WASHINGTON -- Veterans groups Thursday added their support to recommendations calling for modernization of a system that determines what benefits disabled veterans receive relative to severity of their wounds.
Now, the vets said, they want to see some action and enforcement from the government on recommendations made by the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission.
"You've got the riffle, squeeze the trigger," Todd Bowers, director of government affairs for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said at a hearing of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
Representatives from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign Wars and The American Legion said they like the ideas of updating the rankings that match benefits to disabilities.
They also want extra compensation beyond health care for the impact that wounds could have on quality of life of veterans.
But they expressed reservations about mandatory check-ups every two years for veterans already getting compensation.
"A lot of veterans would view these reviews as an attempt to take away their benefits," said Gerald Manar, deputy director of the VFW's national veterans service.
Researching for the commission, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies recommended case by case determinations of whether veterans need follow-up exams.
However, the benefits commission felt that required reevaluations for some types of disabilities, particularly mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, would ensure that those needing regular check-ups didn't slip through the cracks, said retired Lt. Gen. James Scott.
Scott, chairman of the commission, said, "It seems to me if you don't reevaluate, you won't know how the treatment is doing."
The commission also recommended basing benefits on a sliding scale to determine the degree to which different disabilities detract from a veteran's quality of life. The veterans groups said this was a worthy idea but would require more research to find a way to measure how much an amputation versus post-traumatic stress disorder would affect quality of life.
Several of the commission's recommendations stretch back to previous panels meeting more than 50 years ago. The Veterans Disabilities Benefits Commission report, released last October with 113 recommendations, should be sufficient to get started and set deadlines for action, leader of veterans groups said.
Thirty-five percent of disability ratings have not been updated since 1945, according to the Institute of Medicine.
"Despite the fact that the disability system was already outdated more than five decades ago there have been no fundamental reforms," Sen. Richard Burr R-N.C. said at the hearing. "It is a failure of a highest magnitude if we don't provide these heroes who have sacrificed so much for their country with the benefits and services they need and deserve."
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=122653
It's the reason Rick Rogala spent 1968 as a captive in North Korea, enduring beatings and paltry prison meals of gummy rice and turnips served in a water pail.
For the Elk Grove Village man, the Navy spy ship USS Pueblo is both the source of nightmares -- and pride.
He won his freedom after 11 months, but the USS Pueblo still stands prisoner 40 years after its capture. Tethered on the Taedong River in Pyongyang, the only commissioned U.S. Navy ship in foreign hands is promoted as a trophy celebrating the communist nation's Cold War conquest.
One sailor was killed and the surviving 82 crew members held as prisoners when torpedo boats and airplanes attacked on Jan. 23, 1968.
Remembering the Pueblo
Rogala, who was 20 years old when captured, not only wants the public to "Remember the Pueblo," a catchphrase coined at the time in a push for the U.S. to broker freedom for the crew, but he is championing the ship's return.
"I know we're dealing with a country that's hard to talk to, but 40 years later it's time," Rogala said.
He wants to bring the ship back to showcase at a museum in Pueblo, Colo., for which the ship is named, and honor the legacy of the sacrifice of the crew members. An anonymous donor a few years ago gave the veterans property to house the ship
.
Rogala hopes to present the Pueblo story without the taint of propaganda he says will overshadow its legacy as long as it's moored in North Korea.
Cold War prisoners
While the North Korean government says the capture was justified as the Pueblo had crossed into their waters, U.S. officials say the ship never trespassed.
Forty years later, there is no dispute that the Pueblo was dispatched to monitor ship movements and intercept messages.
"We were there to collect intelligence, but we were in international waters, so it's fair play," Rogala said.
He had joined the Naval Reserves rather than be drafted to serve in the Army during the Vietnam War. He left his Niles home to report to San Diego to ship out on the Pueblo in fall 1967.
After a month in Japan, the Pueblo ventured toward North Korea.
As far as Rogala knew, this was a "non-risk mission." He wasn't trained in communications intelligence, but he knew there were officers aboard with those skills.
The events of midday Jan. 23 four decades ago steered the Pueblo's fate into more dangerous waters about 15 miles off the coast of North Korea on the Sea of Japan.
Torpedo boats and airplanes descended on the ship as sailors rushed to dump sensitive material overboard in an effort to protect military secrets. The Pueblo carried two machine guns, but neither was mounted.
"It was a really scary episode. Bullets flying over your head," said Rogala, who was working as a mess cook during the attack.
Amid the barrage of bullets, the captain decided to surrender and allow the North Koreans aboard, Rogala recalls.
It was a decision that led to intense criticism of Pueblo Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher, who endured savage torture until the crew's release on Dec. 23, 1968. He faced the potential of a court martial for surrendering without firing a shot.
Blame followed the Pueblo survivors back home but Rogala himself blames the U.S. Navy, saying "they should have prepared us better" for such a risky spy mission.
Rogala and his shipmates were blindfolded, strip-searched and taken off the ship by gangplank to board a bus after the siege.
When his captors vowed the sailors would be OK if they obeyed their rules, Rogala didn't believe them.
Nightmare begins North Korean soldiers piled the 82 crewmembers into a train for an overnight trip, then stopped in the freezing cold and forced the prisoners off the train for what they saw as a photo opportunity.
"For a while there, I thought it was the end," Rogala said, pausing from time to time as his eyes seemed to rove to a distant place. "I still have nightmares."
They were taken to a building the Pueblo crew dubbed "the barn," and packed into rooms, with eight bunking with Rogala.
Despite the threat of death by firing squad, Rogala only offered his name, rank, service number and date of birth.
The Pueblo's six officers were separated and faced the harshest torture. The North Koreans "knew that they would know more, so they got the worst of the beatings," Rogala said.
He suffered his most severe beating during what came to be known as Hell Week.
The North Korean soldiers had discovered that the captive sailors flashing an obscene gesture weren't extending the "Hawaiian good luck sign" as the sailors told them.
"I got a blow to the face where my teeth were loose, and I was kicked to get back up," Rogala said. "I must have given them the wrong answer because I got another blow to the head. I could wiggle my teeth and everything. It was unbelievable."
A year 'wiped off'
Americans who lived through 1968 have vivid memories of that tumultuous year: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Tet offensive in Vietnam, and the Democratic convention in Chicago.
Rogala had to hear about these events from his captors. To him, it all sounded like propaganda.
"It's a year of my life just wiped off," he said.
Crew members would get about 15 minutes a day to go outside. They could write letters home, but their captors monitored their words.
Rogala recalls sending a letter to his parents in Niles, trying to communicate in a code that all was not well. He told them to say "hello" to an uncle who had died.
The prisoners also were allowed to play cards in the evening for an hour. Sometimes they would write lyrics to songs.
"Thank God we were with other people that would say, 'We're going to get out,' " Rogala said. "Some were lifting others up."
Freedom's price
Freedom for the Pueblo crew came after a grueling 11 months when the United States agreed to apologize. Once the crew was freed, the U.S. government reneged.
It wasn't until 1989 that Rogala and his shipmates earned prisoner of war designation, an upgrade from their "detainees" status.
Now, the hope of returning the USS Pueblo home motivates 60-year-old Rogala. He has reached out to congressional and state representatives for help but he hasn't found support yet.
The plight of the USS Pueblo continues to expose the wounds of the Cold War.
While North Korea and the United States have made progress in resolving the dispute over its nuclear program that led President Bush to describe its regime as part of the axis of evil, normal relations seem elusive.
In recent years, North Korea has tried to use the Pueblo as a bargaining chip, offering to return the ship in exchange for a visit from a prominent U.S. official.
U.S. Navy officials didn't return calls for comment on chances of the ship's return.
The ship in Pyongyang is used as a tourist attraction where visitors can view the Pueblo's encryption machines and radio equipment as North Korean tour guides relay the story of its capture.
North Korean officials used Wednesday's anniversary of the capture to say the United States should remember the "bitter lesson" of the Pueblo.
"The incident was a product of the U.S. gangster-like policy of aggression," the nation said in a statement.
For Rogala, that points up the need for the ship's return. He and the other Pueblo survivors will meet this fall at a reunion, sharing stories and calling for the ship's release.
"I need to put this behind me totally," he said. "It will never be final in my mind until the ship comes back."
The truth about Russia’s military "resurgence"
By all indications, the Russian military has enjoyed a revival of sorts in recent years. 2007 was an especially notable year in this respect. In April, Russia completed construction of a strategic submarine of a new class, the first since the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Despite a string of unsuccessful flight tests, the military has continued to develop a new sea-launched missile for these submarines. In May and December, the Rocket Forces tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) equipped with multiple warheads. In August, President Vladimir Putin made a point to personally announce that he ordered strategic bombers to return to the Cold-War practice of conducting regular long-range patrol flights. The list goes on--Russia has been upgrading its network of early warning radars, plans to resume producing strategic bombers, and is considering developing another new ICBM. In October, Putin called Russia’s plans to modernize its strategic forces no less than "grandiose."
Because it serves as a vestige of superpower status, many Russians look at such a "resurgence" with pride. Naturally, the buildup concerns the West, which also views it in Cold War terms, even though the scale is nowhere near that of Soviet deployments. Whatever the reaction, there seems to be consensus that the credit for this mini-renaissance belongs to the current Russian leadership and to Putin personally. This partly explains Putin’s high-approval ratings in Russia and his recent selection as Time magazine’s "Person of the Year."
But upon closer inspection, a different story emerges. It’s a story of weak leadership, not one of strength. Instead of leading a resurgence, the current Russian leadership has given the military and defense industry a free hand in setting national security policy and uncritically accepted their narrow view of the world and its problems. Just like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, today’s Russia has little control over its military-industrial complex. And since the military-industrial complex can only build missiles, submarines, and bombers, it’s not surprising that Russia’s security threats are now defined to require missiles, submarines, and bombers. The result is that the discussion of security issues in Russia is dominated by paranoid scenarios involving the United States destroying Russian missiles in a surprise attack and alarmist projections of how U.S. missile defense will affect Moscow’s "strategic balance."
It’s hardly surprising that the military-industrial complex is pushing the "resurgence" agenda--generals always fight the last war. There’s little doubt that they will convince the government to keep its number of missiles and submarines at a "respectable" level. Or that the military will be able to maintain these missiles at a reasonable degree of readiness. With a strong economy, Russia can certainly afford strategic forces that would be considered impressive by Cold-War standards. But these standards are irrelevant today and the strategic forces designed to fight the Cold War are useless when it comes to the security threats that exist today. Therefore, this "grandiose resurgence" will eventually prove unnecessary, expensive, and dangerous.
LUZERNE COUNTY: State Rep. Robert E. Belfanti Jr., D-Montour County, reminds veterans of the U.S. military and some civilian employees of the U.S. government who served during the Cold War (Sept. 2, 1945 to Dec. 26, 1991) that they are eligible for a Cold War Recognition Certificate.
As part of the 1998 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress authorized the Department of Defense to award a Cold War Recognition Certificate to honor U.S. military personnel and civilian employees who served the nation during the Cold War.
Anyone who served in either a military or civilian capacity with the War, Navy or Defense departments is eligible. Eligible military and civilian personnel can receive the certificate free of charge. Relatives of deceased military and civilian employees of the U.S. government can apply on their behalf.
Details about how to request a certificate and what supporting documentation is needed are available on Belfanti's legislative Web site at www.pahouse.com/Belfanti.
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| Soldier Missing from Korean War is Identified The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing from the Korean War, have been identified and returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Pfc. Billy M. MacLeod, U.S. Army, of Cheboygan, Mich. He was buried Saturday in Cheboygan. Representatives from the Army met with MacLeod’s next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process, and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Army. MacLeod was a member of Company B, 32nd Infantry Regiment, then making up part of the 31st Regimental Combat Team, 7th Infantry Division, operating along the eastern banks of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. From Nov. 27-Dec. 1, 1950, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces overran the U.S. positions, forcing their southward withdrawal. Regimental records compiled after the battle indicate that MacLeod was killed in action on Nov. 28, 1950. Between 2002 and 2005, three joint U.S.-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), excavated an area with two mass graves on the eastern shore of the Chosin Reservoir. They were believed to be burial sites of U.S. soldiers from the 31st RCT. The teams found human remains and other material evidence. Analysis of the remains subsequently led to the identifications of eight individuals, including MacLeod. Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA and dental comparisons in the identification of MacLeod’s remains. For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO Web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169. |
 Read Letter to Chairman Buyer (pdf) |
| Download Petition to Repeal Legislation Authorizing Attorneys to Charge Veterans (pdf) |
| Download DAV Resolution No. 199 (pdf) |
| Read News Release |
WASHINGTON -- Veterans groups Thursday added their support to recommendations calling for modernization of a system that determines what benefits disabled veterans receive relative to severity of their wounds.
Now, the vets said, they want to see some action and enforcement from the government on recommendations made by the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission.
"You've got the riffle, squeeze the trigger," Todd Bowers, director of government affairs for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said at a hearing of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
Representatives from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign Wars and The American Legion said they like the ideas of updating the rankings that match benefits to disabilities.
They also want extra compensation beyond health care for the impact that wounds could have on quality of life of veterans.
But they expressed reservations about mandatory check-ups every two years for veterans already getting compensation.
"A lot of veterans would view these reviews as an attempt to take away their benefits," said Gerald Manar, deputy director of the VFW's national veterans service.
Researching for the commission, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies recommended case by case determinations of whether veterans need follow-up exams.
However, the benefits commission felt that required reevaluations for some types of disabilities, particularly mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, would ensure that those needing regular check-ups didn't slip through the cracks, said retired Lt. Gen. James Scott.
Scott, chairman of the commission, said, "It seems to me if you don't reevaluate, you won't know how the treatment is doing."
The commission also recommended basing benefits on a sliding scale to determine the degree to which different disabilities detract from a veteran's quality of life. The veterans groups said this was a worthy idea but would require more research to find a way to measure how much an amputation versus post-traumatic stress disorder would affect quality of life.
Several of the commission's recommendations stretch back to previous panels meeting more than 50 years ago. The Veterans Disabilities Benefits Commission report, released last October with 113 recommendations, should be sufficient to get started and set deadlines for action, leader of veterans groups said.
Thirty-five percent of disability ratings have not been updated since 1945, according to the Institute of Medicine.
"Despite the fact that the disability system was already outdated more than five decades ago there have been no fundamental reforms," Sen. Richard Burr R-N.C. said at the hearing. "It is a failure of a highest magnitude if we don't provide these heroes who have sacrificed so much for their country with the benefits and services they need and deserve."
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) became part of the American vocabulary after the Vietnam War as its affects on veterans became widely publicized. Now, a new generation of American veterans are again victims of PTSD. This series explores the impact of politics on the funding, diagnosis and treatment of veterans suffering from PTSD. It examines the propaganda used to justify a reduction in benefits to veterans with PTSD and the effort to redirect blame for the ravages of war to the soldiers themselves.
Part I: Stacking the Deck - With trillion dollar estimates for the Iraq war, the Administration looks to cut costs, eyeing treatment for the returning PTSD wounded veterans.
Part II: Ration & Redefine - Redefining PTSD and substance abuse as moral/spiritual failings opens the door to cheaper unregulated, unlicensed faith-based "treatments."
Part III: Malign & Slime - Propaganda is used to stigmatize veterans seeking help, reduce benefits to veterans with PTSD and to blame the soldiers for their own illness.
by NC Sentinel
Pueblo Chieftain - Pueblo, CO, USA
Veteran group membership dwindling
For ordinary citizens, it was also a rare opportunity to eyeball their gerontocratic leaders standing on top of Lenin's tomb - and to check that they were still alive, and could wave.
But 17 years after the last communist tanks trundled through Red Square, the Kremlin has decided to revive the Soviet-era practice of parading its big weaponry.
For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, combat vehicles will return to the heart of Moscow, driving past the Kremlin during Russia's annual military parade on May 9, Russia's defence ministry confirmed today.As well as six thousands soldiers in shiny new uniforms, Russian generals plan to show off their latest tanks and rockets, including the country's new, and lethal, intercontinental ballistic missile, the Topol-M.
"Under the plan adopted by the president, land and air military equipment will be involved in the parade on Red Square," General Yuri Solovyov said today. The parade will include the new S-300 missile defence system - which Russia has just sold to Iran - and 32 fighter jets.
The decision to revive one of the most pregnant symbols of the Cold War is likely to provoke criticism from Russia's opposition, who accuse president Vladimir Putin of turning Russia into a pastiche version of the Soviet Union.
It might also raise a few quizzical eyebrows inside Britain's Moscow embassy. Last week Russia forcibly closed the British Council's two regional offices in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg using what British officials described as "'classic KGB tactics".
On Friday, Britain's ambassador in Moscow, Tony Brenton, compared post-communist Russia to the Soviet Union after officers from Russia's main domestic intelligence agency - the FSB - interrogated British Council workers.
President Putin has already demonstrated his fondness for Soviet emblems. He has updated the Soviet national anthem. Last year he said Russia should preserve the hammer and sickle on victory flags, arguing it was a part of Russia's past.
Today, one observer said that the Kremlin was using different symbols from Russia's Soviet and pre-revolutionary past to recreate a 'new national idea' of Russian greatness.
"It's a very complicated postmodern mix that borrows from the Soviet past, but also from Russia's imperial past and the tsarist era," Nikolay Petrov, scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Centre in Moscow said.
He added: "It's an ideological concept. The point is to show that Russia was great before the revolution, was great during Soviet times and to say we are restoring its greatness."
The Soviet Union's military parades, to celebrate victory over the Nazis on May 9 and the Bolshevik revolution on November 7, were a twice-yearly feature of Soviet life, watched by millions live on TV.
The parades invariably featured portraits of Lenin and Stalin, as well as balloons, motorcades and rictus-like grinning folk dancers. Kremlinologists used the occasion to try and divine who might become the next Politburo leader - by scrutinising who stood nearest to the current general secretary.
"We will be using military vehicles. But we haven't decided yet which and how many war machines will be used," Oleg Yushkov, spokesman for the Moscow military district told the Guardian. "We'll know by mid-March," he added.
Combat vehicles were last paraded in Red Square on November 7, 1990, shortly before the Soviet Union vanished. No parades were staged from 1991 to 1994. Parades resumed in 1995, but without any of the tanks and 20 metre-long missiles characteristic of the Soviet epoch.
As well as rehabilitating old Soviet imagery, Putin has also boosted defence spending. After the Soviet Union's demise, Russia's vast military economy collapsed. The squeeze continued in the 1990s, but since 2000 spending has gone up, with last year's budget of $31bn almost four times the amount spent in 2001.
| 04/25/07 | REFERRED TO VETERANS, HOMELAND SECURITY AND MILITARY AFFAIRS | |
| 05/22/07 | 1ST REPORT CAL.1287 | |
| 05/29/07 | 2ND REPORT CAL. | |
| 05/30/07 | ADVANCED TO THIRD READING | |
| 06/21/07 | COMMITTED TO RULES | |
| 01/09/08 | REFERRED TO VETERANS, HOMELAND SECURITY AND MILITARY AFFAIRS | |
| 01/14/08 | 1ST REPORT CAL.24 | |
| 01/15/08 | 2ND REPORT CAL. |
Please contact both of your Senators regarding S38.
Please contact both of your Senators regarding S38.
Veterans' Mental Health Outreach and Access Act of 2007
Ask them to co-sponsor this bill. At this time, it has 13 co-sponsors.
S38 - 'A bill to require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish a program for the provision of readjustment and mental health services to veterans who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, and for other purposes.'
About This Legislation:
5/23/2007--Introduced.
Veterans' Mental Health Outreach and Access Act of 2007 - Directs the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish a program to provide to veterans of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, particularly veterans who served in such Operations while in the National Guard and reserves: (1) peer outreach and support services; (2) readjustment counseling and related services; and (3) mental health services. Directs the Secretary to also provide to immediate family members of such veterans, during the three-year period following the return of the veterans from such a deployment, education, support, counseling, and mental health services to assist in: (1) readjustment to civilian life; (2) recovery from an injury or illness incurred during such deployment; and (3) readjustment of the family following the veteran's return.
Authorizes the Secretary to contract with community health centers and other qualified entities to provide such services in areas not adequately served by health care facilities of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
Requires the Secretary to: (1) contract for a program to train veterans to provide the peer outreach and support services; and (2) conduct a training program for clinicians of community health centers and entities contracted to provide such services.
Extends the eligibility for hospital care, medical services, and nursing home care for veterans who served on active duty in a theater of combat operations from two to five years after their discharge or release from such duty.
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/bills/?billtype=S.&billnumb=38&c..110
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OCALA - Frank Holland and Ken Cole, two U.S. Navy submarine veterans, are active participants with the U.S. Submarine Veterans, Nautilus Base.Wednesday night, Paul Rieckhoff talked about Bill O'Reilly's incorrect statements regarding homeless veterans on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Please check it out, post it, and pass it on. Also, encourage your friends to sign on to www.BillWasWrong.com.
Thanks for all the support.
It might help the drought that so few flowers are left to water in Atlanta, so many having been thrown at Jane Fonda to celebrate her 70th birthday.
The AJC predictably gave her glowing coverage, with only the mention that Fonda has to deal with criticism by Vietnam veterans.
Here is one Vietnam veteran who is bothered far more by how the media portray her than by Fonda herself.
Now that the threat of communism is gone, the Cold War stand against it is sometimes ridiculed, likened to looking for boogeymen under the bed. Fonda's own affinity for communism is brushed aside as paranoid rubbish.
But it shouldn't be.
Among those who protested the Vietnam War were many honorable, patriotic and faithful citizens. Fonda was not one of them. Well, she certainly did protest, but if she was a faithful citizen and patriotic, it must have been for another country. Her anti-American roots are evident to any reporter setting willful blindness aside long enough to do some research.
In November 1970, in a speech to University of Michigan students, Fonda said, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become Communist."
Shortly thereafter at Duke University in North Carolina she said, "I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism."
A year later Fonda said at the University of Texas, "We've got to establish a socialist economic structure that will limit private profit-oriented businesses. Whether the transition is peaceful depends on the way our present governmental leaders react."
The complete list is a long one.
What she actually did matters far more, of course, than what she thought or said as a young woman long ago. When Fonda took a camera crew to North Vietnam late in the war, her actions easily crossed the line of "aid and comfort to the enemy."
While in Hanoi, Fonda delighted our enemy by cavorting for cameras on an anti-aircraft gun, pretending to shoot at U.S. aircraft. Under pressure in recent years, Fonda said that was bad judgment, but her other actions were far worse.
She made speeches and recorded propaganda radio broadcasts in Hanoi expressing solidarity against " . . . our common enemy —- U.S. imperialism." She called our troops, our POWs and our president war criminals and begged U.S. troops to disobey orders from their officers.
Fonda returned to the U.S. and reported our POWs were well treated. When the POWs later came home to tell stories of their sustained starvation diet, maltreatment and torture —- real torture, not the kindergarten variety we now debate —- she called them liars.
Youthful indiscretions and rebellious ideas are one thing; Fonda's actions betraying her country are quite another. Prosecuting Fonda for her Hanoi escapade was considered, but set aside. Nobody could find a spine.
Fonda and Tom Hayden, the Marxist activist who would become her husband of 16 years, also organized lobbying efforts to cut off congressional funding for opposition to their friends in the communist regimes of Hanoi and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. After funding was indeed cut off and America turned its back, the Khmer Rouge starved and murdered 1.5 million.
Just as bells cannot be unrung, some things cannot be forgiven. Nevertheless, Fonda seems to me just another aging radical. There have always been left-wing and right-wing kooks. My heartburn is reserved for you in the media who give her legitimacy, the reporters and editors and pundits who give her a pass.
Why is it that Fonda, who betrayed her country by going far beyond legitimate protest, is a media darling?
Why do news stories featuring her leave out those sordid details of her past, making only neutral reference to her clash with Vietnam veterans?
Why is it left to Vietnam veterans to balance Fonda's tributes with the details of her treason, as if Vietnam were somehow a war we created, as if she betrayed just us, and not you and the rest of the country?
When our troops returned from Vietnam through California airports, protesters often gathered there to shout insults and spit at them, sometimes throwing unmentionables to splatter their uniform. Those protesters were a tiny part of the population, but everyone else always seemed to be looking the other way.
That is what you in the media have been doing with Fonda for decades. Looking the other way.
> Terry Garlock of Peachtree City was a Cobra gunship helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War.
Last night, Bill O'Reilly raised an important topic on his television show: the plight of homeless veterans.
Unfortunately, he got the facts wrong.
O'Reilly: "They (homeless veterans) may be out there, but there's not many of them out there. Okay?...If you know where there is a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it."
Despite O'Reilly's doubts, the facts are irrefutable. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, almost 200,000 veterans sleep on our nation's streets each night. And Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are joining those ranks at an alarming rate.
Click here to sign an open letter to Bill O'Reilly, telling him that he needs to set the record straight as soon as possible. This issue is far too important to be swept under the rug. You can also learn more about the issue of homeless veterans, and find out what you can do to help.
As an IAVA Supporter, you're more familiar with this issue than most people. Sadly, many Americans still don't realize that veterans make up about one-third of the adult homeless population.
No matter how you feel about Bill O'Reilly, there's no denying the fact that he has a huge audience - an estimated 2.3 million people tune in each weekday night. So take a minute to urge Bill O'Reilly to correct his mistake. He has a great opportunity to help homeless veterans by bringing more attention to the issue, and you can urge him to be part of the solution.
Thank you for standing with us.
Sincerely,
Paul Rieckhoff
Iraq Veteran
Executive Director
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
P.S. The site also includes more background information on the issue, along with details on how you can get involved.
