On April 21, the first day of trial, the now-infamous VA internal December 2007 email written by Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, was submitted as evidence. The email states that 12,000 veterans per year under VA care were attempting suicide. Widely circulated within the VA, the email, titled “Not for the CBS News Interview Request” told a tragic tale.
“Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities,” Katz wrote. The email concludes: “Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”
In November Katz told CBS, “There is no epidemic in suicide in VA,” and that there were only 790 attempted suicides in all of 2007, a fraction of Katz’s estimate stated in the internal email. In the same email Katz wrote there “are about 18-suicides per day among America’s 25 million veterans.”
Very inspiring talk, i listened in silence to him and that doesn’t happen often.
As an ex VN soldier i fully support the generals opinion.
Even after losing his own son in Afghanistan he still firmly believes in his ideals and knows how to express them on a way that is understandable and inspiring to allot of people, i can only say general van Uhm made me proud to be Dutch today, and proud i served in the Dutch armed forces.
Such is the self-referencing nonsense produced in contemporary American political discourse shaped by a perpetual election cycle that disconnects debate from the real world and stifles rational governance, but keeps the masses entertained and distracted, much like the circuses did for the Roman masses in the waning days of the Empire. With American politicians are arguing endlessly how great a victory we achieved in Iraq, a natural question remains unasked: What does the rest of the world — particularly the Arab world — thinks of our ‘success'?
Attached, FYI, are two thoughtful alternative points of view on this question.
The first headline is from Rami Khouri's. He is a columnist for the Lebanese Daily Star and is syndicated by the prestigious Agence-Global. The second headline is from Patrick Cockburn's, writing in the Independent [UK]. He is one of the most well informed western reporters now writing about the Middle East.
The United States under President George W. Bush drew on a deep well of nonsense, lies and fantasy when it entered Iraq in 2003. President Barack Obama continued this bipartisan American tradition when he said Monday that the departure of American forces from Iraq left behind a country that can be a model for other aspiring democracies. On the other side of the Arab world on the same day, the Tunisian people elected a new president, providing a more credible example of how Arabs can aspire to become democratic without foreign armies destroying their national fabric. Read more.
World View: For all its military might, the US has failed to get its way in Afghanistan and Iraq, severely denting the prestige of the world's only superpower
Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Cockburn's article contains one major assumption, to wit that the US Government will not attack Iran nor condone an Israeli attack on Iran. We disagree. Now more than ever, Israel is bent on attacking Iran and drawing the US in–the deployment of US/NATO troops all around Syria, the plans for major NATO air operations ostensibly against Syria (long billed, falsely, as an Iranian puppet state) all point to precisely the opposite: a cresendo joint US-Israel mega-attack on Iran and Syria together.
Although Global Trends 2030 will not be released by the US secret intelligence community until after the November 2012 election, minutes of the 22-24 May 2011 meeting are available and provide a useful panorama of what the group is and is not considering.
2. They are so beholden to status quo science they actually consider the exploitation of shale gas and oil to be a serious positive–lacking a strategic analytic model, it does not occur to them to examine the true cost of such initiatives, e.g. water, environmental degradation, etcetera. They do not “get” the fragmentation of knowledge as being among the chief obstacles to creating strategic intelligence.
3. They are oblivious to the “eight tribes“* while creeping up on government-business collaboration (and clearly also oblivious to the fact that this is actually plutocracy and corporate capture, not collaboration).
* Academia, Civil Society [inclusive of labor and religion], Commerce, Government [all levels], Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Non-Governmental / Non-Profit.
Open Source Works, which is the CIA’s in-house open source analysis component, is devoted to intelligence analysis of unclassified, open source information. Oddly, however, the directive that established Open Source Works is classified, as is the charter of the organization. In fact, CIA says the very existence of any such records is a classified fact.
“The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request,” wrote Susan Viscuso, CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator, in a November 29 response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive for the Open Source Works directive and charter.
“The fact of the existence or nonexistence of requested records is currently and properly classified and is intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure,” Dr. Viscuso wrote.
This is a surprising development since Open Source Works — by definition — does not engage in clandestine collection of intelligence. Rather, it performs analysis based on unclassified, open source materials.
Thus, according to a November 2010 CIA report, Open Source Works “was charged by the [CIA] Director for Intelligence with drawing on language-trained analysts to mine open-source information for new or alternative insights on intelligence issues. Open Source Works’ products, based only on open source information, do not represent the coordinated views of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
As such, there is no basis for treating Open Source Works as a covert, unacknowledged intelligence organization. It isn’t one.
Capture. Corporate power over government. It may seem like a dour topic (it is) and it may be hard to put it into perspective in our lives. How does it affect you and me? Lobbying, political influence, money in politics all seem very far away from daily life and it’s hard to see just where these issues touch our lives. So, let’s talk about it.
In the past couple of decades our country has been deeply divided on a number of topics but two issues stand out in the arena of corporate power over government: Health Care Legislation & War with Iraq.
. . . . . . . Two Examples Discussed: Health Care and Iraq . . . . . . .
This isn’t government of the people, for the people, by the people. It’s profit maximization for key industries and contractors with interests in military operation and healthcare. This is the essence of capture:corporate power has hijacked the language and purpose of government for their own ends. Democrat or Republican – it no longer matters at the national level because corporate money in politics has bought both parties.
Our veterans in particular, but all citizens generally, are beginning to realize that the US Government as well as State and local governments, are in violation of their constitutional charters more often than might be imagined. Today we begin a new Rolling Update focused on the Constitution of the United States of America, and also start a new Twitter tag. It is our view that respect for the Constitution, and the demand for Electoral Reform, go together.
