Group items tagged

"James F. Gallagher"

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U.S. military veterans from three decades pass through Judge Sarah Smith's courtroom here, reporting on their battles with drug addiction, alcoholism and despair. Those who find jobs and stabilize their lives are rewarded with candy bars and applause. Those who backslide go to jail. Smith radiates an air of maternal care from the bench. As the veterans come before her, she softly asks: "How are you doing? Do you need anything?" But if a veteran fails random drug tests, she doesn't flinch at invoking his sentence. Her court is part of a new approach in the criminal justice system: specialized courts for veterans who have broken the law. Judges have been spurred by a wave of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, battling post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries and stumbling into trouble with the law. But advocates of the courts say they also address a problem as old as combat itself. "Some families give their sons or daughters to service for their country, and they're perfectly good kids. And they come back from war and just disintegrate before our eyes," said Robert Alvarez, a counselor at Fort Carson in Colorado who is advocating for a veterans court in the surrounding county. "Is it fair to put these kids in prison because they served and got injured?"

The men crewed .50-calibers through Iraq neighborhoods, survived roadside bomb blasts, attended memorial services for buddies. Now they were being asked to cut cattle, on foot, in front of one another and a handful of real cowboys. It's safe to say there wasn't exactly a rush to start. But within a few minutes, the 15 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan-almost all of them self-described city boys whose experience with livestock extends only to the dinner plate-had learned a thing or two about patience and teamwork, and for a few minutes of laughter and sweat, they could forget about the war that still haunts them. "It's like we're back in the field now," said Jeremy Williams, a 26-year-old who lives in a small town near Huntsville and served three tours in Iraq with the Marines. The veterans came from throughout the United States to spend four days at the stylish Wildcatter Ranch, invited by the Wounded Warrior Project and the owners of the ranch to help restore their spirits. Some of the men have physical injuries, but each of them is struggling to deal with combat stress and their return to civilian society. The men went canoeing and rode horses. They got massages and shot skeet. They stayed in luxurious rooms and they visited an elementary school, where the children gave them Graham Steers ball caps. "I have never seen anything like this before," said Harvey Stubbs Jr., 32, a Chicago-area native who was medically retired from the Army because of his injuries. "The outpouring of love ... has been amazing. A lot of people give lip service to supporting the troops, but these people have opened their hearts to us in ways I can't believe."

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Deploying to Afghanistan, Craig Mullaney writes, "was a slow immersion, like Dante's descent into the Inferno."\n\nOne moment, Mullaney and his Army Ranger platoon waited in an airport terminal at Fort Drum, N.Y. Televisions were tuned to Major League Baseball games. The soldiers ate what one jokingly called their "Last Supper" - rubbery T-bone steaks with Mexican rice.\n\nThey received an intelligence briefing warning them of the dangers awaiting them in Afghanistan, including ticks, cobras and camel spiders that can run more than 30 mph. Then they marched onto a cavernous cargo plane. Two flights and 7,000 miles later, Mullaney and his men stepped out into the dusty, baking heat of an airbase in Kandahar. It was 128 degrees, in the shade.\n\nIn that summer of 2003, Afghanistan had fallen off the front page. Attention had shifted to the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Taliban regime that had been toppled by the U.S. invasion following 9/11 was resurgent. Operating from across the border in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was suspected to be hiding, Taliban and al-Qaida fighters harassed local villages and Western occupiers.\n\nMullaney's Army Ranger training did not cover desert warfare, which had been dropped in 1995. Studying modern military history at West Point, he took just one paragraph of notes on Afghanistan, involving the Russians' failed experience there in the 1980s.

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First Lady Michelle Obama paid a visit to Soldiers and family members at Fort Bragg in what was her first tour outside the White House. During her visit, Obama said she was inspired by the spirit of the Fort Bragg community and said she was fully committed to improving support to all military families.

The Department of the Army has finally gone public and acknowledged the alarming rate of suicide among its ranks. While Army leadership is to be commended for breaking the barrier of silence regarding mental illness in the military, the underlying culture of secrecy that has contributed to the current trend is in dire need of reform.

Legislation introduced recently by Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, would lift the burden of proof from veterans who served in combat zones and have a diagnosis of PTSD, allowing them to receive disability benefits without having to prove that a specific incident caused the disorder. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone, more than 100,000 veterans have been found to have PTSD, but only 42,000 have been granted service-connected disability for their condition, said Hall, chairman of the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs. The disability claims backlog at the VA tops 800,000. A large percentage of that number are Vietnam veterans seeking compensation for PTSD, Hall said.

"A new study says Wisconsin veterans are more likely to commit suicide than the general population is. The report says veterans make up 8 percent of Wisconsin's population but committed nearly 21 percent of suicides in the state. Kenneth Black is the secretary of the state Department of Veterans Affairs. He says his department sees the issue of veteran suicide as a growing concern. "

"Eric R. Jines"

"Nicholas A. Horner"

""Cyber-security is shaping up to be a major growth opportunity for the defense industry," said Loren Thompson, a military policy analyst for the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va. "We've spent the last 20 years putting all of our information onto computers. Now, we don't have any choice but to defend ourselves against foreign intrusion." "

"Mills Bigham"

Joseph Jesk