Tag: Veterans administration

This isn’t rocket science, if the country had paid attention as we were returning from Vietnam and recognizing what that did to many of our brothers, thousands then, as we tried for decades to push the issues into the public conscious we’d be much more advanced in the understanding of what war and extreme trauma does to the human mind, especially from wars of choice. And it wasn’t only as to our brothers! There also would have been a better understanding as to the civilian populations of these conflicts as well as those anywhere who live through the extreme trauma’s, of many descriptions, that affect individuals in their own lives

Forced to clean up what was left and wasn’t even considered as we sent our soldiers, not into one more failed policy War and long Occupation of others but a second one as well, both still ongoing, both still creating soldiers and veterans, as well as families of, who are owed, more then any previous as they serve in both theaters and multiple tours, adding to all those that preceded and the numbers grow even as us older vets pass on, some getting the help some not and being fought for every step of the way!

Wounded Veterans’ New Fight: The VA

Just one of many ways, and not only as to the VA facilities but Federal and State buildings etc. as well. And boy could I make a huge list of overlooked and ignored infrastructure needs!

I did this a number of years back, but it wasn’t because of a collapsed economy. I came off some eight years on the road, mostly in the northeast some midwest and a few southern states, building and supervising the building of stores in the new enclosed Malls that had grown out of strip malls all over. I just happened to have hit a call for a carpenter to lay a couple of VCT floors at the VA facility in Syracuse and was one of two hired. After we finished that we were asked to stay on and work out of their maintenance office and shop doing repairs and preventive maintenance. We ended up working there for a year plus. The other carpenter, older then myself, stayed on, I left to go back into commercial Rebuilds and continued in Commercial and Residential for the years since, up to the collapse of it all and the to little going on now.

This past week a conference opened, from the 10th to the 14th of January 2010, to discuss the growing suicide rate among our military and veterans community.

This is an extremely important issue, the Mental Injuries and Post Traumatic Stress as to War, that should be right up there along side never starting one except as a Very Last Resort when all else fails and to always plan an exit strategy as we should have done in Afghanistan after 9/11. Bringing in any and all support functions, promised rebuilding monies, NGO’s, government agencies gear to help rebuild including those in the military, in Afghanistan’s case after toppling the government that supported the criminal terrorist who carried out the devastating attacks on our country. Iraq should never had been allowed to happen!

If history judges correctly, one of the Best of the Military Leaders of these past, failed policies of civilian and military leaders, to present times one name will stand out above all the others as a true Understanding Leader and that will be one General Eric Shinseki. Those of us in the present already know much about what this military leader was put through and by whom, but he has been brought back to lead again, lead in the way he seems to have also done, with compassion and understanding for those he has been placed in command of, throughout his military careerer and his life.

Below is just a small group of articles and reports coming in on this Veterans Day 2009. Some about Veterans Day, some about Veterans older and to the present, some about todays Veterans and Soldiers. Much will be said today, much seen, some will even think about, some.

While important it isn’t so much about what will be said or done by our political leaders, it’s really more about how the greater majority in this country who don’t serve, don’t want to really sacrifice, but are quick to use those who do, and their families, then quickly move away from their false meme’s when it comes time to actually heed the calls for the funds to pay for the results of our occupations of choice. And as always by not heeding those calls for sacrifice it ends up causing more suffering by those who’ve suffered enough for country and much much more in the costs of the results of their service!

Ilona Meager met many of us, especially us veterans, through using this technology, especially in research and posting on interactive community boards, and her awaking interest in a subject she had never thought much about until reading reports about suicides by returned veterans of the Afghan and Iraq occupations well into the start of both conflicts. Her interest caused her to start researching the why these were happening, joining her were other online researchers, many like her who might have heard about but never really thought about an extremely important issue, we veteran advocates have been fighting to get much more recognition for from the masses since especially our occupation Vietnam. That issue is Combat PTSD.