WASHINGTON (Nov. 20, 2009) - Patrick W. Dunne, the Under Secretary for Benefits for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), today announced his resignation for early next year. Dunne, who attained the rank of rear admiral while in the U.S. Navy, has been with VA since 2006.

As Under Secretary for Benefits since October 2008, Admiral Dunne has directed the administration of VA's disability compensation, pension, education, home loan guaranty, vocational rehabilitation and employment, and life insurance programs through a nationwide network of 57 regional offices, other special processing centers, and Veterans Benefits Administration headquarters.

I don't know Dunne's exact reasons for stepping down, but since he's only held the position about a year, and during that time there has been massive trouble with the distribution of the new Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits, it seems likely that that may have factored into his departure.

The VA received more than 25,000 applications for updated GI Bill benefits within two weeks of the new program. At the time, Dunne was quoted on PR Newswire as saying, "We are very pleased with the tremendous interest in the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The number of applications submitted in the first two weeks clearly shows the value and importance of this new benefit for Veterans."

But it quickly became clear the VA was worried about being able to process the volume of claims they received. Dunne himself noted, "Our top priority is providing our students and schools with accurate and timely benefit payments so veterans can focus all of their energy on studies," he said in a statement quoted by the Columbus Dispatch in late September.

Although veterans were scheduled to receive living stipends from the VA by Nov. 1, by the end of October, it was clear that wasn't going to happen. The Navy Times reported at the end of October that, "'It is possible, if we have not worked their case by the end of the month, that some may not receive their housing payment on the first,' VA officials said in a statement, referring to Nov. 1."

The VA was supposed to implement a new computer program that would process the new GI Bill benefits faster. But delays in implementing the program put the VA behind in processing claims. Eventually, some emergency checks were distributed to veterans that were written by hand.

In a late September story about the delays in the payments from the GI Bill program, the LA Times quoted Dunne as saying, "The learning curve has been steep for us all." Indeed.

Reports of domestic abuse have grown by 75 percent since 2001. At the same time, violent crime in Killeen has risen 22 percent while declining 7 percent in towns of similar size in other parts of the country. [...]

Since 2003, there have been 76 suicides by personnel assigned to Fort Hood, with 10 this year, according to military officials.

The GI Bill of Rights for the 21st Century (S.22) is expected to be on the  Senate floor this week, and America's veterans need your help. S. 22 would  make sure that veterans who served on active duty after September 11, 2001  have education benefits that measure up to the needs of today’s veterans.

 Since the first GI Bill was signed in 1944 benefits have been scaled back  while tuition has skyrocketed. Currently, it covers only 60-70% of the  average costs of a four year education at a public college. The House of  Representatives has already passed similar legislation, so please call the  US Capitol at (202) 224-3121 and urge your Senators to support our veterans  by passing the GI Bill of Rights for the 21st Century (S.22).

Last night I went to a Winter Soldier panel Campus Progress co-hosted down here in Gainesville, FL. It was a smaller scale than the one Spencer reported on in DC, consisting of six Iraq veterans, four of whom are with Iraq Veterans Against the War and two who just came forward to talk about their experiences unaffiliated. The event was extremely intense, gripping the audience during each soldier's story and lasting nearly four hours. The stories ranging from witnessing deaths of Iraqis, suicide bombers, self-medicating drug use, lack of veterans benefits, and sexual assault of both American female soldiers and Iraqi women.

Clifton Hicks, who was once suspected of being the author of TNR's disputed "Shock Troops" article, said, "None of us are here to make American soldiers look bad, because anyone in this room is capable of the same thing." Hicks blames the evil of war and not the individual troops. Many soldiers said they were still "pro-military" but opposed the Iraq war in particular. The opinions on pullout varied from immediately and as quickly as possible to a strategic and slow withdrawl. Unsurprisingly, the veterans aren't a monolithic group and don't have one opinion about the war.

Cross posted. 

Christian Miller reported in the L.A. Times that, "Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military."

Unfortunately, what is publicly known about the extent to which corruption and deceit is rooted in the activities of U.S.-led initiatives in Iraq is probably just the tip of the ice burg. Not only has the Pentagon manipulated the structure of power and responsibility to eliminate any system of accountability, but there have been increasingly eerie reports on the ways in which the American public has been receiving incomplete, absent, manipulated or slanted news coverage on the war (and how the DoD has been behind a large part of this).

Reports reveal that in the first quarter of 2008, media coverage of the war dropped to a meager 3.5 percent . At the height of Iraq War reporting, immediately following the initial invasion, reporting was at around 30 percent.

It has long been a known fact that the administration has made it a personal policy not to do body counts, learning the lessons from Vietnam that visibility of casualties leads to public outcry. But now a report indicates that the Pentagon is considering hiring, commissioning, or co-opting bloggers “to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message." This coincides with a GOP strategy to bolster support for the presumed Republican nominee John McCain (a staunch supporter of the war) by launching multi-lateral attack campaigns against what they see as Democratic attempts to "legislate defeat" in Iraq.

Bottom line: whether its through the tragedies of formerly deployed troops upon their return stateside, the depletion of our economic infrastructure by the careless and fraudulent spending of our tax money on the war, or the descent of our international reputation from the surfacing stories of contractor corrosion, the consequences of the administration's mishandling of the war will follow us home. We need to take action while our country still has some integrity to defend. Sign Progressive Future's petition to enforce accountability for the events that take place in Iraq in our name.

"They are the result of incompetence on American soil." 

Pleasant headline, no?  It's been a whie since I've blogged for CP, but this article from Tom Shine's ABC News blog caught my eye, and then made me sick.  

Via reddit, a story you shouldn't read if you're in a good mood:

When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

[snip]

Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.

I think (and would hope) this is the sort of thing that will be swiftly rectified once it receives enough media attention, which it will. Still though, a truly abominable, indefensible act by the Pentagon.

I'm still a little disappointed I didn't set up a live blog from yesterday's conference. There were so many times I would have loved to chime in with a spur-of-the-moment-not-so-well-thought-out response.

Considering the GOP's animosity towards the homeless, I suppose this means they don't support the troops? Perhaps these troops chose to be homeless as well.

About 500-1,000 of the 200,000 homeless U.S. veterans served in Iraq or Afghanistan.