Secretary Shinseki Announces Study of Vietnam-Era Women Veteran

Comprehensive Study Will Help VA Provide High-Quality Care



WASHINGTON (Nov. 19, 2009) -Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K.
Shinseki announced the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is launching
a comprehensive study of women Veterans who served in the military
during the Vietnam War to explore the effects of their military service
upon their mental and physical health.



"One of my top priorities is to meet the needs of women Veterans," said
Secretary Shinseki.  "Our Veterans have earned the very best care.  VA
realizes that women Veterans require specialized programs, and this
study will help VA provide high-quality care for women Veterans of the
Vietnam era."



The study, which begins in November and lasts more than four years, will
contact approximately 10,000 women in a mailed survey, telephone
interview and a review of their medical records.



As women Vietnam Veterans approach their mid-sixties, it is important to
understand the impact of wartime deployment on health and mental
outcomes nearly 40 years later.  The study will assess the prevalence of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental and physical
health conditions for women Vietnam Veterans, and explore the
relationship between PTSD and other conditions.



VA will study women Vietnam Veterans who may have had direct exposure to
traumatic events, and for the first time, study those who served in
facilities near Vietnam.  These women may have had similar, but less
direct exposures.  Both women Veterans who receive their health care
from VA and those who receive health care from other providers will be
contacted to determine the prevalence of a variety of health conditions.



About 250,000 women Veterans served in the military during the Vietnam
War and about 7,000 were in or near Vietnam.  Those who were in Vietnam,
those who served elsewhere in Southeast Asia and those who served in the
United States are potential study participants.



The study represents to date the most comprehensive examination of a
group of women Vietnam Veterans, and will be used to shape future
research on women Veterans in future wars.  Such an understanding will
lay the groundwork for planning and providing appropriate services for
women Veterans, as well as for the aging Veteran population today.



Women Veterans are one of the fastest growing segments of the Veteran
population.  There are approximately 1.8 million women Veterans among
the nation's total of 23 million living Veterans.  Women comprise 7.8
percent of the total Veteran population and nearly 5.5 percent of all
Veterans who use VA health care services.  VA estimates women Veterans
will constitute 10.5 percent of the Veteran population by 2020 and 9.5
percent of all VA patients.



In recent years, VA has undertaken a number of initiatives to create or
enhance services for women Veterans, including the implementation of
comprehensive primary care throughout the nation, staffing every VA
medical center with a women Veterans program manager, supporting a
multifaceted research program on women's health, improving communication
and outreach to women Veterans, and continuing the operation of
organizations like the Center for Women Veterans and the Women Veterans
Health Strategic Healthcare Group.



The study, to be managed by VA's Cooperative Studies Program, is
projected to cost $5.6 million.

Encourage Congress to pass honors for Cold War veterans

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=296833&ac=PHedi

November 18, 2009

The Cold War was America's longest war, lasting from September 1945 to December 1991. Yet it seems to be something few people remember; especially how close the world came to nuclear war.

Yet there is no medal or award to honor the brave and dedicated men and women who defended us during that time. We faced the same dangers and did the same jobs as today's military, who have all kinds of medals being issued. At the present time there is legislation in Congress that will correct this injustice, and bring honor and respect so long overdue.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, along with Sens. James Webb, D-Va., Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., have introduced a bill to end this oversight (S. 2743, The Cold War Medal Act of 2009).

In the House, Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., has introduced a parallel bill, H.R. 4051, and has also introduced House Resolution 900, to designate May 1 as Cold War Veterans Recognition Day. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., has introduced House Concurrent Resolution 207, expressing the sense of the Congress regarding the victory of the United States in the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I ask everyone to ask their elected officials to become cosponsors and vote for rapid passage of these bills. Include the bill number and name to ensure the proper bill is considered.

Jerald Terwilliger

National Chairman

American Cold War Veterans, Inc.

South Portland

Key Members to contact for House Res. 900 and HR H.R. 4051 The Cold War Medal Act

Buck McKeon, Ranking Member

Roscoe G. Bartlett

Mac Thornberry

Walter B. Jones

W. Todd Akin

J. Randy Forbes

Jeff Miller

Joe Wilson

Frank A. LoBiondo

Rob Bishop

Michael Turner

John Kline

Mike Rogers

Bill Shuster

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

K.Michael Conaway

Doug Lamborn

Rob Wittman

Mary Fallin

Duncan Hunter

John C. Fleming

Mike Coffman

Thomas J. Rooney

Todd Russell Platts

Honoring Stalin at the D-Day Museum GTFOH

I don't know what genius decided to erect a bust of Stalin at the D-day Museum but lets just say its not a great idea. This column is from Huffington Post thought it is worth a read.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-storozynski/us-honors-stalin-on-hallo_b_363141.html?view=print

U.S. Honors Stalin on Hallowed Ground, Will Saddam Hussein Be Next?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians began taking down their statues of Josef Stalin, the mass murderer who killed millions of people. Astonishingly, in America, the National D-Day Memorial is honoring Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at its museum in Bedford, Virginia.

This misguided move will haunt millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, etc. whose families were massacred by this Soviet tyrant. Stalin's killing machine slaughtered more people than Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did.

Hitler and Stalin were allies and started World War II in 1939 by both attacking Poland at the same time. But William McIntosh, the D-Day Memorial's president says that because Stalin became a U.S. ally after Germany invaded Russia, he deserves to be acknowledged along with Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

McIntosh is wrong. Stalin only gave lip service to the allies so that they would attack Nazi Germany on the Western front. Stalin did not liberate Eastern Europe from the Nazis in 1945; he sent in Soviet troops that occupied half of Europe until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Stalin the communist barely hid his disdain for capitalist America during WWII, and once the war ended, he began the Cold War and ordered his scientists to work on missiles and nuclear weapons that could destroy the United States.

Given McIntosh's logic, should America put up a statue of Saddam Hussein because he was an ally of the U.S. in the 1980s when we supported Iraq in a war against Iran?

Congress authorized the D-Day Memorial and private donors raised $19 million to honor soldiers that fought in the invasion of Normandy. Now McIntosh is lobbying Congress to make his museum part of the National Park Service so that it can receive federal tax dollars.
By placing a bust of Stalin on hallowed ground, McIntosh disrespects veterans, including my father who took part in the Normandy invasion. When the war began, Dionysius Storozynski was 17 and living in Lvov, Poland. He fought in the underground against Stalin's army that invaded Poland and later joined the Polish troops in France that fought the Germans in the West. When France surrendered, he was evacuated to England and trained for the allied invasion of Normandy.

In 1944, when the beachhead was taken, Corporal Storozynski rode a motorcycle off a transport from England as part of the 24th Lancers Regiment of the 1st Polish Armored Division. It was lead by Major Jan Kanski with 47 officers, 634 men, 52 Sherman tanks, 11 Stuart tanks and six anti-aircraft tanks. My father sped ahead of these troops, and scoured the French countryside with his binoculars. He radioed the coordinates of the Germans to Polish tank commanders. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower inspected my father's regiment, which saw heavy action in Caen, Falaise and Aberville in France. They helped liberate Belgium and Holland.

During the campaign, my father lost part of his hearing when he drove over a land mine. Major Kanski lost his life.

My maternal grandfather, Sgt. Wladslaw Krzyzanowski, also fought in the Polish Army against Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. In 1939 he was tortured and sentenced to death by Stalin's NKVD, forerunner of the KGB. His crime? He fought against Stalin's ally at the time, Hitler. My grandfather's sentence was commuted to life, and he was one of 1.5 million Poles sent to Stalin's forced labor gulags in Siberia in the years 1939-1941. He escaped and joined the army of Polish Gen. Wladyslaw Anders that fought alongside British General Bernard Montgomery. The Brits and the Poles pushed the Germans across North Africa and together with the American military liberated Italy. My grandfather won medals at the Battle of Monte Cassino.

Other Polish soldiers were not as lucky. The NKVD took 22,000 Polish officers into the Katyn Forest, tied their hands behind their backs, and one by one shot them in the back of their heads. The bodies were dumped into mass graves. Many have yet to be recovered for proper burial.

That's how Stalin treated prisoners of war. He wasn't much better to his own people. Before World War II began, the NKVD killed millions of Russians during the "great purge" of Stalin's political enemies. Stalin forced collectivization, stole farmland from peasants, and starved to death 10 million Ukrainians in a vengeful act of genocide. And it was Stalin's 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Hitler that split Poland in half, allowing the Germans to carry out the Holocaust that murdered six million Jews.

Stalin enslaved the Russian people. That's why Russia has taken down most of the statues of Stalin and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev is critical of those who gloss over Stalin's image. "From the point of view of the law, killing of a huge number of compatriots for political or unsubstantiated economic motives is a crime," Medvedev recently told Der Spiegel magazine. "The rehabilitation of those involved in these crimes is impossible."

In addition to the civilians that Stalin murdered, he sent Russian soldiers to their death by using them as cannon fodder, marching them directly into the line of German gunfire without a cohesive battle plan. Medvedev said recently on his web site, "Stalin's crimes cannot diminish the heroic deeds of the people who triumphed in the Great Patriotic war."
If McIntosh wants to honor Russia's contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany, he should put up a statue of the Unknown Russian Soldier. That would make more sense than a bust of Stalin.

It took the people of the former Soviet Empire five decades to right the wrongs of Stalin's "evil empire," as Ronald Reagan called it. These days, the Poles are planning to put up a statue of Reagan in Warsaw to acknowledge his role in ending Soviet Communism. How ironic that in Virginia, America is putting up a bust of Stalin.

Army's record suicide rate 'horrible,' general says
Despite high total, awareness campaign shows signs of helping

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli on Tuesday called the Army's record suicide rate this year "horrible" and said the problem of soldiers taking their own lives is the toughest he has faced in his 37 years in service.

As of Nov. 16, 140 soldiers on active duty and 71 soldiers not on active duty were suspected to have committed suicide. "We are almost certainly going to end the year higher than last year," which was also a record for Army suicides, Chiarelli said at a Pentagon news conference.

"This is horrible," he said. "Every single loss is devastating."
However, Chiarelli, who has made suicide prevention a priority, said that despite the high total, the monthly suicide rate has largely declined since March.
In January and February, there were about 40 suicides, or about one-third of the active-duty total this year, and since March the general trend has been down, with the exception of a couple of months, he said. He attributed that progress primarily to a campaign to increase the involvement of Army leaders at all ranks in suicide prevention efforts.

Chiarelli voiced frustration that the Army has not yet been able to identify any causal links among the suicide cases, except that soldiers are more likely to kill themselves when they are away from their stations, where help is available. "There is no simple answer," he said. "Each suicide case is as unique as the individuals themselves."
But Chiarelli said that in more than 40 percent of the cases this year, the soldier involved had seen a behavioral health specialist.

Substance abuse, which can be related to mental health problems and suicide, is on the rise in the Army, Chiarelli said, and he added that the force is short about 300 substance abuse counselors.


The Army is also short an estimated 800 behavioral health specialists, he said, describing prewar authorization levels for such specialists as outdated. "I have been pounding the system to . . . determine what we need after eight years of war," Chiarelli said.

The Army recently refined the questionnaire it uses for incoming soldiers to better screen for psychological problems and has instituted a training program to build mental resiliency within its ranks.

In addition, the Army has launched a pilot program to have soldiers returning from overseas undergo an immediate half-hour evaluation -- either face-to-face or online via Web cameras -- by mental health providers. In the one battalion that has participated in the program so far, the evaluations led to a doubling of the referral rate for mental health issues compared with soldiers who simply filled out a post-deployment assessment form, according to Brig. Gen. Richard Thomas, the Army's assistant surgeon general for force protection.

Chiarelli declined to discuss the case of Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, charged with fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., this month. Asked whether he was concerned about the risk of other violent individuals in the force, Chiarelli said, "We always have to be concerned about that."

Cold War symbol on display on South Dakota prairie

NEAR WALL, SD (KTIV) -- This week marks twenty years since the Berlin Wall came down, the fall of communism and ultimately the end of the Cold War. There is another symbol marking the end of the Cold War in the center of the Rushmore state.

At one point, there were enough nuclear bombs in South Dakota to create what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki more than 150 times over.


It's a modest building in the middle of the South Dakota prairie. And for more than three decades only a select few people had ever been inside. An elite group that held the nation's top military secrets some 30 feet below the ground. This is the Delta-one launch site for the Minuteman Missile program.

"People drove by these facilities for years and didn't realize what was out here," says National Park Service tour guide Jack Hanson. "It's a fascinating part of American history."

And eye-opening. The amount of power and potential destruction capable of the 150 nuclear warheads in South Dakota alone contained power than what was dropped in all of World War II.

"That whole war start to finish including the atomic bombs, was a two megaton war. We had 180 megatons in South Dakota, so roughly 90 times the destructive force of all of World War II, just in South Dakota," Hanson said.

The people who manned these facilities since the early 1960s knew the risks and the realities of their job. The topside crew consisted of enlisted military who spent twelve hours a day here, with the main goal of security. Down below, two people -- the commander and deputy commander -- worked 24-hour shifts in a tiny space inside a protected capsule with the ability to launch a nuclear war.

"They open that up, inside are two keys and the code that the president carries. The president has a military officer with him at all times carrying a briefcase. It's called a football and inside that are the atomic launch codes. Inside here it's called a cookie. They take the cookies out, match that to the codes they've been given, and if they match, they know they're going to have a launch," Hanson said.

An action, with consequence.

"Once they turned the keys, they were committed to nuclear war, because there were no do-overs," Hanson said.

If the decision to launch was made, a missile with a 1.2 megaton nuclear warhead sitting in a silo about 15 miles away from the key turn, would have been sent on a journey to a destination in the Soviet Union. It could have reached that target within 30 minutes.

It's estimated that in the first hour of a nuclear exchange between the US and Soviet Union, 30 million Americans would have died. Forty million Soviets would be killed. Hanson says each site in South Dakota was targeted by the Soviets, so would those at the launch site survive?

"Survivability? Only if the bomb hit more than a mile away."

The crew underground would have enough air to last a few days. Those topside had no protection. A former missileer says everyone was mentally trained for "what could have been."

"There was times when we were down their playing backgammon, watching baseball games and then there were times when you first become a crew member where you may get your first emergency action message. It's real versus an exercise. But you get desensitized to that," said former missileer Kerry Davis.

Some kept their humor, shown by artwork on the eight-ton door to the launch room. Now a national historic site, people can tour this facility and learn a part of American history that few have yet to really study.

Hanson says, "It was such an important part of our history. The absolute destruction that would have been created had these weapons ever been used."

The START treaty signed by the US and the Soviets in 1991 led to the dismantling of all 150 Minuteman Two missiles in South Dakota. The warheads were removed and the silos destroyed, except for the Delta Nine launch facility which is now part of the tour at the Minuteman Missile National Historic site.