VA on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan vets, based on the official 405,000 figure announced back in February. He said there are approximately 80,000 new claims a month from veterans of all wars. As of Sept. 26, there were more than 951,217 pending claims by all veterans, including 200,679 claims pending appeal (the Veterans Benefits Administration recently reduced that number to 176,000, raising eyebrows at Sullivan’s group).
Rarely do we hear these figures over the din calling for even greater numbers of troops on the ground in Afghanistan. The generals want 40,000 or more, which would exceed the "surge" of 20,000 men and women into Iraq almost three years ago. Soldiers are finally withdrawing from that front only to be shifted to the other one for seemingly more hazardous duty.
"Where is the discussion about making sure that before we send any more troops overseas that we can take care of the veterans we already have and whether we can take care of another flood of them?" asked Sullivan.
Such discussions are indeed hard to come by. As Veterans Day nears, veterans are strangely absent, and for many of us, out of mind. Perhaps Sullivan’s question is best answered by Macy’s full-page Veterans Day sale advertisement in the Washington Post this week, featuring two well-dressed, shiny, happy, pretty people with a bugle and a drum. There are lots of numbers â€" 30% to 60% off storewide! â€" but not a veteran in sight.
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.php/veterans-category-articles/1472-kelley-vlahos
Bring the troops home. We really have no business or interest over there. Let them sort their own problems out; we have enough problems here at home. When will our government realize this? When the bottom falls out and we won't be able to take care of ourselves let alone not being able to send troops from "point A" to the corner grocer.
Heights Unknown
Quote from: heights unknown on November 11, 2009, 09:59:21 AM
Bring the troops home. We really have no business or interest over there. Let them sort their own problems out; we have enough problems here at home. When will our government realize this? When the bottom falls out and we won't be able to take care of ourselves let alone not being able to send troops from "point A" to the corner grocer.
Heights Unknown
Agreed.
QuoteJim ThomasLawyer for business/Steward for Colorado
Posted: November 11, 2009 10:11 AM
Veterans Day: How Many Days are Enough
Part of a series on "legal" holidays
This one strikes closest to home. More so even than the debt the nation owes our veterans, I owe two vets, my parents, for my existence and for inspiring my accomplishments. Veterans Day, thankfully, is generally well-observed, with many personal and societal ceremonies and tributes, even if it is not a day-off for many. That military service is a sacrifice borne by few for the benefit of many is all too clear this year. So, as legal holidays go, we seem to do right by Veterans Day; I'm more concerned about the other 364 days, but first the legal history.
Originally Armistice Day, the 11th day of the 11th month, commemorated the end of the Great War, the "war to end all wars" (was there ever a slogan you more wanted to be true?), and honored those who served in it. After World War II, which forced us to drop the slogan and recognize the Great War as World War I, and then the Korean "Conflict" (legal semantics for political purposes), Congress, in 1954, seeing the need to honor all who serve, gave the holiday its present name, Veterans Day.
Congress did a major disservice to Veterans Day when, in 1971, it separated the holiday from its roots by moving the observance to the 4th Monday in October. The American people tolerated that for only a few years and the original date was restored in 1978. But if "we must keep our covenant with them" as President Obama proclaims, then Veterans Day must be a year-long commitment.
I mentioned my parents both served. They enlisted, as many Americans do, as recent high school graduates. I am particularly indebted to an unknown designer of recruiting posters. My mother marched into the recruiting office fully intending to join the Navy, but an Air Force poster showing young people at the Eiffel Tower changed her mind. The poster was prophetic. My parents would have their first date in Paris, France.
So it was that I and my three siblings would grow-up on and around Air Force bases. So it also was that we would see our parents each earn a Bachelor's and then a Master's Degree as beneficiaries of the GI Bill. "The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944," otherwise known at the GI Bill or the GI Bill of Rights, not only carried out the covenant between this nation and its defenders, it transformed my family as it transformed the nation. Home-ownership and college lay beyond the grasp, both economically and psychologically, of much America before the GI Bill; after, everything changed.
On a recent walk around Denver's Fort Logan National Cemetery, I am struck, not by the lives cut short by war, a tragic consequence of military service, but by the long lives of many who served and the great blessings they brought to us. I imagine them, like my parents, young people who leveraged their country's investment in them to transform America. Veterans raise expectations, not just for themselves, but for their children and their children's children, and, in the process, for us all. I imagine the Fort Logan vets as entrepreneurs, teachers, police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, builders, engineers, and even lawyers. I imagine them as mothers and fathers. I see the life you and I live as defended and enabled by their ideals.
Our covenant with our vets, like all agreements, needs to be kept current. The GI Bill has been updated a few times and as recently as 2008, but still we struggle. One-third of America's homeless men are veterans. The economy facing discharged servicemen and women today is all too similar to that facing the World War I veterans whose political and literal battles with our government inspired that first GI Bill. If our investment in that "bonus army" gave birth to a transformed America, we should expect that doing our best for our modern heroes will prove more essential to our current economic reformations than any business bailout. Besides, it is the right thing to do.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-thomas/veterans-day-how-many-day_b_350258.html?view=print
A message from VETERANS FOR COMMON SENSE:
QuoteWHY DON'T YOU SUPPORT VETS SENATOR COBURN?
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is using a Senate procedural hold to block the passage of the Veterans’ Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act.
The Marine Corp Times reports that “Thirteen major military and veterans groups have joined forces to try to force one senator â€" Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma â€" to release a hold that he has placed on a major veterans benefits bill. Coburn has been identified by Senate aides as the lawmaker preventing consideration of S 1963, the Veterans’ Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act of 2009, by using an informal but legal practice of putting a hold on a bill. Coburn’s staff did not respond to questions, but Senate aides said the first-term senator has expressed concern about creating new and unfunded benefits and wants the opportunity to amend the measure.â€
The bill that Coburn is obstructing provides “Enhancements in VA health care for female veterans, including new training for VA mental health providers to handle veterans who experienced military sexual trauma. … Support to family caregivers of severely disabled veterans by giving them access to counseling, support and a living stipend… Expanded mental health services to rural regions where veterans currently have to drive hundreds of miles to seek mental health care… Improved traumatic brain injury (TBI) care… [and] Additional programs for homeless veterans,†according to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a non-partisan veterans’ advocacy organization.
This legislation is crucial to providing much-needed health care, counseling and support to seriously wounded soldiers returning from the battlefield. But instead of honoring the sacrifices of these brave men and women by providing the care America owes them, Sen. Coburn would rather pursue partisan politics.
Sen. Coburn has tried to block other key veterans health bills on purely ideological grounds. This troubling pattern is set against progressive leadership on veterans’ health. While President Obama has declared November Military Family Month, calling “on all Americans to honor military families through private actions and public service,†extreme conservatives continue to prevent veterans from receiving the care they need. A nation’s strength is exemplified by how we treat our war heroes. Sadly, some politicians' weak support for our veterans only dishonors the sacrifices of these brave men and women. (From National Security Network)
Who's counting civilian casualties, or does anyone care?