Sarah Palin’s son, and the link between combat duty and veteran violence

Sarah Palin connects son Track’s arrest to Obama’s record on veterans issues

TULSA — Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin on Wednesday addressed her son's recent arrest — which she called “the elephant in the room” — while stumping here for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and accused President Obama of neglecting veterans and tied that to her son’s recent domestic violence charges. “When my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate to the families who…feel these ramifications of PTSD,” she told the rowdy crowd of around 8,000 people. “And it makes me realize more than ever it is now or never for the sake of America’s finest that we have a commander-in-chief who will respect them.” Sarah Palin's oldest son and a former member of the military, Track Palin, was arrested and charged with assault, interfering with a domestic violence report and misconduct involving weapons in Wasilla, Alaska. The news broke as Palin announced her high-profile endorsement of Trump in Iowa. Police responded Monday to a phone call at Sarah Palin's Wasilla home, where Track Palin lives, after his girlfriend called 911 to report that Track Palin had punched her in the face. He was also, according to his girlfriend, carrying an AR-15 rifle which she feared he would use to harm himself; Track Palin allegedly began yelling, “Do you think I won’t do it?” _[Sarah Palin’s son Track arrested at her home, girlfriend ‘concerned’ he ‘would shoot himself’]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Alluding to her son’s legal troubles, Palin said she was speaking “personally” when she described soldiers “who come home from the battlefield bringing new battles with them…coming back different than when they left for the war zone.” “I guess it’s kind of the elephant in the room, because my own family going through what we’re going through today with my son, a combat vet…like so many others, they come back a bit different, they come back hardened,” Palin said in Tulsa. “They come back wondering if there is that respect for what their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military so sacrificially have given to the country." _[Sarah Palin endorses Donald Trump’s presidential bid]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Palin said the United States should elect a president who will respect the military. “It’s a shame that our military personnel even have to wonder if they have to question if they're respected anymore. It starts from the top," said Palin. "The question, though, it comes from our own president where they have to look at him and wonder, ‘Do you know what we go through? Do you know what we’re trying to do to secure America and to secure the freedoms that have been bequeathed us?’” _[Sarah Palin is a no-show at Trump campaign event in Iowa]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Palin did not appear as scheduled at a campaign stop with Trump Wednesday morning in Iowa before they both flew to Tulsa. _Justin Wm. Moyer contributed to this report from Washington._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Sarah Palin focuses on veterans’ issues at CPAC

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin mostly avoided political theatrics at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, delivering a speech focused primarily on advocating for veterans' issues. “America hands over her sons and her daughters in service with the promise that they’re going to be taken care of. Our troops are promised…that a grateful nation will spare no expense to patch them up and bring them back to health when wounded,” Palin told the crowded ballroom. “And now they come home wounded. Too many broken in body and spirit. Well we, their mothers and their fathers and their husbands and their wives, we’re here to collect on the promises made.” Palin, whose son served in the military, bemoaned government bureaucracy and the roadblocks veterans face when accessing healthcare. “The reason that you don’t hear about them is because our vets don’t whine. They’re not wired to complain,” she told the audience. The former governor said the government should give veterans access to healthcare vouchers so they seek healthcare without going through Veteran Affairs clinics. She also suggested that vets with job-related skills should be able to test out of certification programs and that their benefits should be safeguarded. Palin's biggest applause line came when she hit the Obama administration on its approach to combating the Islamic State. "We can't kill our way out of war? Oh really? Tell that to the Nazis! Oh wait, you can't. They're dead. We killed them," she said.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Book review: ‘The Invisible Front,’ on love and loss in war, by Yochi Dreazen

By Yochi Dreazen Crown. 306 pp. $26 Mark and Carol Graham, an Army couple with two sons and a daughter, lost both sons within a year. Their younger son, Kevin, an ROTC cadet, committed suicide, driven by depression, which may have been the first sign that he was afflicted with familial bipolar affective disorder. Then an IED in Iraq’s Anbar province killed their older son, Jeff, an Army tank lieutenant. That is a cold recitation of the tragedy that befell a warm-hearted Army family. In “The Invisible Front,” Yochi Dreazen recounts the family’s story with great humanity. The Grahams’ compassion and wisdom as they turned their sorrow into a mission of suicide prevention moved me to tears. Dreazen, who writes wonderfully, is no innocent when it comes to the U.S. armed services. He is the managing editor of Foreign Policy and has put in years of war reporting for the Wall Street Journal and National Journal, including multiple embeds in the dust and danger of Iraq and Afghanistan. Through articles and now his book, he devotes himself to the mental health issues confronted by our service members and veterans. In telling the Grahams’ story, Dreazen explores the stigma that attaches to military personnel suffering from mental illness. In Kevin Graham’s case, the young cadet had received treatment for his depression without telling the ROTC or his parents. As the time of his commissioning approached, he stopped taking his antidepressant, fearing that its discovery would abort his Army career. Without treatment, Kevin was again overcome by depression, and his suicide was the result. As a specialist in the psychological injuries of military veterans, I see spotty progress in combating stigma: For junior enlisted service members with no aspirations for a further military career, help for combat trauma is now more available from direct leaders, chaplains and mental health providers. This slight improvement comes off a very low baseline. The help is not necessarily effective or reliable, but it’s better than it was . Still, many in the military believe that seeking help for mental health issues will be career-ending, and they will not ask for it. Stigma has its own social ecology. Mark Graham, a retired major general, and his wife, Carol, have campaigned to lift the stigma attached to psychiatric diagnoses, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder. For example, as base commander at Fort Carson, Gen. Graham instituted and — more important — visibly, practically and personally supported an effective suicide hotline on base. But such efforts still have a long way to go. As Dreazen shockingly documents, those who show evidence of PTSD can be subject to open mockery from sergeants who force them, for example, to spend hours in a “dunce’s corner.” Lower-ranking soldiers cast the sufferer out, calling him a “s---bag” to his face, until finally he feels invisible. Unit culture usually arises from the influence of troop leaders, not a base commander such as Graham. Along with Gen. Peter Chiarelli and others, I have begged the American Psychiatric Association to change the name of the condition from PTS disorder to PTS injury. There is nothing dishonorable in being injured in the service of one’s country, and changing the name would somewhat reduce the stigma. PTSD does not reflect inherent flaws in a soldier; it results from traumatic experience. As Dreazen shows, the Grahams are helping convince America that psychological injuries from war are honorable war wounds as surely as amputations, gunshots and burns. But changing perceptions will require reversing a culturally inbred notion that underlies the stigma. Many Americans believe that if you emerge from childhood with good genes and good upbringing, then you cannot be harmed behind this bulwark of good character, reason and mental balance. This notion goes back to Plato and runs through the stoics, Kant and Freud. The problem with this idea, despite its brilliant pedigree, is that it’s false. Even the strongest, noblest characters will break under bad enough circumstances — especially when those circumstances are long-standing. **Jonathan Shay** , a former Veterans Affairs psychiatrist , is the author of “Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character” and “Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.”

Veterans accuse Sarah Palin of dangerous stereotyping in comments about son’s PTSD

During a tour in Iraq, U.S. Army officer Ryan Kranc was traveling on a convoy with his commander when they drove over a roadside bomb. His commander died, and Kranc survived. That was 2003. For many years after, Kranc bore the guilt of the incident — until 2009, when he was deployed in Saudi Arabia and decided to get help. “I came to the realization that I could no longer mask this,” Kranc said in a phone interview early Friday with The Post. “I would pour my heart and soul into my professional life, but I would be a zombie at home.” Kranc was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder — or what he prefers to simply call “post-traumatic stress” — and started seeing a doctor, traveled through Germany, witnessed a leg of the Tour de France. “It was a personal retreat,” Kranc said. “It took me a long time to realize that I wasn’t responsible.” Now, the officer, who is currently still serving, shares his story with others in the hopes of destigmatizing PTSD and challenging the idea that war leaves psychological wounds from which it is impossible to recover. Though the process has been far from perfect, Kranc said, he continues to lead a productive life, and is frustrated by the common perception that veterans can’t move forward from their psychological traumas.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This was the message Kranc was trying to get across on Twitter earlier this week, when he responded to Nate Bethea, another veteran, with a string of tweets about how he was affected by PTSD. Unknowingly, he was joining a discussion within the online American veteran community that has been sparked by comments from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The one-time Republican vice presidential candidate bolted back into the spotlight with her endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Tuesday, but a side story that didn’t go unnoticed was her son’s arrest at her home the day before she threw her support behind the billionaire real estate developer.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[Sarah Palin’s son Track arrested at her home, girlfriend ‘concerned’ he ‘would shoot himself’]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico According to a police affidavit, Palin’s 26-year-old son and Iraq combat war veteran Track Palin was arrested on domestic violence charges after his girlfriend, Jordan Loewe, called 911 saying that he was armed and had punched her in the face.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Palin approached Loewe and struck her on the left side of her head near her eye with a closed fist,” the affidavit says. “Loewe got on the ground in a fetal position because she didn’t know what else he would do. Palin then kicked Loewe on the right knee.” Sarah Palin addressed the incident while stumping for Trump in Tulsa Tuesday. “When my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate to the families who…feel these ramifications of PTSD,” she said before an 8,000-strong crowd, The Washington Post’s Jose DelReal reported. “I guess it’s kind of the elephant in the room, because my own family going through what we’re going through today with my son, a combat vet…like so many others, they come back a bit different, they come back hardened.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In the same speech, Palin accused President Barack Obama of neglecting veterans, adding, “it is now or never for the sake of America’s finest that we have a commander-in-chief who will respect them.” The statements angered many veterans, who took to social media to condemn Palin for simplifying their experiences and perpetuating the stereotype of the destructive veteran. _[Sarah Palin connects son Track’s arrest to Obama’s record on veterans issues]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Others criticized Palin for placing the blame on Obama. “It’s not President Obama’s fault that Sarah Palin’s son has PTSD,” Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), told NBC. “PTSD is a very serious problem, a complicated mental health injury and I would be extremely reluctant to blame any one person in particular.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico He added: “I hope this doesn’t become a political chew toy in a political campaign.” According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, between 11 to 20 percent of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD in a given year. “Most of the people that I know who I have served with have gone through this,” Kranc said.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Like Kranc, Bethea shared the personal story of how he got better. “Hearing about Track Palin’s issues makes me think he needs serious counseling. But, that need doesn’t forgive his act of domestic violence,” Bethea tweeted. “Underneath [Palin’s] nonsense lies a very dangerous allegation — that all veterans are ticking time bombs, ready to brandish weapons.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In contrast, Bethea said, his PTSD manifested in sleeping problems and introversion. He didn’t want to leave his apartment, and when he was outdoors, he felt like he was “sweating between [his] organs.” Even so, he said, “At no point did I lash out at anyone, because that would have made me feel worse. It would have confirmed my suspicions of being defective.” **More from Morning Mix**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Georgia police officer indicted for murder in shooting of unarmed, naked black veteran    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Snow is beautiful. Please don’t eat it.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The unbelievable story of why Woody Guthrie hated Donald Trump’s dad    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Bristol Palin gets engaged — again

Really, you can’t get more romantic than Rascal Flatts. Just ask 24-year-old Bristol Palin, the eldest daughter of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who on Friday got engaged during a country music concert in Sin City. All together now, _awwww_.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Palin’s new fiance is 26-year-old Dakota Meyer, a former U.S. Marine and an Afghanistan war vet who received the U.S. Medal of Honor in 2011. The couple met in 2014, according to Bristol’s blog, when Meyer flew to Alaska to film an episode of Sarah Palin’s “Amazing America,” giving hope to single women everywhere whose moms host shows on the Sportsman Channel.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico After asking dad Todd (and grandpa Chuck Sr.) for Bristol’s hand in marriage, Dakota popped the question at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino as Rascal Flatts sang “Bless the Broken Road.” Meyer alluded to a seemingly quick romance, writing on his Facebook page that “Marines aren’t trained to stand around and let the grass grow under their feet.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Bristol is mom to 6-year-old Tripp, her son with former fiance and fellow Alaskan Levi Johnston. Johnston, 24, has two daughters with wife Sunny, whom he married in 2012. In 2013, Johnston, who’s had a contentious relationship with the Palin clan since his relationship with Bristol ended in 2010, filed for equal custody of Tripp. At the time, Palin called Johnston a “deadbeat dad.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Of her daughter’s future husband, Palin wrote in a Facebook post, “We’re honored to welcome Dakota into our family. He’s an American hero and patriot whose service to our country — like all his fellow Medal of Honor recipients — has been above and beyond the call of duty; but even more important is he’s a good and kind man who loves Bristol and Tripp, and is loved by them.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

People are criticizing my dad, Jim Webb, for killing a man. Here’s what they’re missing.

If you watched the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night, you probably heard the closing comment by my father, Jim Webb. Without hesitation he answered that the enemy he was ‘most proud of’ was the Vietnamese soldier who wounded him with a hand grenade. He then added that “…he isn’t around anymore.” While there were those in the media and around the country who were a bit stunned, and perhaps even put off by this answer, my fellow veterans and I were not. If anything, his blunt (and perhaps a bit brutal) honesty was much appreciated, and further endeared him to us as a candidate. We veterans are also more likely to have a fuller picture of my father’s record.  He’s the man who gave us the post-9/11 GI Bill. We also know him as a highly decorated combat veteran who earned the Navy Cross for the entire episode surrounding that grenade, not just the snippet that has been focused on. As a Marine infantryman myself, I have experienced the complex emotions of combat. On the one hand, you may not even see the face of an individual who fires a round so close to your head that your ears ring, or blows up the improvised explosive device next to your vehicle that potentially kills or maims your friends. On the other, there’s an intensely personal reaction. After all, this isn’t a person who is besting you in a debate about gun control, or some other social policy, over a beer.  This is a person whose intent is to end your life, and that is as clear cut an enemy as you can think of.  Additionally, many, if not most, of the veterans I have talked to have read the Navy Cross citation that chronicles the incident surrounding my father. For those unfamiliar, it states: We who know the complexities of combat understand the character displayed in the above sentence.  When put into the proper context, it is clearly far more than the sound bite being dissected by political pundits. In fact, seeing the reaction to my father’s story in recent days has highlighted for me the almost stunning level of ignorance that the general public has about war. CNN introduced him as a “war hero,” and yet people were surprised and even uncomfortable when they were given a glimpse of what that might have entailed. Yes, the man who threw the grenade isn’t around anymore, but more importantly the man who my father shielded with his own body lived to see another day. As a Marine and as a leader, that is the important part. To me and many other veterans, we have a sea of presidential candidates who seemingly have only personal interests in mind.  Yet here is a leader who has not only endured war, but demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice his life for his people. Is that really something to be sneered at? This country has been at war for almost 15 years, and as I think about the ridicule leveled at my father in the past 24 hours, I can’t help but imagine what these same people must think about the service of my own generation. In their eyes, did we simply spend some kind of twisted ‘semester abroad’ in a place with plenty of sand, but no ocean? Or conversely, do they ignorantly dismiss our experiences, as they have my father, as those of cold callous killers? _Jim Webb served as a Marine infantryman from 2005-2010. He currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

America’s wars, military feature prominently at Democratic convention

CHARLOTTE — Elaine Brye is a military mom. Four of her five children are serving in the U.S. armed forces. Her father was a veteran of three wars, her husband an Air Force pilot who served in Vietnam. The couple moved to Kabul the year before President Obama’s election to help an Afghan airline improve its business. In other words, Elaine Brye is the kind of speaker who used to be featured at Republican conventions. Her role here Tuesday night — introducing Michelle Obama, whose husband Brye supports — offered a stark illustration of the new place America’s wars occupy in the tight presidential race and the important role those who have been touched by the wars are playing in the campaign. After decades of defining Republican presidential candidates and their nominating conventions, the nation’s wars were virtually invisible at last week’s GOP gathering in Tampa. Republican nominee Mitt Romney did not even mention the Afghanistan war in his acceptance speech, an omission that drew criticism from within his own party. It is the traditionally antiwar Democrats who this year will be featuring the Afghanistan mission, the now-concluded war in Iraq, and the men and women who have fought in them. In addition to the president and the first lady, Vice President Biden and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) are expected to mention the Afghanistan war in speeches with a focus on foreign policy. The Democrats’ approach is not free of risk, given that a large majority of Americans do not think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting. And initial support for Obama’s 2009 troop surge in Afghanistan faded within a year, according to Washington Post polling. Romney also maintains an advantage among veterans — the Republican leads Obama by 52 percent to 41 percent in households containing a veteran registered to vote, according to a Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll published last month. Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it is difficult to talk about the war given its unpopularity, impending defense cuts by Congress and several recent pessimistic assessments of the war’s course. “It certainly isn’t the good war anymore,” Cordesman said. “It certainly isn’t one you are going to want to spend more money and people on. So how do you discuss it?” Obama and his party will emphasize during the convention his plan to end the war, rather than his decision early on in his term to escalate troop levels. He will celebrate his order to send in a Navy SEAL team to Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden — a success that his surrogates, led by Biden, have talked about on the campaign trail for some time. And Obama will take credit for ending the Iraq war. His opposition to that conflict helped define his candidacy four years ago. Speakers this week will also talk about the health and well-being of the men and women who have fought in the nation’s recent wars. At the Republican National Convention last week, these issues were largely ignored. Not only did Romney avoid talking about Afghanistan, but veterans issues, including their health and employment prospects, were hardly mentioned during the three-day event. The staggering economy was the convention’s primary topic. The absence of a strong military focus at the Tampa gathering was a noticeable departure from the Republicans’ two previous conventions. The 2004 GOP convention was held in New York City days before the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes, and George W. Bush used the setting to highlight his response to the attacks. One speaker after another questioned whether Kerry, the Democratic nominee and a decorated Vietnam veteran, could keep the country safe. Four years ago, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) emphasized his national security credentials and history as a Vietnam veteran who, after being shot down over North Vietnam, spent years in a Hanoi prison camp. McCain’s record stood in contrast to that of Obama, who has never served in the military. But neither has Romney. That, in part, undermines his ability to make a case for his somewhat vaguely defined national security policy against a president who scores high in most polls for his handling of foreign affairs, if not the Afghanistan war itself. Obama has outlined a plan to pull U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, leaving behind units to carry out counterterrorism operations and train Afghan national forces. “The president’s plan is about where the country is on the war — a gradual withdrawal — and the fact we have drones and developed other ways of battling terrorism makes a difference,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in an interview Tuesday. Speaking to troops at Fort Bliss, Tex., last week, Obama said he would protect the military budget from unnecessary cuts and pledged to strengthen mental health services for service members, in the hopes of reducing the high suicide rates among those returning from war to a difficult job market. “I know that you join me in saying to everyone who’s ever worn the uniform: If you’re hurting, it’s not a sign of weakness to seek help; it’s a sign of strength,” Obama said. On Tuesday, as the first lady headed for Charlotte, Obama spoke at Norfolk State University. There he was introduced by a Vietnam veteran, who told the audience that the president stood up for military families “not because it’s popular but because it’s the right thing to do.” To a prime-time television audience, Michelle Obama began Tuesday to send that message nationally. Peyton Craighill, Scott Clement in Washington and Amy Gardner in Charlotte contributed to this report.

There’s a divide between civilians and soldiers, partly because of Hollywood

In the Hollywood take on war, there are basically two types of military veterans — let’s call them “Mark Wahlbergs” and “Bradley Coopers.” The former are superheroic killing machines, like the Navy SEAL played by Wahlberg in last year’s action hit “Lone Survivor.” The latter are fragile ticking time bombs, like the PTSD-afflicted Navy SEAL personified by Cooper in the Oscar-nominated “American Sniper.” A range of veterans advocates are pushing to diversify that picture. Why not, they say, have more Ed O’Neill types? Fans of “Modern Family” would be forgiven for not thinking of the TV sitcom star’s character, Jay Pritchett, as a military guy. He’s a doughy, sarcastic businessman, neither muscle-bound nor scarred. Every so often he just happens to mention that he used to be in the Navy. It’s a subtle and matter-of-fact portrayal, say advocates — and it’s all too rare in popular culture’s treatment of the military. “My stepbrother is in the military, and he always wishes that the movies would be a better advocate for the American soldier,” actor Ethan Hawke said during an interview to promote “Good Kill,” a new drama about drone warfare. “Hollywood has a bad habit of either being so nationalistic and flag-waving that it kind of dehumanizes everybody and makes it a recruitment tool, or being so left-wing with conspiracy theories that project all of this negativity. Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle.” The GI Film Festival opens in Washington this week in its ninth year as a corrective to the one-   dimensional portrayals that many observers fear have influenced how the public sees the military. The festival runs Monday through Sunday and features 60 movies, including shorts, documentaries, comedies and dramas. All are either made by veterans or feature military characters. At a time when only 0.5 percent of the population is on active duty, many in the military community argue that even the cinema offerings that attempt to give a sympathetic portrayal of soldiers and veterans — such as the acclaimed “American Sniper” — end up breeding harmful stereotypes. Recent films have also portrayed vets as murderers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“In the Valley of Elah,” “Redacted”); as deserters suffering from PTSD (“Stop-Loss”); and as mavericks so addicted to combat that they can’t reintegrate into American society (“The Hurt Locker”). “People believe what they see in the movies,” said Laura Law-Millett, a veteran who founded the GI Film Festival with her civilian husband, Brandon Millett. “If someone had seen some of these films who had never met anyone in the military, prior to about 2007, they would say, ‘Oh, so everyone who joins the Army becomes a drug dealer or a rapist or a murderer?’” Entertainment has a way of shaping public opinion. “Jaws” left beachgoers nervous about swimming for years, even though sharks kill fewer people than vending machines. Repeated portrayals of Mafia culture have left the Italian American community saddled with unwanted baggage. But can pop culture be used to fight the stereotypes it created? Chris Marvin hopes so. The managing director of the veteran advocacy group Got Your 6 (military-speak for “got your back”) is a retired Army officer and helicopter pilot who was wounded in Afghanistan. He says he saw the misconceptions firsthand when he returned from combat. “I’ve always been of the opinion that people thought we were [either] broken, heroes or both,” he said. “Now we have data on it.” A recent study by Got Your 6, he said, found that “people are extremely more likely to see a homeless person and think he’s a veteran, even when it’s not true.” According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, about 11 percent of the homeless population are vets. Hollywood isn’t entirely to blame. The news media is also more likely to gravitate to stories about horrific atrocities or dramatic triumphs over adversity than humdrum tales of a soldier returning home, getting a job and starting a family — even if that’s the reality of what most end up doing. “It’s the old ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ thing,” said Dale Dye, a retired Marine captain who did multiple tours in Vietnam. He went on to be a technical adviser on “Platoon” and have a successful career in Hollywood. “We look for this, and we develop these false ideas. And I guess it’s a hangover from the Vietnam days: Everybody who ever wore a uniform and went to war must be damaged goods.” Dye is a vocal supporter of the GI Film Festival, or GIFF15, whose films will be shown mostly at the Angelika Film Center in Fairfax. Got Your 6 recently started a certification program for movies and television shows. Filmmakers or TV showrunners can apply to have a panel review a military-themed project; if it’s deemed “reasonable and accurate,” it gets a seal of approval. Marvin appreciates the way a big movie can get people talking, but he sees a greater opportunity in the less overt instances of militarism in pop culture, especially the example of O’Neill’s character on “Modern Family.” “He’s just a guy who used to be in the Navy, which is a really important portrayal for what we’re trying to do,” Marvin said. “If we had hundreds of those throughout television, our society would have a much more normalized view of who veterans are.” The 2015 Veteran Economic Opportunity Report, sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs, found that the median income of post-9/11 veterans is 11 percent higher than non-veterans in a similar demographic. And the unemployment rate among veterans is lower than non-veterans. The 2015 Veterans Civic Health Index indicates that onetime service members tend to vote, volunteer and connect with neighbors more frequently than their civilian counterparts. And then there’s the psychological effects. Between 11 and 20 percent of soldiers returning from combat experience post-traumatic stress — which may sound like a lot, but it’s hardly a majority. And not enough to justify the impulse of so many civilians to ask veterans about their mental health. Kevin Lacz was a Navy SEAL stationed overseas alongside Chris Kyle, the real-life subject of “American Sniper.” Lacz worked on the film as a technical adviser, and the drama’s star, Cooper, convinced director Clint Eastwood to hire the veteran to play himself in the movie. “People always ask, ‘Do you have issues reintegrating?’ ” Lacz said. “And I don’t. I didn’t. I like to articulate the experiences I’ve been through, and that helps me tell that story and educate people.” “American Sniper” was a massive box office hit and a rare blockbuster about war in the Middle East. (“Lone Survivor” was another.) Marvin hailed “Sniper’s” success because of the way it plumbed the issues facing returning veterans. Dye said he appreciated the nuanced human story it told: Here was a husband and a father, as well as a vet, and he was a complicated man. And yet, even that more complex portrayal of a soldier might have given some false impressions. “I think people watch ‘Sniper’ and they get focused on the PTSD element or the hint of PTSD, and I think they overstretch it,” Lacz said. “PTSD is something good to talk about, but I think [the movie] overstated it with Chris, personally.” Browsing the submissions of this year’s GI Film Festival, there’s some indication Hollywood may be getting the message. Every year, certain themes emerge. For a while, about 80 percent of the festival’s entries dealt in some way with post-   traumatic stress disorder, according to Millett. This year, the dominant theme is relationships. It’s all about soldiers returning from combat and reintegrating into society.

‘American Sniper’ decried as propaganda by some, praised as veterans’ paean by others

The makers of “American Sniper” said they wanted the movie to be a thoughtful character study of the most lethal military sniper in U.S. history. But the movie — which shattered January box-office records over the holiday weekend with $105 million in sales — has also inflamed the debate over America’s controversial wars, with one side decrying it as jingoistic propaganda and another defending it just as fiercely as a paean to the country’s underappreciated veterans. In West Los Angeles, a billboard for the film was vandalized over the weekend with the word “Murder!” written in red spray paint. The director Michael Moore and the actor Seth Rogen took to social media to air their thoughts, although they both later backtracked. Moore appeared to slam the glorification of sniper Chris Kyle in the film, writing on Twitter: “My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes.” Rogen compared the movie with a Nazi propaganda movie that appears at the end of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.” The backlash — from politicians, veterans and other celebrities — was swift. “They aren’t attacking a conservative right of America. They are going after the fabric of America at a time when it is celebrating a hero and when the country needs a hero,” author and former Navy SEAL sniper instructor Brandon Webb said in an interview. Country singer and veteran Craig Morgan wrote to Rogen on Facebook: “I’m sick and tired of people like you running your mouth when you have no idea what it takes for this country to maintain our freedoms. If you and anyone like you don’t like it, leave.” Sarah Palin wrote on Facebook: “God bless our troops, especially our snipers.” The exchanges became the latest flash point to emerge from the country’s divergent assessments of its 13-year military engagement overseas. The movie stirred up a host of questions surrounding the way we treat veterans, whether the wars were worth the immense sacrifice, and how to judge actions taken by soldiers in the heat of battle. The debate also hints at another gulf in U.S. politics: the plummeting number of Americans who serve in the armed services. Military analysts said that has given rise to a widening cultural divide between civilians and combat veterans. Today, about 0.5 percent of Americans serve in the military, a smaller share than at any other time since World War II. But the movie’s popularity transcended those differences, said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., which released the movie. “Red state, blue state, small town or big city, across the board, the film broke records everywhere and resonated with all audiences,” Fellman said. “Every once in a while, a movie comes along that reaches the core of moviegoers, that resonates emotionally to all audiences.” The controversy surrounding “American Sniper” wasn’t the key to the film’s initial success, but the heated conversation has created a powerful swirl of interest. “The movie has become more a film that people want to see because they want to be part of the national conversation around it,” said Phil Contrino, a movie analyst at BoxOffice.com. Twitter said discussion around the film was more than double the volume of the average for films. The hashtag “#liberalwarmovies” was one of the top trending topics Tuesday, with conservatives mocking left-leaning critics of the movie for being out of touch with and insensitive to the sacrifices of the military. Facebook data showed the film sparked the most active conversations in traditional red states such as West Virginia, Wyoming, Kentucky and Oklahoma. “American Sniper,” directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper, is based on the memoir of Navy SEAL Kyle, who wrote about his four tours in Iraq between 2003 and 2009. Kyle was no ordinary soldier. Before he was shot to death at a Texas gun range in 2013, Kyle claimed he killed at least 150 people while working as a sniper in Iraq. He oozed conviction and charisma. He wore big boots. He spoke with a languid Texas drawl. He wrote a best-selling memoir. He made millions. And then there were the tales Kyle told about himself, which came under increasing suspicion after numerous journalists tried — and failed — to corroborate them. Among them: Kyle once said he fatally shot two armed Texas thugs who wanted to steal his truck. He said he traveled to New Orleans and killed 30 bad guys in the chaos following Hurricane Katrina. And he also falsely claimed he punched out former Minnesota governor Jesse “the Body” Ventura after Ventura, a former member of a Navy Underwater Demolition Team, disparaged the Navy SEALs. “There were a lot of things he told people that are really unverifiable,” journalist Michael J. Mooney, who wrote a book on Kyle, told The Washington Post in July. A war movie for a nation weary from years of conflict, “American Sniper” wasn’t supposed to be a massive hit. It was expected to generate $60 million in revenue in its first weekend of wide release. But a combination of Warner Bros.’ shrewd marketing campaign, the impeccable timing of the release just days after it received several Oscar nominations and a torrent of social-media recommendations gave it a bigger opening than “The Hobbit” or “Avatar,” movies with much bigger budgets. Many critics have hailed the film for its rich and humanizing portrayal of a man at war. The movie was nominated for six Oscars, including best film and best leading actor. Since their initial remarks, Moore and Rogen have said their comments were taken out of context. Moore said he wasn’t directly referring to the film in his comments about snipers. Rogen said he actually liked the film and wrote a new tweet Monday saying he wasn’t directly comparing “American Sniper” with the propaganda movie in “Inglourious Basterds.” “Big difference between comparing and reminding,” he wrote. “Apples remind me of oranges. Can’t compare them, though.” Actor Cooper has also tried to calm the debate, saying the film wasn’t intended to be political but a human story about a soldier’s life and internal struggles. “It’s a movie about a man — a character study. We hope that you can have your eyes opened to the struggle of the soldier rather than the specifics of the war,” Cooper said at a news conference last week in New York. From the beginning, Warner Bros. has tried to emphasize the human story of Kyle. Warner Bros. began its marketing blitz in October with the release of a trailer that immediately sparked huge interest online. In it, scenes of Kyle’s family life in the United States are juxtaposed with scenes at war, where the sniper is confronted with difficult decisions to kill targets — even children — for the safety of his troops. The trailer is artful, suspenseful and a clear dive into the psychology and struggles of soldiers at war. The trailer and subsequent clips of the movie were slowly released on social media. On YouTube, the trailers were seen more than 10 million times combined. After the film was released, Kyle’s widow, Taya, wrote a guest post on the Facebook page for “American Sniper” that was liked more than 39,000 times. “I also just want to cry and cry and honestly have today. Thank you for being willing to watch the hard stuff and thank you for hearing, seeing, experiencing the life of our military and first responders,” she wrote. Wonkblog: How ‘American Sniper’ compares to the biggest war movies of all time

Dana Milbank: Rand Paul is more like father after all

After former Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle was killed Saturday at a Texas shooting range, former congressman Ron Paul tweeted a shockingly cold sentiment. “Chris Kyle’s death seems to confirm that ‘he who lives by the sword dies by the sword,’ ” wrote Paul, who as a presidential candidate opposed military action. The message quickly drew a dissenting view from Capitol Hill, where one senator issued a statement calling Kyle “a hero like all Americans who don the uniform to defend our country. Our prayers are with his family during this tragic time.” That senator was Paul’s son, Rand Paul. That divergence between father and son underscored the younger Paul’s mission as the Kentucky Republican builds his power in Washington in preparation for the 2016 presidential run he has been talking up: He must detach himself from his father’s most extreme views without disowning his father’s considerable following among tea party activists and libertarians. This is no easy task, for one simple reason: Rand Paul’s views are often indistinguishable from his father’s. The similarity was plain to see when the younger Paul appeared at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday morning to give a speech outlining his foreign policy. “I am a realist,” he proclaimed, “not a neoconservative, nor an isolationist.” He described himself as being between the two extremes of intervening “everywhere all the time” and being “nowhere any of the time.” He informed the Heritage scholars that “Reagan’s foreign policy was much closer to what I am advocating than what we have today.” Oh? The same Reagan who intervened in Beirut, invaded Grenada and bombed Tripoli? In fact, the only military intervention Paul explicitly supported in his speech was attacking al-Qaeda in Afghanistan — a conflict even his father voted to authorize. Later, in a conference call with reporters, I asked Paul whether there was any other military intervention in the past 30 or 40 years he would have supported. That left a wide range of possibilities — Vietnam, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq, Libya — but he declined to name one. The apple, it would appear, doesn’t fall far from the tree. Paul’s libertarianism, like his dad’s, is well established. He caused a stir during his 2010 campaign by raising doubts about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and he opposes foreign aid — reiterating on a recent trip to Israel his wish to cut funding for that country. But Paul has national ambitions. Although the presidency hardly seems plausible, he has shown more interest in being a Washington player than his father did, and he has been making more overtures to the Republican establishment. During Wednesday’s conference call, he said in response to a question from the Louisville Courier-Journal’s Jim Carroll that the purpose of the speech was “separating myself.” He didn’t say from whom he was separating himself, but in a later question from The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, he said “there are definite differences” between the two Pauls, and “I think it’s better just to try to be my own person.” In his speech, Paul presented himself as a modern-day George Kennan, the father of Cold War containment. “What the United States needs is a foreign policy that finds that middle path,” he argued, reading from a teleprompter. “A policy that is not rash or reckless. A foreign policy that is reluctant, restrained by constitutional checks and balances but does not appease.” But in the details of his speech, Paul didn’t say much about where his foreign policy would allow for intervention. He was skeptical of involvement in Iran and Syria, mentioned concerns about Iraq and urged less military support for Egypt. Paul hurried through his speech in 20 minutes and then bolted from the lectern before questions could be asked. Such sessions at Heritage generally last an hour, including questions. In his call with reporters later, he returned to a tone that sounded more isolationist — or, as modern isolationists call themselves, non-interventionists. “We supported a concept of radical jihad against the Soviets, and it came back to bite us,” he said. “Some people argue keeping the shah in power ultimately came back to bite us.” Calling for the United States to “be more hesitant,” he argued that in Syria “we shouldn’t be arming one side or the other.” Paul acknowledged that 70 percent to 80 percent of his colleagues reject his views. “The elected officials up here haven’t caught up with where the public is,” he said. If this makes Rand Paul a foreign policy realist, so’s his old man. _Read more fromDana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more on this issue:** Jennifer Rubin: Rand Paul’s confused foreign policy Nick Gillespie: Five myths about Ron Paul Jennifer Rubin: An interview with Rand Paul

Sen. John McCain learned defiance during his brutal captivity as a POW

The 80-year-old Arizona Republican never wavers. McCain’s courage and defiance are rooted in his years as a Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam, where he faced down death repeatedly. Fifty years ago, on July 29, 1967, he was sitting in his jet on the deck of the USS Forrestal, an aircraft carrier, when a rocket from another aircraft accidentally fired, struck a nearby plane and ignited a fire that threatened to engulf McCain’s. He scrambled out of the cockpit to safety, seconds before the fire set off bombs that had fallen off another plane. A chain reaction of explosions ensued. McCain saw a fellow pilot whose clothes were on fire. “I ran toward him,” he told the New York Times the next day. “He was 50 feet in front of me. I got closer and then the first bomb exploded. I was knocked back about 10 feet. I never saw him again.” Three months later, on Oct. 26, 1967, McCain was flying a mission over Hanoi when an antiaircraft missile blew the right wing off his jet and he had to eject. Both arms and a leg were broken. He landed in a lake and was beaten and bayoneted by those who captured him. He was taken to the notorious Hanoi Hilton prison, where he was further brutalized, repeatedly tortured and kept in solitary confinement for two years. The ordeal would break his body and mind, drive him to attempt suicide and make him a national hero. McCain’s capture generated news across the United States. His picture ran on the front page of The Washington Post with the headline “Held in Hanoi.” He was filmed in an enemy hospital, and a copy of the footage was shown to his anguished parents. His father, McCain said in a 2007 interview with The Post, “got down every night and prayed.” A few months into McCain’s imprisonment, his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., was named the Pentagon’s commander in chief for the Pacific, a job that essentially put him in charge of prosecuting the Vietnam War. His father insisted that his change-of-command ceremony be held aboard the USS Oriskany, the carrier from which his son had flown. Throughout McCain’s imprisonment, his father never wrote him a letter, knowing that the enemy would use it for propaganda. But every Christmas, the elder McCain would fly to Vietnam and visit Marines near the demilitarized zone that then separated North and South Vietnam. At some point, the admiral would walk off by himself and look out to the north over the frontier, as if searching for his son. Early in McCain’s captivity, the North Vietnamese, well aware of who their prisoner was, offered to release him. He refused, sensing it would shame his father and demoralize his comrades. In 1972, the admiral was called on to implement B-52 bombing raids on Hanoi, where he knew his son was being held. “B-52s in those days were not exactly totally precision bombing,” McCain said. “There was never a doubt in his mind what he would do. But still, you know your kid’s there, and you’re ordering the bombing of the area.” McCain and his fellow POWs rejoiced at the bombings. “Thank you!” the Americans shouted as the ground shook and their guards scrambled for cover. By then, their ordeal was almost over. Peace accords ending the war were signed in January 1973, and McCain was released in March. His father, who had already retired and was in failing health, was invited to the welcome-home ceremony in the Philippines. He asked whether the parents of other POWs were invited. Told they were not, he declined. Father and son were reunited a few weeks later in Jacksonville, Fla. “It was a very touching reunion,” McCain said, between the war-weary, old-school admiral and the son he might have killed. On May 26, 1993, McCain spoke to the Naval Academy’s graduating class. He had just been elected to a second term in the Senate. Friends from around the country had come to hear his speech at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis. It was a warm, breezy day and a triumphant moment. “For much of my life,” McCain told the crowd, “the Navy was the only world I knew. It is still the world I know best and love most. “Here we learned to dread dishonor above all other temptations,” he said. He reviewed the achievements of past Navy heroes — pilots and gunners and submariners — and then spoke of his own ordeal. “I have watched men suffer the anguish of imprisonment, defy appalling human cruelty . . . break for a moment, then recover inhuman strength to defy their enemies once more. All these things and more, I have seen,” he said. “And so will you. My time is slipping by. Yours is fast approaching. You will know where your duty lies. You will know.”

How much would Jim Webb’s military background help in a White House run?

Jim Webb, a former U.S. senator, past Navy secretary and Marine war hero, is exploring a run for the White House. The Virginia Democrat made that clear in a YouTube video released Wednesday night, highlighting his past service to the nation and saying that “there is no substitute for clear-eyed leadership.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Among veterans and service members, Webb’s potential candidacy is sure to draw attention. A two-time Purple Heart recipient, he is widely respected for his valor in Vietnam, for which he earned a Navy Cross and Silver Star in separate fights while leading a platoon of infantry Marines in 1969. In receiving those decorations, which fall just below the Medal of Honor in prestige, Webb’s résumé in combat is on par with any modern-day war hero.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Webb, a Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan, did not mention the presumed front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, or any of the Republicans likely to run. But he said that “with enough financial support to conduct a first-class campaign,” he can put important issues “squarely before the American people and gain their support.” One of the places he is certain to go to for help is the veterans community. Webb speaks frequently about not only his own service but the sacrifices that others in his family have made in the military. His father was a career Air Force officer, and his son, Jimmy, served in Ramadi, Iraq, as an infantryman. Webb famously campaigned for Senate in 2006 while wearing his son’s combat boots. Webb vocally opposed the Iraq War, which rubbed some veterans and service members wrong, but his passion for those in uniform is not challenged. As this September profile in The Washington Post pointed out, Webb would likely be running against Clinton from the left on foreign policy while advocating against more U.S. military involvement in places like Syria. But he also is a strong advocate on gun owners’ rights — which resonates with a lot of veterans — and was the primary driver of the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 that expanded benefits to recent veterans.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Oh, and he also has a history of pointedly noting other politicians’ lack of experience or knowledge of the military. One example: In a 1997 interview with the conservative American Enterprise Institute’s magazine, Webb said that he “cannot conjure up an ounce of respect for Bill Clinton when it comes to the military.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Every time I see him salute a Marine, it infuriates me,” Webb said of the president at the time. “I don’t think Bill Clinton cares one iota about what happens in a military unit.” Webb also famously squared off with President George W. Bush at the White House in 2006 after Webb declined to stand in a receiving line to greet the president. Bush eventually came over and asked Webb how his son was doing in Iraq. Webb responded that he wanted to bring the troops home and that how his son was doing was “between me and my boy, Mr. President.” “I’m not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall,” Webb told The Post afterward. “No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I’m certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. [But] leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Webb and Bush later buried the hatchet, with the senator and his Marine son visiting the president at the White House.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico More recently, Webb hammered Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012 while Webb was campaigning for Obama. Webb zeroed in on Romney not mentioning Vietnam veterans or those who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq in his speech at the Republican National Convention.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “They will not say this, so I will say it for them,” Webb said. “They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander-in-chief.  And they are owed much more than that — a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.” Webb’s fierce support of military tradition may also be one of his biggest political weaknesses, however. His blunt 1979 essay in Washingtonian magazine advocating against women in combat roles was used as fodder by then-Sen. George Allen in his Senate race against Webb in 2006. Women at the Naval Academy at the time said that Webb’s article, in which he said he would never trust a woman to provide combat leadership, led to them getting harassed. Webb apologized for his writing causing “undue hardship” — but he stuck by the points he made.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The issue on which jobs women should have in the military has only grown since the Pentagon’s 2013 decision to rescind a longtime ban on women in combat assignments. Research is ongoing across the services about how to proceed, with military leaders having until 2016 to ask for exemptions to keep certain jobs, like infantryman, closed to women. At the same time, Webb is considering a run for president against someone who would be the first woman to run the White House. Webb’s son, Jimmy, already has made his view known on the issue. He wrote in a blog post in 2013 that potentially adding women to the infantry “is a hot button issue for me” on a personal level.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “I see this as an attempt to create social progress or make a social statement at the expense of those who put their lives on the line,” the younger Webb wrote. “Pure and simple, it’s nothing short of self promotion… which is ironic given that Infantry units abhor the concept of the individual.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Afghan shootings refocus attention on Fort Lewis-McChord

LAKEWOOD, Wash. — At the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, which polices a large part of the area near Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Rick Bulman, the department chaplain, has started  programs to train  SWAT team members and other officers on how to recognize a combat veteran who might have post- traumatic stress disorder. He said that he doesn’t want police shooting troops but that he fears the risk of such deadly encounters is growing. “We are having more and more issues with the military — suicides, domestic violence, DUIs, malicious mischief,” Bulman said. “They are trying to deal with issues unsuccessfully, and so they end up getting into trouble. But the situation can escalate if they are not treated properly.” Lewis-McChord, an Army and Air Force installation south of Tacoma, is the largest military base on the West Coast, and thousands of service members from here have been deployed, often repeatedly, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The consequences of those tours are being felt both on distant battlefields and in the communities that surround the base, according to activists who work with veterans. Confrontations with the police and criminal activity off the base are on the rise, and the legacy of battle is to blame, they say. PTSD “is a chronic problem, and it’s been growing for 10 years,” said Stephen Kubiszewski, who co-founded PTSD Anonymous, which meets at a chapel at Lewis-McChord. The 38-year-old soldier who is alleged to have killed 16 civilians over the weekend in southern Afghanistan was based at Lewis-McChord. Officials have said he had a traumatic brain injury in 2010 while in Iraq but was deemed fit for duty. It remains unclear what prompted the shootings or whether anything in the suspect’s medical history could have led to his alleged actions. But the disclosure this week that he was from Lewis-McChord has refocused attention on trouble at the base, where a string of high-profile incidents had already raised questions about the scale of the mental health problems here and how the military is responding. Last year, four members of a platoon from the base’s 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division were convicted for their roles in a self-described “kill team” that murdered three unarmed Afghan civilians. Two soldiers have been accused of waterboarding their children — one because the child couldn’t recite his ABCs and another because his foster son wet his bed. A 24-year-old Iraq war veteran fatally shot a ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. In April, David Stewart, 38, a decorated combat medic with two tours in Iraq, killed himself after leading police on a high-speed chase down Interstate 5 near Tumwater. His wife, 38, who had been shot in the head, was found in the car beside him. Their 5-year-old son was found dead at their home. And on Tuesday, a lieutenant colonel at the base was charged with felony harassment in connection with allegedly threatening to kill his wife, with whom he is going through a divorce, and his superior officer. At least 12 suicides have been recorded in the past year among Lewis-McChord soldiers, and more than 60 since 2001, activists say. “The problem of suicide is very severe,” said Rod Wittmier, program director of the National Alliance to End Veteran Suicide. “And we don’t understand the full dimensions of what is going on.” The Madigan Army Medical Center at the base is under a wide-ranging investigation following allegations that a special psychiatric team altered staff clinicians’ diagnoses for hundreds of soldiers from PTSD to lesser conditions. Fourteen soldiers who complained early this year that their PTSD diagnoses were unfairly changed were flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington for reevaluation. Last month, six of them had their PTSD diagnoses reinstated. Soon after the reevaluations, Juliana Ellis-Billingsley, a leader of the forensic psychiatry unit that is accused, resigned. “I find that I can no longer work in a system that requires me to sacrifice my professional and moral principles to political expediency,” Ellis-Billingsley wrote in her Feb. 23 resignation letter. The Army’s preliminary review last month found that more than 280 additional soldiers evaluated at Madigan since 2007 had their diagnoses altered to less serious conditions, often adjustment disorders that receive fewer disability benefits. Col. Dallas Homas, who heads the center, and William Keppler, a mental health chief at the hospital, were placed on administrative leave while the investigation continues. The most dramatic evidence in the case, according to a congressional source who was briefed on it, is a PowerPoint presentation that Keppler offered to psychiatric and medical staff members. It emphasized that each soldier who receives a PTSD diagnosis costs the military $1.5 million over his or her lifetime in health benefits and pension payments. Keppler referred calls about the case to military spokesmen, who referred questions to the Army surgeon general. Ellis-Billingsley did not respond to calls to her home seeking comment. Nationwide, traumatic brain injuries among service members have been steadily rising each year since 2000, with 11,000 confirmed cases reported that year and 30,000 reported in 2011, according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center. The Army surgeon general said that traumatic brain injury has been diagnosed in 135,000 soldiers from 2000 through 2011. But three-fourths of those injuries were classified as mild, and few troops suffer long-term symptoms. “The overwhelming majority of military personnel who sustain a concussion/mild traumatic brain injury fully recover with proper rest and education with no residual symptoms,” surgeon general spokeswoman Maria Tolleson said in a statement. “Patients requiring ongoing treatment are not deployed to a combat zone or if in a combat zone, they are medically evacuated for further care.” Tolleson said “a relatively small proportion of patients” suffer from symptoms that last more than six months after their concussion. Ashley Hagemann, a Fort Lewis widow, said something is horribly wrong with the way the base handles traumatized soldiers who are shipped out for tour after tour without counseling for the deaths they have witnessed and the stress they have endured. Hagemann’s husband had been with a unit stationed at Fort Lewis and committed suicide last year just before his eighth tour, which was to be to Libya, she said. Hagemann said her husband told her that God would never forgive him for what he had seen and done as a soldier. Hagemann said she had a queasy feeling that the alleged gunman in the killings in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province was from her husband’s base. “I already knew he had to be from Fort Lewis and had to have some sort of trauma,” she said. “I was angry knowing the military would deploy him, to not give him help he obviously needed.” **More on this story:** Militants attack delegation at site of Afghan killings U.S. looks to press on with Afghan exit strategy Military searches soldier’s records for clues in deaths For U.S., bad news on Afghanistan war continues Taliban vows revenge for soldier’s rampage Suspect came from ‘most troubled base in the military’ The Take: Afghan killings bring war to presidential campaign debate

Troubled veterans may suffer from something other than PTSD

_Brian Van Reet is a former sergeant in the Army who served in Baghdad from 2004 to 2005._ It has become an all-too-common story: A young person joins the military, deploys to war and later returns home, only to be troubled by the horrors of combat duty. This traumatic past intrudes on the soldier’s new life, tormenting him or her up to the point of substance abuse, criminality and even suicide. This narrative of combat trauma and self-destruction has gained primacy, partly because it is easy to understand — it sounds true — and partly because it sometimes _is_ true. It elegantly explains how acts of violence, directed inwardly and outwardly, resonate through time. Science, however, is beginning to suggest that the link between war, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and self-harm is not what many expect, given our prevailing cultural narratives. For instance, a study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) concludes that exposure to combat does not increase the likelihood that a service member will take his or her own life. These counterintuitive findings demonstrate the need for further examination of war’s effects on those who fight it. As we attempt to understand this problem, it might be helpful to distinguish the experience of fighting a war from the experience of serving in the military during wartime. The looming threat of year-on, year-off deployments places a psychological burden on all service members — regardless of whether one is ever deployed — and may encourage risk-taking behavior or a live-for-the-day mentality that develops in response to a highly uncertain future. Compounding this phenomenon, young people who seek danger are perhaps more likely to join the military in times of war than in peacetime. People with a genetic predisposition to thrill-seekingmight also be more likely to drink, to use drugs, to suffer financial ruin, to get divorced — in short, to act in ways that have been shown to correlate strongly with suicide. In thinking about this problem, combat-related trauma should be a factor, but so should the character of military recruits before they see action. Other considerations are the structural character of the military, which is capable of rendering draconian shades of misery at a strength, if not intensity, that rivals the better-documented horrors of the battlefield. In 2003, I received stop-loss orders. They meant that instead of getting out of the Army after two years, as I had expected, I would instead be deployed to Iraq. Eighteen months later, when the stop-loss order was finally lifted, I had spent almost twice as much time on active duty as I had signed up for. After I was discharged, I remained a member of the Individual Ready Reserve but thought I was finished with the Army. Then one day, years later, I received a letter ordering me to report for “muster duty” at a mobilization center. There, after considering whether I wanted to chance being called back to active duty, I signed an addendum to my enlistment contract that obligated me to attend weekend drill once a month but that also guaranteed I could not be deployed for the remainder of my time in service. Combat brings its own long-lasting privations — most notably to the civilians who live in places where wars are fought — but the institution of the Army caused me as much sustained mental hardship as any traumatic thing I saw or did while fighting overseas. I know I am lucky to be able to make that statement. I am also lucky that even when I went through hard times, I always thought I had something to live for. I never considered suicide as a feasible escape. But if I had taken my own life, many people would have assumed I did so because something I had seen or done in Baghdad haunted me. In the unlikely event that my death made the news, the media probably would have been quick to mention my tour in Iraq but less ready to speculate on whether I drank too much or suffered from a mental disorder such as manic depression. Yet the latter two factors have been shown, including in the recent JAMA study, to correlate more strongly with military suicide than does a person’s status as a combat veteran. Many are quick to retell the combat trauma narrative as a way to explain why veterans hurt themselves. It is the stuff of Greek tragedy, the sins and wounds of the past revisiting the present, and it makes for a better, more dramatic story. It has the ring of truth, but that does not always — or even commonly — make it true. PTSD is a valuable concept but not if it is used as a catchall for the myriad ways that war, peace, genetics and institutions all shape the behavior of veterans. **Read more on this subject:** Timothy Kudo: I killed people in Afghanistan. Was I right or wrong? Sebastian Junger: Soldiers need to share the moral burden of war Rebecca Sinclair: When the strains of war lead to infidelity

Former U.S. Rep. Lane Evans, Illinois Democrat, dies at 63

Former U.S. Rep. Lane Evans, a Democrat from western Illinois who became a prominent advocate for veterans’ causes during 24 years in Congress, died Nov. 5 at a nursing home in East Moline, Ill. He was 63. Michael Malmstrom, a legal guardian and former staffer, confirmed his death to the Associated Press. Mr. Evans announced in 1998 that he had Parkinson’s disease and declined to seek reelection in 2006. A Marine veteran, Mr. Evans served in Okinawa during the Vietnam War and was a legal services lawyer before running for Congress, his first elective office, in 1982. The district, which includes the Quad Cities along the Mississippi River, was long held by Republicans. Mr. Evans won the seat after the eight-term incumbent, Tom Railsback, was defeated in the GOP primary. Mr. Evans held the seat for 12 terms despite several competitive Republican challenges — an achievement that was credited in part to his reliable constituent services. He was perhaps most outspoken on veterans issues; his brother had served in Vietnam during the Southeast Asian war. Veterans “are the most neglected constituency in the country,” Mr. Evans once told the Chicago Tribune. “Conservatives are all for them in the armed forces, but when they’re discharged, they forget them. Liberals sometimes have a cultural problem in dealing with them. I’m sorry if it disappoints my friends, but I feel a real obligation, particularly since very few others are standing up for the veterans of my country.” He helped lead the Vietnam-era veterans caucus, became ranking Democrat on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and successfully pushed for compensation for military personnel who said they had been harmed by exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam. After the Persian Gulf War of the early 1990s, Mr. Evans pursued the investigation of the disorder known as Gulf War syndrome. He was credited with advocating for benefits for homeless veterans, research on trauma wounds, and job assistance for servicemen and women. Following the 1992 election, he narrowly lost a challenge to G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery (D-Miss.) for the Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairmanship. Mr. Evans also was a member of the Armed Services Committee, where he pushed for measures to end the use of land mines. Lane Allen Evans was born in Rock Island, Ill., on Aug. 4, 1951. His mother was a nurse, and his father, he told The Washington Post, was a “firefighter who never got promoted because he was a union organizer.” After serving in the Marines from 1969 to 1971, Mr. Evans received a bachelor’s degree from Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., in 1974 and a law degree from Georgetown University in 1977. During his political career, he described himself as “populist” and amassed a reliably liberal voting record, according to the Almanac of American Politics. On the Agriculture Committee, he supported subsidies for U.S. farmers. A backer of unions, he opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement and sought to support manufacturers such as John Deere, the producer of farming equipment based in his district. Mr. Evans was reported to have returned thousands of dollars of his congressional salary to the U.S. Treasury. His Parkinson’s disease was diagnosed in 1995, he said, after he found himself unable to wave during a Labor Day event. Survivors include three brothers.

John McCain has it wrong. Trump purposely denigrated his heroism.

McCain, while thoroughly admirable, has it wrong. What Trump said was about him — explicitly about him and only inferentially about other POWs captured during the Vietnam War. Trump was purposely denigrating the heroism of McCain, a POW for more than five years, in solitary for two years, tortured all the time, deprived of food and medicine, untreated for the injuries he received when he had to bail out of his A-4 Skyhawk over Hanoi and was beaten and bayoneted on the ground. And then, when it was discovered that his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., had been named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, McCain was offered an early release from prison. This would have provided the North Vietnamese with a propaganda coup, but it also would have violated Navy regulation — first in, first out. McCain turned it down. The torture resumed. That same year, 1968, the 22-year-old Donald Trump moved straight into his father’s business. His military experience was limited to attendance at the New York Military Academy, in suburban New York, where he had been sent for being a brat. He undoubtedly got all sort of medals for making his bed and brushing his teeth and learned, as we all do, much about courage and perseverance from his experience.  Trump’s mouth is a reverse garbage disposal — the trash keeps coming out. Calling Mexicans rapists is inexcusable and unforgivable. Mocking Serge Kovaleski, a man of understated bravery, for his disability shows what a juvenile bully Trump is. His lists of insults are long and just plain sickening. But dismissing McCain’s imprisonment and denigrating his pain, his suffering, his beatings, his depression and the fierce courage and pride it took to reject an early release clearly show the kind of man Trump is. He’s indifferent to suffering and dismissive of heroism.

Sarah Palin’s odd description of Iraq and Afghanistan deployment trends

_“The strain on military and their families, it is enormous. During World War II the average deployment in the combat theater, it was six months. Korean War, nine months. Vietnam, 13 months. For Iraq and Afghanistan, an initial enlistment was 45 months.”_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **— Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R),** **speech** **at Conservative Political Action Conference, Feb. 26, 2015**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This statement came from Palin’s speech on veterans, during which she focused on the experiences of the “war on terror” generation that served in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d previously rated a section of this speech in which she used an inaccurate statistic for veteran suicides. But this passage also caught our attention.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico She compared the enlistment period of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to the deployment periods of previous conflicts. She went on to say that lengthy and repeat deployments are costly and contribute to veterans being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. But enlistment and deployments are two different things, and this comparison stood out as an odd one. What is the average deployment length for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans? And what does her statement say about the military experience of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans? Comparing deployments from previous wars to the enlistment period of the recent conflicts is an apples-to-orange measure, because the circumstances of each war vary widely. For example, during World War II, men and women were enlisted for the duration of the war, plus six months. The average length of deployment is difficult to ascertain, especially considering the high death toll during that time. Rotation requirements evolved through the war, as units experienced combat fatigue after various lengths of deployment. There was a one-year tour duty requirement early in the war, but the policy was changed in May 1943 to give authority to field commanders to decide when to send troops home.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico During the Korean War, the Army began a point system through which soldiers earned points for each month served in combat. Once they reached a certain number of points, they would be eligible to rotate home. Eligibility for this point system varied depending on the troop and the type of service. There was a one-year deployment period for Vietnam, where soldiers served 365 days and returned home.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Phillip Carter, senior fellow and director of the Military, Veterans and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security, said Palin “raises a valid point about the relative experience of each cohort in war” but incorrectly mixes data on deployment and enlistments of each conflict. “Each generation has had its own experience in terms of the way they went to war … how long they went, what intensity they had in that experience, and what they had as a welcome home,” Carter said, adding that the service trends for the recent conflict also vary. Palin’s representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment, so we are unsure exactly why she was making this comparison. But since Palin focused on the impact of the war on terror on its veterans, we looked at their deployment trends. [ _Fact Checker: Sarah Palin’s inaccurate claim about suicides of veterans of the ‘war on terror’_]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico As Palin pointed out in her speech, the war on terror was the longest war compared to others. Deployment and enlistment for Iraq and Afghanistan varied depending on branch, service and specialty. The initial enlistment of service members is, in fact, 48 months of active duty, as Palin said in her speech. But it is curious to compare that to deployment periods. The typical deployment length is six months for the Air Force, seven months for the Navy and Marine Corps, and one year for the Army. A 2013 Rand Corp. report on Army deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan provides a breakdown of the unique deployment circumstances of its active component members.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico As the report points out, the Army provided the bulk of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, as operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom were predominantly ground operations. The percentage of Army soldiers who were deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan increased over the years of the conflicts. The number of soldiers who were deployed for two or more cumulative years increased significantly between 2008 and 2011. The majority of soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan served up to 24 months. Various estimates of average deployment lengths of this population range from 12 to 18 months. This radar chart provides an illustration of the cumulative deployment periods: There is no doubt that deployment places a strain on families, especially when service members are deployed more than once. But Palin’s statement is an odd one, to compare the enlistment period of recent veterans to the deployment time of veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Her representatives did not respond to our repeated requests for comment, so we are unsure exactly why she made this point. The intent of the statement appears to be to show the increased toll on military troops from World War II and onward. If so, the basis of this comparison is shaky; circumstances during World War II were so different from the recent conflicts, and there were no standard deployment lengths during World War II. The enlistment requirement was for the duration of the war plus six months, and troops were deployed until the field commanders decided when combat fatigue was affecting their duties. When Palin talks about the enlistment period of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, it seems like a huge jump from six months in World War II to 45 months. But the average deployment period of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans ranges from 12 to 18 months. So her statement is misleading. Palin could still make the point of the impact of deployment without this odd comparison. We award Palin Three Pinocchios for this statement.  (About our rating scale)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico  **Send us facts to check by filling outthis form**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Follow The Fact Checker onTwitter and friend us on Facebook**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Fact Checker: Sarah Palin’s inaccurate claim about suicides of veterans of the ‘war on terror’_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Fact Checker: No, the VA has not fired 60 people for manipulating wait-time data_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Fact Checker: Rep. Coffman really is a ‘combat veteran’_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Parents tell Congress how VA failed their children: Veterans who committed suicide

Parents of military veterans who took their own lives after surviving combat told a congressional panel on Thursday how _not_ to prevent suicide: ●Turn away a veteran of some 400 combat missions in Iraq because he’s no longer active in the National Guard. ●Then turn him away because he _was_ previously in the Guard and refer him to a military facility where he’s promptly referred back to VA. ●Now tell him to wait for a postcard with his appointment time. ●Either don’t send that postcard, or send it to the wrong address. ●Refuse to refer him outside the Veterans Affairs health-care system. ●When he finally does get his first VA date with a psychiatrist, have that doctor inform him that he’s retiring and won’t be able to see him a second time. Emphasize that he will, however, be seen by another doctor — just as soon as one becomes available. ●Never get back in touch, and let him run up considerable debt getting what help he can in the private sector. ●And, finally, watch that veteran sprawled on the floor, crying in the corner of a VA hospital where he’s gone while having flashbacks and begging to be admitted. Refuse to see him again, but assure him he’s free to stick around until he feels well enough to drive himself home. ****After all that, Daniel Somers committed suicide last summer, his parents tearfully testified before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee on Thursday. Their son was 23. Sitting close together, Harold and Jean Somers took turns reading their statement, peering through almost matching wire-rimmed glasses. A few times, he finished her sentence when she started to cry. Once, she did the same for him. While they spoke, members of the committee could not have been more attentive. One said she had been close to tears herself; a couple told the grieving parents that their testimony had been hard to hear. Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), a doctor who served in Vietnam, called their words “heartwarming.’’ He must have meant heartbreaking, because there was nothing fuzzy about it. In 2011, Daniel Somers wrote about the crushing guilt he felt over having been “called upon to employ deadly force on a regular basis — often in situations where noncombatants ended up in the crossfire. To this day, I am unable to provide even a rough approximation as to the number of civilian deaths in which I may be complicit.” In his final months, Somers suffered from post-traumatic stress so severe he wore a towel around his head that he said helped keep out the voices, the light and the sound. Clay Hunt, a Marine who fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan, took his own life in 2011. His parents, Richard and Susan Selke, added more to the “what not to do” list. ●Tell someone who has at last found an antidepressant that works well that he has to change drugs because there’s no generic version available. ●Once that hurdle is cleared, tell him the VA pharmacy doesn’t stock that drug, but it will be mailed to him in seven to 10 days. Ignore all medical advice against stopping anti-depressants cold. ●Now tell him the prescription can’t be refilled because it was written in Colorado rather than Houston, where he’s just moved — and thus he must start all over in the system, and wait to be reevaluated. ●Classify him as only entitled to 30 percent disability pay even though he is so compromised by the symptoms of his post-traumatic stress that he isn’t able to work. ●Lose his paperwork for 18 months, and then five weeks after his death, finally review his appeal and conclude that he should be on full disability. Notify his survivors of the good news. Brian Portwine’s mom, Peggy, said he should have gotten an automatic mental health evaluation after a fellow soldier he’d just switched seats with in their Humvee in Iraq was blown to bits. That didn’t happen, though. Back home, he had such poor short-term memory that he’d frequently ask his friends, “Where are we going again?” Yet despite suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and a traumatic brain injury, he was deployed again and killed himself in May of 2011. ****“I’m begging this committee” to do something, Portwine said, in keeping with what “I promised my son at his funeral.’’ She has kept that promise, as have all the parents and loved ones who’ve been turned into advocates by the rolling tragedy of the 22 veterans a day who committed suicide in 2010, up from 18 per day in 2007, according to the latest figures from VA. The committe’s chairman, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), introduced a bill on Thursday called the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, which would require the National Guard and VA to work together. Sen. John Walsh (D-Mont.), a retired Army colonel and Iraq veteran, has proposed similar legislation to financially reward psychiatrists who stay in the VA system. It’s unclear what VA could offer to doctors to stay on in a place that would leave a man who fought for us, and then couldn’t forgive himself, crying on the floor. In this case, it’s obvious that Congress is willing to act, but how? Surely, more access to and information about private care is one answer. But on days like this one, spent watching the grief of those who survived soldiers we effectively left on the battlefield, VA itself seems beyond saving.

Rand Paul tells veterans why America should avoid wars in the Middle East

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. – “Anybody read about the Middle East?” asked Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to a Shriner’s hall packed with war veterans. “They’ve been killing each other for a thousand years and they’ll probably be killing each other for another thousand years. That doesn’t mean we just retreat, and do nothing. That means we need to acknowledge what the Middle East is like before we get involved.” On Monday, Paul made a brief trip to this veteran-rich coast city to reiterate his subtly non-interventionist foreign policy. He did that at a forum hosted by Concerned Veterans of America, a group funded by the Koch network to mobilize conservatives on VA reform and related issues. Organizers said that it would be up to Paul whether he wanted to talk about those issues, or about the world at war. After sharing a few stories of heroic veterans, including one who had lost both legs in Afghanistan. Paul launched right into the positions that have set him apart from the Republican field. “I’ve seen up close – secondhand, but up close – the effects of war,” said Paul. “I don’t see war as a chess game. I don’t see war as a game of Risk, where you put some troops here, you put some troops there… or oh, we’ll topple this government replace it with American-style democracy.” Paul entered the Senate in 2011 as a critic of nation-building and the Iraq War. Since mid-2014 and the rise of ISIS, he’s tailored a narrow approach to fighting terrorism, starting with a limited authorization of military force that would sunset the post-9/11 AUMF. At the same time, he’s continued campaigning (and suing) for the end of some post-9/11 bulk data collection programs. That’s been a hard sale with a Republican base that’s angry about the rise of the Islamic State, and deeply worried about it reaching across the Atlantic to attack Americans. No violence in the United States has been linked to the group, beyond lone wolf attacks by people who claim to have been inspired by it. “It’s getting crazy, and they’re coming here,” said Sandy Kaminsky, 54, an Air Force veteran who moved to South Carolina from New Jersey. “The president has no real strategy for fighting them. He says we should worry about them over there? No: They’re already over here.” In the Shriner’s hall, Paul asked veterans to think about the conflict in different terms. He was standing more or less along among candidates who wanted to over-commit in the Middle East, and to start wars, he said. The choice was not between pacifism and victory. It was between victory and expensive, jingoistic blundering. “Is it really something we want to do to put a million American soldiers back there?” he asked. “Half a mission soldiers back there? When people say we should put boots on the ground, I say, absolutely: The first boots on the ground need to be Arab boots on the ground.” That line sparked a very small smattering of applause. Paul immediately won the crowd back by attacking foreign aid – and a presidential rival, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “Why don’t we quit sending foreign aid to people that hate us?” he said, to applause. “Why don’t we quit sending foreign aid to countries that burn our flag and say ‘Death to America!’ Some people don’t get it, including a senator from your state who loves foreign aid to every country. He says he’s projecting power around the world. You don’t project power from bankruptcy court.” The subject turned back to veterans’ care only after Paul sat down for the question and answer session with CVA’s Pete Hegseth. Some of the hundred-odd veterans who showed up had specific horror stories about long waits for surgery, and about the slow rollout of the Veterans Choice Act, which Paul supported. Paul acknowledged the problems, and tied them to wasteful spending and the built-in faults of a single-payer system. “It is like Canada, or England,” said Paul. “The way health care is rationed is through waiting. It is not efficient, and it never will be. “ Paul’s solution, naturally, was in tighter military spending. Less waste (“you can’t walk around the Pentagon without tripping over a general”) meant more money to spend on care. Less military adventurism meant fewer returning soldiers who needed it. Paul, whose own version of an AUMF stalled out last year, warned that the resolution preferred by most Republicans “would have us at war with Nigeria, Libya, and 10 other countries” in pursuit of Islamic terror. “A commander-in-chief should see war in the terms of sending your son, your daughter, into war,” said Paul. “Not glorifying war, and saying it’s a great thing.” When the speech ended, Paul waded through a crowd of selfie-seekers. The event was CVA’s, not his; selfies, not campaign sign-ups, were the most he could get. His message, which he’ll need to carry into televised debates next week, seemed to survive intact. “If I was a father during World War II, I’d tell my son to enlist,” said Andrew Felker, 67, a six-year Navy veteran. “I could not tell him that today. They say all these Arab democracies are coming up. You know what? The Muslim Brotherhood ain’t never gonna run a democracy. Why would I want my son to give his life for the Muslim Brotherhood?”

In military-rich election battlegrounds, Obama targets veterans

President Obama has wound down America’s war in Iraq, ordered the operation that killed Osama bin Laden and set in motion the end of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan. He also has focused particular attention on veterans and military families, increasing funds for the Department of Veterans Affairs, implementing the post-Sept. 11 G.I. Bill and launching job programs for returning troops. As he gears up his reelection effort, Obama is trying to use that record, and especially his emphasis on the home front, to win the political support of veterans and military families in a handful of important swing states. It is a bold attempt to cut into a traditionally Republican constituency, one the GOP won’t concede without a fight — particularly to a Democrat who opposed the Iraq war, is not a veteran and is described by many Republicans as a weak leader who travels the world apologizing for America. Republicans have long defined themselves in part on their hawkish stance on national security issues and their popularity among the military and veterans. But the makeup of the nation’s armed forces is changing, and Obama hopes to win over veterans by appealing to the same subgroups that propelled him to victory in 2008: women, minorities and young people. “There’s a different face of the American veteran now,” said Lauren Zapf, 30, a Navy veteran who served in the Persian Gulf and who spoke recently at a gathering in Northern Virginia for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Timothy M. Kaine. “The president’s stance on social policies, his work with military families, what he was doing with policy in both Iraq and Afghanistan — I appreciate that.” Republicans concede the group’s new battleground status. “Veterans are truly a cross-section of the population,” Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said in a recent interview. “I appreciate the fact that the president is engaging our warriors and their families.” Obama lost veterans nationally in 2008, as Democrats usually do. But he won those under age 60, a better result than Sen. John F. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, achieved four years earlier. Today, Obama is making a significant push in battleground states with large military installations, such as North Carolina and Colorado. Nowhere is the effort more apparent than in Virginia, which Obama and his presumed Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, are expected to visit extensively in the next six months. The president formally kicked off the general election campaign this month with a rally in Richmond. That same week, Romney spoke in Hampton Roads, home to the largest concentration of the state’s 1 million service members, veterans and their families. Obama is attempting a novel approach to reaching veterans and to understanding who they are and what their concerns are. While most veterans are older and more conservative, younger veterans who served more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan include more women and minorities. Politically, they are more reflective of the nation overall: independent-minded, less socially conservative and more supportive of the winding down of the two wars the president inherited. As a result, Obama campaign advisers said their play for veterans will mimic their efforts to reach particular communities. Neighborhood teams will seek out individual voters on the phone, via the Internet and door to door in key, military-heavy states. “Before 2008, nobody talked about military families,” said Rob Diamond, who served in Iraq and is the Obama campaign’s vote director for veterans and military families. “Military families have become part of the national conversation. Americans realize that when you have an all-volunteer military, the sacrifice is not just by the service members but their families, too.” The Obama campaign sees an opportunity to tout his record not only on foreign affairs but also on social issues such as his repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that barred gay men and lesbians from military service. At the same time, the campaign is pointing to the president’s work on the home front, such as programs to help military families cope with long deployments. In addition, the president is promoting a Veterans Jobs Corps to help service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan get jobs as police officers and firefighters. And his campaign is hosting house parties in military-heavy communities such as Virginia Beach. The parties are intended as a lead-up to a broader push to reach out to these voters. That push will include a visit to Virginia this week by Vice President Biden’s son Beau, the Delaware attorney general, who served in Iraq with the Delaware Army National Guard. Biden will join local veterans in Norfolk on Thursday. Playing to military-friendly voters is not without risk for Obama. If Obama is seen as diverting attention from the economy, he could turn off voters for whom that is the most pressing issue. And if circumstances sour in Afghanistan, when most Americans are eager for an even more rapid drawdown than what Obama has mapped out, his talk of accomplishments there could turn sour, too. Additionally, Romney allies say the president remains vulnerable among veterans and military-minded voters over the prospect of deep reductions in the defense budget, nearly $600 billion, that are scheduled to begin automatically in January if Congress doesn’t negotiate a budget deal. And they say that Romney's advantage among voters on the topic of improving the economy resonates with veterans, too. “You know jobs and the focus on improving the economy are very important, because the unemployment rate for veterans, especially younger veterans, is so much higher,” said Anthony Principi, a veterans affairs secretary under George W. Bush and Romney’s point person on outreach to veterans. Polling suggests that Obama’s courtship of veterans is not a slam-dunk; a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in March showed the president trailing Romney in Virginia “military households” by 41 percent to 53 percent. Polling active-duty troops is rare, given the practical difficulties involved in contacting troops deployed overseas. Romney has stepped up his courtship of veterans, too. In addition, Republican strategist Karl Rove as well as an independent group, Veterans 4 a Strong America, have begun attacking Obama's record with veterans. In 2008, Obama’s advantage in battleground states was in drawing out record numbers of black and Hispanic voters and tapping into college-age populations. In Virginia, he became the first Democratic presidential nominee to win in 44 years. This year, one of his central challenges will be to reenergize those voters at a time of deep economic uncertainty. The campaign believes that veterans, meanwhile, offer the president a chance to outperform his numbers from four years ago — and perhaps even make up for some of the ground he could lose elsewhere. One of Obama’s central advantages is that he no longer faces a decorated war hero, Sen. John McCain, who as the Republican nominee in 2008 characterized Obama as a political neophyte with no foreign policy experience. Across the nation, McCain won veterans by a 10-point margin— one of the few voting groups he claimed handily. Now Romney is the foreign policy novice. And the Obama team is doing all it can to draw a contrast between the two men’s records. Advisers point to Romney’s suggestion, on Veterans Day, that Veterans Affairs health-care programs be privatized. They note that his 59-point economic proposal doesn’t mention veterans once. And they make fun of him for calling Russia the nation’s greatest “geopolitical foe.” Polling analyst Scott Clement and polling manager Peyton M. Craighill contributed to this report. **Read more on PostPolitics: ** D.C. area churches grapple with president’s stance on same-sex marriage Ryan budget still an issue in congressional races Senate to call Secret Service director to testify on prostitution scandal John Edwards endures two-pronged trial, testing his morals and his actions Senate campaign in Florida off to a sluggish start

Biden hits Trump on his PTSD take. Hard. ‘Where in the hell is he from?’

And it was, yet again, the kind of rebuke that perhaps only Biden could deliver.  "When people come back from war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you're strong and you can handle it," Trump said to a veterans' group in Northern Virginia, "but a lot of people can't handle it." Biden laid into Trump on Monday night, referring to his late son Beau's service in Iraq. "Where in the hell is he from?" Biden said, before pointing to Beau and his own 29 visits to Iraq and Afghanistan. Biden then relayed a story. "I found myself in Iraq being asked by General Odierno — a four-star — to pin a silver medal on a young captain, who had pulled someone out of a burning Humvee, risking his life," Biden said. "And when I went to pin it on him in front of the entire brigade, he said to me — looked at me and said, 'Sir, I don't want the medal. I don't want the medal.' You know why? He said, 'He died. He died, Mr. Vice President. I don't want the medal.' "How many nights does that kid go to sleep seeing that image?" Biden said, beginning to yell. "Dealing with it?" Trump's comments Monday drew criticism, given how veterans groups are trying to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues. Biden hasn't weighed in on the presidential race often, but when he has, he's been about as effective as it comes in painting Trump as a charlatan who would be completely out of his element as president. Trump's gaffe opened the door wide to just such a criticism on Monday, and Biden was about the best surrogate Hillary Clinton could have had at her rally that night.

Sarah Palin’s inaccurate claim about suicides of veterans of the ‘war on terror’

_“How many have done more than this generation in uniform? The war on terror is the longest military engagement in U.S. history. So many have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tens of thousands wounded. More than 6,800 dead. The strain on military and their families, it is enormous…. The longer someone is deployed and redeployed, the more likely they will suffer PTSD…. They suffer disproportionate unemployment numbers…. And worse, oh friends, worse, the suicide rate among our best and our brightest is 23 a day. As we gather here — we’re safe, we’re secure, we’re having fun — four days together at a conference, in these four days, 92 of our veterans will have taken their lives.”_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **— Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R),speech at Conservative Political Action Conference, Feb. 26, 2015**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Palin took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to a standing ovation and delivered an impassioned speech about taking care of veterans. She described the challenges veterans have in getting access to quality health care, obtaining jobs after returning from deployment and other issues — including this statistic about veteran suicide rates. Palin used a figure that 23 veterans commit suicide a day — 92, over the course of CPAC. It is a derivative of a claim that we have previously fact- checked and found to be based on a partially completed study with unreliable methods. And since Palin cited it again in front of thousands at what is billed “the nation’s largest gathering of conservatives” — we will revisit it, especially because she included it in a long section related to the veterans of the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Is Palin correct that 23 veterans commit suicide a day, adding up to 92 in four days? And how relevant is that statistic to veterans of the nation’s most recent wars? The claim that there are 22 veteran suicides a day is a figure widely used by lawmakers and veterans groups. At best, this figure is a very rough estimate. The Department of Veterans Affairs has estimated that 18 to 22 veterans die from suicide each day, by using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials took the percentage of veteran suicides (20 percent) of all suicides in the United States and applied the rate to the number of suicides that occurred in 2009 and 2010.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The main source of this figure is the VA’s 2012 Suicide Data Report, which arrived at the same range of 18 to 22 daily veteran suicides by using death certificates filed at the state level. Researchers analyzed death certificates from 21 states, from 1999 to 2011. They took the percentage of suicides identified with veterans out of all suicides from those states in the project period (22 percent). Then they applied it to the number of suicides in the United States in a given year (about 38,000). That comes out to 22 suicides a day.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico There are several issues with the 22-a-day figure — or 23, in Palin’s case. First, researchers, in the study, warned against even using the 22-deaths figure in the first place: “It is recommended that the estimated number of veterans be interpreted with caution due to the use of data from a sample of states and existing evidence of uncertainty in veteran identifiers on U.S. death certificates.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In addition, the sample size was fewer than half the states, and it did not include some states with the largest veteran populations, such as California, Arizona, North Carolina and Texas. So depending on the death certificates from those states, the rate of suicides may change. Researchers said they believed they reached a point of statistical significance because there was enough demographic and geographical variety in the studies that turned over death certificates. There also were “significant limitations” in using death certificates, researchers noted. This is mainly due to the inclusion of people who were incorrectly identified as veterans on death certificates. An updated report with data from at least 44 states is scheduled to be released this summer. The VA, CDC and Department of Defense also are working on a larger study that is expected to be the most comprehensive review of veteran suicides rates and trends. [ _Fact Checker: The missing context behind the widely cited statistic that there are 22 veteran suicides a day_]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But, more to the point, Palin took this unreliable figure and suggested it was emblematic of the most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She included it in a long section of statistics about the impact of those wars on recent veterans, mentioning both post-traumatic stress disorder and a high suicide rate. But when it comes to this population, this statistic is inapplicable. Indeed, the findings in the VA study were more telling of suicide trends among older veterans who were deployed before Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. The most reliable study for the population Palin mainly refers to is one that was funded by the Army.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico That study, published in the February 2015 Annals of Epidemiology, analyzed suicide rates among veterans who were on active duty during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It found that between 2001 and 2009, 351 out of 1,650 deployed veterans’ deaths and 1,517 out of 7,703 non-deployed veterans’ deaths were suicides. That means there was not quite one veteran suicide a day over the nine-year period. In other words, she’s off by a factor of 23. The Army study was the first large population-based research that compared suicide risks among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and non-deployed veterans. This is the population that Palin is referring to in the portion of the speech — those who were wounded, whose deployments put a strain on their families. It specifically studied the suicide risk among veterans who suffer long-term health consequences of being in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. [ _Fact Checker: Sarah Palin’s odd description of Iraq and Afghanistan deployment trends_]    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The larger issue with the figure that Palin used is that it provides no context, and has little meaning. It is a catchy number that doesn’t tell you whether suicides among veterans happen at a higher rate than Americans in general. It doesn’t tell you there are consistently higher rates of male and female veteran suicides compared to non-veterans, but the difference is greater among males. It doesn’t tell you that, by using the same division of estimates, there are 104 Americans who commit suicide a day. It doesn’t say how there has been a spike in suicides among veterans 18 to 24 years old in recent years. It doesn’t tell you that veteran suicide is a difficult issue to tackle, because there are risk factors that apply differently among subsections of the veteran population — by age, gender, whether they were deployed, whether they received help through the VA once they returned, and so much more.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico All it tells you is a raw number: 23. **The Pinocchio Test**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Suicide is a serious concern among veterans and Americans at large. The statement that there are 23 veteran suicides a day and that 92 veterans will have taken their lives over the course of CPAC is an alarming one; there was a flurry of tweets using those numbers as soon as Palin cited them during her speech. But they offer no context or meaning. The actual number of veteran suicides a day might be higher or lower than 23, given the particular population studied. For the specific population that Palin focused on during her speech, the suicide rate is not quite one a day.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico All eyes were on Palin after her bizarre speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit, to see how she would perform at her first major speech since then. It turned out that Palin had a message that was focused — and it was clearly written in advance. It would have done Palin — and the public — a favor to do some extra Google searches about the number or spend a few minutes describing just what exactly it means to have 92 veteran suicides during the conference. Her use of this statistic in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan is almost worthy of Four Pinocchios, but not quite.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _(To contact the VA’s Crisis Line: Call 1-800-273-8255 and push “1″ for Veteran services. Veterans Chat can be accessed at_ _www.VeteransCrisisLine.net._ _Veterans Text is available at 838255.)_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico  (About our rating scale)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico  **Send us facts to check by filling outthis form**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Follow The Fact Checker onTwitter and friend us on Facebook**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Fact Checker: The missing context behind the widely cited statistic that there are 22 veteran suicides a day_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Fact Checker: Sarah Palin’s odd description of Iraq and Afghanistan deployment trends_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Sarah Palin’s son Track arrested at her home, girlfriend ‘concerned’ he ‘would shoot himself’

The day before former Alaska governor Sarah Palin offered her high-stakes, high-profile endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, her son Track Palin was arrested on domestic-violence charges after a fight with his girlfriend, who said she was concerned he would take his own life with an AR-15 rifle.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico About 10 p.m. local time Monday, police in Wasilla, Alaska, responded to a disturbance at Sarah Palin’s home, where Track, 26, an Iraq combat veteran, lives with his parents. According to a police affidavit posted by KTVA Alaska, a woman, later identified as Track’s girlfriend, Jordan Loewe, called 911 to say that Track had punched her in the face and that he had a firearm. Track also called 911, saying Loewe was drunk. When an officer arrived, he found Track outside, talking on the phone.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “I observed that the male had a visible injury to his right eye and the area around his eye,” Officer Andrew Kappler wrote. “His eyes were bloodshot and I detected a strong odor of alcohol on his breath and person. Upon contacting Palin, he was uncooperative, belligerent, and evasive with my initial line of questions.” Track was asked why 911 was called and where the woman who had called 911 was. “Palin stated that he didn’t know where she was and denied that there was a firearm involved, but did state that there were several spread throughout the residence,” Kappler wrote. “Due to Palin’s escalating hostility, the unknown whereabouts of the female 911 caller, and Officer safety, Palin was placed into handcuffs.” Officers searched the home and found Loewe “hiding and crying underneath a bed.” She told her side of the story. _[The ballad of Donald and Sarah]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “She and her boyfriend of one year, Track Palin, left a different residence together and were arguing the whole way home,” Kappler wrote. “Once they got to his home they argued in the car, then in the driveway. They were screaming and he was calling her names.” Though she had not yet called 911, Loewe said, she told Track that she had called police “in an attempt to calm him down and to scare him away from ‘touching her,'” as Kappler wrote. The strategy allegedly did not work. “Palin approached Loewe and struck her on the left side of her head near her eye with a closed fist,” the affidavit read. “Loewe got on the ground in a fetal position because she didn’t know what else he would do. Palin then kicked Loewe on the right knee.” The argument escalated. Track went inside the home and emerged with a gun, Loewe alleged, yelling, “Do you think I won’t do it?” “Loewe stated Palin ‘cocked the gun’ and was holding the rifle out next to him with the his [sic] right hand near the trigger and his left hand near the barrel, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side,” Kappler wrote. “Loewe was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house. She didn’t see where Palin went, so she went inside and up the stairs, where she hid under a bed.” Officers found “the involved firearm,” an unloaded AR-15, and “observed Loewe to have bruising and swelling around her left eye” as well as “a small red area near her knee.” The officers also heard Track’s side of the story. “Palin stated that Loewe was his girlfriend and that the disturbance tonight stemmed from Loewe maintaining contact with an ex-boyfriend,” Kappler wrote. “This angered Palin.” Palin told police that the couple argued throughout the night — at dinner, while hanging out at his “sister’s house” and while checking out property nearby that Track was thinking of buying. Then, Track alleged, Loewe “drove drunk” back to his sister’s house. When the couple returned to his parents’ home, they “continued a verbal only argument.” “When I asked Palin about the injury to his face, he stated that at some point Loewe ‘threw a bow’ [elbow] striking him in the face,” Kappler wrote. “Palin never made it clear exactly how or where the injury occurred. Palin also denied using a firearm during the course of their argument.” Palin’s blood-alcohol level, measured at the scene, was 0.189, according to the affidavit. He was charged with assault, interfering with a domestic violence report and misconduct involving weapons. He was released on $1,500 bond, KTVA reported.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In an email to the Associated Press, Palin family attorney John Tiemessen asked for respect for the family’s privacy “as Track receives the help that he and many of our returning veterans need.” Track enlisted on Sept. 11, 2007 — without telling his parents — and served a year in Iraq with the Army in 2008.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “He’s a good kid and a good soldier and he’d like to remain anonymous,” Col. Burt Thompson _,_ who commanded the Alaska-based 25th Infantry Division’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, known as the “Arctic Wolves,” said in 2008.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Track Palin’s troubles have made news in the past. In 2014, he, allegedly drunk, was found with “blood around his mouth and on his hands” at a party in Anchorage after “some guys were talking rudely to his sisters [Bristol and Willow] making them cry,” according to one report. Though Track initially did not want to speak with police about the incident, he did at the urging of Sarah Palin, who was present; Bristol was also reportedly part of the brawl.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[Brawling with the Palins: A blow-by-blow]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico He wed in 2011 but got divorced the next year. He has a 4-year-old daughter. No number was listed for Loewe in public records.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

TV: Todd Palin to be on ‘Stars Earn Stripes’

Sarah Palin’s husband, Todd, is among those competing in NBC’s new reality series “Stars Earn Stripes,” the network revealed Tuesday. This is not entirely surprising, given that “SES” exec producer Mark Burnett also exec-produced Sarah’s TLC reality series “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” And late last year, word around Hollywood was that Sarah and Burnett were pitching a reality series about Todd’s career as a championship snowmobile racer. Apparently, there were no takers. Maybe more surprising, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the former supreme allied commander in Europe for NATO and a 2004 presidential candidate, is going to host the show with “Entertainment Tonight”/“Dancing With the Stars” alumna Samantha Harris. We’ll give you a moment to mull that pairing. “The general’s legendary record in the U.S. Armed Forces commands respect as he brings so much practical knowledge that will infuse the show with priceless insight,” Paul Telegdy, NBC’s president of alternative and late-night programming, said in Monday’s announcement. When “Stars Earn Stripes” debuts in August, Todd will be part of a lineup of “celebrities,” many of whom are serial reality-series participants: boxing royalty Laila Ali, actor Dean Cain, former NFL player Terry Crews, singer Nick Lachey, Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street, NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” trainer Dolvett Quince and WWE star Eve Torres. The Palins have emerged as the Barrymores of reality TV. Todd’s gig was announced the same day that Lifetime was scheduled to debut “Life’s a Tripp,” starring daughter Bristol, other daughter Willow and grandson Tripp, as they move from Wasilla, Alaska, to one of the many Palazzo Foreclozzos in Hollywood — this one with an excess of bidets, according to a teaser clip posted by the cable network. Then, they will move back to Alaska — all part of Bristol’s “everyday life as a single mother living under intense media scrutiny that comes from her lineage as the daughter of former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.” Bristol made her reality-TV debut in the fall of 2010, on the 11th season of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” She got plenty of screen time on that show, making it all the way to the finals. Also getting major “DWTS” screen time: Sarah, who appeared in the audience many weeks in support of her daughter; in one episode, Sarah was interviewed by host Tom Bergeron. Bristol made her Hollywood debut in the summer of ’10 in a guest turn on ABC Family’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Sarah, meanwhile, starred in TLC’s “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which aired in late 2010; Todd, Bristol, Tripp and Willow also honed their reality-TV skills on that show. (About the time that it started shooting, Bristol and her son’s father, Levi Johnston, were shopping around a reality show about their relationship, but no network rose to the bait.) Each week on “Stars Earn Stripes,” the competitors, teamed with members of the military or law enforcement, will attempt to complete “missions” inspired by military exercises. The winnings will be donated to first-responder and veterans groups. Todd, for example, is playing for Armed Services YMCA Alaska, NBC said. “I am thrilled to join ‘Stars Earn Stripes’ as host and look forward to watching the celebrity cast members test themselves as they step up to take on these tough challenges,” Clark said in a statement about the show, which Burnett is exec-producing with Dick Wolf and David A. Hurwitz (“Fear Factor”). After about $16 million in marketing — and who knows how much in lawyer-billable hours later — ABC snagged just fewer than 4 million viewers Monday night for the launch of its new reality series “The Glass House.” In its 10 p.m. time slot, “The Glass House” attracted about 1 million fewer viewers than CBS and NBC, both of which had been suckered into thinking — based on the hoopla about the show in the media — that the “The Glass House” launch would be a sort of Tyrannosaurus rex of reality-series premieres. CBS dumped its repeat of “Hawaii Five-O” and instead broadcast “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men” reruns. NBC, meanwhile, tossed overboard its usual “Grimm” repeat and puffed up its “American Ninja Warrior” so that it would run more than two hours, from 9 to 11 p.m. Anyway, to put the 4 million in perspective: One week earlier, ABC’s “Castle” rerun had attracted 5 million viewers in the same hour. In its first broadcast, “The Glass House” fumbled about 3 million of its “Bachelorette” lead-in audience. More troubling for ABC, about 800,000 viewers who’d watched the first half-hour of “The Glass House” said “no thanks” to the second half. But, of course, ABC’s in the business of selling 18- to 49-year-olds to advertisers; in that age bracket, “The Glass House” scored 1.5 percent of the population — a considerable improvement over that “Castle” rerun, which snared 1 percent last week. That 1.5 percent of the country’s 18-to-49 demographic put “The Glass House” on par with those CBS sitcom repeats (1.6 percent), but behind “American Ninja Warrior,” which bagged 2 percent of the country’s audience in the age bracket. “The Glass House” premiered Monday despite CBS’s best efforts to get a judge to put the kibosh on it, with the network claiming that the show is a knockoff of its “Big Brother.” “Hooey,” responded ABC — or words to that effect — in the course of which that network revealed that it had spent a whopping $16 million in marketing for “The Glass House” premiere. Anyway, after much back-and-forthing by lawyers representing each network, a judge decided not to issue a temporary restraining order. CBS has vowed to keep on fighting and says it will prevail — it even gave Entertainment Weekly a list of 12 ways in which “The Glass House” is exactly the same as “Big Brother,” including: ●Reality unscripted TV competition program set entirely in a house on a soundstage; ●Contestants cut off from the outside world; ●50 cameras (plus microphones) monitor contestants around the clock to create a voyeuristic feel; ●Streams live to the Internet; ●12 to 14 contestants; ●Viewer input via online and text message; ●Narrative is an unpredictable, evolving story of competition and elimination; ●Grumpy; ●Sleepy; ●Bashful; and ●Dopey.

Link between PTSD and violent behavior is weak

Post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury can increase a person’s anger and hostility and diminish his or her self-control. But the link between those disorders and outright violent behavior is weak and hard to pin down with certainty. That’s what the research suggests about the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI), two medical conditions suffered by tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers who fought in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. That research — which is both voluminous and inadequate — could play a role in the defense of Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who has been charged with 17 counts of murder after a rampage in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. People with PTSD avoid certain activities and environments, are hypervigilant, have intrusive memories and are often depressed. Anger, hostility and aggressiveness are less common symptoms. Headaches, troubled sleep, poor attention and muddled thinking are the hallmarks of mild traumatic brain injury. Impulsive behavior is sometimes seen, too. The prevalence of PTSD in combat veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars varies from 9 percent to 31 percent, depending on whether severity of impairment is included in the measurement. Numerous studies have shown that repeated deployment is a “risk factor” for the disorder. A study published this month examined the experience of 66,000 Marines who served in Iraq. Those with two deployments had almost twice the rate of PTSD as those deployed once. People with longer time at home between deployments had half the risk of developing the disorder as those with rapid turnaround times. There’s also considerable evidence that untreated PTSD tends to get worse, not better, over time. Bales served three tours in Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan. During one of those tours, the 38-year-old soldier suffered a traumatic brain injury. Bales’s attorney said last week that Bales described experiencing flashbacks, nightmares and persistent headaches. It is unclear when those symptoms began, or whether he has been diagnosed with PTSD. Veterans with PTSD are two to three times as likely to be physically abusive of their wives and girlfriends as those without the diagnosis. They’re three times as likely to get into fistfights when they go to college. One study showed they are especially prone to “impulsive aggression,” but that “premeditated aggression” — the kind of act Bales is accused of — was far more common in veterans without PTSD than in those with it. Hostility and aggression are measured by questionnaires asking soldiers both about their feelings and whether they’ve done such things as hit an “intimate partner,” threatened someone with or without a weapon, been in a fight, or destroyed property. There’s no data about more specific violent acts. “The closer we get to trying to understand how PTSD relates to extreme violence, the more we get anecdotal,” said Paula Schnurr, deputy director of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for PTSD, in Vermont. The effects of traumatic brain injury on future behavior is even more complicated and — on some questions — contradictory. Head injuries can diminish “executive function” — self-control — especially when the part of the brain just above the eyes, called the orbitofrontal cortex, takes the hit. Injury there “increases the chance of violent behavior by about 10 percent,” said David Cifu, director of the VA’s physical medicine and rehabilitation program, citing an analysis of more than 50 studies. TBI can worsen the symptoms of people who already have PTSD or who go on to develop it because of, say, a near-fatal bomb explosion. Curiously, however, PTSD appears to be more severe in soldiers who suffer mild head injuries rather than severe ones. The reason may be that prolonged unconsciousness can blot out the memory of the traumatic event. “We’ve asked [experts], ‘How do we predict violence in a soldier?’ and they haven’t been able to provide us with a good screen,” said Col. Rebecca I. Porter, a psychologist who heads the behavioral health division of the Army surgeon general’s office. “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.” In any case, mental disorders arising from trauma are unlikely to be a big contributor to a person’s violent tendencies, many experts believe. “To pick PTSD and highlight it in the way it’s been played out in the media is a gross distortion and contrary to what we know,” said Matthew Friedman, director of the VA’s national center. Nevertheless, finding the angriest combat veterans is an urgent priority. A group of researchers at the University of California at Irvine reported in January that a seven-item questionnaire called the Dimensions of Anger Reactions scale given to 3,500 combat veterans seeking treatment was able to identify those in whom anger and thoughts of violence (as opposed to anxiety or depression) predominated. Three months before soldiers return home from the war theater, commanders fill out a “downrange assessment tool” telling their counterparts in the United States about unusual stresses a soldier may be under — combat experience, domestic problems, disciplinary issues. Upon arrival, everyone is screened for PTSD (among other things), and again 90 to 180 days later. Soldiers are also screened for PTSD and TBI problems before they are sent overseas. Porter, the Army psychologist, said that although neither diagnosis precludes deployment, soldiers with severe symptoms or under active treatment for the disorders wouldn’t be sent. “There’s a misperception that PTSD is debilitating for anyone who has the diagnosis. There are actually varying degrees of how it impacts one’s life,” she said. Neither the Army surgeon general’s office nor Central Command could provide data on what fraction of soldiers scheduled to be sent to the war theaters in the past 10 years were judged undeployable because of PTSD or TBI, or whether the percentage has gone up over time. However, Porter said the percentage of combat soldiers evacuated for behavioral health reasons has remained relatively stable over time. That suggests “the soldiers we are sending into theater are able to complete their mission and are at least as resilient now as they were at the beginning of the wars.”

Obama faces tough questions from military and veterans

FORT LEE, Va. — Military personnel and veterans challenged President Obama, often aggressively, on his refusal to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism,” his decision to open combat jobs up to women and the performance of the Department of Veterans Affairs at a town hall meeting here Wednesday. Obama was at this Army base near Richmond to take part in a military-focused special that aired Wednesday night on CNN. The cable network selected questioners who were respectful but who reflected a military population that is more conservative than the population as a whole and generally skeptical of the president’s performance as commander in chief over the past eight years. Obama’s appearance came on the same day he announced that he was sending 600 more troops to Iraq, a war that the president thought he had ended when he withdrew U.S. forces from the country in late 2011. The additional forces will boost the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to just more than 5,000, ahead of an Iraqi-led offensive on Mosul planned for the coming weeks. Obama emphasized that Iraqi forces would do the vast majority of the fighting, while U.S. troops would provide air support, logistical help and advice. “They are engaging in a fight that is dangerous,” Obama said of the U.S. troops in Iraq. “We are grateful for their sacrifice, and I never forget it.” At a time of deep political polarization in the United States, White House officials have sought to use the town hall format to put the president in front of audiences that disagree with him. The latest CNN town hall followed that pattern from the opening question, in which an Army chaplain asked Obama why there had been “a substantial increase in terror attacks around the world” since he took office. Obama challenged the premise, saying that the number of terrorist attacks worldwide had not “substantially increased,” despite some recent high-profile attacks in the Middle East and Europe. At home, the president said that military operations, better policing and improved intelligence had made the country safer. A mother whose 19-year-old son was killed in Baghdad in 2007 pressed Obama more directly on the subject, asking him, “Why do you still refuse to use the term ‘Islamic terrorism’?” Obama countered that he did not want to conflate murderous terrorists with “the billion Muslims . . . who are peaceful, who are responsible, who in this country are our fellow troops.” An active-duty Marine officer challenged the president’s decision to open combat jobs to women, saying that studies conducted by the Marine Corps showed that such units performed “notably worse” and that women “suffered staggeringly higher rates of injury.” “Why were these tangible, negative consequences disregarded?” she asked. Obama said that he had not acted out of political correctness and noted that women have been fighting at great risk in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade. “I want to make sure our starting assumption is that if you can do the job, you should be able to get the job,” he said. A mortuary affairs officer, who oversees a unit that recovers the bodies of soldiers killed in combat, asked Obama about the decision by some National Football League players to protest police shootings of black men by kneeling during the national anthem. Obama said that he both recognized the importance of the anthem to military families and respected the right of Americans to protest. “Part of what makes this country special is that we respect people’s rights to have a different opinion,” he said. Among the toughest questions he fielded was one from a woman who said her husband had waited a year for an appointment from VA. When he finally saw a doctor, his cancer was misdiagnosed and not treated. “First of all, my heart goes out to you,” Obama said. He then said that he had increased the VA budget by 85 percent over the course of his presidency but that there was more work to do.

The Pentagon’s pugnacious critic on religion gets his day in Congress

As the United States sent tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan in 2010, a controversy erupted: the rifles they were carrying had coded scopes engraved with biblical references. In the war against the Taliban, already religiously charged,  it was akin to tossing a match on gasoline in the ongoing fight over where religion should fit into military life. The incident followed a script for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the activist organization that exposed the issue. Service members registered their complaint about the so-called “Jesus rifles.” Mikey Weinstein, its founder, distributed the information widely through the media, expressing outrage. And then the government responded, with some officials defending the practice while others — including Gen. David Petraeus, then the top commander in Afghanistan — called it problematic. The scope’s maker, Trijicon, eventually promised that it would stop using biblical references, and the military said it would work to alter rifles already in service. They were inscribed with phrases like “PSA91:5,” short for Psalms 91:5: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.” It was one of several victories by Weinstein over the military about how religion will be handled in the ranks. His pugnacious style, vigorous public relations efforts and aggressive fund-raising have earned praise from some — but also made him a target for those who say he is capitalizing on political correctness to get rich and exaggerating problems. On Wednesday, Weinstein will get one of his largest stages yet: An appearance before the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on military personnel. Weinstein, along with several other witnesses, will testify before Congress on the military’s current policy for religious accommodation, which requires Sikhs to seek a waiver from top service officials to wear their religion’s mandatory turbans and beards.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Weinstein intends to stretch the conversation beyond that, though, he said. He plans to tell Congress that numerous leaders in the military practice a “twisted version of Christianity” that oppresses not only Muslims and other religious minorities, but Christians who are not devout. “If they intend to try to shoot the messenger, to assassinate the messenger, I couldn’t care less about that,” Weinstein said Tuesday. “To me, this is about the U.S. Constitution. They will not assassinate the message, and the message is that tens of thousands of our brave members of the U.S. military are being persecuted by a version of Christianity, a twisted version, that is the closest thing to the American, Christian version of the Islamic Taliban.” Weinstein, who has not appeared before Congress previously, said the foundation will celebrate its 10th anniversary in about two weeks. It has grown to include nearly 40,000 members, 96 percent of whom are Christian, he said. The other 4 percent are from various faiths — there are even about 12 members who subscribe to Jedism, a religious movement based on the ideas in the “Star Wars” movie franchise. Weinstein said he founded the organization after growing angry with the way his sons were treated while attending the Air Force Academy following the release of Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie “The Passion of the Christ.” His sons objected to the way the movie was advertised on campus, and were subjected to anti-Semitic slurs because of it from evangelicals on campus, he said. He sued the academy, alleging that cadets also were coerced into attending Christian events on campus.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A study of the religious climate at the academy eventually found numerous examples of intolerance, insensitivity and inappropriate proselytizing, but said that the school was not overtly discriminatory. Weinstein, however, has continued to pounce on similar issues across the military for the last decade.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico His actions have led to plenty of critics. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., objected strongly last year after hearing a report that Weinstein had met with U.S. generals to offer advice on religious tolerance, and would consider court-martialing chaplains who professed their faith to others in the ranks.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “The work of military chaplains is essential to the well-being of our men and women in uniform,” Jones said at the time. “Threatening them with a court-martial for doing their job would be a disservice to all members of the armed forces. It is appalling that this administration is allowing an individual with such a history of threatening religious freedom to help shape policies for military personnel.” Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R.-Kansas, also expressed frustration that the Obama administration had met with Weinstein, calling him a “notorious anti-Christian zealot who says the military ranks are full of Christian fundamentalist monsters whose evangelizing constitutes ‘spiritual rape,’ ‘a national security threat,’ and sedition and treason.’    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The conservative Family Research Council also piled on, chronicling numerous attempts by Weinstein’s foundation to stop certain forms of religious expression in the military in a report released this year and titled “A Clear and Present Danger: The Threat to Religious Liberty in the Military.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Weinstein also is derisively called an atheist on many online forums, but is actually a “Jagnostic,” he said — an agnostic Jew. There’s also the money issue. An Air Force Times article earlier this year zeroed in on Weinstein’s income. In 2012, Weinstein received total compensation worth $273,355, or nearly half of all the money his organization earned that year, the newspaper reported. That is significantly more than top executives for other military non-profit organizations of similar size, but Weinstein said his donors and fellow board members have no problem with it.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The other witnesses testifying Wednesday are from the Family Research Council, the Liberty Institute, and the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. Bruce Kahn, a rabbi and retired Navy chaplain, also will appear. Kahn has said previously that most military officials oppose proselytizing, while the other organizations have called repeatedly for politicians to stay out of religious issues in the military. ~~~~“If it’s contentious, it’s contentious,” Weinstein said of the hearing. “It’s not supposed to be UFC fight or a World Wrestling Entertainment event. It’s a congressional hearing. But, we’ll see how it goes.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Vice President Biden’s powerful rebuke of Donald Trump’s PTSD comments

And it was, yet again, the kind of rebuke that perhaps only Biden could deliver.  "When people come back from war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you're strong and you can handle it," Trump said to a veterans' group in Northern Virginia, "but a lot of people can't handle it." Biden laid into Trump on Monday night, referring to his late son Beau's service in Iraq. "Where in the hell is he from?" Biden said, before pointing to Beau and his own 29 visits to Iraq and Afghanistan. Biden then relayed a story. "I found myself in Iraq being asked by General [Raymond T.] Odierno — a four-star — to pin a silver medal on a young captain who had pulled someone out of a burning Humvee, risking his life," Biden said. "And when I went to pin it on him in front of the entire brigade, he said to me — looked at me and said, 'Sir, I don't want the medal. I don't want the medal.' You know why? He said, 'He died. He died, Mr. Vice President. I don't want the medal.' "How many nights does that kid go to sleep seeing that image?" Biden said, beginning to yell. "Dealing with it?" In an interview airing Tuesday morning on CNN, Biden continued the attack. "That kid probably goes to sleep every night with a nightmare," he said. "And this guy doesn't understand any of that? How can he not understand that? How can he be so out of touch? He's not a bad guy. But how can he be so out of touch and ask to lead this country?" And: "This is an ignorant man. This guy says things he has no idea about. He's not a bad man. But his ignorance is so profound. So profound." Trump's comments Monday drew criticism, given how veterans groups are trying to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues. Biden hasn't weighed in on the presidential race often, but when he has, he has been about as effective as it comes in painting Trump as a charlatan who would be completely out of his element as president. Trump's gaffe opened the door wide to just such a criticism on Monday, and Biden was about the best surrogate Clinton could have had at her rally that night.

Fiction: ‘Sparta,’ by Roxana Robinson

Pardon the pun, but Roxana Robinson’s new novel, “Sparta,” which takes us deep inside the troubled head of a Marine returning from four years of active duty in Iraq, really is a tour de force. Robinson, whose varied bibliography ranges from a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe to her preceding novel, “Cost,” about a family dealing with a son’s heroin addiction, surprises us again with the unexpected subject. “Sparta” is a novel with a mission — which in a lesser writer’s hands could spell its doom. But Robinson manages to convey the difficulties of a warrior returning to society and dramatize how we fail our veterans without reducing her story to a polemic. She pulls this off by expertly deploying three literary weapons: emotional insight, moral nuance and intellectual depth. Robinson has created a character to whom even liberal, antiwar Easterners can relate. Conrad Farrell is a classics major at Williams College whose thesis is on the ancient Greek warrior culture of Sparta. When he announces his intention to join the Marines in the spring of 2001, his parents are aghast — even though the country is not at war. “Their family was bookish and liberal, not martial and authoritarian,” Robinson writes. But Conrad insists that he wants “to do something that has consequences. This is the biggest challenge I know.” Fast-forward to 2006. Conrad is headed home to his family’s lovely old farmhouse in Katonah, N.Y. But “he wasn’t the person they were expecting to meet,” and “he didn’t know how to change himself back.” That, in a nutshell, is the returning warrior’s predicament. By embedding herself in 26-year-old Conrad’s point of view, Robinson brings the tolls of war up close. She captures the terrors of flashbacks, insomnia, headaches, panic attacks, impotence, inchoate rage and suicidal thoughts — all symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Although no longer in danger, Conrad finds it impossible to let down his guard. He’s leery of crowds and windows. He flies into a terrifying rage when a woman’s handbag knocks into him in a crowded restaurant. Unable to penetrate Conrad’s armor, his increasingly alarmed family and girlfriend keep asking, “How are you really?” But he finds it impossible to talk about the Iraqi children murdered in their beds or the member of his platoon trapped in a burning Humvee whose doors are welded shut by the heat of an improvised explosive device — never mind his mounting doubts about the mission. Robinson replays these horrors in a torturous loop. While it is remarkable how many ways she finds to describe panic attacks — “hovering over him like a tornado funnel,” as if on perpetual night guard duty — her portrait of PTSD is so relentless that it occasionally threatens to overwhelm not just her character but her novel. Conrad feels his platoon’s absence “like a phantom limb” and tries to keep in e-mail touch with his men. But he holds that Marines don’t complain, and so he pushes himself to prepare for graduate school despite his escalating despair. He quickly wears out his welcome at his girlfriend’s and sister’s New York apartments. As she prepared to write this novel, Robinson talked to a number of Iraq war veterans and read Sebastian Junger’s “War,” Dexter Filkins’s “The Forever War” and Anthony Swofford’s “Jarhead,” among others. Her explanation of the mishandled early missions in Fallujah and the clash between the long-ruling minority Sunnis and the majority Shiites is as clear as any I’ve read. So, too, is her fascinating primer on the severe and ultimately doomed warrior culture of Sparta, which provides an underlying cautionary tale for her book. But it’s Robinson’s portrait of the Veterans Affairs system that is most devastating. When Conrad becomes desperate enough to seek help, the response is outrageously inadequate. He finally gains entry after waiting four months, only to meet for a few minutes with a distracted doctor who hands him a fistful of prescriptions — most with suicidal side effects — and tells him to get back to him in three months. It’s appalling. “He’d thought that there was some sort of compact — wasn’t there? He was offering his life for his country, and his country would be there when he came home.” Robinson demonstrated her deftness in handling the dynamics of a family under duress in “Cost.” In “Sparta,” the Farrells are a more congenial, highly functional bunch who are nonetheless stymied by Conrad’s condition. One small reservation about Robinson’s otherwise convincing scenario: It seems astonishing that his father, a law professor, and his mother, a family therapist, wouldn’t have done a little research into what their son was going through and intervened to make sure he got help. It would be wonderful if “Sparta” led to improvements in mental-health care for veterans, but at the very least, it is bound to add understanding to their plight. Although too carefully wrought to be called improvised, Robinson’s powerful novel demonstrates that fiction actually can function as a sort of explosive device. By Roxana Robinson Sarah Crichton/Farrar Straus Giroux. 386 pp. $27

Five things to know about Jim Webb

**Five things to know about Jim Webb, the latest to enter the 2016 presidential contest:** *He’s spent about half his life as a journalist and author. Webb is the author of ten books, including several historical novels about Vietnam and a history of the Scots-Irish in America. His most recent book, “I Heard My Country Calling,” is a memoir. He also wrote the story behind the 2000 film “Rules of Engagement.” *He’s conservative on environmental policy. In the Senate he backed a delay of Environmental Protection Agency rules for coal plant emissions and opposed cap-and-trade. He has questioned whether the federal government has the power to regulate carbon dioxide. When Obama went to Copenhagen in 2009 to attempt an international agreement on cutting greenhouse gases, Webb said the president didn’t have that power. He supported the Keystone XL pipeline and tax subsidies for oil companies. *He has for years been passionate about prison reform, an issue that has gained traction with some Republicans in recent years. In 2009, he wrote a cover story for Parade magazine titled, Why We Must Fix Our Prisons. *He’s been attacked as misogynistic for some of his writing. In a 1979 Washingtonian essay bluntly titled “Women Can’t Fight,” he argued that women should not be allowed to serve in combat. He had “never met a woman,” he wrote, “whom I would trust ... with combat leadership.” His novels include graphic sex scenes that his 2006 Republican opponent, then-Sen. George Allen, described as demeaning to women. His wife called the attacks “despicable,” saying Webb was raised by strong women and supported her career. *He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Hong Le Webb, a securities lawyer, their daughter and his step-daughter from her previous marriage. Married twice before, Webb has four adult children. His wife was a refugee rescued by the U.S. Navy while trying to escape the Vietnam war; Jim Webb speaks fluent Vietnamese. **And here are some key moments to know about:** *Raising his son’s combat boots in the air after unseating Sen. George Allen (R) in 2006 and helping Democrats take control of the Senate. *Refusing to talk to President Bush about his son in Iraq: “How’s your boy?” Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq. “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded. “That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?” “That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President, Webb said coldly, ending the conversation. *Responding to the State of the Union in 2007. And here are some key recent clips of Webb: *His 2016 announcement *At the National Press Club in September 2014 *Sparring with Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) over the war in Iraq in 2007 *Introducing Obama in 2008 *Joking about Sarah Palin on campaign trail in 2008 *On the 1983 Beirut bombings

Book review: “The Evil Hours,” a biography of PTSD, by David J. Morris

_Carter Malkasian is the author of “War Comes to Garmser” and spent several years in Iraq and Afghanistan, often as an advisor to U.S. generals._ By David J. Morris Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.   338 pp. $27 ‘We are born in debt, owing the world a death,” David J. Morris writes. “This is the shadow that darkens every cradle. Trauma is what happens when you catch a surprise glimpse of that darkness.” This passage captures the sadness, pain and profound weight of “The Evil Hours,” Morris’s exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder. Morris weaves together an autobiography of his own experience with PTSD , a history of research into the disorder and a critique of modern treatment. The book is timely, coming out when hundreds of thousands of veterans are back home from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Department of Veterans Affairs is under siege for mismanagement. From 2004 to 2007, Morris was a war correspondent in Iraq for Salon, the Virginia Quarterly Review and NPR. Before becoming a journalist, he was a Marine officer in the 1990s, which was one reason he volunteered for Iraq. He embedded with Marines and soldiers in Fallujah, Ramadi and Baghdad, and witnessed his fair share of death and violence. His description of a direct IED strike on his Humvee is perhaps the most vivid in the entire literature: “The force of the blast rocked past Reaper’s right ear. . . . I looked at him, his head wreathed in smoke. . . . In the air behind my head there was no sound, just an underwater rush, like if I were swimming inside the explosion, holding my breath and waiting to come to the other side.” Morris returned from Iraq traumatized. Flashbacks, nightmares and sleeplessness haunted him. Eventually diagnosed with PTSD, he went through therapy and saw the Department of Veterans Affairs up close. Moved by his experience and those of others, he ventured to write about PTSD. In parallel with his own story, Morris tells the history of PTSD from the ancient Greeks to the present. The Civil War and World War I are key periods. The latter, with its mass industrial warfare, 8 million deaths and “shell shock,” was the first conflict in which trauma was officially diagnosed and treated. Fittingly, Morris took “The Evil Hours” for his title from World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon’s description of the agony of post-combat stress. For Americans, Vietnam is the turning point. The war brought PTSD to the attention of the general public and led to its official recognition in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, meaning Veterans Affairs could treat it. Heightened scientific research followed. That research, in Morris’s view, has fallen woefully short. He argues that it focuses too much on large-scale studies based on quantitative data and disregards “the highly subjective experiences of survivors,” which he sees as central to understanding PTSD. Personal experience in three different studies leads him to question data-based treatments preferred by VA. His foremost example is “prolonged exposure” therapy, which requires the patient to recount the worst moments of trauma over and over again in an attempt to dampen the emotion. Morris describes how the therapy has actually done harm, sometimes causing certain patients’ symptoms to worsen. He shows that such cases can elude the statistics because, in some studies, patients who want to stop the treatment are dubbed “noncompliant” and thrown out of research samples. Study results can end up looking far prettier than the reality. Morris stops short of recommending treatments that touch on veterans’ personal experiences, but he is interested in options such as travel, physical exercise and yoga. He rejects the idea that there is one treatment for everyone. The book’s sad tone lifts when he describes the triumphs of a few who have taken their own path and overcome PTSD. The critique of science ties into a deeper philosophy about trauma and society. For Morris, PTSD is more than simply an illness that haunts combat veterans. It is a manifestation of society’s worst ills: “More often than not, it is the powerless and the disenfranchised who are traumatized. . . . Any honest attempt to deal with the problem of PTSD must begin with a commitment to reduce the sources of trauma that are under human control: war, genocide, torture, and rape.” Morris contends that PTSD is a moral force that draws attention to these ills. Veterans and victims stand up and become critics of government, atrocities and injustice. He points to Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group whose members spoke out against that war and its atrocities. He worries that science will mute this moral outrage if it disregards the subjective experiences of survivors. “Trauma is symbolic,” Morris writes. “Trauma is history made manifest in the flesh. Trauma, when heard by society, is a form of testimony.” There is no denying that Morris has followed in the footsteps of Sassoon, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and others in raising PTSD from a hidden affliction to an issue of universal moral significance. Yet not everyone will agree with what Morris writes. His argument that treatment should be based on more than the scientific process is bound to be controversial. Doctors, scientists and researchers will challenge his critiques, evidence and assertions. That is helpful. Debate will improve the future of America’s veterans and point the Department of Veterans Affairs toward possible reforms. A worse outcome would be for “The Evil Hours” to pass unnoticed.

John McCain is a fighter, no question. But can attitude affect cancer?

Military metaphors are commonplace when people talk about cancer — or should we say the “fight against cancer.” Since John McCain announced his brain cancer diagnosis, the senior senator from Arizona has received a barrage of supportive statements featuring martial language. Politicians and other well- wishers have explicitly connected his war hero reputation with a favorable outcome. “Cancer doesn’t know what it’s up against,” former president Barack Obama tweeted. Vice President Pence wrote: “John McCain is a fighter & he’ll win this fight too.” McCain’s daughter Meghan posted a tribute on Instagram, saying: “Cancer may afflict him in many ways: But it will not make him surrender. Nothing ever has.” On television, newscasters discussing McCain’s diagnosis talked up his toughness, too. “There is nobody who is the kind of fighter that John McCain is,” said CNN’s Dana Bash. “. . . He has a fighter pilot’s mentality.” There’s no denying McCain’s fortitude. It was on full display this past week, when he bucked his party to block the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. But can personality traits alter the course of cancer, as his well-wishers seem to want to believe? Can a positive mental stance tame an aggressive malignancy such as glioblastoma ? As a doctor and cancer survivor, I know there is no evidence to support the idea that personality can influence the growth of malignant cells. There is no cancer for which attitude can halt the progression of disease. And, despite medical progress against other tumors, glioblastoma remains lethal. Even with treatment, patients have a slim chance of living long with this condition; the five-year survival rate is just over 5 percent. Both Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and former vice president Joe Biden’s son Beau died within two years of diagnosis. Still, the words of support for McCain shouldn’t be written off as empty platitudes — phrases that belong on Mylar balloons, as the Atlantic’s James Hamblin suggested. Language can be a powerful tool in medicine. As with physical remedies, there are potential harms and risks to consider, but potential upsides, too. The questionable relationship between cancer and psychological traits has percolated through scientific and popular literature for decades. In her landmark 1978 essay, “Illness as Metaphor,” Susan Sontag railed against the view, popularized by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, that cancer is “a disease following emotional resignation — a bio-energetic shrinking, a giving up of hope.” Sontag wrote: “Widely believed psychological theories of disease assign to the luckless ill the ultimate responsibility both for falling ill and for getting well. And conventions of treating cancer as no mere disease but a demonic enemy make cancer not just a lethal disease but a shameful one.” She rejected these notions. Modern researchers have debunked the idea that negative emotions heighten an individual’s susceptibility to developing cancer, or that maintaining a positive outlook can stave off cancer’s return or delay its progression. As Jimmie Holland, a psychiatrist at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, has said, “The idea that we can control illness and death with our minds appeals to our deepest yearnings, but it just isn’t so.” In 2007, the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group confronted the belief that psychology affects cancer patients’ survival. This well-established clinical- trials organization studied more than 1,000 patients with head and neck cancers. After controlling for tumor stage and demographic factors, such as income, the researchers found no relationship whatsoever between patients’ outcomes and their emotional well-being. Another informative, large study drew on personality questionnaires completed by nearly 60,000 Swedish and Finnish people. Years later, investigators identified 4,631 cancer cases among the participants. In 2010, they reported that neither “extraversion” nor “neuroticism” increased the likelihood of a cancer diagnosis or survival after a cancer diagnosis. Although a handful of studies have found that women who are anxious or depressed are more likely to suffer recurrences of breast cancer and die from the condition, it’s plainly true, and understandable, that dying women are more likely to be anxious and depressed. These analyses are confounded by the fact that attitudes influence patients’ treatment decisions: their willingness to participate in clinical trials, try new drugs, seek second opinions and travel for their care. What’s more, social determinants of health — education and economic circumstances — can mask what might be construed as grit or a fighting spirit. Many people cannot afford to try new cancer medications or seek multiple opinions. In some disadvantaged communities, fatalism about cancer affects whether patients get screened, go for checkups upon noticing worrisome symptoms or, even after a diagnosis, accept care provided by oncologists. Meanwhile, some doctors and advocacy groups worry about the potential harms of applying battle language to the experience of having cancer. Patients may feel they are to blame if they fail to “beat” the tumor. They may think that their recurrence, or impending death, is not due to the nature of their malignancy but a failure of will. An added concern is that military language and tales of courage can discourage acceptance of palliative care. Patients may become trapped by a positive mentality — pressured by family and friends who encourage them to keep trying more treatments, or compelled by an internal drive to fight to the end — and they may push themselves beyond what’s sensible or realistic. Yet I recall some of my patients who _liked_ to say they were “fighting” cancer. So did my father, who lived with lymphoma for three decades before dying at age 83 from a pancreatic tumor. When I received my own breast cancer diagnosis, in 2002, I didn’t think of it in terms of battle language. I’m not a military-oriented person; although I aspire to mental fortitude, fighting words don’t suit me. However, I accept that just as some people derive strength and comfort in prayer and others don’t, patients’ responses to words, images and stories about cancer do vary. Recent research suggests that participating in support groups can reduce cancer patients’ anxiety, fatigue and depression. We can’t dismiss the possibility that embracing an optimistic attitude toward cancer may help some individuals to feel happier and enjoy a better quality of life even while bad cells grow and spread. McCain may be one of those people. He displayed a battling mind-set this past week, telling his Senate colleagues that, after treatment, “I have every intention of returning here and giving many of you cause to regret all the nice things you said about me.” McCain’s diagnosis serves as a reminder that cancer does not discriminate; everyone is vulnerable. But he also has the potential to inspire and improve the lives of other cancer patients. When I heard about his diagnosis, I thought of the portrait of McCain that David Foster Wallace wrote for Rolling Stone in 2000. The description of the senator as a young Navy pilot is especially memorable. As Wallace tells it, in October 1967, McCain was flying a bombing mission over Hanoi when his plane was hit by enemy fire. He ejected from the craft, breaking his arms and a leg before landing in a lake. “The crowd pulled him out and then just about killed him,” Wallace wrote. “. . . McCain got bayoneted in the groin; a solider broke his shoulder apart with a rifle butt.” When he arrived at the infamous Hoa Lo prison, “they made him beg a week for a doctor and finally set a couple of the fractures without anesthetic.” Months later, McCain was offered the chance to leave. Evidently the North Vietnamese sought to appease his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., who’d been promoted to lead Pacific naval forces. John S. McCain III, “100 pounds and barely able to stand, refused,” Wallace wrote. He didn’t want to violate the code that prisoners who had been detained longer should be released first. And so he spent much of the next four years alone in a small, dark “punishment cell.” Just as his bravery 50 years ago can inspire people who have never fallen from a plane into a hostile crowd, been imprisoned or experienced torture, McCain might now set an example for others, including patients who are less strong, less fortunate and with fewer resources, as he moves forward and chooses his treatment. Perhaps he’ll find a way to avoid entrapment by the tyranny of positive thinking. It takes a certain strength, and maybe even fierceness, to select a plan of care that doesn’t necessarily match the expectations of family, doctors and the public. He might opt for aggressive glioblastoma treatment. He might be brave enough to choose a palliative care plan, with or without potentially curative therapy. For sure, McCain will find support among Americans, who admire him for his years of service and his courage. **Twitter: @ESchattner** Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.

‘The Mummy’ and other films and shows to watch with your kids

First Dark Universe monster movie is violent, uneven. “The Mummy” is a monster-movie reboot starting Tom Cruise. It has very little to do with either the 1932 Boris Karloff version or the 1999 Brendan Fraser take on the story. Rather, it’s the first in Universal’s new “Dark Universe” series, which is planned to be an interconnected franchise much like the DC and Marvel superhero movies. Expect fairly strong fantasy/action violence, with some blood spatters, guns and shooting, stabbings, fighting and punching, crashes and explosions, jump scares, zombies and a lab full of gross things. There are several mildly suggestive sexual references, too, including partly naked and/or obscured male and female bodies, kissing, a couple shown in bed together and sensuality. Language is infrequent but includes “a--hole” and “son of a bitch,” as well as “hell” and “damn.” The main character, who’s presented as a hard drinker, quickly downs several glasses of liquor in more than one scene, with no effect. This film marks the first Universal Mummy movie to have the central monster played by a woman. (110 minutes) Poignant, earnest drama about a Marine and her war dog. “Megan Leavey” is an inspiring, poignant drama based on the true story of a young Marine corporal who worked with a bomb-sniffing combat dog to keep their fellow soldiers safe during the war in Iraq. Megan (Kate Mara), like her dog, Rex, is initially considered aggressive and unpredictable, but together they work effectively and are touchingly close. The movie has several scenes of war, including tense, violent moments set in Iraq in which IEDs explode. Megan and Rex are injured during a mission, and a supporting character dies while deployed. The language is occasionally strong and includes “s---,” “piss,” “crap,” goddamn” and one “f---.” Civilian and military adults drink, in one case so much that the person throws up. Late in the film, a relationship between Megan and another soldier turns romantic, and there are a few scenes of making out on a bed (he’s shirtless) that make it clear they’ve had sex. Viewers will learn a lot about the Marines’ war dogs and their handlers and will come away with strong messages about teamwork, perseverance, communication and courage. (116 minutes) Strong, complicated woman anchors intense mystery tale. “My Cousin Rachel” is a period drama based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier and starring Rachel Weisz. It has more sex and violence than many movies set in similar eras. There’s a moment of sexual violence in which a man holds a woman’s arms and demands “kiss me!” while she says forcefully to stop and let her go; he briefly chokes her. Another disturbing scene shows the aftermath of a woman and a horse falling off a cliff; viewers see her dead and facedown, and while the horse is initially still moving, it’s soon shot (off-screen) and then lies still. A couple has sex on the ground with their clothes on; the man thrusts and moans while the woman looks stoic. After they’re finished, she borrows his handkerchief and, turning away from the camera, raises her skirt to clean up. A man is briefly visibly naked from behind when he jumps into the water. Language is mostly clean, but there is one “f---ing,” as well as a “s---” and a “damn.” A character smokes a pipe, and party and dinner guests drink liquor and wine; one character gets drunk and sloppy while waiting for a picnic to start. (106 minutes) Streaming Kid scientist can see real dinos in fun educational series. “Dino Dana” is a continuation of the series “Dino Dan.” But this time a young female paleontologist acquires a special field guide that allows her to see dinosaurs in her everyday life. The show’s blend of its live-action setting and the CGI animation that brings the dinosaurs to life will appeal to the imaginations of preschoolers, who see Dana learn by observing the creatures’ behavior and applying what she discovers to a problem she’s facing. Kids will learn dinosaurs’ names, as well as pick up information on their general appearance, eating habits, defense mechanisms, and more. Also noteworthy is Dana’s close relationship with her older sister. (14 22-minute episodes)

Sarah Palin cites ‘media driven wedge’ between Trump, McCain

Via CNN’s Jake Tapper comes word from former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that there’s a “media driven wedge” dividing her former running mate, Sen. John McCain, and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Palin wrote in an e-mail to Tapper, “We can keep the debate focused on significant issues at hand. I leave politics of personal destruction to those on the Left and lazy media lapdogs who’s only take away from any debate is any salacious slip-up, as if they’ve never wanted to restate something they’ve publicly uttered.” Such a strong critique, as always, from the former Fox News commentator. Consider the facts: McCain told the New Yorker that Trump was riling up the “crazies” when he hosted a rally in Phoenix. Reporter Ryan Lizza tweeted about his outsize role in extracting this divisive remark from McCain:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In any case, the media widely circulated McCain’s “crazies” remark, as if a Republican elder using colorful language to criticize a prominent and wealthy presidential contender constituted a newsworthy moment. Then, when Trump started returning fire by questioning McCain’s status as a war hero and denouncing his record on veterans’ affairs, the media reported that, too. Always wedging people apart.

Obama salutes troops on Memorial Day, calls for war only when ‘absolutely necessary’

President Obama and Mitt Romney commemorated Memorial Day on opposite coasts Monday, each trying to lay claim to a constituency — service members, veterans and their families — that has emerged as a battleground in the campaign. Obama paid his respects to fallen soldiers at three events on Monday: a White House breakfast for families who have lost loved ones, a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery and a speech to thousands gathered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, joined Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a decorated Vietnam veteran, to lay wreaths at a morning commemoration in San Diego that drew a crowd of 5,000. Although neither candidate’s schedule was labeled political, both managed to weave themes from their campaigns into their remarks, highlighting the importance of a voting group that Republicans have historically dominated. That advantage remains intact, according to a recent Gallup poll that gives Romney a commanding lead among veterans. But that hasn’t stopped Obama from launching an aggressive effort to court veterans and their families, in which he has touted the killing of Osama bin Laden, the end of the war in Iraq and the effort to wind down combat operations in Afghanistan. Obama has also emphasized how he has increased funds for the Department of Veterans Affairs, implemented the post-Sept. 11 G.I. Bill and launched job programs for returning troops. On Monday, Obama’s speeches honoring the nation’s war dead touched on those actions and praised veterans for their contributions. At Arlington cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknowns, amid solemn performances of the national anthem and “Taps,” the president recognized both the first and the final casualties of the war in Iraq, alluding to his own stewardship of a conflict that he had promised in 2008 to end. He also pledged Monday to go to war only with a “clear mission,” with the support of the nation and when “absolutely necessary.” At the Vietnam memorial ceremony, which actor Tom Selleck presided over as master of ceremonies, Obama delivered a lengthy speech in which he addressed some of that war’s most painful legacies. He described the treatment of returning Vietnam veterans as a “national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.” He promised to do “everything in our power” to continue the effort to find those still missing in action and to provide the necessary benefits to disabled veterans, those afflicted by the effects of Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress syndrome, and those struggling to find jobs. He celebrated the valor of Vietnam veterans and credited them for the nation’s appreciation of those who have served in more recent conflicts. “Because of you, because our Vietnam veterans led the charge, the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill is helping hundreds of thousands of today’s veterans go to college and pursue their dreams,” Obama said. “Because of you, because you didn’t let us forget, at our airports, our returning troops get off the airplane and you are there to shake their hands. Because of you, across America, communities have welcomed home our forces from Iraq. And when our troops return from Afghanistan, America will give this entire 9/11 generation the welcome home they deserve. That happened in part because of you.” If the polls don’t show Obama making inroads among veterans, his efforts to court this constituency at the very least are pushing Romney to pay attention to a voting group that Republicans historically have been able to count on for support. In San Diego, Romney did not appear to be taking veterans’ backing for granted, however. He spoke about visiting Afghanistan and Iraq while he was governor of Massachusetts and about talking to not only soldiers, but also their families at home. Romney, who regularly criticizes Obama for undermining global security with a weak foreign policy, did not mention the president by name. But he ticked off a list of global threats and said: “I wish I could tell you that the world is a safe place today.” Romney said the country must not shrink its military to the point where the United States loses its status as the strongest power in the world. “Were we to follow that kind of course, there would be no one that could stand to protect us,” he said. Under clear San Diego skies, the crowd waved flags, sang along to patriotic hymns and cheered as veterans were recognized. Typically the annual event draws about 100 people, according to organizers, but two hours before the ceremony began, large crowds began arriving. The president’s visit to the Vietnam memorial was timed to mark the start of the 50th anniversary of that conflict. But if 2008 is a guide, it will be harder for Obama to connect with older veterans than those coming home from more recent conflicts. Obama won veterans under age 60 in 2008, a better result than Sen. John F. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, had achieved four years earlier. But Obama lost veterans overall because of a lack of support among the older men, who overwhelmingly outnumber their younger counterparts because so many more Americans served in Korea and Vietnam than in more recent conflicts. Obamas and his wife, Michelle, attended the events at Arlington and the Vietnam memorial on a sweltering Washington day that saw temperatures exceed 92 degrees. Spectators fanned themselves with programs while military honor guards performed 21-gun salutes. At the Vietnam memorial, several Vietnam-era aircraft flew overhead at the close of ceremonies, including Huey and Chinook helicopter and a B-52 bomber. Obama was the third sitting president to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, after Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. _Gardner reported from Washington. Henderson reported from San Diego._

Sarah Palin went after the ‘Today’ show for bringing up her son’s arrest. Sorry, but it’s fair game.

Is it fair game? Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) became the latest political figure to raise the age-old question Monday, crying foul during an interview on NBC when "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie referenced her son's recent arrest for an alleged incident of domestic violence. Palin, who endorsed Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump in January, subsequently said at a campaign rally that combat veterans, like her son Track, "come back a bit different" and suggested that President Obama's administration has not adequately cared for vets. The remark was interpreted by some as blaming Obama for the incident involving Track Palin, in which he is accused of punching his girlfriend. Guthrie asked Sarah Palin whether she regrets the comment. The 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee gave a terse reply and then objected to Guthrie asking the question in the first place. "I don't regret any comment that I made, because I didn't lay PTSD on the foot of the president," said Palin, who is campaigning with Trump again on caucus day in Iowa. "You guys brought me here to talk about Iowa politics and the caucus tonight, not to talk about my kids — and that was a promise. But as things go in the world of media, you don't keep your promises." Guthrie's co-host Matt Lauer denied that there had been any agreement not to bring up Track Palin's arrest. So we're left in a he-said-she-said situation on the promise — with no easy way to figure out what actually happened. Perhaps there was a genuine misunderstanding in which an NBC booker assured Palin that the arrest would not be the focus of the interview (it wasn't, by the way), and she took that to mean that it wouldn't come up at all. Who knows? A spokesman for the show did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As for the broader question of fair game-ness: Sorry, Sarah Palin. It's totally in play. And there's no question about it. Palin is the one who injected her son's arrest into the campaign by talking about it on the stump; furthermore, she politicized the issue when she used the incident to criticize the state of veterans' care under Obama. Trump, who has made caring for vets a pillar of his campaign — he staged a veterans' fundraiser instead of attending last week's GOP candidates' debate in Des Moines — has said that he suggested Palin talk about the arrest on the trail. For similar reasons, many in the news media declared that Bill Clinton's past philandering is fair game because he is campaigning for his wife, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who is positioning herself as a champion of women. It might be personal, but it can't stay private because it's clearly relevant to issues in the campaign. Palin said she was there to talk campaign politics. Well, guess what? Her son's arrest is campaign politics. She has only herself to blame for that.

Tom DeLonge defined pop-punk with Blink-182. He left stardom behind to study aliens.

A different kind of stardom — space, and the aliens who lived there — seduced DeLonge.  All of those works are related, in one way or another, to a subject DeLonge calls “the Phenomenon.” More than 20 years of research and reflection led to the new book. DeLonge’s perspective turned to the heavens in early adolescence, he told The Washington Post in a recent phone interview, after witnessing the conflict between his mother, a devout Christian, and his father, who was “not religious at all.” He began to wonder if something sinister was at work. “I realized early on there was something odd with the human life experience,” DeLonge said. “There’s all these wars. I had a really difficult, broken family. I got kicked out of high school.”      DeLonge’s book will not convince any skeptics about the reality of aliens. Sufficient evidence already exists, DeLonge told The Post, citing the scale of the universe. “There are trillions of galaxies,” he said. “There’s trillions of planets within each galaxy, and people go, ‘Are we alone?’ ” DeLonge dismissed his own question with a word Blink-182 once set on fire. He also had little time for those who doubt whether aliens had visited Earth. “It’s all out there already,” DeLonge said. “It’s so frustrating when people say they’re waiting for some big person to say something. Well, there’s been a hundred books, national press events in D.C., meetings in Congress and multi-star generals on the record.”      A Defense Department spokesman said in an email to The Washington Post that neither the Defense Department’s Community Relations nor the Air Force had records of such a meeting. The spokesman “did see one open source story that named generals who supposedly worked with Mr. DeLonge.” Both of the generals mentioned had retired, the representative said, the first in October 2013 and the other in June of 2014.

That time Jim Webb fought a man in Vietnam, explained

That was one of the closing lines from Jim Webb, a former senator from Virginia and secretary of the Navy, in Tuesday's first Democratic presidential primary debate. It was certainly his most memorable, anyway. His answer came in response to a question about political enemies he's made. Here's his exact answer, delivered with an undeniable smirk: Some have reported Webb's comments as saying that he killed the man, though Webb doesn't appear to have claimed that exactly or stated it so plainly. Either way, the immediate aftermath of his comment earned some ridicule on Twitter and late night. His son, an Iraq War veteran also named Jim Webb, found his father's actions in combat anything but funny. He wrote an op-ed published in The Washington Post's military blog, Checkpoint, on Thursday saying, "If anything, his blunt (and perhaps a bit brutal) honesty was much appreciated, and further endeared him to us as a candidate."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The story begs for context, and the Military Times has a record of when Webb received his Navy Cross for his action on a fateful July 1969 day in Vietnam, deep in hostile territory (relevant section bolded):    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Webb shared more details of the incident in a 2007 Rolling Stone profile:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Webb writes in his 2014 memoir, "I Heard My Country Calling," he spent close to a year in "the blood-soaked, infamous battlefields known as the An Hoa Basin." In the book he shares many gruesome battles, particularly the one mentioned above:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The experience has understandably stuck with him. The former journalist and New York Times bestselling novelist broke out his fiction pen this summer for the first time since 2001 to write "To Kill A Man: A Short Story."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The opening lines read: In his memoir, Webb shares his frustration with serving and being put in dangerous situations, ostensibly like the one above: Webb's injuries eventually forced him to leave the Marine Corps. He wrote in his memoir how disorienting that was: Today, his presidential candidacy is a long shot. But it's worth noting that we have previous presidents who have been in hand-to-hand combat and have killed. According to Cecil Adams, the writer of the syndicated online column The Straight Dope, these four presidents also have killed: Andrew Jackson (a duel), Grover Cleveland (hanging criminals as sheriff of Erie County in New York), Teddy Roosevelt (firing at Spanish troops as a Rough Rider in Cuba during the Spanish-American War), and George Washington (allegedly ambushing a French military detachment).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _This post has been updated._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Sarah Palin, the political mother of Trump

_“I know Russia well. I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, Miss Universe contest.”_ — Donald Trump Mark Salter, the longtime John McCain _consigliere_ , was just asked by Politico’s Glenn Thrush whether he believed McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate “opened the door a crack for a Trump-style candidate.” “Maybe a little,” Salter said after a pause. Stuff and nonsense. Salter was being modest. Palin’s nomination didn’t crack the door for Trump. It birthed him. Palin is, politically, the Mother of Trump. Some of their similarities, such as their curious ways of justifying their knowledge of Russia, are superficial. Trump, asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd where he gets his military advice, said: “Well, I watch the shows. . . . You know, when you watch your show and all of the other shows.” This had more than an echo of Palin’s reply to Katie Couric in 2008 about which newspapers or magazines she reads: “Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.” But the likenesses go much deeper, between the candidates themselves and among the followers they’ve inspired: The attacks on the media. The demonization of a supposed “establishment.” The huge and sometimes violent crowds. The prominent platforms given both candidates by Fox News. The racist responses among supporters. The paranoia about taking away guns. The suspicion of science. The scapegoating of Muslims. The portrayal of President Obama as something other than American. Well before Trump built his national political reputation by questioning the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate, there was Palin. In December 2009, she called it a “fair question” and “fair game” and said “the public rightfully is still making it an issue.” In 2011, after Trump said he was sending investigators to Hawaii to probe Obama’s birth, Palin responded, “More power to him.” Before Trump said he would bring back waterboarding and “a hell of a lot worse,” there was Palin. Two years ago, she talked about how “if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.” Before there was Trump talking about banning Muslim immigration (a stance Palin supports) and forced registration of Muslims, there was Palin. “Let Allah sort it out,” was her 2013 response to the Syrian civil war. Soon after Palin was named McCain’s running mate in 2008, I went to see her campaign in Florida in front of 8,000 people — and as I reread my column from then it sounds much like the Trump events I’ve seen this year. She justified her accusation that Obama “pals around with terrorists” by saying that Obama isn’t “a man who sees America the way you and I see America” and that he “sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.” When she railed against this “domestic terrorist,” Bill Ayers, one man in the audience shouted, “Kill him!” She stirred the crowd to turn against the press in a manner similar to Trump’s rallying of supporters against penned-in reporters at his events: “Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, ‘Sit down, boy.’ ” Back then, she stirred racial animosity (she tried to make an issue of Obama’s former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, even though McCain had called that off-limits) and quarreled with the party establishment (the Florida GOP chairman was forbidden aboard her plane because he questioned Palin’s abilities). Nicolle Wallace, a former top official on the McCain 2008 campaign, observed the parallel in the New York Times in January after Palin endorsed Trump: “Mr. Trump is riding the wave of anxiety that Ms. Palin first gave voice to as Senator John McCain’s running mate. Mr. Trump has now usurped and vastly expanded upon Ms. Palin’s constituency, but the connection between the two movements is undeniable.” McCain, admirably, refused to let the rage take over his campaign in 2008: He famously corrected the woman at his event who called Obama an “Arab,” taking a different approach than Trump, who let stand an accusation at his event that Obama is a Muslim. But now there is no such filter. And the man who gave us Palin in 2008 worries that her political progeny could cost him his Senate seat in Arizona this year. With Trump on the ticket, McCain has said, “this may be the race of my life.” **_Twitter: @Milbank_ ** _Read more fromDana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more:** Ruth Marcus: If Trump were a woman... Kathleen Parker: With Trump and Palin, Republicans get what they deserve Michael Gerson: Trump and Palin join forces in a war against reason

Critics exploded over Trump’s PTSD comments. But many veterans who support him don’t care.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments Monday about veterans’ mental health set off a fiery debate about how post-traumatic stress should be discussed. But many veterans, including some who have suffered from the condition, say they continue to support him. Trump, speaking to a group of veterans in Reston, Va., was asked whether he would support boosting the roles of chaplains and faith-based programs to promote mental resiliency among service members and veterans. He indicated he would, and then shifted quickly to opine on problems he sees in the care veterans receive. “When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over and you’re strong and you can handle it,” Trump said. “But a lot of people can’t handle it. And they see horror stories. They see events that you couldn’t see in a movie, nobody would believe it.”  Retired Army Sgt. Maj. Michael Adams, a Special Forces veteran with numerous combat deployments, said part of the culture in his world was not seeking help, even as stress mounted and service members carried out numerous classified operations of unclear lengths. “PTSD remains a huge problem across the military and in Special Operations forces and bulls— comments like the one Trump made today — intentional or not — just make it worse,” Adams said. The Department of Veterans Affairs and the military “need to make a sincere effort to try to help troops and stop crunching numbers,” he added. But Trump’s supporters who have served quickly said his remarks were being exaggerated for effect in the media. Former Marine Staff Sgt. Chad Robichaux, a combat veteran who served in Force Reconnaissance units and asked Trump the question, defended him in a statement released to news organizations. “I think it’s sickening that anyone would twist Mr. Trump’s comments to me in order to pursue a political agenda,” said Robichaux, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. “I took his comments to be thoughtful and understanding of the struggles many veterans have, and I believe he is committed to helping them.”  https://twitter.com/draesims/status/783025134194024449  “When you’re struggling you do need support. You don’t feel strong. You feel your weakest,” Brennan wrote. “On the flip side, the moment you ask for help is when you’re at your strongest despite feeling as though you’re at your weakest. It just takes time to see that. And because it’s incredibly embarrassing most survivors won’t talk about it.” Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump adviser, released a statement through the campaign that blamed the media for taking Trump’s words out of context “in order to deceive voters and veterans.” He suggested Trump was simply “highlighting the challenges veterans face when returning home after serving their country.” Numerous groups supporting veterans challenge the concept that those who seek treatment “can’t handle” trauma they have experienced. In fact, it’s often now described as an injury that must be treated rather than as a mental disorder, to the point that the “D” in “PTSD” often is dropped.   Paul Rieckhoff, the chief executive officer of the non-profit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called in a series of tweets Monday for an educated dialogue about the subject, urging media organizations to add “light rather than just heat” and for people to be careful with the words they choose. “Every national leader has a responsibility to use accurate and appropriate language when talking about mental health and suicide especially,” Rieckhoff said.

Sarah Palin tries to stay relevant

**CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post and the post’s URL incorrectly reported that Sarah Palin had signed on as a contributor to the Al Jazeera America news network. The blogger cited a report on the Daily Currant Web site as the basis for that information without realizing that the piece was satirical.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The Sarah Palin Story is a cautionary tale about what can happen when politics and celebrity meet. Fox News and their once-upon-a-time darling Palin recently parted ways after three years. But it appears that Palin is still trying to find ways to stay relevant while her 15 minutes fades into the political history books. On Monday morning, Palin posted a message via Facebook that she and her husband, Todd, planned to attend Monday’s memorial service for slain Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. After the service, she wrote on her page, “It was a beautiful memorial service for Chris Kyle at Cowboys Stadium this afternoon. What a celebration of a great life! All in all, is there a finer human being who has crossed the 50-yard line star in Texas than Chris Kyle?” She then linked to a way to honor Kyle. She also thanked her followers for recent birthday wishes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University A recent poll shows that her home state of Alaska no longer loves her. A survey by Public Policy Polling shows that Alaskans have a higher opinion of Congress than Palin. And that’s saying something considering Congress is at an all-time low. Alaskans – 78 percent of them – also do not want Palin to run for president in 2016. If she was pitted against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a presidential matchup, Clinton would win by 16 points in the 49th state.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Four years ago, Palin was the superstar of the Republican Party. She was a fierce fundraiser and a lightening rod for the tea party. Then, the reality television and fame bugs bit her and her family hard. From “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” to daughter Bristol appearing on “Dancing With The Stars,” you half-expected the family to appear next in a mayonnaise commercial. Was that where it all went south for Palin? Lara Brown, a political science professor at Villanova University, says that Palin’s star flickered the minute she said she wasn’t running for president in 2011. “She gave up her gladiator status and became a spectator,” Brown told me. “In doing so, she could only stay relevant for so long because the people who rallied behind her in 2008 and wanted her to be their champion in 2012 were sorely disappointed. They believed she had the ‘fire in belly’ for politics and that she was going to be a ‘pit bull-tough hockey mom.’” Brown points to Palin abandoning the Alaska governorship as the first clue that she may not remain in politics. “For whatever reason, she has chosen to leave the game – more than once – and that is why she has become a ‘flash in the pan,’” Brown says. Fame, not legislating, is clearly what Palin still seeks. She had to be at least a bit giddy last month when actress Julianne Moore won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Palin in the HBO miniseries “Game Change.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Then there’s social media on which Palin still has a loyal following. On any given post on Facebook, she may have between 30,000 and 90,000 likes. But likes don’t translate into votes. No, Palin is likely done with seeing her name on a ballot, and now will try to stay in the GOP limelight against rising stars such as South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez – women who can actually boast about sponsoring legislation and signing bills. As Brown says, “You have to love the game to stay with it.” __    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Sarah Palin tries to stay relevant

Fence jumper brings issue of troubled veterans to Obama’s door

When a man carrying a knife scaled the White House fence and was arrested inside the mansion Friday evening, an issue President Obama has been grappling with for years - troubled veterans returning from combat - literally landed in his entryway. The country has contended with the issue of veterans coming home with mental wounds for as long as it has sent soldiers into war.  But the issue has taken on an increased urgency during Obama's years in office, as Obama has wound down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of combat veterans have returned. Veteran health care -- both mental and physical -- has come into sharp focus as scandals involving wait lists to see doctors rocked the Veterans Administration earlier this year. The man who jumped the fence at the White House, Omar J. Gonzalez, served three tours of duty in Iraq, according to his public defender. His family said he was a sniper. His medical records have not been released, but his former stepson told The Post that Gonzalez suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Gonzalez's ex-wife told an NBC affiliate in Indianapolis that her former husband had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. It is unclear if Gonzalez was diagnosed before or after his tours in Iraq; during one tour his wife said he suffered a traumatic incident he could not talk about.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Though Gonzalez's case is an extreme one, advocates said it is a stark reminder that many people are returning from combat with mental wounds that are left untreated. "It’s quite sobering if you ask me. It hits very close to home in a sense," said Adrian Atizado, assistant national legislative director at Disabled American Veterans. "But you know this is going to be an issue that I think this country and our government is going to have to try its best to address for the next few years as more service members get out of the military." The issue of mentally ill veterans may be affecting Obama now in a direct and personal way, but he's long been connected on a policy level. He has lobbied to expand mental health care for veterans since he was in the Senate seven years ago. Last month at the American Legion's national conference in Charlotte, he announced 19 executive actions to help improve mental health care for veterans, including orders automatically providing support for outgoing members of the military with mental health issues and expanding suicide prevention programs.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “We can’t stand idly by on such tragedy,” Obama said of military suicides. "So long as any service member or veteran is suffering or feels like they have nowhere to turn or doesn’t get the support that they need, that means we haven’t done enough. We all know we need to do more." But some advocates for veterans think the Obama administration needs to do much more. "There is tremendous anger and outrage and disappointment across all sectors of the veterans community across all generations," because of the VA scandal and a sense that veterans are not being listened to, said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "Nobody’s been surprised," at Gonzalez's case, he said. "What they’re really surprised is he got to the front door because we’re all security experts. We know there are a lot of veterans who are extremely ill and are severely injured and feel lost." Phil Carter, Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security, said Gonzalez's case brings up three relevant questions concerning the care of similar vets:  what to do if someone comes into the military with a mental illness, how to treat soldiers who are diagnosed with mental illness while on active duty and whether injury compensation should also include a treatment mandate. "I wouldn’t generalize from this case, but I would use this as a learning moment to ask those three questions," he said. Ron Honberg, national director of policy and legal affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said there is a much broader conversation to have about post-traumatic stress disorder and the quality of care for the mental wounds suffered by service members in combat. But, as a society, "we're not very prepared to to respond to the needs of these individuals," Honberg said. People are still loathe to interfere in people's lives, he said, and there are cultural factors in the military that "sort of make it taboo or at least discourage people" from seeking help. Honberg said he believes the administration has done a lot to heighten awareness of mental health in soldiers, but fissures remain. "There’s this big, big gap between recognizing that individuals have these needs and actually creating an environment that’s conducive to people getting help when they need it," he said. Can the Gonzalez case serve to heighten awareness of mental health issues for vets? Shad Meshad, president and founder of the National Veterans Foundation, thinks Obama should talk to Gonzalez. "He has an opportunity," Meshad said of Obama, "to sit down and show he has the you-know-what to listen to someone who was that disturbed and served his country," Meshad said. "Maybe there's something to learn."

Injured Ranger Cory Remsburg gets SOTU spotlight

President Obama has at times been described as a detached commander in chief. The warm words the president used to describe his relationship with a soldier in the audience, a guest of honor who sat next to first lady Michelle Obama, projected a far different image. The experiences of Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg, an Army Ranger who was wounded in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan, provided a coda to a speech that focused in part on the unintended consequences of wars. Obama said he met the soldier in the summer of 2009 at an Omaha Beach anniversary of D-Day. “He walked me through the program — a strong, impressive young man, with an easy manner, sharp as a tack,” Obama said. “We joked around and took pictures, and I told him to stay in touch.” Remsburg soon deployed to Afghanistan — his 10th overseas tour. A roadside bombing in Kandahar on Oct. 1 of that year nearly killed him. He was in a coma for three months and remains partially paralyzed and brain damaged. “Like the Army he loves, like the America he serves, Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg never gives up, and he does not quit,” said Obama, who has visited the soldier twice since his return. Lawmakers leaped to their feet clapping as Obama told attendees about Remsburg’s gradual recovery and strength. Even as America’s role in the war in Afghanistan draws to a close this year, the United States will continue to wrestle with the legacy of that conflict, as well as the war in Iraq, Obama said. “As this time of war draws to a close, a new generation of heroes returns to civilian life,” he said. “We’ll keep slashing that backlog so our veterans receive the benefits they’ve earned, and our wounded warriors receive the health care — including the mental health care — that they need.” Chai R. Feldblum, an Obama appointee who has been a commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since 2010, said the government needs to do more to help disabled Americans. “I wish all the legislators clapping for Cory would pass legislation that helps people with disabilities,” she said after the speech. “The president could have helped that if he had included disability when he mentioned the inherent dignity and equality of all people.” Karen Tumulty contributed to this report.

Seven years ago today, Sarah Palin gave the best speech of her career

Seven years ago today, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took the convention stage in St. Paul, Minn.,  and formally accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination offered to her by GOP nominee John McCain. The speech she gave, which ran just under 45 minutes, was Palin's introduction to the vast majority of Americans. And she slayed.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Palin spent the first half of the speech telling what remains a very compelling life story -- about her eldest son's service in the military, about the birth of her special-needs son and about her unique and, at the time, uniquely appealing life story. She segues into an attack on President Obama's lack of political experience and, in a sign of things to come, bashes the media for their "unfair" treatment of her.  And then she details her life in politics -- as a reformer who "took on the old boys network in Juneau." Palin was pointed, charming and funny.  And the crowd was IN LOVE with her. I remember vividly watching Palin speak from The Washington Post's space at the St. Paul convention site and thinking that she was an absolute natural -- a star who McCain had plucked from obscurity and who had the very real possibility of becoming the face of the Republican party for years to come. What came next -- both in that 2008 race and then everything that followed it -- reduced Palin from a star politician to a sort-of celebrity to, now, something less than that. But watching her 2008 convention speech again today reminded me of how much talent and potential she had at one time. It's impossible to watch just how good she was in that speech and think her story -- politically speaking, at least -- would end the way it did.

After Navy Yard shooting, vets fear crackdown on security clearances will unfairly hurt them

Will Simmons felt a sickening sense of familiarity when news bulletins scrolling across his computer screen Monday identified the Washington Navy Yard shooter as a veteran. “I thought, ‘Here we go again,’ ” recalled Simmons, 31, an Iraq war veteran who was at his pharmaceutical office job in New Jersey that day. “It’s going to turn into a disgruntled veteran story. It was like a punch in the gut to see it was a vet.” Many veterans groups and advocates complain that media portrayals of onetime Navy reservist Aaron Alexis as a troubled veteran plays into a stereotype that causes problems for former members of the military. “They talk about it like it’s some sort of explanation,” said Tom Tarantino, chief of policy for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “It perpetuates the stigma of the ticking time bomb or disturbed vets. To talk about it as relevant is not only insulting, but it also does a disservice to hundreds of thousands of veterans.” Some warn that calls to clamp down on security clearances for federal workers and contractors who have mental health issues could discourage veterans from seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered a broad review of the security clearance procedures. Simmons said he was concerned about assumptions that the attack was tied to Alexis’s military service and speculation about possible post-traumatic stress. Alexis did not deploy for overseas service. “As someone diagnosed with PTSD, that was pretty offensive,” said Simmons, who served at Balad Air Base in 2007 with an Air Force Office of Special Investigation unit that came under fire during counterterrorism operations. “Shooter-veteran-PTSD — it all gets lumped together.” Meg Mitcham, who served as an Army medic in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, said she is concerned the talk of stripping the security clearances of people with mental health disorders will derail military efforts to end the stigma surrounding PTSD. “I worry if we start going down that road, service members won’t seek help for mental health,” said Mitcham, who noted that losing her security clearance would hurt future job prospects. “There’s been a lot of effort put into convincing service members that they won’t lose their security clearance and that it won’t affect their careers.” Veterans make up about a quarter of the federal workforce, and many have been treated for mental health issues. In 2012 alone, the VA provided mental health care treatment to 1.2 million veterans, including 502,546 veterans who were treated for PTSD. Under current procedures, service members who have sought help for post-traumatic stress are not flagged for additional review in background checks. Phillip Carter, a former Army officer who served in Iraq and is now a fellow with the Center for a New American Security, also worries some may avoid needed treatment to protect a security clearance. Carter used Twitter to criticize as “irresponsible” a headline Monday evening on The Washington Post Web Site that read, “Navy Yard gunman said to be troubled veteran.” “The headlines and general narrative are getting ahead of the facts,” Carter said. “I put this in the category of workplace violence. There is still no evidence that anything in his service record caused him to kill these people.” A CNAS report on veteran employment last year said companies consistently cite concerns about PTSD as a negative stereotype that could hurt the chances of a veteran being hired. “It hurts them in the workplace,” Carter said. “It hurts them in a university setting. It hurts them in family situations.” Noted Simmons, “I had a former boss say, ‘You’re not going to shoot everybody up, are you?’ ” He was stunned by the question, he recalls, and had to walk away. Now he is concerned others think the same. “You’re wondering if they’re thinking about the Navy Yard,” Simmons said. “With incidents like this, you’ve got to wonder if they’re wondering.”

Marine wounded alongside Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter featured in new video

When President Obama presented the Medal of Honor this year to Marine Cpl. William Kyle Carpenter, he recalled the way the infantryman attempted to save his friend, Lance Cpl. Nick Eufrazio, from the devastating effects of a grenade blast on a roof in Afghanistan.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “When the grenade landed, other Marines in the compound looked up and saw it happen,” Obama said of the Nov. 21, 2010, ambush in which both Marines were grievously injured. “Kyle tried to stand. He lunged forward toward that grenade, and then he disappeared into the blast. Keep in mind, at the time, Kyle was just 21 years old. But in that instant, he fulfilled those words of Scripture: ‘Greater love hath no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends.'” Carpenter’s recovery required dozens of surgeries and years of physical of therapy, and has been well documented as the story of his heroism spread. Eufrazio’s recovery is less known, but also remarkable. As the new, independent video above shows, he sustained a severe traumatic brain injury that doctors said would prevent him from every speaking again. He still spends much of his time in a wheelchair, but he’s now able communicate freely, and has retained a razor-sharp sense of humor. “I’m talking now, right?” he says, when asked in the video if he proved doctors wrong. Nick’s father, Mark, says in the video that his family acknowledges their Marine has changed, but that they have to be positive and focus on the fact that he is still here. “Things have changed, but you know what? It’s time to change,” the father said. “Again, you do have your days. I don’t think you’re ever going to be away from that. But you heal. I don’t know, everybody is different, and everybody heals in a different way.” As outlined by Marine Corps Times, the video was produced as part of a project by artist Thi Linh Wernau. It’s called “You. Are. Beautiful,” and includes photos and videos featuring numerous veterans.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Eugene Robinson: Six issues raised by Bowe Bergdahl

Bringing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl home was the right thing to do, and President Obama did it in a mostly reasonable way. The high-volume “debate” about Bergdahl’s homecoming sounds like the raving heard around the water coolers of Crazytown. Here, in descending order of importance, are the issues the Bergdahl affair presents — and a rational way to think about them. 1. “We leave no soldier behind on the battlefield.” This is the commitment we make to the men and women who serve in the U.S. armed forces. The promise was made to Bergdahl, and the nation was honor-bound to respect it. Five years ago, Bergdahl apparently walked away from his post in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province, near the border with Pakistan. Earlier, he had expressed his disillusionment with the U.S. conduct of the war — more than that, his shame — in an e-mail to his father. The Post reported Thursday that nearby villagers reported seeing Bergdahl walking around in a daze, unwilling to accept food or water, deaf to their warnings that he was heading into a dangerous area full of Taliban. It’s pretty clear that he went AWOL. Was he a deserter? Quite possibly. Did he somehow take leave of his senses? That seems possible, too. These are questions for the military justice system to answer, and Bergdahl should be held accountable. Deserting one’s post in a combat zone is a grave offense. But Bergdahl has not been found guilty of anything, or even formally accused of anything. He was, until his release, an active-duty U.S. Army sergeant being held by the Taliban. We cannot decide whether to secure a captive soldier’s release based on his or her political views — and we certainly cannot take into account what the soldier’s _father_ might think about U.S. foreign policy. Recent proof-of-life videos from the Taliban appeared to show that Bergdahl’s health was deteriorating. Meanwhile, the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan soon will come to an end. The time to act was now. 2\. Reports that six U.S. servicemen died on missions searching for Bergdahl have been denied by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. My impression is that this may be a matter of semantics. For example, troops at an outpost under Taliban fire might have been ordered not to evacuate if there were reports that Bergdahl could be in the area. In my book, such duty should count as participation in the search. The nation’s hearts should go out to the families of any who died looking for Bergdahl. These men were bravely doing their job, as defined by their commanders: Bring home a U.S. soldier being held by the enemy. 3\. Was the price of Bergdahl’s freedom too high? No, it wasn’t. The five Taliban commanders released in exchange should properly be described as one- time Taliban commanders. I don’t doubt that they were powerful, dangerous enemy leaders at the time of their capture. But all have been held at Guantanamo since at least 2002. The war and the world have changed. It defies credulity that any of them could emerge after such a long absence and regain command; for one thing, many — if not most — of the fighters they once led are dead. Drone strikes would be launched the minute one of the five appeared on the battlefield. The release does boost the Taliban’s morale, however, so the deal is not cost-free. But I believe bringing Bergdahl home is worth it. 4. I said the way Obama did this was “mostly” reasonable. The president should and could have informed Congress that he was going ahead with a prisoner exchange that he knew would be controversial. I don’t know whether Obama complied with the letter of the law when he described the outlines of a possible deal to skeptical members of Congress in 2011. The spirit of the law surely required the courtesy of a heads up. 5\. The optics of the deal’s announcement were unfortunate. The White House knew there were serious questions about how and why Bergdahl left his post. Officials also knew that Bergdahl’s father, Robert, had coped with his son’s captivity by growing a long beard, studying Islam and learning Pashto, the language spoken by the Taliban. Rose Garden ceremonies should be safe and predictable. This one wasn’t. 6\. And finally, national security adviser Susan Rice. First she’s given incomplete talking points about Benghazi, then she’s dispatched to say on the talk shows that Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction.” If I were Rice, I’d start taking Sundays off. _Read more fromEugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A;._ **Read more about this topic:** Charles Lane: When soldiers walk off George F. Will: The rogue president Dana Milbank: Knowledge not required Kathleen Parker: He had to make a deal Ruth Marcus: Still one left behind

Santorum’s quotes on the role of women

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is under fire for saying he has “concerns” about women in combat. “I think that could be a very compromising situation,” Santorum said in an interview with CNN’s John King, “where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved.” This isn’t the first time he has sparked controversy with comments about the role of women in society. Here is a sampling of some of his recent remarks concerning women and combat, women and rape, working mothers, stay-at-home mothers and equal opportunity for women. “I was talking about men’s emotional issues; not women. I mean, there’s a lot of issues. That’s just one of them. So my concern is being in combat in that situation instead of being focused on the mission, they may be more concerned with protecting someone who may be in a vulnerable position, a woman in a vulnerable position.” “You throw on top of that just simply physical strength and capability and you may be out there on a mission where it’s you and a woman and if you’re injured, the ability to transport that person back. And you know, there’s just, there are physical limitations,” Santorum said. “Women have served and do serve and do wonderful things within the military and . . . they do have opportunities to serve in very dangerous positions. I mean, they serve in very dangerous positions. And I certainly understand that and respect that and admire women for doing so, but I think on the front line of combat is not the best place and it’s not maximizing what they can bring to the table.” **— ABC News interview Friday morning.** PIERS MORGAN: But do you really — do you really — let me ask you this. Do you really believe, in every case, it should be totally wrong, in the sense that — I know that you believe, even in cases of rape and incest — and you’ve got two daughters. You know, if you have a daughter that came to you who had been raped. SANTORUM: Yes. MORGAN: And was pregnant and was begging you to let her have an abortion, would you really be able to look her in the eye and say, no, as her father? SANTORUM: I would do what every father must do, which is to try to counsel your daughter to do the right thing. MORGAN: It’s an almost impossibly hypothetical thing to ask you, but there will be people in that position, and they will share your religious values. SANTORUM: It’s not a matter of religious values. MORGAN: And they are looking at their daughter, saying, how can I deal with this, because if I make her have this baby, isn’t it going to just ruin her life? SANTORUM: Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice, I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation. **— Jan. 20, 2012 interview with Piers Morgan on CNN.** “The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong.” **— From Santorum’s book, “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good.”** “Many women have told me, and surveys have shown, that they find it easier, more ‘professionally’ gratifying, and certainly more socially affirming, to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children.” **— From “It Takes a Family”** “Respect for stay-at-home mothers has been poisoned by a toxic combination of the village elders’ war on the traditional family and radical feminism’s misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect.’’ **— From “It Takes a Family”** “Radical feminists have been making the pitch that justice demands that men and women be given an equal opportunity to make it to the top in the workplace.” **— From “It Takes a Family”**

The voices of veterans ring out in Maryland’s debate about assault rifles

When hunters argued that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed assault-weapons ban would ruin their sport, state lawmakers were not moved. When devotees of the National Rifle Association cried that it would trample on their constitutional rights, lawmakers did not blink. But then there were the soldiers, who showed up in Annapolis by the dozens this year and quietly became one of the most influential critics of O’Malley’s gun-control plan. Veterans streaming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have argued that freedoms they fought for overseas would be violated at home. Some also came with a different, more complicated message that has resonated with lawmakers, who are now considering significantly weakening the proposal by O’Malley (D) by exempting several military-style weapons. The very guns the veterans used in war — the ones they sang about in boot camp, slept with, cared for, cleaned, prayed with, the guns that led them down dark alleys and through firefights — have now become something altogether different. They are instruments of catharsis more than violence, a postwar release, therapy through the crosshairs. Since he has returned from Afghanistan, A.J. Wynne, 24, who was a corporal in the Marines, has spent countless hours shooting in the farmland north of Frederick. On a recent Sunday, he picked up his semiautomatic rifle, put down his demons and let muscle memory take over. Breathe. Focus. Squeeze. The weapon erupted into a violent cacophony — 30 shots in 11 seconds — and sent the crows in the treesbolting skyward. The smile made his beard rise. He reloaded. “It’s not yoga — it’s not graceful in any sense of the word, but I could do this all day long,” he said. “It’s just something that you go do to relax, to calm down.” Wynne knows there are those who would argue that he is perhaps the last person who should be given unfettered access to high-powered, semiautomatic rifles that are designed to emulate the weapons he was trained to use in battle. For months after coming home, Wynne would lunge to the ground at the sound of a weapon firing or a car backfiring. At night, he would awaken to find himself wrestling an invisible enemy, flailing and slamming the nightstand and leaving his girlfriend, Tara, cowering at the end of the bed. The nightmares have subsided, but guns have become an ever bigger part of his life. He sells them, trains people how to shoot them, collects them, and has positioned them around his home so they are never more than a few steps away. As the House of Delegates debates O’Malley’s bill, the veterans’ argument appears to be having an effect. After passing the Senate, the legislation is bogged down in an influential House committee, where lawmakers say they are concerned about the effect of the assault-weapons ban. Members of both parties say they are considering rolling back provisions of O’Malley’s ban, potentially leaving legal for purchase many semiautomatic rifles modeled after military ones. Del. Kathleen M. Dumais, a Montgomery County Democrat and vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said veterans and competitive sportsmen were central factors in her thinking that a total ban may be inappropriate. “We have problems with soldiers returning from combat and taking their own lives. That’s a big deal, and we need to talk about that overall in this country,” added Del. Michael A. McDermott, an Eastern Shore Republican and former member of the U.S. Army Reserve. “But banning these weapons? For some guys, that’s actually therapy. They go to the range. They enjoy shooting sports. It’s something that helps them recover and have balance in their lives. If we start taking that away, it’s only going to hurt, not help.” That’s far from a universally accepted premise. While he understands that many like to shoot for recreation or even relaxation, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (D), a colonel in the Army Reserve, said that doesn’t mean you need to have a weapon designed for war. “It’s nonsense,” said Brown, the highest-ranking U.S. elected official to have served in Iraq. “The military trains us on these military-style assault weapons to perform a combat mission, and that combat mission does not exist in the communities of Maryland or anywhere in this country.” Gun industry data suggest that recent veterans are one of the country’s fastest-growing segments of buyers of semiautomatic rifles. Gun manufacturers have increasingly marketed to them, and the NRA has focused a membership push on active-duty and recent veterans. Wynne may be among Maryland’s most prolific purchasers of rifles that O’Malley would like to ban. Since returning from Afghanistan two years ago, Wynne has purchased seven semiautomatic rifles — a side effect, at least partly, of his day job at a gun shop in Montgomery County. He also just likes shooting them. “I hear a lot of people say they’re willing to move rather than abide by this law,” Wynne said. “I say, ‘Why?’ — why do I have to move from the state that I grew up in — that I went over and served in Afghanistan for? Why do I have to come home to a state that denies my fundamental right? Polls show that residents in Maryland overwhelmingly support an assault-weapons ban as well as other rules proposed by O’Malley, such as fingerprinting gun buyers. But the plight of veterans is one lawmakers, especially in the House, have heard loudly. Veterans were a heavy presence among more than 1,300 people who on March 1 amassed in Annapolis to testify against O’Malley’s plan. Many cited federal data to stress that their rifles are for good, not for harm: Out of 398 Maryland homicides in 2011, two were carried out with rifles. Witness No. 74 was Adam Obest, a staff sergeant in the Maryland Army National Guard, who was last abroad working in Egypt. Seeing how quickly security deteriorated there, he said, buying a gun was his top priority upon returning to Maryland. “I came home and bought an M4 and $1,000 worth of suits at Joseph Banks” to look for a new job, said Obest. “I want to be able to be an asset to my community if I am needed. If there is a disaster, and the road is blocked and I can’t get to the armory, I want to be able to tell my mayor that, ‘I’ve got this. I’m here. I can help keep order.’ ” Ryan McDonald was witness No. 684. He survived two explosions in combat outside Baghdad in 2004 and 2005 and remains in the Army reserves. He shoots an AR15-style rifle on the weekends. “In the rare case where you could be called up again,” said McDonald, 29, “it might be nice to have the skills.” Wynne was witness No. 900. In 2010, Wynne deployed to southern Afghanistan, where he was sometimes assigned to guard the perimeter of bases. Wynne fired only once, after a commander squawked on his radio warning that combatants were planting explosives near a path that convoys traveled to the base. He is still not sure whether he hit anyone. “I could probably still pick the gun out of the armory by feel. It probably rested in my shoulder within a millimeter of the same spot every time.” Kate Havard contributed to this report.

‘American Sniper’ exemplifies a new kind of war film: The professional procedural

“American Sniper,” Clint Eastwood’s military drama starring Bradley Cooper as Navy SEAL and Iraq war sharpshooter Chris Kyle, solidified its standing as this season’s biggest surprise hit — and perhaps the biggest war movie of all time — over the weekend, with its domestic box office earnings surging past $200 million. The film, which is nominated for six Oscars, including best actor and best picture, has also become a bona fide cultural phenomenon, inspiring a slew of commentaries and social media sub-arguments that occasionally confound expectations. There’s no doubt that “American Sniper” is a big hit with the red-state constituencies from which Kyle and many of his fellow service members hail. But the movie — a well-acted, absorbing portrait of Kyle in action during the Iraq war and coping with trauma and dislocation when he returns home — has been a hit with viewers of all philosophical stripes. It may be the first — and last — movie to earn Twitter love from Sarah Palin and Jane Fonda. Over the weekend, at a Producers Guild Awards event, Eastwood insisted that, rather than glorifying combat, “American Sniper” is antiwar, in that it portrays “what [war] does to the family and the people who have to go back into civilian life like Chris Kyle did.” Hours earlier, comedian Bill Maher had slammed the film and its protagonist, declaring Kyle “a psychopath patriot.” That “American Sniper” has been greeted with such different interpretations is a testament to a movie that never hews to obvious ideological lines. But the wildly divergent readings are also typical of an emerging genre of war film that “American Sniper” exemplifies, one that strikes a different focus and tone than its predecessors. Films of earlier eras commonly portrayed boots-on-the-ground soldiers as either victims, demons or mythologized heroes. In today’s war movies, they’re professionals, represented on a par with journalists, attorneys and police detectives whose journeys have propelled movie narratives for decades. “American Sniper” joins a slew of wartime professional procedurals that take similar positions toward their protagonists, from 2013’s “Lone Survivor” to last year’s “Fort Bliss,” about an Army medic and single mother returning home after a tour in Afghanistan. The filmmakers who have perfected the genre most successfully are director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, whose superb wartime thrillers “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” best express the new sensibility: Their main characters aren’t cowboys or ill-fated cannon fodder but skillful, serious-minded operators who are focused on the duty at hand. The tone is sympathetic but not hagiographic, appreciative but not uncritically awestruck; instead Bigelow and Boal treat their protagonists with evenhanded frankness — which goes a long way in explaining why “Zero Dark Thirty” became a big hit in 2012, despite being targeted for a takedown by opportunistic politicians who mistook its representation of torture for endorsement. The same kind of controversy has been brewing around “American Sniper,” with some viewers seeing it as a blinkered glorification of an unjust war and others admiring how Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall portray the psychic toll the Iraq conflict took on Kyle. (Still others object that Kyle, who called Iraqis “savages” in his book and boasted of picking off looters from the Superdome rooftop during Hurricane Katrina, wasn’t nearly the paragon of rectitude the filmmakers portray him as.) Although Kyle supports the Iraq war, some of his colleagues do not: “American Sniper” leaves it to viewers to decide if his unyielding faith in the mission is warranted. The fact that no one knows quite how to take “American Sniper” — that it can’t be reductively labeled as a polemic — is typical of a genre that often lands like a square peg in the round hole of our hyperpartisan political discourse. Rather than an avatar of noble American exceptionalism or a symbol of a grievously misguided foreign doctrine, Kyle is portrayed as a highly trained, surpassingly competent operator whose comfort with firearms and self-image as a protector dovetails perfectly with his chosen career path. Eastwood, Hall and Cooper are careful never to put a heavy spin on Kyle as a hero, victim or villain. The result is that viewers are embracing and abhorring the film for the same reason: They’re conflating simple respect with valorization. In a post-draft era of a volunteer armed forces, the familiar tropes of World War II and Vietnam movies no longer hold. Soldiers now sign up fully aware of what they’re getting into, so they don’t quite fit the binary black-hat-white-hat roles of yore. As members of the military often observe (paraphrasing Winston Churchill), rarely have so few served for so long for so many. At its best, the military professional procedural serves as a symbolic bridge of understanding for a populace that, as James Fallows recently wrote in the Atlantic, is “reverent but disengaged” when it comes to the men and women who have chosen to fight on its behalf. The filmmakers’ challenge is to find a way to honestly portray soldiers’ service, sacrifice and dedication without using them as hobby horses to endorse or critique the political decisions that put them in harm’s way. In many ways, the myriad interpretations of “American Sniper” reflect a conflict from which most Americans were personally disconnected and about which they remain steadfastly unresolved, and an asymmetrical global context that is deeply unsettling and confusing. With consensus still stubbornly elusive, we reflexively look for heroes, but they’re no longer martyred draftees, morally damaged warmongers or shining warrior-gods. They’re just ordinary people, doing jobs that are anything but. **MORE READING** “American Sniper” movie review Trial of Eddie Routh, killer of Chris Kyle, will be darkest chapter of ‘American Sniper’ The ‘unverifiable’ legacy of Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in American history

Under fire for inaction, Obama orders flags lowered for Chattanooga victims

PITTSBURGH — President Obama, facing growing criticism from conservatives and some veterans, ordered all American flags on federal grounds to be lowered to half-staff for the remainder of the week to honor the five service members killed at a naval reserve center in Chattanooga, Tenn. The move was announced Tuesday, five days after the shooting rampage and just minutes after Obama delivered a speech here at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in which he defended his Iran nuclear deal, called for more military spending, and criticized Republicans for relying too heavily on military force and threats instead of diplomacy. Standing before a crowded hall of aging veterans, Obama eulogized each of the four Marines and the one sailor killed by a gunman in Chattanooga. Tom Sullivan was “everything that a Marine should be,” Obama said. Skip Wells was so devoted to the Marine Corps that he wore his dress blues to his home town’s Fourth of July parade. David Wyatt led with courage in Afghanistan and mentored comrades with post-traumatic stress disorder. Carson Holmquist loved his wife, Jasmine, and their 2-year-old son. Randall Smith, the sailor, was a high school baseball star with two young daughters he called “little princesses.” But even as he spoke, the president faced stinging criticism that he hadn’t acted swiftly enough to honor the dead by lowering the flag at the White House and federal buildings around the country. “Oh one more thing, lower the FLAG!!!!!!!! Sir,” former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, author of the best-selling book “Lone Survivor,” wrote on his Facebook page. That critique was then echoed on Capitol Hill, where House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) moved quickly to lower the flag to half-staff on the Capitol grounds. The midsummer tempest highlighted how Obama — six years into his tenure as commander in chief — continues to be pressed to defend his patriotism, his support for the military and his toughness. Those questions have grown especially pointed in the wake of the agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear program. Republican critics of the deal have blasted it as too weak and conciliatory, and insisted that tougher sanctions and threats of force would have been more effective in bending Iranian will. In his VFW speech, Obama fired back, saying his more measured and diplomatic approach had produced results. “Instead of chest-beating that rejects even the idea of talking to our adversaries — which sometimes sounds good in sound bites, but accomplishes nothing — we’re seeing that strong and principled diplomacy can give hope of actually resolving a problem peacefully,” he said. Obama also sought to demonstrate his toughness. In one of the speech’s most striking moments, he said he would not hesitate to use force against those who threatened the United States, and then he read a list of al-Qaeda leaders killed on his watch. “Osama bin Laden is gone,” Obama said. “Anwar Awlaki, a leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, gone. Many of al-Qaeda’s deputies and their replacements, gone. Ahmed Abdi Godane, the leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, gone. . . . The list goes on. If you target Americans, you will have no safe haven.” The VFW crowd applauded heartily for that list, but the reception overall was cool, if respectful. Obama also struck a hawkish pose in blasting Republicans for backing automatic cuts — known as sequestration — that would pare back defense spending. He accused the Republicans of “trying to fund our military with gimmicks” that would “shortchange national security programs like counterterrorism” and “increase risk to our troops.” “I’ve got a better idea, which is to end sequestration, increase the defense budget, invest in America’s strengths,” Obama said. “We shouldn’t be playing partisan politics when it comes to national security.” “These mindless cuts have to end,” he said. Obama vowed to veto any “bill that locks in” the automatic cuts. That sets up a clash with Republicans who have pressed for more defense spending — without the matching increases to domestic programs that Democrats are demanding. Republicans believe those domestic spending hikes are too costly. On the issue of lowering the flags, Obama seemed to hear the mounting Republican criticism and respond to it. There are no clear or consistent rules that apply to lowering flags to half-staff. Obama ordered flags lowered after the mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009 but didn’t lower them when a gunman struck last year at the Army post in Texas. He has lowered flags almost immediately after mass shootings in Tucson; Aurora, Colo.; Newtown, Conn.; Oak Creek, Wis.; and the Washington Navy Yard. He has ordered flags to half-staff after the deaths of American icons such as Neil Armstrong, Edward M. Kennedy, Dorothy Height and Frank Buckles, the nation’s last surviving World War I veteran. But he didn’t lower the flag after last month’s shooting in Charleston, S.C. Obama focused most of Tuesday’s VFW speech on defending his foreign policy record and detailing improvements made to the Department of Veterans Affairs after last year’s scandal in which VA officials were found to have falsified records to cover up the long waits that many veterans faced to get basic medical care. VA is now handling millions more appointments, and waiting times for veterans have fallen, Obama said. But he also acknowledged that VA continues to struggle with a surge of aging veterans as well as younger veterans of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “You put it all together, and in some places, wait times are higher than they were last year,” he said. The best way to honor all veterans, Obama said, was through a foreign policy that focused first on diplomacy and turned to war only as a last resort. “I’m hearing echoes of some of the same policies and mind-set that failed us in the past,” Obama said. He said the critics of the Iran deal include “some of the same folks who were so quick to go to war in Iraq . . . [who] said it would only take a few months.” Although Obama did not mention former president George W. Bush, Obama said past administrations were guilty of “rushing into war without thinking through the consequences.” “Who paid the price?” Obama asked. “Our men and women in uniform.”

John McCain is a man of supreme resolve and honor

John McCain’s mother’s name is Roberta. She is 105. When I met her, she was somewhat younger and something of a mythical figure to those who knew her son. He had often told about her trips through Europe and Asia by car while in her 90s, and so one night at a party John McCain was giving, I approached her, wanting to know more about her. I asked how she had weathered the five years her son had been a POW in Vietnam. She brushed it off. “We’re Navy,” she said. She need not have said any more. Sen. John Sidney McCain III (R-Ariz.) is the son of a four-star admiral. He is the grandson of a four-star admiral. He himself rose to the rank of captain, and as a Navy aviator he was shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War, was imprisoned and suffered two years in solitary confinement. When he ejected from his plane, he broke a leg and both arms. On the ground, he was bayoneted. At first, he was denied medical treatment and then, when it was offered, it was rudimentary. He was repeatedly tortured, beaten every two hours, wracked with dysentery. The North Vietnamese wanted him to accept release, but he refused. The military had its rules: First in, first out. McCain would wait his turn even if it cost him his life. He tried suicide, but finally he broke. He made a propaganda recording . Now McCain has brain cancer of the worst kind. The prognosis is not good, and for me to write otherwise would violate the McCain spirit. His campaign bus for his presidential campaign in 2000 and 2008 was called the Straight Talk Express — and it was. I climbed aboard it in New Hampshire and before I knew it, we were in California in 2000. It was the ride of my life, hours siting with McCain and sometimes one of his old prison-camp buddies from Vietnam, and talking politics and government and history and books and movies and, even, gossip about some movie star. The bus rolled on, reporters got on and off — I did not stay the whole time — and one by one they became entranced, sometimes having to admit to a crush. I’d sit next to McCain and try to take his measure. As a journalist, I deal in fame, occasionally in greatness. Sometimes I size up these people and wonder if I could do what they have done or, often, whether I would even want to. I am not as smart as some of them, nor as articulate, nor as disciplined, nor as ambitious, but mostly they do not awe me. McCain does. It is not merely that he went into combat — this is the great “what if” of most men — but he withstood torture, accepted it, really, as the price of service, which he had chosen. He could have said “Stop! Send me home,” and the North Vietnamese would have done so, crowing about the admiral’s son . . . and his shame. The last was the nub of it: shame. Horror of it is what motivates McCain. Pride is what animates him. Now I hear McCain whispering in my ear. _Don’t go there, Cohen_. But I must. I have to compare McCain with that drizzle of apparatchiks who now populate Washington, that coterie of sycophants who have gathered around President Trump, to sing his praises and extol virtues that don’t exist. Can you imagine McCain doing such a thing? Can you imagine the man who preferred death to shame telling that playground bully Trump how great he is? It’s not that McCain is not a politician — in the most understandable of political triage, he briefly endorsed Trump, after all — but generations of McCains, Navy men and Annapolis graduates, sit on his shoulder. He cannot disappoint them. McCain has his tics. His temper is famously volcanic. He is sometimes too ready to fight. Choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 was more than a mistake. It was — as he must know — shameful. He loathes lobbyists with a fury that both impressed and intimidated me. To him, they are beseechers, beggars in Gucci. McCain’s cancer is called glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. It was what Sen. Edward Kennedy and Beau Biden, the son of the former vice president, both had. The outlook is grim, so now is the time to write. John Sidney McCain III — warrior, POW, senator, former presidential candidate and just plain swell company — will win this fight against cancer if anyone can. But if it is otherwise, Washington will have lost something of painful rarity: a wholly honorable man. _Read more fromRichard Cohen’s archive._ **Read more here:** The Post’s View: What we can all learn from John McCain

Afghan killings bring the war to presidential campaign debate

Three days before the Republican presidential primary in Ohio, Mitt Romney was campaigning in Dayton when a woman stood up to ask a question that pointed to one of the most important missing debates of Campaign 2012, and to a widening division in the GOP over a critical foreign policy issue. Vicki Chura said her daughter was on her second tour in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division. She said her daughter was increasingly frustrated by the lack of clarity of the U.S. mission there and desperately wanted to come home. What would Romney do as president to expedite the withdrawal of U.S. forces? The economy is and probably will continue to be the dominant issue in the campaign, but the shooting rampage Sunday, allegedly by a U.S. soldier, that killed 16 Afghan civilians could push the Afghan war into the political debate. The killings may or may not be a shock to the political system. At a minimum, they are likely to raise uncomfortable questions, particularly for President Obama, the architect of the current policy, but also for the Republican candidates. Even for those out of power, Afghanistan provides no easy answers. Romney’s response to Chura’s question underscored why. He began by criticizing the president. He said that Obama has not clearly defined the U.S. mission to the American people, and that a president should report regularly on the goals and progress of any such mission. Romney described the U.S. objective as one of building an Afghan security force capable of protecting the country’s sovereignty — which is not that different from Obama’s stance. Hoping to show empathy with his questioner, he said he wants U.S. troops to come home “as soon as humanly possible.” But he offered a big, broad caveat: They can withdraw, he said, “as soon as that mission is complete.” Chura’s question underscored the growing public weariness at home about the war. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that more than half the country wants U.S. forces withdrawn even before they can train the Afghan army to handle security on its own. The conflict has not become another Iraq war in terms of public division and emotion, but beneath the surface is a clearly growing pessimism. As the past few days have shown, Republicans face a debate within the party over what to do about a conflict whose objectives are so difficult to define and whose costs have been enormous. Republican dissent over staying the course in Afghanistan is not pervasive, but there is hardly unanimity. On Sunday, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) said the mission “may not be doable” and suggested that military force may not be able to accomplish the goals set by two administrations. Among other candidates, Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), an opponent of the U.S. intervention, has long called for winding down the war. Before quitting the race, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. called for a speedy end to the conflict and said the resources being spent on it should be used to rebuild the U.S. economy. Former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour raised doubts about the war when he was considering a 2012 candidacy. “What is our mission?” he asked last March. He said the United States should not try to turn Afghanistan into “an Ireland or an Italy” or some other Western democracy. These are questions first for the president, because the Afghan war is his now. As a candidate in 2008, he described Afghanistan as the central front in the fight against terrorism. During his first year in office, he approved a major increase in troop strength. With that troop surge, he took possession of a conflict started by President George W. Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But Obama was also always mindful of the opposition to escalation within his own party, as well as to concerns from some of his advisers that Afghanistan could become another quagmire like Vietnam. So he sought to set limits on the mission in terms of time and resources, establishing deadlines for starting to bring troops home. He made clear to the military and, he hoped, to the public, that the United States would not stay indefinitely. Afghanistan will not be among the achievements Obama highlights during his reelection campaign. His supporters will cite the killing of Osama bin Laden as a bold decision that shows his toughness as commander in chief. He will point to the end of the Iraq war as a promise kept from his 2008 campaign. Given the state of things in Afghanistan, the country could be one of his vulnerabilities. But will Republicans have a consistent and coherent line of criticism of the president’s Afghan policy? The coming weeks may answer that question. Former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) highlighted one view Sunday while campaigning in Mississippi by saying that the president is making it “very, very difficult” to win the war because he had signaled when U.S. forces would leave. Santorum said that U.S. policy is unraveling because Obama has given the enemy hope that American troops will be out sooner rather than later. He said Monday on NBC’s “Today” show that the United States should reassess and either make a full commitment to the war — something he said Obama has not done — or speed up the NATO-established timetable that calls for the handoff to Afghans to be completed in 2014. Romney has tried to calm those who want U.S. forces out quickly, saying he does, too. But he has criticized Obama’s timetable for withdrawing the surge troops that were sent at the beginning of the year, and has vowed that he would listen to his military commanders, saying the president has not done that. He has said that Obama has not clearly articulated the goals of the mission, but Romney has not done so with any particular clarity himself. Until now, the Republican candidates have been free to criticize the president when given the opportunity, but they otherwise keep Afghanistan in the background. The killings Sunday, which come at a time of deteriorating relations between the United States and Afghanistan, could force Obama and those who want to replace him to give the public a fuller explanation of what constitutes success, and the costs of achieving it. **More on this story:** U.S. looks to press on with Afghan exit strategy Military searches soldier’s records for clues in deaths For U.S., bad news on Afghanistan war continues Taliban vows revenge for soldier’s rampage Suspect came from ‘most troubled base in the military’

Manassas Ballet Theatre’s ‘Colin’ will expand to full length to tell soldier’s story

As a child, Colin Wolfe trained to be a dancer. Ballet is the family business. His father, Mark, is the executive director of the Manassas Ballet Theatre, and his mother, Amy, is its artistic director. But Colin chose a different path. Inspired to serve after Sept. 11, 2001, he joined the Marines and went to Iraq. He was killed by a roadside bomb in 2006 at age 19. In creating “Colin: The Ballet,” Amy Wolfe choreographed a work to celebrate her son’s short life in dance. A collaboration with composer Mark Menza, the four-part ballet debuted in March and has been performed four times, including once in Bakersfield, Calif. Now Wolfe wants to share more of Colin’s story. That’s why she’s creating a full-length version of the ballet, extending it from 27 minutes to nearly two hours. Wolfe and Menza will join forces again for the project, which will be unveiled on Veterans Day at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. Wolfe sat down recently with The Washington Post to discuss the project that exacerbates her anguish and allows her to remember the son who died too soon. Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation. **Do you see the ballet differently every time?** The performance in Culpeper [was] our fourth time. . . . When they dance it, for me it’s as fresh as the first time. And the story never gets stale for me. I liken it to “Romeo and Juliet.” Its such a beautiful story . . . that’s the way the ballet “Colin” is for me. Every time I get through to the end it’s like, “Let’s do it again.” **It’s not difficult?** For me as his mother? It’s always difficult. Two separate things are here. One is the fact that within this one body there is the artistic director/choreographer and then there is the mother. When I’m working on the ballet, I hold the mother at bay. So that’s pretty much how I get through the difficulty. As the mother, what makes it so poignant is that I don't grow tired. Within this ballet he lives again. ******Are there moments that you particularly like both as a mother and a choreographer?** Yes. There are moments that are especially poignant. It’s in the fourth movement and the character of Colin has left the stage. . . . He has been in Iraq, going up and down the streets on patrol. You know the roadside bomb is about to go off and he’s about to be killed. My character, the mother, then runs onstage into his empty room where they have danced earlier in the ballet. And he’s not there. How it happened exactly is the two Marines showed up at 4:30 in the morning and the doorbell rings. I had not slept at all. Call it mother’s intuition. The doorbell rings, and Mark goes to the window, and he's like, “Oh, my God, Amy, it’s two Marines.” You know. You know at that moment. **What plans do you have for the longer performance?** We are going to add 40 minutes more of music, so it will become a full evening-length ballet. I feel the music is absolutely beautiful. Now Mark Menza, the composer, has to get down to work and write more music, but prior to that, I have to get down to work and flesh out the libretto. Decide what scenes were not shown should be shown . . . to make it an hour and 45 minutes. One scene that jumps into my head is Mark and Colin. Colin saying, “I want to be a Marine. I’ve made up my mind.” And Mark saying, “You should go to college and be an officer.” Colin said, “No, no, no. . . . I don’t want to tell others to do. I want to do.” There’s also the story of Colin and CeCe, his younger sister. That all needs to be fleshed out. CeCe absolutely adored Colin; they were four years apart. As they grew older, they fought like brothers and sisters can, like cats and dogs as teenagers. What’s so sad is how he got killed at 19. A 19-year-old is still so young, and he was just beginning to be more mature and come into adulthood, and therefore their relationship would have gotten beyond that silly stage and come to the loving, get along so-happy-to-have-each-other stage. That’s something I want to show. **What made you want to do a longer “Colin” ballet?** The ballet “Colin” was such a huge success, and it resonates with so many people. Not just fellow Marines; not just fellow military. Really it resonates with anyone who has lost a loved one for whatever reason. And therefore, there [were] a lot of requests for us to tour it. But as a one-act ballet, we had to decide what are we going to tour it with. Really what it calls for is coming up with a full-length “Colin.” It was amazing the reaction that I got from this ballet. Voice mails, e-mails, Facebook messages. **What was the message?** “Thank you so much for this ballet. I cried and cried.” I got the most gorgeous phone call from a Holocaust survivor. In the ballet, I also touch on Colin the young Jewish boy. He was so proud to be a Jew and learn the Hebrew prayers. This woman, in her eighties . . . all her life she has been afraid to say she’s a Jew. And here’s a ballet just putting it out there. For that reason, she called and said thank you so much. **Is there any part of you that doesn’t want to launch this project because it’s painful?** Yes. extremely. We've done “Don Quixote” since then. . . . We’re working on “The Nutcracker” now. Then we have another ballet in March and another in May. Thank goodness I have all these other projects. It would be extremely depressing and difficult just to work on this project. **How will the longer project change people’s perception?** That’s to be seen. What if it doesn’t work? There’s no guarantee that people are going to love it as much or more than the one act. Its entirely possible people will say, “Amy just should have left it at the one act.” But I feel it’s something I have to try to do because of everyone’s reaction. I have so many ideas already popping into my head. For me, that’s the spirit of Colin hovering over us. I feel I’ve got this time to carefully come up with the ideas . . . and hopefully it will fall into place and we’ll have something for all time. **Is it the ultimate lasting tribute to Colin?** More than a tribute, I see it as a lasting gift from Colin. Colin wanted to make the world a better place. That’s why he became a Marine and that was why he went to Iraq. He felt he’d be helping the people of Iraq and the world in general. Now, through his ballet, he continues to help people. He continues to help them come to peace with their own loss or to realize even in the midst of loss, you are giving and receiving.

Book review: “I Heard My Country Calling,” by James Webb

“I Heard My Country Calling” is an embattled book by a man who has long been a fighter — inside the ring and out. Shaped by the peripatetic, turbulent experience of growing up a military brat, trained to box as a teenager by a pair of former amateur champions, James Webb graduated from the Naval Academy and survived combat as a Marine in Vietnam, where he won the Navy Cross for valor. Forced by war wounds to leave the corps prematurely, Webb became a lawyer and continued a career of public service, which included a stint as secretary of the navy during the Reagan administration and a recent term in the U.S. Senate, where his determination helped secure passage of the post-9/11 G.I. Bill. Along the way, Webb, who is now 68, wrote nine books, including “Fields of Fire,” a highly regarded Vietnam novel; “Born Fighting,” a study of the Scots-Irish in America; “A Time to Fight,” an essay collection; and now this memoir, which sustains his combative image. “I had never backed down,” he sums up his senatorial term near the beginning of “I Heard My Country Calling.” “I had never said a word that I did not mean. And I never cut a political deal.” As the sonorous title intimates, Webb conceives this as a big book, deeply personal yet also emblematic. Admiring his own improbability, he relishes the fact that a descendant of poor Appalachian farmers walked the Senate corridors “as the equal of giants.” Liberally peopled with the “legendary” and the “famed,” the book is overwhelmed by its author’s desire to represent those most important to him as outsize. His obvious love for his family cannot rescue their portraits — especially those of powerful women like his mother, aunts and grandmother — from a certain allegorical flatness. Nor do repeated mentions of Scots-Irish ancestry and a “Celtic” restlessness inherited from his father effectively open a window onto Webb’s inner life. Various passages reminded me of Virginia Woolf’s complaint about biographers who assemble “events” but omit “the person to whom things happen.” An early allusion to the Joads of John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” is telling , for Webb understands his family history as an archetypal American story in which the modest and hardworking battle a complacent “elite” across the centuries: the rich planters of the South, the media, academics, “the club of insiders who manipulate public opinion” from Capitol Hill. Triumphant yet uneasy at having joined this club, Webb hints frequently that he remains a man of the people: When touring a ship while navy secretary, he always insisted on visiting the “snipes” in “the bowels of the boiler rooms”; when he emptied the fridge in his senate office, he left “the beer for the cleanup crew.” Yet rather than seeming generous, Webb’s populism can sound small, narrow and occasionally resentful. Instead of wearing his considerable accomplishments lightly, Webb misses no opportunity to catalogue a prize, honor or award. A friend’s joke that he is “the literary descendant of Ernest Hemingway” introduces a discussion of Webb’s decision to write “Fields of Fire,” but the ensuing account reads more like a press release than a meditation on a writer’s development or on the ways in which that novel might illuminate the relationship between art and lived experience. Do we really need to know that Webb scored in the 99th percentile on the Iowa Tests long ago? This revelation, coupled with his humblebrag that he was an indifferent student, an “autodidact” who disdained formal education, foregrounds a vignette about a high-school dispute over the Emancipation Proclamation. Contradicting his history teacher, Webb, having read the document the night before, rightly insisted that it did not free “all of the slaves in America” but only those in the states then within Confederate control. Webb rehearses the episode to weigh in on a favorite subject and to inveigh against one of his great bogeys: “political correctness,” which he claims has obscured the story of his ancestors by distorting Southern history. “Why hadn’t Lincoln freed the slaves in the North in 1863?” he demands. “And what did that really say about the reasons the Civil War was being fought in the first place? I didn’t know the answer, but for some reason my teacher and everybody else seemed to be afraid of even discussing the question.” Highlighting the postwar victimization of the South, Webb argues that the “internal migration” of impoverished white Southerners that carried his progenitors from Tennessee to Mississippi, Arkansas and ultimately California is “the most misunderstood movement of people in American history.” This agenda ensnares him in several bizarre attempts to minimize the political and economic significance of chattel slavery, which Eric Foner, our foremost historian of Reconstruction, calls “the central institution of antebellum Southern life”; to equate the sufferings of poor whites and blacks in the postbellum South; and to blame the murderous system of Jim Crow on Northern occupation. Webb also notes, in an apparent paean to familial combativeness, that “most” of his ancestors “on both sides” fought for the Confederacy. The Lost Cause, it seems, is never quite lost. It is puzzling that a man who has waged substantive battles, military and political, should pick these particular fights. In a May radio interview with Diane Rehm, Webb suggested that he is mulling a 2016 presidential bid. Are we to regard “I Heard My Country Calling” as a campaign memoir? If so, its fighting spirit seems alarmingly misdirected. **Elizabeth D. Samet** is the author of “Soldier’s Heart.” Her new book, “No Man’s Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America,” will be published in the fall. **I HEARD MY COUNTRY CALLING** **A Memoir** By James Webb Simon & Schuster. 388 pp. $27

Sarah Palin whines to ‘Today’ show: ‘You guys don’t always keep your promises’

The “Today” show this morning invited former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to chat about — well, _exactly what_ she was supposed to chat about was the matter of some dispute on the program.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Broadcasting from Iowa in anticipation of today’s caucuses, anchors Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie quizzed Palin on her decision to endorse Donald Trump and her feelings about the presidential bid of Ted Cruz, whose successful Texas Senate bid she’d endorsed. Palin had good, reasonable responses to all that stuff. Then “Today” turned back the clock just a touch, to the Oklahoma Trump rally at which Palin spoke of her son’s recent troubles. Twenty-six-year-old Track Palin was arrested on charges of “fourth-degree assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possession of a firearm while intoxicated” after an altercation with his girlfriend. Track Palin had spent a year in Iraq with the Army, which provided the backdrop for Sarah Palin’s remarks at the rally:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Guthrie pressed, “You said that President Obama may be to blame for some of the PTSD that’s out there.” Palin: “I never said that.” Guthrie: “Let’s take it piece by piece — what exactly did you mean?” Palin: “Let’s start piece by piece by: You guys brought me here to talk about Iowa politics and the caucus tonight, not to talk about my kids, and that was a promise. But as things go in the world of media, you guys don’t always keep your promises evidently. I never blamed President Obama. What I have blamed President Obama in doing, though, is this level of disrespect for the United States military that is made manifest in gutting budgets, in not trying to beef it up and let our military do the job that they are trained to do.” Asked by Lauer whether she regretted the comment, Palin replied, “What did I say that is offensive?” On the matter of the media’s credibility, Lauer said, “There were no specific promises made about content of the interview.” Palin countered that she was told the topic was Iowa politics. Which it was, until the hosts wanted to probe another newsworthy matter, and that’s a quite common progression in the news business. Plus: The notion that Palin would give controversial remarks in a venue as public as a Trump rally and gripe about having to defend them, well, that’s Sarah Palin.

Q&A: Rep. Scott Rigell (R) on why he endorsed Libertarian Gary Johnson

Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) this week became the first Republican member of Congress to publicly support Libertarian Gary Johnson over GOP nominee Donald Trump **.** **** The endorsement meant the retiring congressman had to resign from the Virginia Beach Republican Party, whose members are required to support the party nominee **.** Rigell, whose says his congressional district includes more members of the military than any other, is the son of a Marine veteran who served in Iwo Jima. Rigell himself served in the Marine Corps Reserves and inspired his son and two nephews to become Marines. He said his service makes him particularly critical of Trump and spurred his support for Johnson, who he hopes will gain enough traction in the polls to participate in the presidential debates. The Washington Post spoke to Rigell on Wednesday about the election and Virginia’s diminishing clout in Congress. **When did you first realize you couldn’t vote for Trump?** I don’t see him as a man of being of reputable character. I never have. . . . The Khan comment, that’s what really got me off the sidelines. [With U.S. Navy assets in my district], we have a heavy and disproportionate sacrifice. I know many, many families. We have grieved with them and held them. To see a man try to somehow put in context the sacrifice of a Gold Star family with his quote- unquote sacrifice of creating jobs, that’s when I said, “No, I’m done.” **What do you think ofTrump’s recent remark about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and “Second Amendment supporters”?** ****It was absolutely intentional on his part to put uncertainty in this. He’s raising the whole specter of violence. It’s the antithesis of the man or woman that should lead this country. . . .There’s a Navy veteran — his name is Coby Dillard. He is one of the most thoughtful conservatives that I know. He’s got a big pain tolerance. Frankly, you have to if you’re African American and in the Republican Party. [The GOP has] lost Coby. . . . I think [Trump’s nomination] is going to be a permanent breach of what it means to be a Republican. **You endorsed Gary Johnson. Will you campaign for him? Will you fundraise for him? I noticed your name is misspelled on his website. What do you think of that?** Well, isn’t that humbling? [Laughs] We’ll get that straight. I really believe that leaders need to be counted. I want to properly use the influence that I do have. I will help Governor Johnson to the extent that he wants me to help him. He was effusive, I’d say, in his expression of thanks. . . . I really didn’t think that much of it. And then the phone started blowing up, so here we are. **You’re not seeking re-election, but you’re in the middle of a media blitz and some in the party have welcomed your message. I wonder if you regret not running again.** Oh no. . . . There’s a season to life. My major purpose was to take the gavel from Nancy Pelosi. We did that. **You endorsed Rep. J. Randy Forbes, but as you know, Del. Scott Taylor defeated him, tapping into some of what has animated Trump supporters. Do you feel out of touch? ** I don’t think that’s the case, I really don’t. About 40 percent of the people [in my district] wanted Trump, which is to say 60 percent wanted somebody else. I think if this vote was done over today I really believe it would be somewhere like 35. Scott’s a friend of mine, I’m campaigning with and for him. It is true even after saying that the loss of [Forbes] as chair of the seapower subcommittee [of the House Armed Services Committee] and replacing that person with a freshman, you’re so far down from the dais they can’t even see you.

Book review: ‘Thank You for Your Service’ by David Finkel

_Andrew J. Bacevich teaches at Boston University. His new book is“Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.” _ Nominally a sequel to “The Good Soldiers,” his 2009 account of an American infantry battalion at war in Iraq, David Finkel’s new book actually serves as a perfect companion to George Packer’s recent bestseller, “The Unwinding.” Like Packer, Finkel examines the human detritus left in the wake of fraudulent promises and collapsed illusions. In “The Unwinding,” Packer contemplates the fate of those victimized by cataclysmic economic change. In “Thank You for Your Service,” Finkel looks at those victimized by egregious military malpractice. The post-industrial, high-tech, information-age economy unveiled near the end of the 20th century supposedly offered a template for permanent prosperity. The Great Recession upended such expectations. Although some Americans have gotten very rich indeed, far larger numbers of ordinary citizens find themselves unemployed and unemployable. With impressive sensitivity, Packer tells their story. Concocted at about the same time, a post-industrial, high-tech, information-age approach to waging war supposedly offered a template for assured victory. Iraq and Afghanistan have shredded such pretensions. Although some high-ranking military and civilian officials found ways to cash in, far larger numbers of ordinary soldiers (and their families) suffered, many of them grievously. In painful, intimate and at times almost voyeuristic detail, Finkel tells their story. More specifically, Finkel, a reporter with The Washington Post, attends to what he calls the “after war.” His concern is with the soldiers who return from the war zone bearing wounds — and with the loved ones on whom those wounds also become imprinted. Above all, he is concerned with wounds that may not be fully visible: the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and related conditions that affect roughly a half-million younger veterans. Make that a half-million and counting. To translate this disturbing statistic into flesh and blood, Finkel checks in on some of the soldiers featured in his previous book. What he finds is anger, anxiety, shame, depression, guilt, sleeplessness, self-abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse and suicidal tendencies, sometimes acted on, sometimes not. Shouting matches, crying jags and bizarre behavior along with guns and two-pack-a-day smoking habits abound, but not much in the way of useful therapy. Of one soldier, Finkel writes: “He began to take sleeping pills to fall asleep and another kind of pill to get back to sleep when he woke up. He took other pills, too, some for pain, others for anxiety. He began to drink so much vodka that his skin smelled of it, and then he started mentioning suicide.” Apart from an astonishing facility for prescribing medication — one of Finkel’s protagonists is “taking forty-three pills a day for pain, for anxiety, for depression, for nightmares” — the Army has made little apparent headway in caring for this torrent of tormented souls. To judge from Finkel’s description, the assistance rendered has been erratic, bureaucratic and ineffective, with soldiers not so much treated as processed. Just to gain entrance into one of the Army’s Warrior Transition Battalions (WTB), a troubled soldier needs to collect 39 separate sets of initials from 39 different offices, not all of them adequately staffed or open for business. As a further prerequisite for admission, soldiers must sign a “Contract for Safety.” Apparently assuming that the people signing the contract are coherent, rational and in full command of their faculties, the text reads in part, “I will not intentionally harm myself or others and if I have thoughts about harming myself or others I will contact my Chain of Command immediately.” It isn’t quite that simple. Finkel writes that one soldier, upon admission into a WTB, duly “met with a case manager, the chaplain, the pharmacist.” Procedurally, the right people were all on the case. “He got occasional counseling and was prescribed the twelve medications that would be mentioned in the post-suicide medical report. He also attended suicide awareness training and was given a laminated card on how to recognize the signs of suicidal behavior, which was found tucked into his wallet after he was pronounced dead.” An institution designed to dole out death and destruction possesses little inherent aptitude for dealing with severe psychological or emotional distress. Why should we be surprised? Testifying to that lack of aptitude, the number of soldiers taking their lives has reached epidemic proportions. In Washington, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s second most senior officer, made it his personal mission to stem this epidemic. Here was a problem that was going to get sustained, four-star attention. Yet Finkel’s characterization of the general’s ensuing campaign illustrates the difficulty the Army faces in grappling with the problems of the “after war.” Chiarelli’s innovation was to require detailed accountability for every soldier-suicide. He made it his business to find out what happened and why. In regularly scheduled videoconferences, he pressed commanders not only to explain specific incidents but also to identify “lessons learned” for broader application. Charged with explaining the inexplicable, nervous subordinates tried their best to make the boss happy. They submitted lengthy reports. They documented attendance at suicide-awareness training. They confirmed that the deceased had received the requisite laminated cards. When preparing for Chiarelli’s show and tell, they fretted over the appearance of their briefing slides, hoping that form might conceal the absence of serious content. In place of solutions, they offered bromides. “Increase suicide prevention classes,” they suggested. “Continue improvements in leader communication.” “Encourage the use of a battle buddy among warriors.” In effect, try harder. Chiarelli retired in 2012, having come nowhere close to accomplishing his self-assigned mission. Credit him for wanting to do the right thing. But as Finkel makes abundantly clear, between intentions and outcomes a yawning gap exists. Readers of “Thank You for Your Service” might wonder if Chiarelli and his fellow generals have been barking up the wrong tree. Rather than trying to exorcise the demons that beset individual soldiers, senior officers would do well to focus on a prior question: Where exactly do the demons come from? As if in passing, Finkel offers one plausible explanation. “Soldiers with repeated deployments are more likely to commit suicide.” So why does the Pentagon order troops to return to combat zones again and again, with so little time to recover and recuperate between deployments? The answer is clear: Because a relatively small Army configured to fight short wars that it confidently expected to win has found itself fighting interminably long, unwinnable wars. Do the math. We’ve got too much war for too few warriors. Reducing the incidence of PTSD and suicide among the soldiers they profess to care about will require two things of general officers. First, they will need to recover their ability to achieve prompt and conclusive victory in wars that absolutely must be fought. Second, they will need to do a better job of persuading their political masters to avoid needless wars that can’t be won. It’s what generals exist to do: achieve battlefield success and provide cogent advice to policymakers. In recent years, of course, senior military leaders have manifestly fallen short on both counts, with soldiers paying the price for their failure. Should that failure persist — should our too-small Army once again become mired in a too-long war — then only a single option would remain for easing the burden on U.S. troops. That option would entail expanding the force, inviting the American people to share in the sacrifices currently exacted of only the few volunteering to serve. That, too, would constitute an admission of a failure to which American generals have contributed. That failure finds expression in a deeply perverse and thoroughly dishonest relationship between soldiers and society. The hackneyed phrase providing the title for Finkel’s fine book exquisitely captures the hypocrisy pervading that relationship. The travails of those whose suffering he recounts give us a glimpse of the costs incurred and of who pays them. **Andrew J. Bacevich** teaches at Boston University. His new book is “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.” **THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE** By David Finkel Sarah Crichton/Farrar Straus Giroux.   256 pp. $26

Could women in combat mean fewer wars?

The Pentagon’s decision to allow women to serve in combat has been met with great jubilation -- and consternation. A column by my colleague Kathleen Parker suggested that the decision was misguided because women are not equal, biologically, to men. Others have used the Bible to defend the status quo. All men (and women) are created equal. But we know that equal rights are different from equal abilities. Parker wrote that women “through quirks of biology and human nature, are not equal to men.” But I would counter that some military women should be in combat and some should not. Just as some men should be in combat and some should not. In fact, there are plenty of non-combat jobs in the military which are being filled by men. I support two levels of enlistment: one for support and one for combat. That way, the military can have highly qualified men and women in support roles and send those who choose, both men and women, into combat. Women in Afghanistan today are already in combat situations and many readily embrace the idea that they can now make it official. These are women who know what combat entails and do not shrink from it, women who are qualified to assume the duties that men do. Military authorities have deemed them fit. I believe women should be able to match the same standards as men. There would be nothing worse than a woman or a man, for that matter, who is not combat ready. They shouldn’t be there in the first place. The most strident objections to women in combat come from conservative religious groups, particularly Christians. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said of women in combat: “Men are designed to be the primary protectors while women are intended as the primary nurturers. No amount of social engineering can overcome these realities. The dignity of women is to be defended by men, not undermined by vulnerability in the extreme conditions of combat.” I believe everyone should be required to sign up for selective service. The idea of a draft is pretty much off of the table, but if it were ever to be reinstated because of a serious attack on our homeland not everyone drafted would go into combat. Combat should be reserved for those who volunteer. If there is a war the majority of Americans believe is worth fighting, there would be no shortage of men and women willing to sign up for battle. If not, we shouldn’t be in it. Period. Few people would object to women and men being called up to serve in some capacity, other than combat, in a national emergency. In fact it has often been proposed that every young American be required to participate in some form of national service for two years. The biggest problem with required combat for any sex is that we don’t always send our young men and women into harm’s way for good reasons. We have fought some terrible, some would say illegal, wars. Vietnam was a disaster. Even President Lyndon Johnson admitted early on that it was a bad war and unwinnable. He knew it and so did his secretary of defense and they pursued it anyway. Korea wasn’t exactly World War II, the last “great war” worth fighting. Iraq was invaded on faulty intelligence and turned out to be a disaster. Afghanistan has turned into a quagmire. Too many people have died because of fickle, weak, dishonest, corrupt or ambitious politicians. The idea of having to fight in a war you don’t believe in is reprehensible, whether you are a man or a woman. That is why only those who volunteer, men and women, should be required to fight. Kathleen Parker talks about the unacceptability of 18 year old girls going into combat. Certainly the prospect of one being captured and raped is horrible. I would venture to say though, that today’s female enlistee is also in danger of being assaulted by a comrade, a sad fact that some believe will be reduced by equalizing the opportunities for men and women to hold all positions. Let’s talk about 18 year old boys. They are children too. Anyone who has ever seen “Saving Private Ryan” cannot forget the unbearable scenes of teenagers landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day, screaming for their mothers as they are being slaughtered. War is a terrible thing. Nobody should ever have to fight in one. But if we are to engage in wars, then those courageous men and women who choose to do so should be permitted. In America, we call that equality.

House VA chairman to introduce bill to combat veteran suicides

Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) on Thursday plans to introduce legislation to help combat veteran suicides after a hearing on access to mental health treatment at the Department of Veterans Affairs.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Miller, who chairs the House Veterans Affairs Committee, is scheduled to unveil the legislation at a news conference with the parents of former Marine Clay Hunt, who committed suicide in 2011 after serving two combat tours, one apiece in Iraq and Afghanistan. An estimated 22 veterans killed themselves every day in 2010, up from 18 per day in 2007, according to the latest figures from the VA.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday “If there is any emergency that we need to address, this is it, right now,” said Susan Selke, Clay’s mother.  “It’s not that hard to come to the right answer. We know what we need to do, we just need to do it, and do it quickly.” Selke said Congress should enact legislation that would reduce red tape for veterans seeking mental health treatment. She said her son experienced problems with continuity of care as he transitioned from active-duty to veteran status and when he moved between states. Clay enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2005 and deployed to Iraq’s Anbar Province in 2007. During the tour, a sniper shot him the wrist, and he returned to the United States for treatment. He then qualified as a Marine sniper scout in 2008 and served a tour in Afghanistan later that year. Selke said her son, who was honorably discharged in 2009, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which caused him to suffer from panic attacks, anxiety, sleeping troubles, hypervigilance and survivors guilt. But she said he seemed to be coping relatively well before his suicide, having taken a job in construction, rented a new apartment and bought a new pickup truck days before taking his own life. “By the time he actually died, we were surprised,” Selke said. “He seemed to be doing so much better. We knew it was a struggle he still dealt with, but we had no idea that was coming.” Miller has not revealed specifics about his upcoming suicide-prevention bill, but his office said the meausure will be named the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act. Sen. John Walsh (D-Mont.), the first soldier to return from Iraq and become a U.S. senator, proposed legislation in March to address the same issue. His bill would extend veteran eligibility for the VA health system from five years to 15 years and provide financial incentives for psychiatrists to sign on for long-term service with the agency.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Walsh’s bill would also require the military to review discharge cases involving troops who were removed from service for behaviors relating to post-traumatic stress. Veterans in that situation can lose certain benefits for former service members.

Mother picks up the pieces after the suicide of her Marine son

DAVIE, Fla. — It has been two years since Marine veteran Janos “John” Lutz committed suicide, wracked with the memories and guilt he came home with following a deployment to Afghanistan. An enlisted infantryman, he had been involved in the largest helicopter offensive that the Marine Corps had launched since the Vietnam War, taking back territory from the Taliban. And he lost his best friend in that mission. Lutz’s death sent his mother, Janine, 53, into a spiral, she said. She, too, considered suicide before deciding that she wanted to honor her son’s memory by raising awareness about the unseen wounds that combat veterans can have, she said. In May 2013, she launched a foundation bearing her son’s name, providing a support system for returning veterans and their families here in this town just north of Miami. “After I decided not to kill myself … I told myself, we need to raise awareness,” Ms. Lutz said. “We need to tell the families about post-traumatic stress, how to deal with and what to expect — These guys need to know they are not crazy, that what they are feeling is normal for experiencing the theater of war. They are survivors, and they are awesome.” On Sunday, the second annual Lance Cpl. Janos V. Lutz Live to Tell Awareness Motorcycle Ride will travel 26 miles, starting here at Western High School, where Lutz was a student before joining the Marine Corps, and finishing in nearby Pembroke Pines, Fla. Its purpose is to encourage veterans to grow from their most difficult days and provide information about post-traumatic stress to their families. Lutz, who left the service as a lance corporal, committed suicide two years ago on Monday while dogged by the memories of his 2009 deployment to Afghanistan. An enlisted infantryman, he had deployed to Iraq previously and found it to be a “cakewalk,” his mother said – but the violence and unforgiving nature of his next war-zone assignment was not. The worst day was July 2, 2009. Reveille came early that day as John and the rest of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, of Camp Lejeune, N.C., began to awake from their slumber under the blanket of cool air and the growing anticipation at what the day might bring. The Marines didn’t get much sleep the night before as Afghanistan’s “120 days of wind” – famous for kicking up brutal sandstorms – rained a steady stream of dirt onto the men and their weapons and gear. By mid-morning the temperature had swelled to more than 110 degrees. Some Marines could be seen breathing every ounce of life out of the cigarettes they had lit, while others turned to their iPods. Most stood in silence, alone in their thoughts, as they began to clean their weapons. ~~~~    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters started to land in the background at Forward Operating Base Dwyer. The objective was to seize control of supply routes the Taliban was using to resupply their forces farther north and improve security for the upcoming Afghan voter registration period. Second Battalion, 8th Marines, was about toembark on Operation Khanjar, or “Strike of the Sword,” the largest U.S. military offensive since the Battle of Fallujah in 2004 and the largest helicopter offensive that the Marine Corps had launched since the Vietnam War. I was there as an infantryman with a different platoon, and part of the same raid.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The early morning anxiety was quickly brought to a halt once the helicopters touched down in the recently plowed marijuana fields of Mianposteh, a village on the outskirts of Garmsir district in Helmand province. Mere hours into a firefight that would not cease until sunset, one of John’s platoon mates, Lance Cpl. Charles S. Sharp of Adairville, Ga., was shot in the neck by a sniper while trying to advance into a village. The 2011 Oscar-nominated documentary, “Hell and Back Again,” depicts the scene. The Marines of Echo Company’s 2nd Platoon huddled around Sharp as his blood poured onto the pants of another Marine holding his head. They called out to him to wake up — but he didn’t. John and his fellow Marines would run Sharp’s limp body down the long dirt road, hoping they could load him onto the medical helicopter in time to save him. But Sharp — John’s best friend — would bleed out before ever reaching that helicopter. By the end of 2009, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, would lose 13 more men during their deployment. Just a few weeks after returning to Camp Lejeune, N.C., the battalion held a memorial service in honor of its troops who died in what was already America’s longest war. Four days later, the unit lost another Marine: Cpl. Xhacob LaTorre, who succumbed to wounds he has suffered in Afghanistan. At the memorial service, the main theme song from HBO’s Band of Brothers reverberated through the speakers of the base theater as John entered the lobby. An artist had created hand-drawn portraits of the dead that lined the stage, accompanied by the traditional battlefield cross. The faces within the frames stared back at the crowd of Marines, who appeared to have aged years in a matter of seven months. Silent reflection was interrupted only by a widow’s screams, which echoed throughout the theater. For John, there was survivor’s guilt and unbearable memories. In particular, Sharp’s death haunted him. Sitting in John’s bedroom more than five years later, the Marine’s mother says he was an empty shell when he returned. “No expression,” she said of his demeanor. “I didn’t know what to say or what to do. It seemed like everything I said made him mad.” Over the next few months, John was tormented by the memories of war. Depression and anxiety were his “new normal” while awake, nightmares while asleep. He was very reactive, and filled with rage, his mother recalled. John was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and treated with a combination of prescription medications and group therapy that didn’t work, his mother said. At one point, John was on somewhere between 17 and 24 different drugs. His first suicide attempt came on June 6, 2010, just seven months after getting back from Afghanistan. “He called me up and said ‘goodbye,’” Ms. Lutz said. “He said, ‘I am sorry, I can’t take the pain anymore.’” After awaking in the hospital, his mother said his response was anguished: “Why am I still here?” That same year, another Marine, former Cpl. Clay Hunt, also committed suicide. His mother, Susan Selke testified before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee in November, and recalled treatment similar to Lutz’s. “He received counseling only as far as a brief discussion regarding whether the medication he was prescribed was working or not,” Selke said. “If it was not, he would be given a new medication. Clay used to say, “I’m a guinea pig for drugs. They’ll put me on one thing, I’ll have side effects, and then they put me on something else.” Selke was testifying as a bill named after her son, the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, was under consideration by lawmakers. It ultimately was blocked by retiring Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), but was reintroduced this month. In part, it would have required a pilot program that would take back unneeded prescription drugs from patients like John and Clay. Veterans have used old prescription drugs to kill themselves, but Coburn thought the legislation included too much new federal spending. ~~~~    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Hunt —profiled here on Checkpoint — committed suicide on March 31, 2011. For John, the turmoil continued until the evening of Jan. 12, 2013, when he was found dead on the floor in his bedroom. He had overdosed after swallowing a handful of Morphine and Klonopin. On his laptop, John had left a suicide note. He said, “I am sorry … I am happier now.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The bike ride this Sunday will give Ms. Lutz a chance to spread the message of hope to veterans suffering from the invisible wounds of war, connecting them to resources and support networks, so that ultimately, these veterans do not have to suffer in silence. “The people must fight for those who fought for us,” Ms. Lutz said. Until then, Ms. Lutz will continue to add faces to a traveling memorial wall she has created. Spanning 40 feet, it includes 200 portraits of service members who have committed suicide. By the time of the motorcycle ride, another 242 veterans will have taken their lives, according to 2012 suicide data released by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Many of them will be older than 50, the data shows, but others are like Lutz – young, and just a few years out from deploying. _James LaPorta is a Marine Corps veteran who served in Afghanistan._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Michelle Obama joins Bradley Cooper to praise ‘American Sniper’

Avid movie fan Michelle Obama praised the Oscar-nominated “American Sniper” at a veterans-focused event Friday — potentially ending a media-fueled “culture war” over the politics of the film. Obama, who saw the film on Air Force One as she and her husband traveled abroad this week, called it “complex,” “emotional” and a realistic “depiction of a veteran and his family” in her remarks at a gathering that included star Bradley Cooper. “While I know there have been critics, I felt that, more often than not, this film touches on many of the emotions and experiences that I’ve heard firsthand from military families over these past few years,” she said. “This movie reflects . . . the complex journeys that our men and women in uniform endure.” Her remarks followed a panel discussion at National Geographic’s headquarters in downtown Washington, where Cooper and four Hollywood producers touted the power of films to change culture. Cooper’s film was at the center of the conversation, and one panelist called it a “happy coincidence” that their discussion was taking place just as “American Sniper” had become an unexpected box-office hit and nabbed six Oscar nominations. Cooper spoke of his film as a model for the kinds of relationships the entertainment industry should cultivate with military veterans, some of whom visited the movie’s set and were cast as actors. Cooper said that at a showing of the film to 260 veterans at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, “a Marine stood up and got very emotional and said, ‘Thank you for getting it right. You’re one of us.’ ” The first lady’s blessing comes three weeks before the Academy Awards and in the midst of a larger debate about the film. It has been lauded by many movie critics for its humanizing portrayal of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who is known as the “most lethal sniper” in military history. Yet some liberal commentators have criticized it as glorifying war, drawing pushback from conservative pundits rushing to defend it. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D) said last week that there was “a lot of intersection” between the people seeing the movie and the tea party, and he described the people who go to see the movie as “angry.” He later apologized. Fox News Channel’s Todd Starnes said he thought “Jesus would tell that God- fearing, red-blooded American sniper, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ ” And the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has asked “American Sniper” director Clint Eastwood and Cooper to condemn anti-Arab and anti-Muslim threats that have accompanied the film’s success. The endorsement of the movie by a Democratic first lady could calm the media tumult. But Obama did not address the controversy in her comments. Friday’s event was built around an announcement by Got Your Six — a Hollywood industry group advocating for veterans — that is launching a program to certify positive movies focused on veterans as well as films that have employed or consulted veterans during production, with a goal of promoting more “authentic” portrayals in pop culture. But nuanced portrayals are already flourishing in film, according to Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday, who cited “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Hurt Locker” in a recent essay as part of a trend of movies that highlight the professionalism of military personnel. “Films of earlier eras commonly portrayed boots-on-the-ground soldiers as either victims, demons or mythologized heroes,” she wrote. “In today’s war movies, they’re professionals.” But Obama, who with Jill Biden heads the military advocacy group Joining Forces, called for even more “untold true stories” of veterans. In her call-out to Hollywood’s “content creators,” Obama said she would like Hollywood to have the same effect on views of military veterans that it has had on perceptions of gay and lesbian Americans. “It wasn’t all that long ago that this was a third-rail kind of issue, not just in politics, but in entertainment as well,” she said of gay rights. “Today, ‘The Imitation Game’ is up for best picture at the Oscars, and Cam and Mitchell — two of my favorites — are raising their daughter on ‘Modern Family,’ one of the top-rated shows on TV. And at the same time, we’ve seen gay rights advance in real life as well.” It is not unexpected that Obama chooses to engage moviemakers in connection with her initiative. The first lady has had a close relationship with Hollywood that was capped in 2013 when she made a surprise appearance at the Oscars to present the award for best picture.

Duffel Blog makes fun of military absurdities — and has the Pentagon laughing, too

It reads a bit like a brewing mutiny. Writing mostly under pen names, the tribe of former and current service members behind the satirical Duffel Blog regularly lampoons military leaders, blasts the bureaucracy and mocks policy. You might think the Pentagon — zealous about message control — would be scrambling to unmask the scribes and shut down a site that has managed to find humor even in taboo subjects such as the force’s suicide epidemic, the sexual assault crisis and the psychiatric wounds of combat. Sample headline: “Anthony Weiner Selected As Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention Chief.” The brass seems to be laughing along, for the most part, as the once-obscure site has become a widely read guilty pleasure at the Pentagon and at military bases around the country and the world. When the Duffel Blog launched a couple of years ago, its creators said their only ambition was to lighten the mood among a generation of war-weary veterans who felt somewhat disconnected from civilian America. But it has turned into much more, regularly attracting more than half a million unique visitors per month. Its brand of satire often conveys grievances and contrarian views that are widely held among those in uniform. The articles have also helped bridge the country’s civilian-military divide, the blog’s writers say, by sparking conversations and portraying troops in ways that defy stereotypes. “Duffel Blog is a beautifully crafted response to an increasingly stuffy environment in today’s America,” said retired Gen. James Mattis, a former head of U.S. Central Command who has been parodied in several items. “Duffel Blog reminds us of much of what we in the military fight for — the freedom to think our own way and to laugh about the absurdities without being mean-spirited.” Paul Szoldra, a former Marine sergeant, came up with the concept almost by accident. While developing a Web site designed to help veterans succeed in college, he penned a couple of satirical posts that got far more attention than his tips for student vets. “When I first started it, it gave me a board to vent and be funny about things in the military that were kind of dumb,” Szoldra, 29, said in a phone interview from San Francisco, where he works for a business news site. “Other people started recognizing the power of that.” Szoldra soon began getting e-mails from veterans around the country who wanted to play a role, allowing him to build a group of roughly 50 regular contributors, about half of whom are on active duty. A Marine captain who writes under the pseudonym Dark Laughter said he found solace and empathy in the Duffel Blog when he was having a hard time adjusting to civilian life after a deployment to Afghanistan. “I remember walking around and marveling: You would never guess in a million years that there were people fighting in places like Baghdad or Marja,” said the officer, now a reservist in graduate school, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because he fears that his Duffel Blog work could negatively affect his career. “It’s amazing how little people understand about the military, but also how little people are interested in closing that gap.” One of the captain’s posts poked fun at the military’s euphemistic portrayal of Afghan troops who have opened fire on their American comrades — acts normally attributed to men “wearing Afghan army uniforms,” rather than to Afghan soldiers. “Man In Afghan President’s Uniform Shoots Secretary Of Defense In Latest ‘Green-on-Blue’ Attack,” reads the headline of the Aug. 22, 2012, post, written when such incidents were occurring with alarming frequency. Mocking the rationales that U.S. military officials have provided for green-on-blue shootings, the post said Afghan President Hamid Karzai explained that he had been motivated by “American insolence, ignorance of Afghan culture, Quran burning, violating Afghan traditions, or something else like that.” The Duffel Blog’s coverage of the Obama administration’s debate over how to respond to Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons this summer was scathing. An opinion piece published under the mock byline of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, satirized his perceived uneasiness about a military strike on Syria. “Our Military Exists To Fight And Win Wars,” said the headline, which continued: “Except In Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, And Korea.” A play on the poem “The Night Before Christmas” also took aim at the White House’s indecision over bombing military targets in Syria: _Twas the day after gassing, when throughout the White House_ _No one’s courage was showing, not as big as a mouse;_ _The Nobel was hung by the chimney with care,_ _In hopes that a second soon would be there;_ _The Syrians were nestled all snug in their graves,_ _While the President dithered and ranted and raved._ _And Kerry in a lather, Hagel a bind,_ _Both wondered if it were time to resign._ The Duffel Blog’s humor has been particularly funny when it’s been lost on people. An aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fired off an inquiry to the Pentagon after receiving a letter from a constituent concerned that inmates at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were about to receive the same college stipends awarded to U.S. troops. Army officials laughed uncomfortably after they began fielding media inquiries about the reported promotion to lieutenant colonel of Nidal Hasan, the Army officer who was convicted of killing 13 comrades at Fort Hood, Tex., in November 2009. And they giggled over a story about a new Army policy that was going to force troops to get divorces in an effort to improve readiness. The Duffel Blog reached a milestone of sorts when the Pentagon’s main Twitter account began following the site in September. Jennifer D. Elzea, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the step was taken to help the Defense Department “maintain situational awareness.” It probably also had something to do with the fact that the Pentagon press secretary had become a huge fan. George Little, who stepped down from the post last month, said the blog had become a “must read,” and he counseled public affairs colleagues to monitor it closely to spot what narratives were taking hold and which messages were falling flat. “It helps put many things in healthy perspective, even when it’s a little over the top or overly satirical,” Little said. “In the very serious world we live in at the Pentagon, a bit of levity can actually help advance the mission.”

What happens when the military chaplain is shaken by war

The pre-war Pastor Matthew Williams had gone to seminary, was ordained and thought he understood why people suffer. “God allows suffering because this world is temporary,” is how he would have put it. Then came two deployments as an Army chaplain, one to Afghanistan and one to Iraq. Williams spent a year in an Afghanistan morgue unzipping body bags and “seeing your friends’ faces all blown apart.” He watched as most of the marriages he officiated for fellow soldiers fell apart. He felt the terror of being the only soldier who wasn’t armed when the mortars dropped and bullets flew. This Memorial Day weekend, Williams is no longer an active-duty military chaplain nor a United Church of Christ minister. He is a guitar player on disability whose outlook on God, religion and suffering was transformed by post-traumatic stress. “I thought I had a handle on suffering. I thought I had a handle on understanding the sovereignty of God. I didn’t know crap,” said Williams, who now travels across the country, performing music and visiting other suffering veterans in what he sees as a new kind of ministry. “At the end of the day, what I know now is: I’m alive, I believe in God, I have faith, and that’s where it stops. It doesn’t get much deeper than that.” “I don’t think anymore that there is some grand design,” he said “It just _is_.” Perhaps the roughest parts of war — mortality, suffering, the seeming randomness of life — are supposed to be a chaplain’s bread and butter, their expertise. The 5,000 active-duty men and women often called “Chaps” are the ones soldiers seek at all hours, under strict confidentiality, to share their darkest acts, doubts and fears — even the suicidal thoughts that could end their military careers. And yet chaplains experience post-traumatic stress, too, while carrying out their unique mission to shore up others. The Rev. John Weatherly’s deployments to Bosnia in 2001 and Iraq in 2006 convinced him that chaplains respond to trauma much as other soldiers do: They get scared, they hide fear, they grown numb. “It’s normal to have nightmares, to cry when you listen to the news,” said Weatherly, a retired Army colonel who serves as rector at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria, has completed workshops on post-traumatic stress and now serves as a facilitator to others. “I know fear. I know what it’s like to be scared and yelling the 23rd Psalm at the top of my voice.” On the other hand, the last thing a commander wants is a weak chaplain, said Anthony Pantlitz, 53, a retired chaplain with the Air Force. “The chaplain is supposed to be the one that is unbroken,” Pantlitz said. “When soldiers see a chaplain is broken, they feel it’s okay for them to be broken, too. Other soldiers — okay. But a man or woman of God is not supposed to be broken.” A father of five, Pantlitz fills journals with stories of a Thanksgiving mortaring in Iraq, where he saw three security guards charred “like burned meat.” For a time, he lost his faith altogether. It returned with a new, different force, but the numbness, flashbacks and deep isolation remain. “A still small voice frequently asked me, where is your God?” he wrote recently in his journal. “I feel so alone in this world. I am so isolated and alienated from people, the world, and myself. I feel like a Prisoner of a War who has been forgotten on the battlefield.” A chaplain’s loss of faith is a particularly unfortunate cost of war, say experts who believe spiritual community and routine help long-term healing. Some reframe their ideas about faith. Others see God in post-traumatic stress itself. “If I could turn back the hands of time, I’d not change anything,” said Pantlitz, who now focuses on his family and his work in counseling groups. “To go to Iraq, to get PTSD, and to use it, to make me a more ironically compassionate person, which opened doors for me to tell people who have been through trauma, difficulties, that God doesn’t waste anything.” “Sometimes God purposely breaks the chaplain so he can make them a better chaplain,” he said. “In my case, I was wounded, and I use my wounds to be a healer to others. This has made me a better Christian.” The drain on chaplains and other caregivers is sometimes called “compassion fatigue,” a term used in the civilian world to refer to anyone, from firefighters to newspaper readers, who grow desensitized to endless stories about conflict. Some post-traumatic-stress programs are starting to specialize in caregivers. Operation Tohidu, a seven-day retreat program in Maryland for veterans coping with stress, will run its first version specifically for caregivers — many chaplains — early next year. Post-traumatic stress disorder has been the common term for the potentially crippling symptoms some people experience after traumatic incidents, though it’s becoming less frequent to use the word “disorder.” Mary Neal Vieten, a Navy psychologist who runs the Tohidu program, said it is filling fast. “Chaplains are the go-to person when someone has a problem,” she said. “They are the only ones perceived as offering real confidentiality, available 24-7. They are also non-combatants. In other words they can’t defend themselves under attack. “They are the dumping ground for everyone else’s problems,” she said. “They can’t go anywhere without someone saying, ‘Hey Chaps, got a sec?’ It’s a boundary-less job in that sense.” While their theological training may make plenty of theoretical room for the existence of suffering, it’s different when they are confronted by the brutalities of war head-on, Vieten said. “What we tell them is: If you aren’t traumatized on some level, you’re not a functioning human being,” she said. Reminding pastors that trauma is a category of suffering — not a mental illness — helps them to recover, Vieten said. Chaplains play different roles for soldiers. Several chaplains described being characterized as “good luck charms,” with comrades wanting them to fly or drive with them into conflict, believing in a religious or even superstitious way that the chaplains would protect them from danger. Others say they feel more like a “sin-eater,” a folkloric magical figure who takes on others’ sins so they can rest after death or be free. Sin-eaters are sometimes seen as outcasts, sometimes as heroes. “I can’t do the sin-eater thing day in and day out anymore,” said Williams, who now lives in Florida. “I’ve done the thing where you do death notification in the morning, someone telling me about their husband leaving them in the afternoon, and someone talking about being abused in the evening. Constant suffering becomes your reality. I couldn’t handle it anymore.” Yet Williams said that dealing with his own post-traumatic stress helped liberate his religious faith. “Now I’m living my faith more,” he said. “Before, I felt I had to stick with the party line. Now, I’m unaffiliated, but I believe in God and my soldiers” and other soldiers with whom he didn’t serve, he said. Doug Carver, a major general who was the chief of chaplains for the Army from 2007 to 2011 — the Army is the branch with the most chaplains — said there is no hard data on whether chaplains are more or less likely to experience stress, but that from his experience, a long-term syndrome is rare. However, he said, the Army launched a program called Combat Military Ministry, specifically to help chaplains and their assistants deal with trauma. He said he also sees a trend at Christian colleges, where they are creating crisis-counseling programs for chaplains. “The chaplain is unique in dealing with guilt, unforgiveness, blame,” Carver said.

Defense cuts pose an economic quandary for liberals

Liberals are increasingly facing a conundrum as the Pentagon experiences the deepest cuts in a generation: The significant reductions in military spending that they have long sought are also taking a huge bite out of economic growth. Liberal lawmakers and others on the left have argued for years that the military budget is bloated and should be dramatically scaled back. At the same time, they have been major advocates of government spending to help drive economic growth and create jobs. Fresh data on the state of the economy Friday showed that the two goals are coming into conflict. The economy grew only 2.5 percent in the first quarter, in large part because of a sharp 11.5 percent drop in military spending, and that came on top of an even bigger 22.1 percent plunge in military spending at the end of last year. “It makes me feel torn,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “The bottom line is military spending is government spending, and in the absence of any sort of other stimulus for the private sector, we need to get it where we can.” The pattern of military cuts is expected to continue over the coming months. The United States is intensifying its withdrawal from Afghanistan and has exited Iraq. And a pair of budget measures — including budget caps put in place in 2011 and the reductions known as sequestration — are forcing the military to sharply cut back. The shrinking Pentagon budget also raises tough questions for liberals about the role of the military as a source of employment. At a time when the country is struggling to keep good-paying manufacturing jobs from going overseas, weapons systems and armored vehicles must be made in the United States, creating jobs at home. Shrinking the military means more veterans looking for work, and the government has struggled to place recent veterans in private-sector jobs. The unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan is 11.8 percent, compared with 8 percent for veterans overall, and President Obama is preparing another major push Tuesday to help with veteran employment. The internal tensions among liberals over military spending cuts echo debates among some conservatives, who want to maintain or expand defense spending but struggle to explain how to do that at the same time they wish to substantially cut the federal budget. Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University and a former national security official in the Bill Clinton administration, said the conflicts are explained by basic politics — and have been present during every major military drawdown since World War II. “In either party, there’s going to be a tension for the members between wanting to cut defense and wanting to save jobs in their district,” Adams said. “We’re in one of those big 20-year cycles where the budget goes up with a combat and then comes down. It always brings these politics to the surface.” **** Liberals say they feel deeply divided. They welcome the fact that the military — after so many years of growth — is adjusting to tighter spending controls. But they acknowledge that the cuts are happening at the worst possible time, when the economy is already growing slowly and could use a lift from the government. “I don’t want to see anybody lose their jobs,” saidSen. Bernard Sanders (Vt.), an independent who caucuses with Democrats. “We are in the midst of a terrible recession. When you cut military spending you lose jobs, and that’s a terrible thing.” On the other hand, Sanders said, military spending should not be preserved just because it keeps people employed. “You can hire millions of people digging ditches and hire millions of people to fill the ditches,” he said. The money should be redirected toward better sources of employment, he said, such as investing in construction projects that benefit the economy — building roads and bridges, for example — or education. Former congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), one of the loudest advocates of sharp military reductions over the years, argued against making immediate and dramatic cuts to military spending. But he said there will still be a positive lesson. “This is the wrong time to be making government cuts to any form of expenditures,” Frank said. But, he added, “the fact that we’re doing the reductions now in military spending will have zero negative impact on American security.” While pained by the consequences for the economy, several liberal lawmakers defended the cuts, especially given that other nonmilitary programs are facing the ax in an age of austerity. “When you look at what sequester’s done to Head Start and unemployment benefits, this is a very terrible period,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). “Defense can handle an across-the-board cut. Head Start cannot handle that.” Military spending is rapidly becoming a less significant share of the overall economy. As a percentage of gross domestic product, defense spending started picking up after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, rising from 3.8 percent and peaking at 5.3 percent in the fall of last year. In the first three months of this year, military spending made up only 4.8 percent of the size of the economy, and that is likely to decline more. The drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan will mean hundreds of billions of dollars less in defense spending over the next decade. The Budget Control Act of 2011 caps defense spending at low levels, and then the sequester trims hundreds of billions of dollars more. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that military spending, aside from mandatory expenditures to pay for health care and pensions, will fall from 16 percent of the federal budget in 2014 to 12 percent in 2023. **** The prospect of deep defense cuts has stirred debate among Democrats for several years. The Simpson-Bowles commission suggested deep reductions in military spending, but the Obama administration rejected the panel’s recommendations in part because of the heavy hand it took with the Pentagon. Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) said sequestration is forcing the Pentagon and defense hawks to realize that the nation can do just fine with less spending. “I’m pleased that there does seem to be, because of the sequester, a growing consensus that there is waste and ineffectiveness in the Defense Department,” he said. Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow with the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that though military spending has some unique economic benefits, it also has drawbacks. “It definitely has political protection. Every time someone mentions a defense cut, a member of Congress talks about protecting factory jobs in their district,” he said. “But relative to other government spending, a considerable chunk of the military is spent outside our borders. In that sense, the multiplier is smaller there than in other forms of government spending.”

Alleged White House intruder Omar Gonzalez is a veteran. Does it matter?

The action came quickly: Omar J. Gonzalez allegedly hopped the fence at the White House last month, rushing over the North Lawn before bursting through the front door and getting tackled in the building’s ornate East Room.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The details of that scramble into the nation’s most iconic building has captured national attention and garnered scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where an oversight committee is examining today how security could have failed so badly. But there’s another question that has not been answered: How relevant is it that he fought in Iraq for the U.S. Army? The case hits a common narrative that frustrates many veterans: that of the individual who serves in combat, and then somehow “snaps” afterward and becomes a danger to himself and his community. The former soldier’s family has pointed out his military history in interviews over the last few weeks while explaining what may have possessed him to allegedly take an action that could have got him killed by Secret Service agents. He was dealing with post-traumatic stress and had been living out of his car recently, a family member told The Washington Post.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Gonzalez served in Iraq as a cavalry scout, leaving the Army as a sergeant, said Wayne Collins, an Army spokesman. The soldier joined in July 1997 and was discharged in September 2003. He rejoined the service in July 2005 — not uncommon, especially at a time when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were underway — and was retired due to an unspecified disability in December 2012, Collins said. As a cavalry scout, Gonzalez likely conducted patrols in Iraq and served as the eyes and ears of his commander while observing enemy movement.He deployed at least once, from October 2006 to January 2008, and earned a Combat Action Badge, Army officials said, indicating he was engaged by enemy fighters at some point. ~~~~    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But there are some uncertainties about his background.The New York Times reported last week that his former neighbors in Texas said he complained about a foot injury, and believed he sustained it in Iraq. The Army does not list a Purple Heart among his awards, though, raising questions about whether it occurred due to enemy action. At least one other media report has suggested the foot was injured by an improvised explosive device, attributing the information to an unnamed family member. That would qualify for the Purple Heart.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Gonzalez’s case hits themes explored recently by The Post’s Greg Jaffe in a story out of Alaska: How much should Gonzalez be held accountable for his alleged actions if he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder? As Jaffe’s story notes, the condition has been linked regularly to criminal behavior, especially when combined with family problems, anger and alcohol.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Still, the vast majority of veterans with post-traumatic stress commit no crimes, and many have expressed frustration when PTSD is cited as a reason for other veterans who have committed crimes. Numerous pieces to that effect were written by veterans following the mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in April that killed three people and wounded 16 more.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The circumstances of Gonzalez’s case will be released over time. Until then, it may be best to reserve judgment.  _RELATED:_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Damascus man charged in death his 3-year-old adopted son

Brian O’Callaghan fought in Iraq, mastered Arabic and became a division chief at the National Security Agency. Last year, wanting a second child for their young family, he and his wife adopted a 3-year-old boy from South Korea. “He was so loving of him,” a family member said. It is a background that made allegations revealed in Montgomery County District Court on Tuesday seem all the more stunning: Alone with the boy — with his wife out of town, his other son in a different part of the house — O’Callaghan repeatedly struck the child, hitting him so hard that the boy died two days later. “An absolutely horrific crime on an absolutely innocent young victim,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Fenton, listing injuries to the boy’s head, neck and back. “Basically this child was beaten to death from head to toe.” Based in part on her assertions, Judge William Simmons denied bond for O’Callaghan, who has been charged with first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death. The hearing was the first in the case, one that O’Callaghan’s attorney said was not what police and prosecutors were making it out to be. “This was a terrible, terrible tragedy — and not a crime,” said the lawyer, Steven McCool. O’Callaghan’s wife, Jennifer, his parents and his in-laws came to court. “He has the unwavering support of his family,” McCool said. “They know he is incapable of committing the crimes alleged.” O’Callaghan, 36, said little during the hearing as his image was piped in via a video feed from jail. He attended the University of Northern Colorado and, by 1997, was serving in the Marine Reserve, according to McCool and military officials. He served in Kosovo. In 2003, while deployed in Iraq, he earned the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for his part in a firefight that helped lead to the rescue of captured soldier Jessica Lynch, according to military records and McCool. At some point, O’Callaghan went to work for the NSA, where he is chief of the Korea Division in the analysis and production section and holds a top-secret intelligence clearance, McCool said. At home, he and his wife had one son, who is now 7. They worked through Catholic Charities to qualify to adopt a child with special needs — which is how they adopted Hyunsu from Korea in October. The family called him Madoc, an Irish addition to his name. For three months, Jennifer O’Callaghan was the boy’s primary caretaker, according to police. In January, Brian O’Callaghan went on leave to care for Madoc, while his wife went back to work. On Jan. 31, she went to New Jersey, and he and their sons stayed at their home in Damascus, authorities said. It is here that the accounts about what happened differ substantially. According to Fenton, the prosecutor, some time on the night of Jan. 31 or into the next day, O’Callaghan beat Madoc. From there, O’Callaghan didn’t render aid, Fenton said. Instead, he moved his injured son from a bed to a blanket and cleaned bodily fluids from inside the home — finally taking Madoc to a hospital in Germantown. The child was in full arrest, Fenton said. The boy died Feb. 3, police said. An autopsy confirmed injuries consistent with being beaten, Fenton said. Among them: a fracture at the base of skull, bruises to the forehead, swelling of the brain and wounds to other parts of the body. There was also “blunt impact to the back from a linear and triangular shaped object,” Fenton said in court. Detectives questioned O’Callaghan. He said that on the evening of Jan. 31, he helped Hyunsu take a shower because the child didn’t like having water hit him. “During the shower, Hyunsu was crying and upset,” Detective Mike Carin wrote in court papers, summarizing his conversation with O’Callaghan. “After the shower had ended, Hyunsu slipped in the bathtub, falling backwards. As he fell, he hit his shoulder. Brian consoled him and he went to bed without incident.” The next day, O’Callaghan took his sons to breakfast, followed by a trip to a swim center, according to Carin’s summary. The three eventually returned home, O’Callaghan told the detectives, and Hyunsu took a nap. At 4 p.m., O’Callaghan went to check on his younger son and saw pink stains on the bedding and mucus coming from the boy’s nose, Carin wrote. O’Callaghan told detectives that he changed the sheets, returned an hour later to check on the boy and found his condition had worsened. O’Callaghan told the detectives that the boy was unresponsive and that he washed him off in a bathtub, eventually taking him to the hospital. “Brian O’Callaghan could not provide an explanation” for the injuries, Carin wrote. “These facts are strong, these facts are horrific, and what this man did to this child is murder,” Fenton said in court. Detectives got a warrant for O’Callaghan’s arrest Feb. 12 but allowed him to attend his son’s memorial service, McCool said. In court Tuesday, McCool said that medical tests performed at the hospital appear to contradict the autopsy. “There was a full CT scan done of Madoc, and there were no skull fractures,” he said. William Rose, O’Callaghan’s grandfather, said the memorial service was moving. The pastor reminded mourners that the boy’s organs had gone to save people’s lives. “I find it impossible to believe,” Rose said of the murder charge, “because he’s worked so hard to get this baby. He was so loving with him. He’s been so wonderful with his other child. I’ve never seen him do anything that would make me believe he is capable of that.” Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.

‘The Yellow Birds,’ a novel of grit, grace and blood by an Iraq war veteran

Halfway through our ongoing war on terror, a scholar at the University of East London estimated that a new book on terrorism was being published in English every six hours. Fiction writers were slower to engage with Sept. 11, but by 2006, the attacks and America’s response were becoming a touchstone for major novelists, including Jonathan Safran Foer, Ian McEwan, Claire Messud, Ward Just, John Updike, Don DeLillo, Joseph O’Neill, Andre Debus III, Lorrie Moore, Allegra Goodman, Sue Miller and many, many others. Even more than a decade into that insatiable conflict, two of the best novels of this year — “Wish You Were Here,” by Graham Swift, and “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” by Ben Fountain — revolve around soldiers returning home from Iraq. And now comes a novel about the Iraq war written by an Iraq war veteran. Kevin Powers enlisted at 17 and served as an Army machine gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar in 2004-05. After returning home, he studied creative writing and poetry at the University of Texas at Austin. “The Yellow Birds” is his first novel, and though it isn’t the first work of fiction about the war on terror by someone who actually fought in it, such books fill a relatively short shelf. “The Yellow Birds” reads like a collection of 11 linked short stories. Except for one that takes place in Germany, they move back and forth between Iraq in the fall of 2004 and the United States from 2003 to 2009. The narrator is John Bartle, a pensive, guilt-ridden vet recalling his friendship with another young soldier he calls Murph. “We were boys then,” Bartle says, and in the disturbing scenes of battle that he describes, it’s impossible to forget that these soldiers carrying out the fantasies of politicians back in Washington are barely old enough to vote. Bartle and Murph form the sort of intense friendship that battle cements quickly. Two Virginia boys, they’d “had small lives, populated by a longing for something more substantial than dirt roads and small dreams.” The younger man’s naivete appeals to Bartle’s sense of responsibility. As they’re getting ready to ship out, he makes a solemn promise to Murph’s mother to bring her son back home safely. But he admits early on, “The world makes liars of us all,” and the rest of the novel is a tortured search for how he failed to protect his friend in battle, an effort to “assemble all the marks into a story that made sense.” The first chapter demonstrates what Powers can do so well, and anthology editors should be fighting over the rights to excerpt it from the novel. “The war tried to kill us in the spring,” he begins. “We stayed awake on amphetamines and fear. I pushed my chest off the rooftop and crested the low wall, trying to scan the few acres of the world for which we were responsible.” Patrolling the streets with his buddies, Bartle describes a life in which the most lurid scenes of carnage have become routine. “Nothing seemed more natural than someone getting killed,” he says. “We only pay attention to rare things, and death was not rare.” Watching a civilian being shot in the street, he wants to jump up and yell, “What kind of men are we?” but then suddenly he realizes, “I was shooting at him and I wouldn’t stop until I was sure that he was dead.” Throughout “The Yellow Birds,” amid the gore and the terror and the boredom, you can hear notes of Powers’s work as a poet. At the end of one story, “The sun set like a clot of blood on the horizon.” In another, “While we slept, the war rubbed its thousand ribs against the ground in prayer,” he writes. “When we pressed onward throughout exhaustion, its eyes were white and open in the dark. While we ate, the war fasted, fed by its own deprivation. It made love and gave birth and spread through fire.” More than a little of that rich language would risk turning the novel florid, but Powers rarely oversteps. In the best sections, he moves gracefully between spare, factual description of the soldiers’ work to simple, hard-won reflections on the meaning of war. “I’d been trained to think war was a great unifier,” he says, “that it brought people closer together than any other activity on earth. Bullshit. War is the great maker of solipsists: how are you going to save my life today?” His lacerating honesty never feels false or fails to shock, as when he admits, “We only grieved those we knew. All others who died in Al Tafar were part of the landscape, as if something had sown seeds in that city that made bodies rise from the earth.” The Iraq stories are hard to compete with, but some of the alternating chapters of his stunted life back home are sometimes effective, too. Despite how politicized the war on terror has been from the start, Bartle reserves his greatest anger for America’s unified gratitude, those cheery yellow ribbons, the back-slapping congratulations, everyone telling him, “Thank you for your service,” as though they had any idea why he went, what he accomplished, or what price he paid in that remote corner of the world. Tempering one’s enthusiasm for a vet’s war novel seems, if not unpatriotic, then at least peevish and small-minded. Surely, anyone who has survived battle and lived to write about it this well deserves to ride through the bookstore under a flurry of confetti made from congratulatory blurbs. That’s certainly been the initial response to “The Yellow Bird.” Tom Wolfe calls it “ ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ of America’s Arab wars.” Anthony Swofford, who knows battle himself, sets it alongside Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” Philip Caputo compares its opening to “Moby-Dick,” but sensing perhaps that that’s insufficient, goes on to invoke “The Iliad.” This sort of praise helps attract attention in a fall publishing season crowded with big, splashy books from Michael Chabon and J.K. Rowling, but it also raises crushing expectations for a modest, affecting novel like this one. Because, frankly, the parts of “The Yellow Bird” are better than the whole. Some chapters lack sufficient power, others labor under the influence of classic war stories, rather than arising organically from the author’s unique vision. Murph risks being a hick cliche, and moments of recycled Hemingway sound glib, e.g.: “They were young and had girls at home or some dream that they thought would make their lives important. They had been wrong of course.” At other times, Powers gets snarled up in his own language, as in this sentence: “Home, too, was hard to get an image of, harder still to think beyond the last curved enclosure of the desert, where it seemed I had left the better portion of myself as one among innumerable grains of sand, how in the end the weather-beaten stone is not one stone but only that which has been weathered, a result, an example of slow erosion on a thing by wind or waves that break against it, so that the else of anyone involved ends up deposited like silt spilling out into an estuary, or gathered at the bottom of a river in a city that is all you can remember.” Lost in a thicket like that, we need an editor to bring back the poet who wrote, “The war tried to kill us in the spring.” Powers hasn’t written a classic war novel yet, but there are enough victories in these pages to suggest he’s marching in the right direction. By Kevin Powers Little, Brown. 230 pp. $24.99

Why many veterans are sticking with Trump, even after he insulted a Gold Star family

Evan McAllister was 23 years old when he fought in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in 2006. He killed men and buried friends. Eight years later, he watched the same city fall to the Islamic State. To McAllister, a former Marine staff sergeant and scout sniper instructor, the war he fought was a harebrained mission planned by Republicans, rubber-stamped by Democrats and, in the end, lost to al-Qaeda’s brutal successor. The foreign policy establishment of both parties got his friends killed for no reason, he said, so come Election Day, he is voting for the man he believes answers to neither Democrats nor Republicans: Donald Trump. “Most veterans . . . they see their country lost to the corrupt,” he said. “And Trump comes along all of a sudden and calls out the corrupt on both sides of the aisle.”   But among many of the people who have actually fought in this country’s wars, particularly on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump offers a refreshing alternative to 15 years of seemingly endless conflict marked by uncertain goals, fleeting victories and constant personal sacrifice, according to interviews with dozens of veterans who remain unfazed by the Republican candidate’s recent behavior or falling poll numbers.  “I think there’s a pretty sour taste in a lot of guys’ mouths about Iraq and about what happened there,” said Jim Webb Jr., a Marine veteran, Trump supporter, son of former U.S. senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) and one of McAllister’s platoon mates. “You pour time and effort and blood into something, and you see it pissed away, and you think, ‘How did I spend my twenties?’ ” “There’s a mentality that they don’t want to see more of that,” he said, adding that he worried that a Hillary Clinton presidency would result in “continued adventurism,” given her record supporting interventions in Iraq and Libya.  His fans in the military community could prove critical in November in swing states with large military populations, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. In these three states, veterans represented at least 8 percent of the population in 2014, according to data collected by the Department of Veterans Affairs.  At a recent Trump rally in Wilmington, N.C., just 30 minutes from the back gate of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, David Buzzard, a 26-year-old former Army specialist, said the Republican real estate magnate was not his “ideal candidate.” But he is also wary of Clinton, who he says too readily backs military intervention as a solution in the Middle East and seems untrustworthy, based on her handling of emails while she was secretary of state and possible conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. “I’d rather have an a–hole in the office who doesn’t have a filter than a pandering, corrupt hawk who has special interests in mind rather than the American public,” said Buzzard, who has the light outline of a scar under his left eye, the faint evidence of a roadside bomb that hit his patrol in 2011 in Afghanistan’s Wardak province.  Former Marine Andrew Delrossi said he recoiled when he heard that Trump “always wanted” the Purple Heart. “There was probably some Marine sitting there in Walter Reed missing his legs and his testicles watching that on the news,” Delrossi said. “And that’s the first time I got mad at Donald Trump. For him to say a comment like that put a bad taste in my mouth.” A former infantryman with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Delrossi started a wounded-veterans nonprofit called New England’s Wounded Veterans, which received $75,000 from the candidate this year but only after some delay.  Still, Delrossi said, he is voting for Trump and sees him as the “average Joe.” “Donald Trump is the father at the end of the table. He is the guy at the Christmas party saying we gotta do more for our vets and screw ISIS,” said Delrossi, who now works as a Boston-area police officer. “He’s like our own dad almost.” Delrossi admits that his affection for Trump is not entirely rational. “It’s almost one of those things where it’s like where your heart says Donald Trump and your brain says Hillary Clinton,” he said. Trump’s frequent calls to fix the Department of Veterans Affairs have resonated with veterans, although several said they are waiting to hear more specifics. The candidate in July released a 10-point plan to improve the department, calling for changes that include firing “corrupt and incompetent VA executives who let our veterans down,” boosting funding for job-placement services and improving mental health-care services, but details are slim. “Vets aren’t being taken care of like they should be no matter which way you try to twist it,” said Kaylea Schneider, a former Marine staff sergeant, who said she does not agree with everything Trump says but appreciates his views on the military and foreign policy. Trump’s perceived patriotism and calls for a fiercer response to the Islamic State and other insurgent groups have drawn support from veterans frustrated with the rules of engagement under which the U.S. military operates, several veterans said. The specifics of those rules are classified but are broadly understood to outline circumstances under which U.S. troops can attack enemy fighters in an effort to prevent civilian casualties. “When you send our guys — my brothers-in-arms, my sisters-in-arms — into a combat zone, we need to go to win, not to play nice with the populace,” said former Army Pfc. Chris Richardson, who drove convoys in Iraq’s Diyala province in 2008 and 2009 and attended Trump’s recent rally in Fayetteville, N.C., in a leather vest adorned with an Iraq War veteran patch. “If they shoot at us, we need to be able to shoot back and trust that we’re not going to be charged with a crime when we get back stateside.” But Trump’s rhetoric has not won over everyone. Brandon Friedman, a former Army captain who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and later served in the Obama administration, pointed to a litany of remarks made by the Republican presidential candidate that disparaged the military and veterans. He also pointed to Trump’s lack of support for the post-9/11 GI Bill, a piece of legislation that has helped thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan receive a higher education, and Trump’s claims that the U.S. military “doesn’t win anymore.” “When I see veterans saying things like, ‘He’s proud of the military,’ I don’t think they’re paying attention to the words coming out of his mouth,” said Friedman, who plans to vote for Clinton. “It’s amazing to me that he’s been actively hostile to the veterans community and still retains so much support.” Some veterans have decided that neither candidate suits them. Former Marine Gunnery Sgt. Emir Hadzic said he used to back Trump, but his support waned after he heard the candidate’s comments about Mexicans and Muslims. Hadzic, who just left the Marines after spending eight deployments overseas, said he plans to write in a name or vote for a third-party candidate in November. “My friends say, ‘You gotta pick Hillary or Trump, man; you need to pick the lesser of two evils,’” Hadzic said. “And I say, ‘I’m not voting for either, because I don’t vote for evil.’ ” For Webb, writing in a candidate or voting “out of protest,” is not an option. For all of Trump’s perceived flaws, Webb said, he thinks he is the strongest candidate. “He is bringing a comprehensive re-examination of how we conduct business,” Webb said. “Whether it’s on taxes or it’s how we’re involved in the world, it’s very sorely needed.”

Still serving the nation after leaving the battlefield

_Matt Gallagher is a former U.S. Army captain and Iraq war veteran. His debut novel, ‘Youngblood,” will be published in February._ Drawing parallels between the American nation of today and the fallen empires of antiquity has become something of a pastime for the contemporary military scholar class. There’s something comforting in believing that it’s all been done before, even when that “it” is anticipating rot and ruin. And the history of antiquity does suggest that widening drifts between soldier and citizen — such as the one occurring in 21st-century America — foretell decline for nations with democratic foundations. Consider the tenor of our current presidential primary debates: Many Republicans seem to believe that victory corresponds to the number of bombing campaigns promised, while the Democrats gleefully ran off the one candidate who could (and, well, did) speak to the consequences of war, Jim Webb. In recent weeks, I can’t have been the only American citizen who turned to the well-worn quotation often attributed to Thucydides: “The State that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.” This quotation is actually a misattribution, a variant of something said by a 19th-century British army officer, but no matter. The emotional truth of it resonates throughout Joe Klein’s new book, “Charlie Mike,” a deep and compelling exploration of a group of young veterans determined to continue serving after leaving the military. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have left them disillusioned with what our political leaders sent them to do, even despondent in some cases, but that didn’t mean they were going to spend the rest of their days in beer halls recalling false glories. They still had plenty to give and were set on doing so in practical and meaningful ways. “I’m a Marine,” one told the Red Cross after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, trying to explain how and why he could help with relief efforts. “I can do danger.” Klein, a longtime political journalist for Time magazine, centers his narrative on two vets of the war on terrorism who came home and founded organizations devoted to others: Jake Wood, a former Marine sergeant who played football at the University of Wisconsin and was inspired by Pat Tillman, and Eric Greitens, a hyper-earnest Rhodes scholar and “American anachronism” who served as a Navy SEAL officer. Wood’s story pops off the pages of “Charlie Mike”; indeed, the book is at its most vibrant when following Wood and his disaster-relief organization, Team Rubicon. The tale virtually writes itself. There are the young vets wading into the aftermath of floods, tornadoes and hurricanes. There is the fire of the personalities surrounding Wood and Team Rubicon, from the dark Irish fierceness of co-founder William McNulty to no-nonsense firefighter Matt Pelak to Indra Petersons, a Los Angeles television meteorologist. And there’s the herculean figure cut by Wood himself, a former scout sniper who before Team Rubicon seemed primed for business school, “ready to begin the rest of his life after a four-year adrenaline fiesta in the Marines.” Then the Haiti earthquake happens, and he and McNulty find themselves willing to go into the breach once more, then again and again. The journey of Greitens’s organization, The Mission Continues, is more subdued but no less absorbing. The origins of The Mission Continues rest in a 2007 visit Greitens and others made to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The resoluteness of the wounded service members struck the group. When pressed on what they wanted to do after the military, many “said that they wanted to work in the public sector: teach, coach, join the police or firefighters.” These were amputees and serious burn victims, though, so how many of these hopes and ambitions were possible anymore? The idea for a community-service fellowship was born, and, some eight years later, more than 1,000 Mission Continues fellowships have been awarded to post-9/11 veterans, in areas from education for low-income youth to Habitat for Humanity projects. These vets are “redeployed” into their communities, and the successes of the case studies profiled speak for themselves. Klein weaves a fine tale; “Charlie Mike” reads like a who’s-who of the modern veterans movement, but the pages never feel bloated. The odysseys of people like Mission Continues fellow Natasha Young and Team Rubicon volunteer Mike “Top” Washington Sr. are told with care and skill. But it’s Klein’s willingness to explore the darker sides of his protagonists that gives “Charlie Mike” its soul. Wood is anything and everything to everyone until the burden of it all becomes too much. In a book filled with acts of profound courage, Wood’s public admission that he’s been helped by counseling stands prominent. As for Greitens, he builds his organization from scratch while wrestling with the naked political ambitions he’s held since his youth. In September, after stepping away from an active role in The Mission Continues, he announced his candidacy for the governorship of Missouri. Then there’s Clay Hunt, the Ajax of “Charlie Mike.” A veteran with deep connections to both Team Rubicon and The Mission Continues, Hunt committed suicide in 2011. His death has haunted the post-9/11 vets community for years. Can anything good or meaningful be salvaged from such loss? The trajectories of those profiled in “Charlie Mike” suggest perhaps so. “That community service might be a viable treatment for post-traumatic stress” is substantiated both in these deeply personal stories and in surveys conducted by Washington University in conjunction with The Mission Continues. Hunt may have been lost, but Klein shows us how many have been saved, in part because of service organizations like these that provide not just hope but purpose for vets and civilians alike. By Joe Klein Simon & Schuster. 304 pp. $27

Ask Amy: Veteran struggles with marriage

DEAR AMY: My 27-year-old son returned home from a tour of duty in Afghanistan about two years ago. He, his wife and infant daughter live with us due to economic difficulties that are common to their generation. He attends school on vet benefits and also is a National Guard member. He recently disclosed to me that he’s been very unhappy since returning from his tour of duty and is torn between leaving his wife to be “happy” or staying with her for the sake of the baby and being “miserable.” I fear he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his tour of duty, even though he wasn’t directly involved in combat, and that this is at the root of his depression rather than him being stuck in a loveless marriage. It breaks my heart to know that he might make a rash decision to destroy his family over this, as his wife is loving and supportive of him. Is there any advice or direction you can offer to help my struggling veteran son? I know I can’t live his life for him. But he has reached out to me and seems to be overwhelmed with his situation. -- Worried Father DEAR FATHER: Your son might be suffering from some traumatic aftereffects of his tour of duty. Or, he might be a guy pushing 30 who is stressed, restless and wants out of his marriage. The everyday reality of family life is extremely challenging, especially for people who are engaged in exciting, dangerous, high-octane careers that take them away from home for long periods. Your son has a responsibility to try his hardest to be a good person and a good parent. If he is determined to leave his marriage, you should urge him to consider the reality of his choice. For instance, could his wife and child continue to live with you if they tried a trial separation? This couple would benefit from professional mediation. He should be screened for depression. He can connect with his local VA for an evaluation. Your responsibility is to be supportive of each party, and all about your grandchild. Do not refer to this as “destroying his family” because the focus should be on keeping the family functioning and peaceful, even if the marriage ends. DEAR AMY: I’m the mother of a 41-year-old daughter who is unable to feel any empathy for me. She’s courteous in every other way, but if I ever need support — emotional or physical — she’s MIA. Twice she has flown home for surprise parties for me, but has never come to help me or care for me through six surgeries. She cannot listen to any problems of mine, no matter how serious. I have tried to talk with her directly about this, and she feels that it is not her job to take care of her mother in any way. That’s not part of the mother-daughter relationship. She has told me that it should be entirely one-way, regardless of my age or need. What will she teach her kids about how a child should treat her mother? And how much can I entrust her with as I become older and need her to carry out my end-of-life wishes? I’m afraid she’ll dump me in a nursing home and walk away. My son has schizophrenia and could not bear the stress of making those decisions alone. -- Mother DEAR MOTHER: I can only imagine how disappointed you are in your daughter. I think it is wisest to assume that she will never change. You should do everything possible to plan for your own future. This includes researching housing options and finding friends or other family members who would be willing to assist. That way, when your future arrives, you won’t feel “dumped,” but like you are living according to your own plans and wishes. DEAR AMY: I think your advice to “Impatient” was fine, but you really should have advised this unmarried mother of two to see a lawyer! The father of her kids may never marry her and they should both be aware of the legal ramifications. -- Not a Lawyer DEAR NOT: I agree; great advice. Amy’s column appears seven days a week at www.washingtonpost.com/advice. Write to  Amy Dickinson  at askamy@tribune.com or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.

Why are we celebrating the beating of a black child?

_Stacey Patton is a senior enterprise reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, an adjunct professor of American history at American University and the author of “That Mean Old Yesterday.”_ This past week, a black mother in Baltimore discovered her 16-year-old son, covered by a hoodie and a mask, participating in the riot that shook the city. So she chased him down, cursed him and beat him as a bystander captured the scene on video. Once it was posted, the consensus online, in social media and on cable TV held her up as a hero. A still from the video graced the cover of the New York Post with this headline: “Forget the National Guard . . . send in the moms.” In this country, when black mothers fulfill stereotypes of mammies, angry and thwarting resistance to a system designed to kill their children, they are praised. “He gave me eye contact,” Toya Graham told CBS News. “And at that point, not even thinking about cameras or anything like that — that’s my only son, and at the end of the day, I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray. . . . Is he the perfect boy? No he’s not, but he’s mine.” Graham’s message to America is this: I will teach my black son not to resist a system of oppression, so he can live. The kind of violent discipline she unleashed on her son, Michael, did not originate with her, or with my adoptive mother, who publicly beat me when I was a child, or with the legions of black parents who equate pain with protection and love. The beatings originated with white supremacy, a history of cultural and physical violence that devalues black life at every turn. From slavery to Jim Crow to the school-to-prison pipeline, the innocence and protection of black children have always been a dream deferred. The problem is that Graham’s actions do not assure that her son, and legions like him, will survive childhood. Recall the uncle who in 2011 uploaded a video of himself beating his teenage nephew for posting gang messages on Facebook. The uncle may have been acting out of love and fear for his nephew’s life, but months later the teen was found dead anyway. Praising Graham distracts from a hard truth: It doesn’t matter how black children behave — whether they throw rocks at the police, burn a CVS, join gangs, walk home from the store with candy in their pockets, listen to rap music in a car with friends, play with a toy gun in a park or simply make eye contact with a police officer — they risk being killed and then blamed for their own deaths, because black youths are rarely viewed as innocent or worthy of protection. If there were an easy way to keep black children safe from police, out of prisons, morgues and graves, we would not have spent the past three years in an almost endless cycle of grieving the loss of young black people: Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Rekia Boyd, Jordan Davis, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray and . . . and . . . and . . . . The list is too long to fit into my word count. This celebration of Toya Graham reflects a belief that black youths are inherently problematic, criminal and out of control. The video also supports the idea that black fathers are always absent, and that everything will be fine if an angry black mom just beats the “thug” out of an angry young man. This view suggests that a militarized and racist police force is not the problem. Systemic racism — from the war on drugs to racial profiling, from hyper-segregation to community divestment — is not the issue. Black children’s behavior is the true enemy of peace. If only Freddie hadn’t run; if only his parents had beaten him; if only he were perfect, maybe he would still be with us. The praise for Graham across racial lines suggests people think that beating black children is the only way to keep them safe from the dangers of a racist society or from stepping out of line. Rather than embracing Michael, rather than hearing and seeing his pain and assuring him that she had his back, Graham struck and shamed him. The public humiliation of black children has a long heritage. On Nov. 8, 1893, the Anderson Intelligencer, a South Carolina newspaper, reported that a black boy was caught stealing a lunch that had been left inside a horse buggy. The locals tied the boy up in a stall and called his mother. Officials briefed the 200-pound mom upon her arrival, and she exclaimed (as quoted in the paper): “I bin trying to git hold of you for six munts and you git away from me ebery time. Bit I got you now, tank de Lord.” She asked for a whip or cowhide, but was given a buggy trace. She stripped her son’s pants, bent him over a cross bar and beat him. The reporter noted, “Those licks and those yells were awful to hear and awfuller to behold.” We can all appreciate the pain and fear of Graham’s cry that “I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray.” This is every black mother’s cry through American history. From the plantation moms who whipped their kids so white masters and overseers wouldn’t more harshly do the same, to the parents during Jim Crow who beat their children to keep them safe from the Klan and lynch mobs, these beatings are the acts of a people so desperate and helpless, so terrorized and enraged, that heaping pain upon their children actually seems like a sane and viable act of parental protection. The intensity of this fear is integral to the history of black Americans. Just as black parents have “the talk” with their children, listing survival tips for when they are confronted by white authority, corporal punishment is supposedly the only way to make black children acceptable to society. The recent killings of unarmed black people have brought forth even more anxiety about how black parents should protect their kids. America praises Martin Luther King Jr.’s embrace of nonviolence yet militarizes its police. It blames black parents for problems from low graduation rates to poverty but lets  principals suspend children en masse. Beatings are not transformative. They don’t empower. They simply punish the victims and accelerate the trauma, bringing the pain from the streets into the home. This form of “discipline” makes children more vulnerable to violence. It increases the risk of the behaviors that will get them in trouble at school and in the streets — the very behaviors that parents think beatings will prevent. Where is the celebration of moms whose children have been at the forefront of peaceful protests? Where is the celebration of black mothers and fathers who have been organizing against police abuses, against food injustice, and against the violence and looting in Baltimore and beyond? The history of the civil rights movement is one of parents and children joining together on the front lines of the struggle, not one of black parents thrashing their children. Yet this is the image captivating the nation. **_Twitter: @DrStaceyPatton_ ** Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.

NBF Authors Share Stories of Hope to Inspire Readers

**_All articles are written by YJDP Student Correspondents and edited by mentors from The Washington Post prior to publishing._ ** Blogger’s Row provided an opportunity to hear authors from a variety of genres share their stories and passion for writing books. This year’s NBF theme, “I cannot live without books,” explored a wide range of topics to spark discussions on the human side of war, history, science, poetry, biography, international, food and children’s literature. Decorated Marine veteran and former White House Fellow, Elliot Ackerman, shared that he grew up around books and knew that he would eventually write since his mother was a novelist too. “I served as an advisor to Afghan troops, so my war buddies weren’t just Americans, they were Afghan soldiers. I wanted to write about the war as I thought they saw it.” _Green on Blue_ is very much about the Afghan experience with themes of friendship, loyalty and betrayal which exist in war. “The Green on Blue attacks serves as a metaphor of what happens when the cause you’re fighting for destroys you, using the experience I had in Afghanistan to make the story,” said Ackerman. Ackerman went to high school in D.C. and understands the competitive D.C. culture, yet suggests that students do something they are interested in and write about it along the way.  Those experiences lead to discoveries about our future. Ackerman now lives with his family in Istanbul and is writing his second novel about the war in Syria after conducting research on humanitarian issues in that region for the past two years. It is a love story set on the Turkish border amidst the Syrian war. Headlining the festival’s “Human Side of War” discussions were veteran journalists; news broadcaster, Tom Brokaw with his book _The Greatest Generation_ , and former Washington Post associate editor, Rajiv Chandrasekharan on his book _For Love of Country_ , co-written with the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, about what veterans can teach us about citizenship, heroism and sacrifice. Both authors shared inspiring stories of veterans who have bravely served our nation and the sacrifices they have made to protect us. The message of hope, faith and perseverance was a constant theme the authors conveyed to enthusiastic attendees. Many veterans were present throughout the day-long festival eager to share their experiences as part of the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project to collect, preserve and make accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war. As a recurring theme, hope was prevalent in many books at the Festival, including the biography of Bob Hope written by Time Magazine’s acclaimed theater critic, Richard Zoglin, _Hope: Entertainer of the Century_. Bob Hope entertained U.S. servicemen with his unique brand of stand-up political comedy during traveling USO shows. Zoglin explained, “As America’s comedian, Bob Hope was the most important show business person of his era. He had a role on the public stage like no other.” He was a trusted friend to many U.S. Presidents and used political humor to share his unique brand of comedy with Americans. Stand-up comedy back in the ‘70’s was very different than what it is today. Zoglin shared insights from several of his interviews with comedians like Jon Stewart, David Letterman and George Carlin who are engaged in the political conversation much like Hope was fifty years ago. Zoglin explained how he spent five years conducting extensive research at the Library of Congress and traveled to Culpepper, Va. to sort through 250 boxes of Hope’s letters, scripts and scrapbooks to write the definitive biography of an American entertainer who lived to the age of one hundred. Zoglin shared his insight that constructing and telling a good story comes from listening, observing, reading and writing. Sharing stories is a crucial part of the human experience according to international author, Andres Neuman, an Argentinean whose popular books, _Things We Don’t Do_ and _Talking to Ourselves_ have been translated from Spanish to English by him. Neuman believes, “We live twice when reading or writing, that’s what I think.” He speaks passionately about writing and reading literature. He shared that his imagination was sparked by listening to bedtime stories when he was young and how literature speaks to him to find his voice for expression.  Neuman states, “I am convinced that literature and writing will never disappear as long as we are on the planet. Although I don’t know if we’re going to be on the planet for a long time, but that won’t be for anything related to literature, I’m afraid!” Echoing this idea was ethnobotanist, Mark Plotkin who has done a lot of research on climate change, deforestation, drug resistant bacteria and alternative medicine solutions he found in the Amazon rainforest which could help to save our planet. Plotkin is a well-versed TED speaker, passionate about his work for the Amazon Conservation Team based in Arlington, Va., which received the Skoll Foundation’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2008. His first book, _Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice_ chronicled his fifteen year experience in the Amazon rainforest with indigenous tribes and the curative properties found in plants used by local healers. Plotkin exclaimed, “It was wildly successful. It’s in its 35th printing, in seven languages, and my publisher said what else you got?” He wrote _The Killers Within: The Deadly Rise of Drug Resistant Bacteria_ in which he explores why doctors are baffled by bacteria which have grown increasingly drug resistant, and what solutions can be found in the eco- system. Plotkin states, “It is a big issue! This is ten years ago, if they paid attention it wouldn’t be such a big issue now. The system is really screwed up. That’s one of the reasons we don’t have new drugs. It’s a much greater threat to our species than terrorism, nuclear war, global warming and deforestation.” Plotkin is fascinated with the Indian tribes in the Amazon rainforest and believes their age old curative plant based techniques offer viable innovative solutions for our modern society. According to George Mason University English Professor, Eric Pankey, “poems inspire the reader to pause to question the uncertain fate of our souls.” In his eleventh book of poetry, _Crow Work,_ Pankey writes about faith and doubt, the physical and the metaphysical, the visible and the invisible as he explores death and what happens afterward. Speaking about the title and why he chose it, Pankey states, “What I like best about it is that you can see it’s the same backwards as it is forward, and that’s what first struck me. The crow keeps reappearing in a number of poems in this book and I’m interested in how the world goes on without us, but the crows are scavengers that clean up the mess that’s left behind. They do the good work…In some ways I was comparing the work of poetry to the work of crows in taking the unfortunately ugly and trying to turn it into something more beautiful and useful.” A former high school creative writing and contemporary literature teacher, Pankey has a way with words and imparting their meaning. Picture book author, Jean Reagan wrote her first book, _Always My Brother_ after the loss of her own son to help young children cope with loss. “I put a little humor and heart to offer hope to the sibling that’s left behind,” Reagan said. _How to Babysit a Grandpa_ and _How to Babysit a Grandma_ made the _New York Times_ bestseller list. They are humorous and realistic. At the festival she read from her latest picture book, _How to Surprise a Dad._ Reagan shared her reason for writing picture books based on her memories of sitting on the couch reading stacks of library books with her young children, and “how magical that moment with parents and grandparents is, reading together.” Reagan’s work appeals to all ages since picture books are meant to be shared. “Picture books arefor everyone,” according to new author, Elise Parsley. As an artist, she illustrates and writes her own stories. Her work has fine detail and though the topic of her first book may sound silly ( _If You Ever Want to Bring an Alligator to School, Don’t!_ it offers young readers valuable lessons as seen through the main character, Magnolia. Parsley shared how her publisher signed her on the spot and asked for a series of books to continue Magnolia’s dilemmas. Parsley illustrates first and then creates a story behind the illustration. University of the Sciences Physics Professor, Paul Halpern’s book, _What’s Science Ever Done for Us?_ is based on _The Simpsons_ movie. Halpern spoke about his passion for the study of science and how he began writing to share his interest with others. “When I was younger, I really loved going to science museums, and I used to go to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia which is a push-button museum,” Halpern said. “When I was in high school, I discovered that I was really good in math and really interested in nature….I read a lot of science fiction and works of Isaac Asimov, who I met when I was in 8th grade. He was a big influence on me.” Halpern is a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics, a Guggenheim and Fulbright scholar, and author of several science books including, _Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat_ which is about Einstein and Schrödinger who were both Nobel Prize winners. Einstein quipped that God does not play dice with the Universe and Schrodinger constructed his famous fable of a cat that was neither dead nor alive, not to explain quantum mechanics, but to highlight the absurdity of a theory gone wrong; seeking a Theory of Everything to make sense of the universe. As an author and teacher, Halpern is able to relate theories in science to readers of all ages. After listening to authors share their inspiring stories and seeing so many attendees interested in what they had to say at the National Book Festival, it was evident that our society cannot live without books. Reading and writing literature sparks our collective imagination to think and hope for a better future.

Slain recruit’s family files negligence claim against Army

The family of a 17-year-old Rockville girl killed by a U.S. Army recruiter who then took his own life has filed a claim against the Army, accusing it of negligence. The claim, filed by the family of Michelle Miller, charges the Army with improperly supervising Adam Anthony Arndt, 31. Had they monitored Arndt more closely, they would have discovered that he wrote sexually suggestive comments to potential recruits and had written poetry online discussing suicide, the family argued in the claim. “It was only because of a complete abdication of supervision responsibilities that [Arndt] was able to begin an inappropriate sexual relationship with Michelle Miller culminating with her unfortunate death,” the claim reads. George Wright, a U.S. Army spokesman, declined to comment about the specifics of Miller’s claim. In a lengthy interview, Kevin Miller, father of the victim, talked about his daughter, her April 8 death and what he’s learned about Arndt since. Miller said he tried to discourage Michelle from joining the Army Reserve. But Michelle’s enthusiasm didn’t come as a surprise; as a fourth grader, she wore camouflage to class so many times that she got in trouble with her teachers. As her graduation from Rockville High School neared, Michelle enlisted in the reserves and was preparing for basic training and psychology studies at the University of Arizona, he said. She wanted to counsel soldiers returning from war. “She’d done a lot of thinking about it,” her dad said. Michelle talked about Arndt a lot when she first met him. Her father remembered Michelle telling him: “This guy’s so cool; his wife’s so pretty.” Arndt was a native of Manitowoc, Wis., and had served in the Army since October 2003, according to Army Recruiting Command spokeswoman Kathleen Welker. He served tours in South Korea in 2004 and Germany in 2007 and deployed to Turkey for a year before being assigned to Gaithersburg, she said. The night before Michelle’s body was found, Kevin Miller said, she came downstairs about 9 p.m. Her mother was in the kitchen, clipping their dog Chloe. She told Placita, Miller’s wife, “I’ve got to go out. One of my platoon members is feeling suicidal. I gotta help him out.” “As soon as she left, I just got bad feelings,” her father recalled. It wasn’t until the next morning that Miller found his daughter’s car at Arndt’s home. No one answered the door. The lights were all off. “That’s when I got really scared,” he said. He waited for what seemed like hours after calling police, who forced their way into the house, he said. When two officers came out and stood on either side of him, “that’s when I knew she was dead,” he said. “There was kind of a haze then.” Police discovered the two bodies sitting in the shower, with Michelle appearing to be kissing Arndt on the cheek or whispering in his ear. Arndt had shot her through the left temple before shooting himself, investigators told Miller. “This guy was supposed to be her mentor,” Miller said. “Instead he chose to use her. Maybe he needed to kill her to make him kill himself.” Miller saw dozens of Facebook messages that Arndt had sent Michelle, he said. Arndt also started texting Michelle before she’d officially signed on as a recruit. “Had I seen any of that [earlier], I would have been in the recruiting station,” he said. Personal communication is forbidden between recruiters and recruits, according to Welker of the Army Recruiting Command. ** — The Gazette  **

How Rick Perry befriended the real ‘Lone Survivor’ Navy SEAL

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Before he became immortalized as the “Lone Survivor,” a Navy SEAL   who escaped a 2005 Taliban ambush on a mountain slope in Afghanistan, Marcus Luttrell was a broken man in search of a haven. He found it one day in spring 2007 when, struggling to recover his body and mind and with the horrors of war still raw, he showed up unannounced at the Texas governor’s mansion and asked to see Rick Perry. Over the ensuing months, a virtual father-son relationship blossomed, the two men said. The governor and his wife, Anita, helped bring Luttrell back to health. Perry used the power of his office to find Luttrell a spine surgeon to fix his back. The Perrys gave him a spare bedroom — “I was the creepy guy in the attic,” Luttrell recalled. The governor took him bass fishing, the first lady counseled him about his love life and, as Luttrell became famous — first with a best-selling memoir, “Lone Survivor” and later in the movie adaptation — they were his rock. “When I came into the Perry family, it was one of those deals where it was the only family I had,” said Luttrell, who was born in Houston and grew up in Texas near the Oklahoma border. “I didn’t have that father figure growing up like that, somebody who genuinely cared about me. . . . Governor Perry taught me how to be a good man.” Perry and Luttrell shared their story in an extensive interview with The Washington Post and in an appearance here Monday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. They are drawing attention to their unusual relationship as the now-former governor prepares to launch his second presidential campaign. Perry considers his own military career as an Air Force pilot a trump card in a Republican presidential race in which he is being crowded out of the top tier by formidable contenders. Perry is one of only two prospective candidates with a military background; the other is Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “I went from being the second lieutenant going through pilot training to getting my wings to ending up as a tac airlifter to being an aircraft commander — and all those experiences paint my worldview,” Perry said in the interview. So, too, he said, did his 14 years commanding the Texas National Guard as governor. “All of that gives me a unique perspective about what these young people go through and the impacts on themselves and, just as importantly, their families,” he said. Highlighting his service flying C-130 cargo planes has long been a staple of Perry’s campaigns, said David Carney, a former strategist for his gubernatorial races. “It shows you’re not just a politician, but you have real-life experiences,” he said. “Texas has a huge military presence, and it really helped him relate to folks.” Since his humiliating withdrawal from the 2012 race, Perry has been preparing for redemption in 2016 — holding lengthy tutorials with conservative scholars and logging thousands of miles in early caucus and primary states. But his work has not paid off in early polls. In an April Washington Post-ABC News survey, Perry ranked ninth — with support from just 2 percent of Republican or Republican-   leaning voters nationally. Perry’s advisers say they think that focusing on his military background can help him break through. Foreign policy is emerging as a dominant issue as Republicans attack what they consider President Obama’s foibles and, by extension, the record of his first-term secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is the Democratic front-runner. Perry, an adherent of muscular intervention, has sharply criticized Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran and accused his administration of sparking chaos around the world and weakening the U.S. armed forces. Perry is likely to campaign with Luttrell and hopes the war hero’s testimonials can add a personal dimension to Perry’s national security agenda. Luttrell, 39, deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 with Navy SEAL Team 10. As dramatized in the 2013 “Lone Survivor” movie, Luttrell was part of Operation Red Wings, a four-man mission to find and kill Ahmad Shah, a top Taliban leader in eastern Afghanistan. A group of goat herders stumbled upon Luttrell and his team on a mountain slope. After the SEALs released them, local Taliban forces returned and ambushed the Americans. Luttrell was the only survivor. Badly wounded, he managed to evade capture, and an Afghan tribe sheltered him before he was rescued by U.S. forces. The next year, while undergoing physical therapy at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego, Luttrell met Rick and Anita Perry. The Perrys, who have two grown children, were vacationing at the Hotel del Coronado, and Luttrell was assigned to give them what he called a “dog and pony” tour of the naval facilities. Perry kept in touch, sending Luttrell e-mails, including throughout Luttrell’s 2006 deployment to Iraq, and extended an open invitation to visit him in Austin. Luttrell took him up on it, showing up at the security guard post outside the governor’s mansion one day. “It was a safe haven,” Perry said. Later that year, when the Perrys moved into a temporary residence for the mansion’s renovation, they turned a third-floor space into a bedroom for Luttrell. Anita Perry (Luttrell calls her “Lady Perry”) gave him an air mattress and a television, which he liked to leave on while he slept. “I’m not sure I can put into words how my wife and I were attracted to him or he was attracted to us,” Perry said. “I kind of put that in the ‘grace of God’ category.” Back then, Luttrell was addicted to painkillers and had many ailments, both physical and mental. As Perry tells it, Luttrell was lost in a bureaucratic maze at the Pentagon and at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “He needed stuff done,” he said, “and all he was getting was a sack full of pills.” So Perry stepped in and called Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who made Luttrell eligible for Tricare. “There are 1,000-plus just like him,” Perry said. “They just didn’t have a governor to intervene. And that pisses me off.” Luttrell, who had a poor relationship with his father, said he effectively adopted the Perrys as parents. He met Melanie, who would become his wife, in 2010, and when he introduced her to the Perrys, he recalled telling her, “That’s my family.” The Luttrells now have two children. Their godfather is Rick Perry.

Transgender war heroes, angry celebrities, and James Cordon in a top hat: Twitter reacts to #transban

It all started with a tweet, and fingers haven’t stopped punching buttons ever since.  If Trump’s aim here was to hijack the national conversation away from the Russia probe or his deteriorating relationship with Attorney General Jeff Sessions — mission accomplished. The administration has offered few details on the trans ban — no concrete policy; no government savings forecasts; no next steps. That lack of concrete information about the president’s intentions has left a vacuum, and outrage and approval from the online gallery has been pouring in. The transgender movement has found an increasingly larger foothold in the mainstream thanks to celebrities such as Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox. Both chimed in, voicing their disapproval with the measure. Another high-profile transgender woman and military vet, Chelsea Manning, also offered her thoughts. The former U.S. Army soldier pointed to the inherent stupidity of a deep-pocketed military banning transgender soldiers due to budget concerns. Lady Gaga, one of pop culture’s more vocal advocates on gender and sexual equality, also reached for the 140-character-mic to speak her piece. The Internet also did not miss the contrast between the values and heroics of transgender members of the military and a president whose own moral compass has been questioned. Both the president’s behavior and his lack of military experience came under fire. An unexpected feature of the #transban online discussion has been a number of transgender U.S. military veterans coming forward to share their stories of service. Individuals like Carla Lewis, Becca Benz and Shari Zabel now are known to more Americans thanks to the larger platform. Another pervasive theme running through much of the Internet commentary out there was an appeal to common sense. Trump’s own decision, according to his short-burst statement, focused on preventing the burden on the military of the “tremendous medical costs and disruption” caused by the transgender lifestyle. Many Twitter users cut through the moral, economic and logical faultiness of the argument. Late night comedians had their sardonic knives out as well. “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert each dropped pithy assessments of the ban, while other early hours programs went further. Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” turned his monologue over to transgender comedian Patti Harrison. And James Cordon launched his broadcast with a musical number aimed at both Trump and those impacted by the ban. But the real critical kudos belong to our friends up north, specifically the Canadian Forces. When word of Trump’s latest move spread across the world, Canada’s military shot out a reminder that humor and grace are two qualities you’ll fine in abundance over the border.

Michael Pitre: Echoes of War, Thursday night in McLean

Michael Pitre was sitting in the Post Pub Wednesday afternoon, having a beer and talking Louisiana football (LSU and the Saints), motorcycles and his acclaimed first novel, “Fives and Twenty-Fives.” The New Orleans native, a Marine veteran, did two tours in Iraq and based the book on that mix of boredom and terror. It was both therapy and literary endeavor — he wrote the book late at night, when post-war nightmares would keep him awake. (He spoke at Politics and Prose Wednesday night, and he’ll be talking again at Books-a- Million in Mclean at 7 p.m. Thursday.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico He’d been taking some notes during his combat tours — he was a creative writing and history major at LSU — but didn’t start writing in earnest until he’d been home a few years. He was working writing construction bonds for a surety underwriter by day, but found the memories of war kept bubbling up at night. The title comes from the areas around trucks that Marines were to scan for explosives. An IED within five meters would kill everyone in the truck; one within 25 meters would kill everyone on foot. The book begins with an actual nightmare he had during those sleepless nights once back home — a Marine is sprinting through the desert, trying in vain to warn a convoy of a bomb with a pressure switch buried in the road. “That was more or less everybody’s nightmare,” he said. But the book stewed, more an idea than a project. “It really started to take form when I saw the beginning of the Arab Spring,” he said, talking about the street uprisings that swept through much of North Africa in late 2010 and early 2011. “That was mostly in Tunisia, at the beginning. But the young Arabs on TV looked so much like the interpreters I had in Iraq.” That persona takes flesh in the book as Kateb, an Iraqi interpreter who knows much of American pop culture … and that their role in Iraq is not likely to end well. The novel is also told from the point of view of two Marines, a lieutenant and a corpsman (who’s a Cajun). Pitre, 35, is saying all this in a booth, seated next to his wife of four years, Erin. She was working with his sister in Chicago during the war, who described her brother as “deployed and sad,” she says. They became pen pals, met when he came home between tours, and married in 2010. An enthusiastic transplant to the Crescent City, she now has a small fleur-de-lis tattooed on the back of her neck. Pitre’s work during the war, and the subject of the book, was in Iraq’s Anbar province. Mostly he oversaw the clearing of explosives from potholes and roadsides during the day, then arranged logistics and support runs after dark. On his second tour, when he worked as a combat watch officer, stuck in a command post, he worked almost entirely between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. “I didn’t see the sun. I lived on chicken fingers and french fries. And Dr. Pepper.” By tour’s end, he’d gone from 155 pounds to north of 175. “He came home ugly,” says Erin, smiling and leaning into him. The weight has long since gone. The memories haven’t. _Pitre will talk and sign his book at 7 p.m. Thursday, at Books-A- Million,1451 Chain Bridge Road, McLean, Va._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

‘The Kill Team’ movie review: A grim reminder of the tragedy of war

In 2010, Army Spec. Adam Winfield was at a crossroads. Members of his platoon had killed an innocent boy farming in Afghanistan and planted a grenade on his body. In a message to his father, Winfield asked whether he should become a whistleblower, which might put his life in danger, or just lie low and try to avoid getting pulled into the orbit of his homicidal staff sergeant. “Why am I the only one that’s not okay with this?” he wrote. And yet, months later, Winfield was facing murder charges. Just how Winfield got from point A to point B is the subject of Dan Krauss’s documentary “The Kill Team,” a disheartening look at the war in Afghanistan, the military justice system and what can happen when soldiers get bored in the desert. The child’s death was only the beginning, and even after sending the message to his father, Winfield ended up in the thick of it. His father tried to report what his son had told him, leaving messages everywhere he could think of. He finally got through to a sergeant at Fort Lewis, Wash., who threw up his hands and said that Adam would have to take his accusations to his superiors. But given that his commanding officer was openly discussing killing Winfield, the specialist thought best to keep everything to himself. Krauss focuses on Winfield and his parents leading up to the murder trial, but the director also gets access to a few others who were charged, as well as the man, Justin Stoner, who ultimately reported everything (and admits that he wishes he hadn’t). Winfield’s story is tragic — hinging on one moment he will likely replay in his head forever — but the interviews with the other men may be more telling. Their mindsets were disturbingly similar and they admit, with shocking frankness, that their boredom, coupled with an intense distrust for all Afghans (“Nobody’s innocent,” one of them justifies), turned into a killing spree. If Krauss offers up a clear villain in this story, it’s the men’s staff sergeant, Calvin Gibbs, who was the mastermind. All you need is a “drop weapon,” he told his subordinates, and then you can pretty much kill with impunity. Gibbs also had some sick tendencies, such as collecting fingers of victims that he planned to string together into a necklace and tattooing skulls on his leg to represent each of his kills. Gibbs isn’t interviewed in the film, which makes him an easy target, but there also was more evil at play, especially given the number of people who either participated in or knew about the killings. There’s a psychological element here that Krauss leaves frustratingly unexplored, even as Stoner says, in his smug way, “I don’t care what the military wants to say, but this goes on more than just us. We’re just the ones who got caught.” “The Kill Team” is expertly edited, at one point overlaying interviews with the men who participated in the war crimes with B-roll of infantrymen milling about, weapons in hand. And it’s all set to a brilliantly spare and evocative soundtrack. It’s a beautiful way to lose faith in humanity. Unrated. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains strong language and grisly images. 79 minutes.

Webb to Romney: A ‘thanks’ would have been nice

Introducing President Obama in Virginia Beach, retiring Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), condemned Mitt Romney for failing to mention veterans or the military in his GOP convention speech. The omission was all the more damning, Webb suggested, because Romney is of an age where he might have served in Vietnam but did not. "If nothing else, at least mention some word of thanks and respect when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech," said Webb, a former Navy secretary and decorated Marine who served in Vietnam. Romney was exempted from the draft, first as a student and then as a missionary. "This was a time when every American male was eligible to be drafted. People made choices," Webb said. "Those among us who stepped forward to face the harsh unknowns did so with the belief that their service would be honored." Webb also tied in Romney's much criticized remark that 47 percent of Americans believe they are "victims" who feel entitled to federal handouts, saying some of those benefits go to veterans. "Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. All gave some. Some gave all. That’s not a culture of dependency," he said. "They paid. Some with their lives, some with their wounds, disabilities. Some with emotional scars. Some with lost opportunities. Not only did they pay, they are owed. They are owed." Although veterans affairs is a common theme in the president's speeches, he hit the subject harder than usual Thursday. "As Jim Webb so eloquently stated, when our troops take off their uniforms, we will serve them as well as they served us," Obama said when he took the stage. "No one who fights for this country should have to fight for a job or a roof over their heads when they come home." The program, which drew wild cheers from the military-friendly audience, also presented a tacit contrast with Romney, who has done much less than Obama to reach out to veterans and who has criticized the president's withdrawal plans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Romney's campaign hit back at Obama for not mentioning the looming automatic defense cuts passed in the congressional budget deal. “President Obama’s failure to mention defense cuts today in Virginia Beach proves just how out of touch he is with the hundreds of thousands of military members, veterans and defense contractors who call the Commonwealth home," said Romney spokesman Curt Cashour. _Amy Gardner contributed to this report._

New defense secretary would inherit old tensions

President Obama may have picked a new defense secretary, but an older and thornier problem remains: The commander in chief, who publicly committed to ending America’s two wars, must find ways to inspire the men and women he continues to send into battle. Obama has had a difficult relationship with the military and his defense secretaries, who have often questioned his passion and commitment to the military’s mission. Those misgivings could grow as troops, haunted by the   muddled outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan, increasingly ask whether the past 12 years of war were worth it. “The military and veterans look to the president to give them a story that justifies their sacrifice,” said Mike Breen, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and executive director of the left-leaning Truman National Security Project. “They’re asking, ‘What was the last decade of my life for?’ Fairly or unfairly, they are looking to the president for an answer.” Ashton B. Carter, the president’s likely choice for defense secretary, may not have the answers to those questions. Although Carter has spent much of his professional life around the military and the Pentagon, he has a reputation as a savvy technocrat with deep familiarity with the Defense Department’s weapons programs and budget process. Focused on the day-to-day running of the military bureaucracy in Washington, he hasn’t been a major architect of the administration’s war strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unlike many of his predecessors, he has never served in uniform or led troops in combat. Now he will probably take over at a particularly perilous time for the military, which is dealing with steep budget cuts, an uncertain outcome in Afghanistan, and a mission in Iraq and Syria that Pentagon officials have said could stretch for years. All are likely to deepen preexisting tensions. The White House sought Tuesday to play down reports of recent acrimony. “There’s always some natural tension between the Pentagon and the White House,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. The president can also point to some significant achievements on behalf of troops, including pay increases and a broad expansion of benefits available to veterans. In the battle against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, Obama has used drone strikes more aggressively than President George W. Bush in places such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. “This administration is stacking terrorists like cordwood,” said Phillip Carter, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Such appeals, however, don’t necessarily resonate for soldiers and senior officers who have taken part in multiple tours of Iraq and Afghanistan and feel a deep emotional connection to the conflicts. “Some in the military are very uneasy at the prospect that both of these wars could be on the cusp of being lost causes,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Unlike their Vietnam War counterparts, who were products of the draft era, many of today’s professional soldiers and officers have taken part in multiple tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. For much of the decade they have lived with their families in what one West Point professor has described as a “no man’s land,” somewhere between war and peace. They’ve come home to bases with stone memorials bearing the names of their fallen friends. They’ve kept in touch with war widows and their children. “In a sense, they are saying, ‘We fought and we bled, and we are not willing to give this up,’ ” Barno said. “It is a much stronger sentiment in this force than anything I saw coming into the Army after Vietnam.” Chuck Hagel, who was recently asked to resign as defense secretary, was supposed to be the kind of leader who could smooth that transition from war to peace. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Hagel understood the trauma of fighting a losing war as well as the vocabulary of leading and inspiring troops in combat. As a former Republican senator from Nebraska, he also had close relationships on Capitol Hill. But Hagel had trouble penetrating Obama’s inner circle and was criticized by senior administration officials as being an inarticulate spokesman for the president’s policies. In Carter, Obama has chosen someone who will be much more familiar with the inner workings of the Pentagon and someone who should able to make Washington’s largest bureaucracy run more efficiently. Although he hasn’t served in the military, Carter has developed close relationships with many of the military’s top brass over the course of decades. He is also likely to be seen as a more effective advocate for the military inside the White House than Hagel, who some senior defense officials have criticized as unprepared and, at times, lacking as deep a knowledge of the issues facing the military as his predecessors. Carter’s selection, though, won’t address the perception among some senior military officers that the president often lacks passion for their mission. In Afghanistan, Obama has placed a high priority on cutting U.S. troop numbers during his final two years in office. The timelines, largely imposed by the White House, are intended to cap his generals’ ambitions and make good on his repeated promises to end the longest stretch of conflict in U.S. history. White House officials say the limits reflect the president’s concern for the troops and their families. “One of the most difficult decisions the president has to make is the decision to send our troops into harm’s way,” said a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the president’s thinking on policy. “No one takes that responsibility more serious than President Obama. . . . The sacrifices that thousands of military service members and their families have made during the past 13 years serve as a constant reminder to the president that war takes a disproportionate toll on a courageous few.” To many in the military, though, the long battles over exactly how many troops will remain in Afghanistan can smack of micromanagement. The repeated references to “exit paths” and “responsibly ending wars” can seem like evidence of a lack of presidential resolve. “When did it become normal to announce years in advance the precise number of troops you are going to have in a conflict and think that gives you an advantage?” asked one Army general who has served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss administration policy. In Iraq and Syria, where U.S. attack helicopters are striking Islamic State insurgents and where soldiers are advising Iraqi forces, the president has mandated that American troops should not take part in combat. On a recent trip to Iraq, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fielded a question from a soldier asking why troops in the country didn’t qualify for combat patches and awards reserved for other war zones. “The reason is that we’ve tied ourselves into a policy knot,” Dempsey recounted telling the soldier at a recent event in Washington. Dempsey promised to fix the problem, but to some in the military, the White House’s insistence on referring to U.S. soldiers in Iraq as noncombat troops reflects a tone-deafness to military culture and a reluctance by the president to acknowledge that the United States is back at war in Iraq and Syria, fighting a determined enemy. “By not calling it combat, that devalues the risks these troops are now going to be taking,” said Barno, the retired Army general who now serves as a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “For most military folks, what you call it makes a big difference — especially if you are putting your life on the line. You risk breaking faith with your people if you ignore this.”

Obama doesn’t get to say he is tired of war

_Eliot A. Cohen teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. From 2007 to 2009, he was counselor of the State Department._ It is the phrase of the moment, dropping from the lips of television reporters and radio commentators, salting the columns of pundits, earnestly being spoken by furrow-browed politicians of serious mien. The families of the fallen are entitled to war-weariness. So are those wounded in body or spirit, and their loved ones. The mother who has sent her son to war has a right to war-weariness, as does the father who prepares to send his daughter to battle again and again. But for the great mass of the American public, for their leaders and the elites who shape public opinion, “war-weariness” is unearned cant, unworthy of a serious nation and dangerous in a violent world. The average American has not served in the armed forces, as a diplomat or intelligence agent in a war zone. Neither have his or her children. No one has raised our taxes to pay for war. Americans can change the channel if they find the images too disturbing — though our teenagers’ violent video games and gory movies are infinitely more graphic than what would be shown on CNN or Fox News. “I am not going to send your children to fight this misbegotten war,” or words like that, come from politicians who know full well that our country has an all-volunteer force. No one is sending anyone who did not sign up. And anyone who volunteered for military service in the past decade had to know that meant signing up for war. Service members or public servants who have served in combat, and had enough of it, have every right to be war-weary. They also have a right to resign their commissions or appointments — and should, because they are probably well on the way to becoming ineffective. By and large they do not do that, and not because they lack something better to do. In my experience, they are proud of their service and rather wish the rest of us would stop treating them like victims. I have known fighters from crack outfits, including the 10th Mountain Division, 7th Marines and the Joint Special Operations Command, who are visibly war-weary. Almost all would consider it shameful to say so. When retired generals, claiming to speak for active-duty troops (who usually resent having views put in their mouth that way), talk about war-weariness, they do not help American diplomacy. They hurt it, because the surest way for a president to negotiate credibly, and thus avoid war, is to have at his side a growling mastiff on the leash — not a tired bloodhound that looks as though it has had, for the moment, enough tussles with the other canines. Above all, a president has no business confessing to war-weariness. Sending soldiers to war is a hard business. But President Obama knew he was going to be a war president; if that duty was too trying for him, he should not have run for reelection, because, as he has discovered, he might have to fight new wars and not merely end old ones. For a president to confess to war- weariness is to confess weakness. It is the business of the commander in chief to inspire, either with tempered optimism or grim determination. He fails in his duty if he tells his subordinates, his people and the world that he is weary of the burden that he assiduously sought. In their dark moments, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who presided over infinitely more consequential and bloodier wars than Barack Obama, were undoubtedly war-weary. Can anyone imagine them proclaiming it to the world? **Read more from PostOpinions:** Robert J. Samuelson: The myth of Americans’ war-weariness Eliot A. Cohen: Syria will require more than cruise missiles Michael Gerson: Obama misunderstands wartime leadership Robert H. Scales: A war the Pentagon doesn’t want David Ignatius: America the war-weary and the war-wary

Book review: ‘The Illuminations,’ by Andrew O’Hagan

Most Americans’ lives are totally unaffected by the fact that, a world away, soldiers bearing our flag are fighting an enemy we know little about, using methods that don’t bear close inspection, for a purpose that no one seems able to define. Compared with Vietnam or World War II, wars that involved or convulsed all of American society, our “forever war” seems like an anomaly. But it would have been quite familiar to a 19th-century Briton: For these are the border wars of an empire, which can never be won because no empire is ever free from threats. It makes sense, then, that a British writer, Andrew O’Hagan, should write so perceptively about the way we fight now in “The Illuminations,” his fifth novel. The structure of the book itself reflects the schizophrenia of Britain’s war in Afghanistan, which like its war in Iraq was begun under American auspices. Half of “The Illuminations” deals with the misadventures of a platoon of British infantry in Afghanistan; the other half tells the story of an aging woman in Britain who is slowly falling prey to dementia. Each plot is, in its own way, an affair of life or death, survival and devastation. As it turns out, the connection between these two stories is as close as can be. Luke Campbell, the captain leading the squad in Afghanistan, is the beloved grandson of Anne Quirk, the woman losing her memory in the Scottish town of Saltcoats. Luke comes from a military family. His father was a British soldier killed in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and he enlisted as a way of connecting to a man he barely knew. Yet from Anne, who in her youth was a professional photographer, Luke also inherits a sensibility — artistic, inward and, in the novel’s terms, feminine — that sets him apart from the army’s world. In alternating sections, O’Hagan unfolds Luke’s and Anne’s stories, each of which is heavy with the sense of impending disaster. In Anne’s case, the decline is gentle but inexorable. Increasingly confused, she has begun to retreat mentally into the period of her life that meant most to her, when she lived in the British resort town of Blackpool with the love of her life, a man named Harry Blake. Thanks to her neighbor Maureen — a finely drawn character whose solicitude for Anne goes hand in hand with indifference toward her own children — Anne has so far been able to keep living on her own. But she can no longer use the stove, she has begun to feed bowls of soup to a ceramic rabbit, and clearly the next steps in her life will be the nursing home and the grave. With Luke, on the other hand, O’Hagan conjures the chaotic sense that absolutely anything could happen. Luke is the protege of Major Scullion, a commanding officer who represents the best of the contemporary military. His career has been spent in humanitarian peacekeeping missions in places such as Sierra Leone and Kosovo. Yet he is visibly breaking down, having lost both his wife and his nerve. In his decay, Scullion embodies the West’s own loss of confidence in the power of its military to make any real difference in the world. For the new generation of soldiers, O’Hagan writes in one of the novel’s persistent themes, actual warfare seems less real than the combat video games they grew up playing: “Younger soldiers often thought they knew the battleground; they saw graphics, screens, solid cover and . . . guns you could swap. . . . They saw cheats and levels . . . and the kinds of marksmen who jump up after they’re dead.” In such a war, where the privates get stoned on Afghan hash with their commanding officers and speed through the desert blasting heavy metal in their SUVs, it seems only a matter of time before disaster strikes. Once it does, Luke returns to Scotland for one last reunion with his grandmother, helping her to relive the Blackpool of her youth. In the course of their visit, family secrets are uncovered that help to explain why their history turned out as it did — in particular, why Anne’s career as a photographer never blossomed. An artist himself, O’Hagan exalts Anne’s evanescent truths of vision and perception, the ones that she captured in her old pictures, over the suspect truths of ideology and patriotism. “We got a lot of things wrong but we got a lot of things right,” Anne muses near the end of the book. “Some of them said there was . . . that’s right . . . justice in it.” The photographer’s flash, rather than the red and green tracer fire that lights up the Afghan sky, is the illumination in which O’Hagan finally asks us to place our trust. Kirsch is the author most recently of “Rocket and Lightship: Essays on Literature and Ideas.” Ron Charles is on vacation. By Andrew O’Hagan Farrar Straus Giroux.   293 pp. $26

After veteran Daniel Somers’s suicide, his family has a new mission: Improve VA services

Shortly before his death on June 10, Army veteran Daniel Somers wrote a note for his family, asking his wife, Angel, to share it as she saw fit. “I am left with basically nothing,” he typed on his laptop at their Phoenix townhouse. “Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war.” His service in Iraq, including multiple combat missions as a turret gunner, left him with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. But the government, he wrote, had “turned around and abandoned me.” Somers felt frustrated in his efforts to get mental health and medical care from the Department of Veterans Affairs. An antiquated scheduling system at the Phoenix medical center left him waiting, often in vain, for a postcard with the date of his next mental health appointment. And he was caught in VA’s notorious disability claims backlog, which at its peak in March included more than 900,000 compensation requests from veterans, two-thirds of them waiting for more than 125 days. When Somers died, his case seeking full disability for his PTSD had been awaiting resolution for 20 months. “Is it any wonder then that the latest figures show 22 veterans killing themselves each day?” Somers asked in his note. Around 9 p.m. on June 10, while his wife, a nurse, was working, Somers took a handgun from his home and walked to a street several blocks away. When Phoenix police arrived at the scene, he shot himself in the head, police and family members said. He was 30. Now his parents, Jean and Howard Somers, are determined to use their son’s death to expose what they see as critical deficiencies in the VA system for treating mental illness. They met with congressional and VA officials in Washington this month and opened Somers’s records to The Washington Post. It is an effort, they say, to show how the agency failed their son and a way, maybe, to help someone else. “He was one of those million vets who didn’t get the care they needed,” said Jean Somers, 62, a former health-care administrator. In a speech Aug. 10 to the Disabled American Veterans, President Obama declared a need to “end this epidemic of suicide among our veterans and troops,” and he announced $107 million in new funding to better treat PTSD and traumatic brain injury. The daily average of 22 suicides by veterans, found in a VA study in February, was 20 percent higher than a 2007 department estimate. Suicides among active- duty troops reached 349 last year, the most since the Pentagon began closely tracking the number in 2001. Howard and Jean Somers were in New Jersey visiting family when Angel called with the news. “Our whole lives have been turned upside down,” said Howard Somers, 65, a retired urologist who lives with his wife in San Diego. After arriving in Phoenix, their grief turned to anger as they read through Daniel’s papers documenting his interactions with VA. The family shared Daniel’s story with local media, and his note was posted June 22 on the Web site Gawker. For veterans’ organizations, Daniel Somers’s death is a case study in how federal agencies continue to fail veterans. “It shines a light on these issues,” said Kim Ruocco, director of suicide-prevention programs for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), a group for military families that organized the Somerses’ Washington visit. Ruocco’s husband, Marine Maj. John Ruocco, a Cobra gunship pilot, killed himself in 2005 after returning from Iraq. In a statement expressing condolences for Somers’s death, VA said that it “has made strong progress in the treatment of mental health disorders” in recent years, including hiring more than 1,600 mental health professionals in the past year, developing a suicide-prevention program to identify those at risk and bolstering its 24-hour Veterans Crisis Line. Over the past year, the Phoenix VA medical center has hired 32 mental health workers. “Still, more must be done,” the department said. During their meetings at VA headquarters and around Capitol Hill, Howard and Jean Somers carried papers outlining their son’s experiences. “It just boggles the mind,” Howard Somers told two House Veterans’ Affairs Committee staff members sitting at a hearing-room table in the Cannon Office Building. No one disagreed. The couple’s mission statement is simple: “No service member or veteran should suffer the wide range of fundamental deficiencies in needed and entitled services as Daniel suffered.” Angel Roth sat behind Daniel Somers in seventh-grade history class in Chandler, Ariz. She thought he was the brightest kid in the school, and the sweetest. They married when they were 18. In January 2003, nine days after his 20th birthday, he joined the California Army National Guard. “He was looking for direction and a career,” Angel Somers recalled in an interview. “After 9/11, he really wanted to do something to make the world better.” Assigned to military intelligence, Daniel Somers deployed to Iraq in 2004 with a military police company. He served as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, frequently exposed to roadside bombs and rocket attacks. He returned home in February 2005 traumatized, his wife said. “He couldn’t sleep, and when he did, he’d wake up screaming.” “I was called upon to employ deadly force on a regular basis — often in situations where non-combatants ended up in the crossfire,” he later wrote. “To this day, I am unable to provide even a rough approximation as to the number of civilian deaths in which I may be complicit.” But he wanted to go back to Iraq, hoping to make amends, his wife said. He studied Arabic and volunteered to return in 2006 as an intelligence contractor. Going back, however, just “made things worse,” Angel Somers said. After coming home again in 2007, he channeled his energy — and his trauma — into music. He was the lead singer and guitarist for a Phoenix rock band called Lisa Savidge, writing songs that drew on his struggle with PTSD. But his efforts to get adequate mental health care were less successful, family members said. When he was admitted to the VA health system in February 2008, they said, he found that he could not make appointments over the phone but would be assigned a date and time by postcard. “It was jumping through hoops,” his wife said. “Waiting for somebody to send paperwork to somebody else and hoping to get a postcard.” When Daniel Somers did see a VA psychiatrist, the doctor retired. And when he tried to get information about his next appointment, the office told him that there was a shortage of mental health providers and that he’d be notified when he was assigned a new one. He was seen 40 times, mostly in 2008, shuffled between psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and nurses. “Most of the time, he didn’t know who his doctor was,” his wife said. Family members paid to send Somers to a doctor in private practice, but his mental health continued to decline, they said. VA had assigned him a relatively low disability rating for his PTSD: 30 percent, a level that assumes the veteran can be employed. Somers applied for a VA vocational rehabilitation program in October 2010. As part of the process, he met with a VA psychologist, who, according to Somers, told him his PTSD was so severe that he was unemployable. “I did not necessarily disagree with his findings, though it did make me wonder why my disability percentage for PTSD was only 30 percent,” Somers wrote to VA. He appealed his rating decision in October 2011, sending a cover letter detailing his problems. He was suffering from “unrelenting depression” and frequent visions of people around him “dying in horrible ways,” he wrote. Over the past year, he added, he had begun hearing threatening voices and experiencing nightly panic attacks. It all “drives me to consider suicide very seriously on a daily basis,” he wrote. There were physical ailments, too, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome and chronic headaches. “I am terrified, I am paralyzed, and I am furious,” Somers concluded. When he reached someone on the phone about his claim, he was told that it had been delayed because he had missed a physician evaluation — an appointment he never knew about, family members said. Over the Memorial Day weekend, Angel and Daniel Somers drove to visit his parents in San Diego. “He was saying goodbye to us — we now know that,” Howard Somers said. Looking back on their son’s experience, the Somerses ask basic questions. “If your system is so difficult to get into,” Howard Somers asked, “how the hell are you going to prevent suicides?” If Daniel missed an appointment, why didn’t someone call? “Don’t you think a phone call was in order?” his father asked. When the Somerses told this story during their meeting at VA headquarters with Jan Kemp, the department’s director of suicide-prevention programs, the official showed the parents a memo recently sent to facilities around the country, reiterating that all patients who miss mental health appointments should be called. Kemp spoke with the Somerses for 90 minutes, well over the allotted time. “She seemed frustrated and sympathetic,” Howard Somers said. “It ended up with her apologizing profusely.” “The steps we identified are there,” Jean Somers said. “But there’s not follow-through, no oversight. We’re letting the VA monitor themselves.” On July 23 — having learned of Daniel Somers’s death six weeks earlier — the Phoenix VA notified Angel Somers that her husband’s PTSD claim had been approved and that he had been granted 100 percent disability retroactively to 2008, a benefit that will now be paid to his wife. The response from VA has left the family hopeful that changes are being made but angry that problems recognized for years continue to plague veterans. “If he had not met so many obstacles, would my son be alive today?” Jean Somers asked. The Somerses traveled this week to Phoenix, where area musicians have organized a tribute concert Saturday. They met Friday with the state directors for Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake and expect to meet Tuesday with officials at the Phoenix VA. They plan to return to Washington, too. Jean Somers put it plainly: “We are not going to go away.”

Why the Iraq War has produced more PTSD than the conflict in Afghanistan

We often talk about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same breath, as if American soldiers fighting in the 21st century were engaged in largely interchangeable experiences wherever they've been "over there." Researchers often combine veterans of the two wars into the same suicide and depression statistics. They're compared in a single class to veterans of earlier wars in the Persian Gulf, Vietnam, Korea or World War II.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University And it's true that they deploy from America under comparable circumstances, as members of a U.S. military that's fighting longer wars and is more isolated at home from the U.S. public than ever.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Combat in Iraq, however, is not entirely like combat in Afghanistan. And research consistently concludes that veterans are returning from Iraq, where the troubled shooter in Wednesday's Fort Hood tragedy served, with what appears to be greater exposure to stressors and higher levels of PTSD. The Fort Hood shooter, an Army truck driver named Ivan Lopez, was reportedly undergoing evaluation for PTSD.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Some numbers from the Department of Veterans Affairs estimate that PTSD affects about 11 percent of veterans of the war in Afghanistan, but 20 percent of veterans who served in Iraq.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University There's little data explaining the differences between the two groups partly because of the difficulty of diagnosing PTSD (and identifying veterans who may not know they suffer from it), as well as the fact that the VA itself often combines veterans of the two conflicts together. Over the length of these two wars, though, service members in Iraq have been exposed to more combat, with the kinds of traumas associated with it. This data comes from an early study contrasting soldiers' experiences in the two wars in 2003:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University While the nature of both wars has changed over the last decade, that hints at why soldiers fighting in Iraq have consistently remained more likely to report symptoms of PTSD, and why – going forward as veterans – they'll likely need such a deep investment in mental health care.

Book World: A mother’s view of war in ‘Eleven Days’ by Lea Carpenter

Even before they stormed the secret compound in Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, the Navy SEALs were men of legend. Their punishing training and especially their death-defying missions elevate them to the status of godlike warriors at a time when our nation prefers to rain down lethal force by joystick. Not surprisingly, amid the thousands of titles inspired by 9/11 and its aftermath, we need many shelves just for the books about Special Ops men — from the dramatic histories and CIA-approved memoirs to the attendant thrillers, diet books, children’s stories and, yes, romance novels, all featuring Navy SEALs. This summer, some big guns have been firing for a quiet work of military fiction by a first-time novelist named Lea Carpenter. She was a founding editor of the literary journal Zoetrope, earned an MBA from Harvard and worked for the New York Public Library, a résuméwhich may not suggest much affinity for SEALs. But her father was a soldier, and “Eleven Days” has been praised by — among others — former senator Bob Kerrey, a SEAL himself in Vietnam; and former Army machine gunner Kevin Powers, whose Iraq war novel, “The Yellow Birds,” was a finalist for the National Book Award. It’s easy to see why these thoughtful, real-life veterans would be drawn to this story. Despite its tight, thriller title, “Eleven Days” is largely a novel of stillness and reflection. It delivers scenes of military adventure eventually, but not until we’ve soaked up the muted anxiety of a single mother named Sara waiting for news. In the opening paragraph, Sara “is no longer sure what she fills her days with.” Her only son, Jason, a 27-year-old Navy SEAL, has been missing for nine days. Two officers have come to her house in rural Pennsylvania and told her that they have “a general idea of where he was, but that they could not tell her any more than that.” She can stand not knowing where he is — he’s never been able to tell her any details about his secret operations — but not knowing if he’s dead or alive has blanched her days in terror. And yet she must sit gracefully in this crucible of fear while reporters and TV crews buzz around the end of her driveway, hoping to catch some award-winning image of grief or delight when the news finally arrives. Neighbors clean her house and bring covered dishes; politicians express a grateful nation’s concern; someone donates a new refrigerator. “She did not hear most of what was said or remember who had said it,” Carpenter writes. “She knew that things like sleeping and eating were necessary but remembered to do them only when prodded.” While trapping Sara in that claustrophobic setting that constrains all her activity to the frozen movements of waiting, Carpenter keeps “Eleven Days” in motion by constantly slipping back in time. Short scenes show us Sara’s brief affair with a much older CIA operative. We see their son, Jason, as an artistic little boy, an impervious football player and a determined new recruit — one of that great wave of people drawn to military service by the flames of the twin towers. Carpenter is particularly sympathetic to Sara’s struggle to understand and accept the purity of Jason’s patriotism, a feeling her own hippie parents couldn’t have fathomed. “She’d never known what love of country meant,” Carpenter writes, “until she’d observed her son, and seen him develop his own instinct for it.” Jason’s stoic demeanor and Herculean stature, his appreciation for the classics and his deep regard for his mom — all these golden qualities should render this young patriot about as lifelike as the Statue of Liberty. But Carpenter’s greatest accomplishment here may be her success at creating an Olympian warrior who seems entirely human, modest and decent. As she puts it, “The military’s culture suited him: its ethos of invisibility matched his.” Short, intimate scenes, told in restrained, unsentimental prose, present him just that way: a great serviceman who has no regard for the trappings of greatness. Regardless of your politics, as you watch Jason nervously train for “drown-proofing,” or encourage another frightened recruit, or rehearse a complicated mission so that no unarmed civilians will be hurt, it’s impossible not to swell with pride for these people who devote their lives to the United States. As a novel, though, this mission is not without some snafus. At times, Carpenter seems almost allergic to excitement, unwilling to let her scenes gather the power they naturally possess. These are, after all, the coolest guys in the world engaged in the most harrowing missions of the past decade. But too often, in the middle of some gripping ordeal, the author breaks in with flat-footed explanations of military service or historical context, spraying flame-retardant all over her pages. And a tougher editor should have defended Carpenter from clunky observations that sometimes strafe these paragraphs: “Having seen one too many things he is not sure he can ever forget, he will slowly start to relearn how to access his feelings. . . . Controlling emotion when op tempo is high isn’t a skill; it is an art.” _Medic!_ Grandiose lines that reduce characters to psychological cliches are particularly deadly: “Having grown up without a man in his life, he was now determined to pass the world’s hardest test for becoming one.” In a novel as svelte as this one, such slips sound off-key. More problematic is some needless melodrama involving Jason’s late father, which distracts from the novel’s starkly realistic tone. And worse, there’s Jason’s never-named “godfather,” a string-pulling political operative who adds nothing but a cheesy swirl of intrigue to a novel that boasts plenty of native intrigue. Fortunately, none of these missteps shatters the story’s absorbing progress or mars its solemn conclusion. Carpenter’s intelligence and sincerity find powerful expression in the novel’s sophisticated structure, which finally merges past and present. Although her frequent allusions to epic war poetry emphasize the persistence of ancient values, “Eleven Days” makes plain that something fundamental has changed since the days of the Argonauts. Today’s Jasons fight in ways the world has never seen — and may never publicly see. But this story reminds us that each of these warriors, no matter how brave and tough and deadly, is still some woman’s beloved son. Charles is the deputy editor of Book World. You can follow him on Twitter: @RonCharles. By Lea Carpenter Knopf. 270 pp. $24.95

Fifty years after Vietnam’s bloodiest battles, the ‘lucky ones’ recall their time there

_[This story has been optimized for offline reading on our apps. For a richer experience,you can find the full version of this story here. An Internet connection is required.]_ Kathryn Barents got home from work that fall night in 1967 to find somber family members gathered in the living room, and her shaken father, Henry, waiting to speak with her. She feared this was about her husband, Paul, a Marine Corps lieutenant in Vietnam. They had been married only a few months, and his class had just completed the Basic Officer Course in Quantico, Va., in August. Ten from the class had already been killed, and she figured that Paul, 23, had now been added to the list. Her father brought her into the kitchen, and they sat down. Paul had been grievously wounded in a friendly-fire incident. His legs had been shattered, and would later be amputated. But she was lucky. He was alive. This week, Paul Barents, now 72, and Kathryn Barents, 71, of Easton, Md., will join scores of Marine Corps veterans and their spouses outside Washington for a 50-year reunion of Paul’s graduating class from the Marines’ Basic School for officers. There were 516 of them in class 5-67, most college graduates, like Paul, in their early 20s who trained as infantry platoon leaders and were sent almost directly to the war, which was reaching its height. Dozens of Americans were being killed every day, and the toll was especially great for officers. The men of 5-67 were the sons and grandsons of immigrants, and the sons of Marines who had fought in World War II. There was a college wrestling star, and a baseball player with a shot at the major leagues. Most of them were single. But a few were married, and some had children. One, 2nd Lt. Morrell J. Crary, was killed in action five days after his daughter was born back home in Salem, Ore. Some lasted only a few days in Vietnam — two were killed Oct. 14, 1967, the day after they arrived, according to a classmate who knew them. Others made it a few months before they were killed or wounded. One man was spared death when a buddy persuaded him to skip a flight on a transport plane that was shot down, killing everyone on board. Thirty-nine from the class perished, in battles around well-known places like Khe Sanh, and Con Thien, and at forgotten locales like Thon Tham Ke, “Bastards Bridge” and “Antenna Valley.” Twelve would receive posthumous medals for courage — four got Navy Crosses, three Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars and one a Distinguished Flying Cross. One classmate would be missing in action for 36 years, until his body was located in 2004. The remains of two others have never been found. But many, like Barents, have moved beyond the lifelong physical scars from the war to enjoy successful and productive lives. They are in their 70s now, with white hair and grandchildren. A few still have mementos of the war — faded telegrams sent to their families, a memorial card from a friend’s funeral, snapshots of themselves in Vietnam. This year and next year, when most of the men served, mark the 50th anniversaries of some of the bloodiest months of the Vietnam War. The year 1967 saw the deaths of 11,400 Americans, and 1968 claimed 16,900, the worst yearly toll of the war, according to the National Archives. The two years account for almost half the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, which honors those killed by the war. Since the war, the men of class 5-67 haven’t met often. This is only their fifth get-together. They went separate ways after the conflict and reunited for the first time in 2008. Now 50 years have passed. Many survivors from the class have died. Some are too sick to attend the reunion. And while their four days together will be a time of comradeship and remembrance, one of them said, “we might not do this again.” Second Lt. Paul Barents was setting up a night ambush south of the Vietnamese town Phu Bai when he got a radio call from his captain to be alert for an attack from across a river behind him. He passed the warning to his front-line Marines, and in a crouch began making his way through the underbrush to warn men he had posted in the rear. It was Dec. 7, 1967. Barents had been in Vietnam about 10 weeks and had yet to see much action. He and Kathryn, then 22, had been married only a short time. They were both from Massachusetts, she via northern New Jersey. They had met while they were college students, working in the kitchen of a dining hall at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. They had hit it off, and were married June 17 at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in South Orange, N.J. He wore his dress white uniform. She was in a white wedding gown. He had joined the Marine Corps right out of college. He believed it was an outfit with purpose, and he went to Vietnam “thinking we were doing a noble thing,” he said. “I really did.” Doubt emerged mainly in hindsight, he said. He had been hesitant about marriage because he knew he would be going to the war. But Kathryn told him: “I’d rather be your wife for three months than not all.” “Starting in 1965, ’66, we became more aware of the losses over there,” she said. “So by the time the class of ’67 went, we knew the fatalities were going to be pretty high.” “I was prepared for that,” she said. (Both of Paul’s roommates at the basic school and a fellow who lived across the hall were killed in action.) The couple had lived in Woodbridge, Va., while he was at Quantico, and three months after their wedding they were saying goodbye at an airport in New York. She drove their 1963 Pontiac back to her parents’ home in Andover, Mass., to await his return. In Vietnam, he wrote Kathryn regularly and discussed, among other things, whether she should get her hair cut before they met in Hawaii when he had R&R. “I wouldn’t mind if you cut your hair for Hawaii,” he wrote her nine days before he was wounded. “The only thing that has to be there is you.” In another letter, he told her he had cut back on his smoking, and closed with, “Well, beautiful, I guess I better go.” Now, as he crept back to his men in the darkness, a new Marine in the platoon mistook him for an enemy soldier and opened fire with an M-16 rifle. Barents had always trained his men to aim low at night, so as not to miss high, and the bullets ripped into his legs. The slugs broke his right thigh bone, both bones in his lower left leg and lacerated critical arteries in both legs. Barents collapsed, and hollered “Cease fire!” He asked his men to take off his boots, and someone gave him some shots of morphine. Medevac was called. He was placed on a poncho and hoisted into the helicopter. Before it left, one of his men said, “You were a damn good skipper, sir, a damn good skipper.” Barents was flown to Phu Bai, where he told a superior not to blame the man who shot him. “It was my fault,” he said. “I should have had some kind of better communications.” On Dec. 18, his right leg was amputated above the knee, and on Dec. 29, his left leg was amputated below the knee. The left leg failed to heal and was later amputated above the knee. Barents’s part of the war was over. He regretted being unable to complete his tour and his service. Plus, he thought: “How the hell am I going to make a living?” And he wondered how Kathryn would react. “I’m not the guy [she] married,” he said. Back home, the commandant of the Marines had sent her a telegram reporting that Paul’s condition was “serious with his prognosis fair.” “Okay,” she said she thought. “We knew this going in. . . . Just bring him home. We’ll be fine.” But her young husband of a few months now had amputated legs. “It was a game changer,” she said in a recent interview in their Maryland home. “It changed all our hopes and futures and plans and everything that we dreamed of.” She wondered whether she would still be attracted to him. He was crippled. There would be no more dancing, no more walks on the beach, she said. Some people said to her: Wouldn’t it be better if he had just been killed? “No,” she replied. “I’m one of the lucky ones. He’s coming home.” Paul was eventually moved to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, where he would stay for 14 months. They were reunited there in early January 1968. He was in bed when she walked in. She remembers that he weighed about 75 pounds. He remembers that she looked terrific. At dusk on Jan. 28, 1968, Jack Callanan, call sign “Gold Lemon 1,” was studying a map and reporting over the radio that he and his men had just seized part of the enemy hamlet of Lam Xuan. He had collected documents from dead enemy soldiers and crammed them into his pockets for intelligence purposes. Suddenly his radioman yelled, “Grenade!” Callanan never saw the North Vietnamese soldier who had popped out of a spider hole, and never saw the crude grenade he threw. But he heard the “kerplunk” when it hit the ground between him and the radioman. It exploded with a bang, flipped him on his back and drove hot shrapnel into his abdomen, pelvis and left side. Callanan, 23, was a second lieutenant from the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx in New York City, and one of the five children of parents who had been born in Ireland. He was a math whiz, with an electrical engineering degree from Manhattan College. After leaving the Marines’ Basic School he had gone to the Army’s Fort Sill, Okla., for 12 weeks of artillery training. Technically he was a forward observer, a spotter who would call in artillery fire when it was needed. But the fighting in Vietnam often came in such close quarters that it was too dangerous to ask for an artillery attack, lest Americans be hit. He was stationed with other Marines aboard the USS Valley Forge, an amphibious assault ship just off northern South Vietnam, and had been involved in previous operations, most notably in late December 1967, near a village called Thon Tham Khe. It was part of Operation Badger Tooth, and aimed to find a large contingent of enemy soldiers reported to be in the area. The Marines had stumbled on a superbly camouflaged North Vietnamese bunker fortress. “We took it real bad,” Callanan said in a recent interview in his home in Boston. Forty-eight Marines were killed. They included his Quantico classmate, 2nd Lt. George M. Broz, who had been in Vietnam a month. Now, a month later, during the fight for Lam Xuan just south of the demilitarized zone dividing South and North Vietnam, he was leading a squad of Marines after another lieutenant had been killed by mortar fire. “It was another one of these fortified villages,” he recalled. “We had to cross some rice paddies, and they had these dikes. We were kind of pinned down on this dike . . . not quite 50 meters from the periphery of the hamlet.” “Anybody that stuck their head up over that dike got a bullet between the eyes,” he said. He maneuvered his men, took some foxholes in the village, and then seized the enemy command and control bunker. He was reporting in when the radioman yelled. Callanan didn’t think he was that badly injured, although he was bleeding internally and a wing of his pelvis had been blown off. “I was very much at ease,” he remembered. He was wearing a religious medal his mother had given him. “Strangely enough, you’re at peace,” he said. “A calm comes over you. You basically say, you know, ‘Here it is.’ ” Medevac was called in under fire, and Callanan was placed on the helicopter beside the body of the officer he had replaced, 1st Lt. Kenneth W. Smith. Smith, whom Callanan knew only as “Smitty,” was one of eight Marines reportedly killed there that day. Callanan underwent surgery — the first of many over the years — to have shrapnel removed and internal damage repaired, and shipped back to St. Albans Naval Hospital in New York City, where he would be for almost six months. When a Marine officer came to his parents’ house on Milton Place with the news of his wounds, his mother, Delia, fainted. Later, she would keep pieces of shrapnel removed from her son’s body in a teacup in a china cabinet at home. A few weeks after he was wounded, while he was still in the Naval Hospital, he got word that his buddy and Quantico classmate, 2nd Lt. Ferdinando DiStefano Jr., 25, had been killed in a mortar attack near Khe Sanh. DiStefano was the only child of Italian immigrants. He spoke several languages and wanted to go to language school. But he wound up in the infantry. The two men would travel together on visits home from Quantico, and Callanan had gone to DiStefano’s to meet his parents. DiStefano’s mother, Antonietta, spoke little English. His father ran a grocery store on Central Avenue in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, according to a news account. When Callanan was informed of DiStefano’s death, he agreed to be an honorary pallbearer at the funeral. He got a hospital pass and attended the viewing. He introduced himself to DiStefano’s parents, and his mother remembered him. He recalled her grief. “It was something that was searing,” he said. The funeral Mass was packed, he recalled. Callanan and other Marines walked behind the casket in dress blue uniforms. He also attended the burial. “It was a gray, cold, damp day,” he said. “We had a bugler. . . . When the casket was lowered into the ground, his mother [was] screaming.” Fifty years later, he still has the laminated memorial card from the funeral. It bears a picture of DiStefano in his Marine Corps uniform. “O Gentlest heart of Jesus,” the prayer on the card says. “Send thy angels to conduct thy departed servant to a place of refreshment, light and peace. Amen.” Second Lt. George Chaconas had to get back to the Khe Sanh Combat Base. His week-long break from the grinding siege there was over. His R&R in Bangkok, away from the mud and the trenches and the pounding of enemy artillery, had been wonderful. But now it was time to return. He had made it as far as Da Nang, and had signed up for a flight that would make the dicey hop from Da Nang to Phu Bai to Khe Sanh, in what was then northwestern South Vietnam. The C-123 cargo plane was scheduled to leave March 6, according to historian Gregg Jones. It would eventually carry, along with its crew, 43 Marines. Also onboard would be a young freelance photographer working for Newsweek magazine, Robert J. Ellison. Ellison, 23, had been at Khe Sanh 10 days earlier and had taken a stunning series of photographs that Newsweek would run March 18 in a spread called “The Agony of Khe Sanh.” One picture showed Marines dragging from the bush the body of 2nd Lt. Donald Jacques, 20, one of Chaconas’s 5-67 classmates, who had just been killed. Now Ellison was heading back to the base. Chaconas, 23, the grandson of Greek immigrants, had grown up in Northwest Washington and graduated from the University of Maryland. He had been at Khe Sanh before the siege began in January and would be peppered there by shrapnel from a North Vietnamese artillery or mortar round. Aside from brief leave, he would be present for the entire 77-day siege. It was a subterranean experience lived in trenches and dugouts often filled with muddy water and populated with huge rats, he recalled in recent interviews in his Washington, D.C., home and via email. The canned rations were tasteless, and the possibility of death always present. Thousands of artillery shells and mortar rounds fell on the combat base from enemy positions in the surrounding highlands. Inside the base, where about 6,000 Marines were besieged by 20,000 to 40,000 enemy soldiers, a fellow officer gave Chaconas a copy of Bernard Fall’s book, “Hell in a Very Small Place.” The historical account, which he still has, tells of the siege and fall of the French bastion of Dien Bien Phu to Vietnamese communists in 1954. “You gotta read this,” Chaconas remembered his friend saying. Chaconas did, underlining parts in pink marker. “ ‘Whoa, this is exactly what’s going on right now here at Khe Sanh,’ ” he thought at the time. Nearly 50 years later, he said, “I’m sitting there in my hole, reading this thing . . . thinking, ‘Holy cow!’ ” Could Khe Sanh be another Dien Bien Phu? No matter, Chaconas had to get back. In Da Nang he had met up with his Washington boyhood friend Dick Wooster. Chaconas and Wooster had gone to elementary and middle school together. Both had joined the Marines, and both were, for the moment, in Da Nang. They hung out, drank beer, and Wooster urged Chaconas to stay the night and skip his flight to Khe Sanh. He could catch one later. Chaconas agreed. The next day, when he signed up for the trip to Khe Sanh, a flight coordinator did a double take: “Lieutenant Chaconas? Weren’t you on the airplane yesterday?” The C-123 had been shot down. Everyone onboard was killed. Officials were notifying families of those whose names had been on the doomed flight’s passenger list. “My name was on that list,” Chaconas said. “They were filling out the paperwork to tell my parents that I had been killed in Vietnam.” The reunion of class 5-67 begins May 3 and runs through May 6. Jack Callanan, who uses a walker and wheelchair because of complications from his wounds, plans to fly in from Boston. Paul and Kathryn Barents plan to pick him up at the airport and give him a lift to the headquarters hotel in Arlington, Va. George Chaconas, who is scheduled to lead a reunion tour of Washington, is putting up a couple of the visitors at his home. Others are expected from Nevada, Vermont, New York, North Carolina, California, Texas and elsewhere. They won’t gather to tell war stories, said Tony Latorre, 76, who as a young Marine captain helped train class 5-67 a half-century ago and is also attending. They assemble because “they all shared probably, with the exception of a marriage or the birth of a kid, the most unique experience . . . [of] their entire lives,” he said. “They just revel in being . . . [in] standing there,” he said, in knowing “that you survived it.” Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. Read more: