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Aaron Glantz, Foreign Policy in Focus
Eighteen American
war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving
care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More
veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas.
These are statistics that
most Americans don't know, because the Bush administration has refused to tell
them. Since the start of the Iraq War, the government has tried to present it
as a war without casualties.
In fact, they never would
have come to light were it not for a class action lawsuit brought by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth on behalf of
the 1.7 million Americans who have served in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
The two groups allege the Department of Veterans Affairs has systematically denied
mental health care and disability benefits to veterans returning from the
conflict zones.
The case, officially known
as Veterans for Common Sense vs. Peake,
went to trial last month at a Federal Courthouse in San Francisco. The two sides are still filing
briefs until May 19 and waiting for a ruling from Judge Samuel Conti, but the
case is already having an impact.
"Shh!"
That's because over the
course of the two week trial, the VA was compelled to produce a series of
documents that show the extent of the crisis effecting wounded soldiers.
"Shh!" begins one e-mail from Dr. Ira
Katz, the head of the VA's Mental Health Division, advising a media
spokesperson not to tell CBS News that 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA
try to kill themselves every month.
"Our suicide
prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month
among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we
should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone
stumbles on it?" the e-mail concludes.
Leading Democrats on the
Senate Veterans Affairs Committee immediately called for Katz's resignation. On
May 6, the Chair of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Bob Filner (D-CA)
convened a hearing titled "The Truth About Veteran's Suicides" and
called Katz and VA Secretary James Peake to testify.
"That e-mail was in
poor tone but the content was part of a dialogue about what we should do about
new information," Katz said in response to Filner's questions. "The
e-mail represents a healthy dialogue among members of VA staff about when it's
appropriate to disclose and make public information early in the process."
Filner was nonplused and
accused Katz and Peake of a "cover-up."
"We should all be
angry about what has gone on here," Filner said. "This is a matter of
life and death for the veterans that we are responsible for and I think there
was criminal negligence in the way this was handled. If we do not admit, assume
or know then the problem will continue and people will die. If that's not
criminal negligence, I don't know what is."
A Pattern
It's also part of a
pattern. The high number of veteran suicides weren't the only government
statistics the Bush Administration was forced to reveal because of the class
action lawsuit.
Another set of documents
presented in court showed that in the six months leading up to March 31, a
total of 1,467 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claim would
be approved by the government. A third set of documents showed that veterans
who appeal a VA decision to deny their disability claim have to wait an average
of 1,608 days, or nearly four and a half years, for their answer.
Other casualty statistics
are not directly concealed, but are also not revealed on a regular basis. For
example, the Pentagon regularly reports on the numbers of American troops
"wounded" in Iraq
(currently at 31,948) but neglects to mention that it has two other categories
"injured" (10,180) and "ill" (28,451). All three of
these categories represent soldiers who are so damaged physically they have
to be medically evacuated to Germany
for treatment, but by splitting the numbers up the sense of casualties down the
public consciousness.
Here's another number that
we don't often hear discussed in the media: 287,790. That's the number of
returning Iraq and Afghanistan war
veterans who had filed a disability claim with the Veterans Administration as
of March 25th. That figure was not announced to the public at a news
conference, but obtained by Veterans for Common Sense using the Freedom of
Information Act.
Why all the secrecy? Why is
it so hard to get accurate casualty figures out of our government? Because the
Bush Administration knows if Americans woke up to the real, human costs of this
war they would fight harder to oppose it.
Some 'Cakewalk'
Think back to 2002, before
the invasion of Iraq,
when leading neo-conservative thinker and Donald Rumsfeld aide Ken Adelman predicted the war would be a "cakewalk."
Or consider this statement
from Vice President Dick Cheney. Two days before the invasion, Cheney told
NBC's Tim Russert the war would "go relatively quickly…(ending in)
weeks rather than months."
Today, those comments are
gone but the motivation behind them remains. This is why the VA's head of
mental health wrote "Shh!" telling a spokesperson not to respond to a
reporters' inquiry.
But all the shhing in the
world cannot stop the horrible pain that's mounting after five years of war in Iraq and nearly seven years of war in Afghanistan.
Unpleasant Facts
According to an April 2008
study by the Rand Corporation, 300,000 Iraq
and Afghanistan
war veterans currently suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or major
depression. Another 320,000 suffer from traumatic brain injury, physical brain
damage. A majority are not receiving help from the Pentagon and VA system which
are more concerned with concealing unpleasant facts than they are with
providing care.
In its study, the RAND Corporation
wrote that the federal government fails to care for war veterans at its own
peril -- noting post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury
"can have far reaching and damaging consequences."
"Individuals afflicted
with these conditions face higher risks for other psychological problems and
for attempting suicide. They have higher rates of unhealthy behaviors -- such
as smoking, overeating, and unsafe sex -- and higher rates of physical health
problems and mortality. Individuals with these conditions also tend to miss
more work or report being less productive," the report said. "These
conditions can impair relationships, disrupt marriages, aggravate the
difficulties of parenting, and cause problems in children that may extend the
consequences of combat trauma across generations."
"These consequences
can have a high economic toll," RAND
said. "However, most attempts to measure the costs of these conditions
focus only on medical costs to the government. Yet, direct costs of treatment
are only a fraction of the total costs related to mental health and cognitive
conditions. Far higher are the long-term individual and societal costs stemming
from lost productivity, reduced quality of life, homelessness, domestic
violence, the strain on families, and suicide. Delivering effective care and
restoring veterans to full mental health have the potential to reduce these
longer-term costs significantly."
Bush and Congress have the
power to stop this problem before it gets worse. It's not too late to extend
needed mental health care to our returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans;
it's not too late to begin properly screening and treating returning servicemen
and women who've experienced a traumatic brain injury; and it is not too late
to simplify the disability claims process so that wounded veterans do not die
waiting for their check. As the Rand study
shows, this isn't only in the best interest of veterans, it's in the best
interest of our country in the long run.
To start with, the Bush
Administration needs to give us some honest information about the true human
costs of the Iraq War.
Aaron Glantz, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is the author
of two upcoming books on Iraq: The War
Comes Home: Washington's Battle Against America's Veterans (UC
Press) and Winter Soldier Iraq and
Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations (Haymarket). He
edits the website WarComesHome.org.
would not hesitate to kill her and the children. Probably everyone has
PTSD to some extent that has been in combat.