Blog post

IAVA Daily Brief 08.06.09
Posted by Michelle McCarthy on August 4

Here are some of today's top stories and happenings at IAVA.  Prefer to receive real-time updates about major stories and legislation that IAVA is tracking?  Follow us on Twitter @iavapressroom.

MUST READS

1) VA works to stop vets from repeating crimes

In an effort to brace for an influx of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Veterans Affairs department is currently training 145 specialists at its hospitals nationwide to locate veterans who've had minor brushes with the law and offer them treatment to try to prevent repeat crimes.  As part of the Veterans Justice Outreach Program, launched in January, VA specialists will provide a civilian court a report on an accused veteran's medical history — and available VA benefits or programs that might help.  Prosecutors and judges can then use that information at their discretion when deciding if a veteran should undergo treatment instead of incarceration.  As part of the program, the VA is also participating in 10 "veterans courts" to help former service members accused of crimes get into treatment programs in exchange for reduced sentences or dismissed charges. More than 40 such courts are planned across the country, including one near Fort Carson.  Currently, only a handful of U.S. counties, including Los Angeles, Hamilton County, Ohio, and Alachua County, Fla., track veterans for VA outreach programs although the Department of Justice reported in 2002 that veterans accounted for roughly 10 percent of the nation's jail and prison population.

2) Vets shred uniforms to heal PTSD through art

In an effort to heal combat stress, Associated Press reports this morning that some Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are using razors to shred their military uniform to bits and turn them into art.  The Combat Paper Project, a Vermont-based collective of combat vets who became artists after leaving the military, has spent the past year holding coast-to-coast workshops aimed at teaching former service members to help themselves by recycling fatigues into artwork.  Drew Cameron, who became opposed to the Iraq war after serving in an Army artillery unit during the 2003 invasion, started the group after moving to Burlington, Vt., where he learned paper making from a local artist while also becoming active with Iraq Veterans Against the War.  Cameron, 27, saw it as a way reach out to other Iraq veterans haunted by memories of friends slain in battle and men they had killed, wounded physically and psychologically by bomb and mortar explosions, and struggling to direct their own lives after years of being told what to do by the military.  “It’s about taking the things you did and owning them, taking responsibility and expressing them,” Cameron said. “The experience is not simple. For me to translate things that are hard to express, art is the perfect medium.”  Click here to learn more about the Combat Paper Project and view the veterans’ artwork.

AFGHANISTAN

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell confirmed Wednesday that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, asking that "a few other ideas" be taken into account, has extended the deadline for an assessment of how to turn around the war in Afghanistan.  The report had been expected next week and now may come in late August or early September.  “He was very impressed with the briefing he got and the assessment thus far," Morrell said of Gates. "But he wants (McChrystal) to take into consideration a few other ideas he had to address some additional issues in this review of the situation on the ground."  Last week, defense officials indicated the draft of the assessment called for changes in the way troops operate and that after the report was finished commanders were likely to ask for more U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Despite the assessment delay, officials indicate that intelligence sharing continues between the U.S. and Pakistan as they try to route the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the Afghan border.  On Wednesday, Pakistani intelligence and military officials said a suspected U.S. missile strike killed the wife of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud at his father-in-law's house in South Waziristan.  Mehsud was reportedly not at the home in the Jangara area of South Waziristan during the attack.  South Waziristan is part of the northwest tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan where Taliban and al-Qaida leaders — including possibly Osama bin Laden — are believed to be hiding.

On Wednesday, at least 21 civilians, mainly women and children traveling to a wedding party, were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.  Separately, local officials in the neighboring province of Kandahar said that five civilians had been killed in an airstrike by a United States Apache helicopter as they were taking cucumbers to a bazaar. American and NATO officials disputed the account, saying the men had been loading weapons, not cucumbers.

IRAQ

The Iraqi government announced Wednesday that the towering concrete blast walls that have both protected and suffocated Baghdad streets for the past two years will come down within 40 days.  Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the spokesman for the city's operations command center, said the walls will be taken off major thoroughfares and secondary roads in the capital. In response, the U.S. military, which erected most of the walls, said it had not been informed of the decision - an indication of the Iraqis' increasing confidence as the two sides redefine their relationship ahead of the U.S. withdrawal in 2011.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb exploded Wednesday as policemen were travelling by car through a market in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, killing five.  An additional eight people were wounded, including three policemen, in a blast in the predominantly Sunni district while gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint in Mosul killing one officer.

MILITARY AFFAIRS

Fort Hood soldier Spc. Victor Agosto was sentenced Wednesday to a month in jail for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan over his beliefs that the war violates international law.  Agosto, 24, of Miami, pleaded guilty to disobeying lawful orders and was sentenced at the central Texas Army post. The judge reduced his rank to the Army’s lowest level, a private, which also was part of the maximum penalty he faced in his plea agreement with the military.  “I really had no Army way of being consistent with my conscience,” Agosto said. “The courts haven’t recognized soldiers’ rights to refuse an order they believe to be illegal. ... I believe future courts will find that the Afghanistan war is illegal because it violates international law.”

Days after the U.S. military announced it had recovered his remains, people close to the family of Gulf war veteran Capt. Michael Scott Speicher said a team of experts is working to help the Navy determine the details surrounding his death and why his remains were discovered far from the his downed F/A-18 Hornet’s crash site in western Iraq.  According to family friends, the Navy is working with an ejection expert, an anthropologist and a forensic scientist to help resolve the 18-year-old mystery surrounding the fighter pilot’s crash in January 1991, during the opening hours of the Gulf War.  We can hopefully get a date of death, plus a date for when [the remains] were placed in the desert,” said Albert “Buddy” Harris, Speicher’s friend and a former Navy pilot who has since married Speicher’s widow.  Speicher, the only American who remained missing in action from Operation Desert Storm, was shot down Jan. 17, 1991, while flying a combat mission over Anbar province.

INSIDE WASHINGTON

In a continued effort to press Congress to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the Human Rights Campaign and Servicemembers United will gather in Norfolk, VA on Thursday for a town hall forum on the topic.  The House, which introduced legislation in March to repeal the policy, is on recess until September 8^th.

CONGRESSIONAL SCHEDULE

THE SENATE

The Senate will convene at 9:30 a.m.

FUTURE COMMITTEE HEARINGS of INTEREST

• August 28, 2009 - SVAC will conduct a field hearing on the state of VA’s services on Maui, to include an OIG report of the same.  10:00 a.m.; Maui Cultural Center (Vasquez)

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The House is on recess until September 8^th.

WHAT THE BLOGS ARE SAYING

Blog: Cold War Veterans

Title: IAVA Update

Date: Wednesday, August 5^th

Representative: IAVA, Patrick Campbell

A wide-range of views, positions, and publications are represented in these articles.  These views, positions and publications are not endorsed by nor do they necessarily represent the views of IAVA.