Vets feel 'alone' in their guilt
A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo thinks of himself as a killer — and he carries the guilt every day. "I can't forgive myself," he says. "And the people who can forgive me are dead." With American troops at war for more than a decade, there's been an unprecedented number of st…
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Ailing vets turn to charities in larger numbers
Brandon Pelletier sits with his dog, Skylar, Feb. 19 at a park near his home in Chula Vista, Calif. Susan Rocco starts authorizing help on a litany of pleas from wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at 7 a.m. in her home north of Quantico, Va. One is a young Marine veteran living in a shelter who needs clothing and electricity turned on so he can…
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Veterans Work to Bring Those Left Behind to US
Officially, the war in Iraq is over. And US troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan. But for some US veterans already home, their mission still continues. Recently I met three vets, all students at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. We gathered in a small room on campus and the veterans broke out their laptops to show me documen…
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Combat widows get keys to new life
Savannah Jirtle, widow of Army Spc. Charles Scott Jirtle who died in 2010 while serving in Afghanistan, speaks with Brig. Gen. Ronald F. Lewis after a Homes for Our Troops ceremony at W.O. Smith Music School in Nashville at which she and two other 'Gold Star Wives' received mortgage-free homes. Nikki Redding wondered how she would rebuild her l…
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THE VALUE OF VETERANS
As part of the U.S. Army's Hire a Veteran campaign, the Army recently partnered with the Society for Human Resource Management to conduct a research study on veteran employment. The results indicate that assumptions about veterans often influence employers' hiring decisions—and not always in the veterans' favor. The study finds thre…
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Veterans battling myriad challenges
When Anthony Vidales walked out of a lie detector test as part of his application process at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department earlier this month, he wanted to cry. He failed the test, he said, due to irregular breathing, a condition he contracted from radiation, pollution and burn pits he was exposed to while fighting in Iraq. “They to…
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Tony Blair Re-invents Himself
Even by the standards of a seemingly increasingly partisan British media, the decision to invite Tony Blair to Guest Edit the London Evening Standard on 27th June, the fifth anniversary of his leaving office was, well, bizarre. The Standard (established1827) gained early eminence for its detailed foreign news. Within little over forty years of its f…
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'Military friendly' college concerns
In press releases and ads, colleges love boasting they're "military friendly" and "veterans friendly" — and that isn't just because veterans are usually good students and campus leaders. It's also because the newly expanded Post 9/11 G.I. Bill will pay colleges of all types around $9 billion this year to educate nearly 600…
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Afghan patrols up injuries
The number of severe wounds that have resulted in loss of limbs to service members has been rising this year because of increased foot patrols in areas mined with buried explosives, and is on a pace to exceed any year since the Afghanistan War began, according to the latest casualty data. “Nobody has ever seen this degree of injury before,” says Lt. Col. Jo…
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Filming Afghan and Iraq war veterans
Steven Grayhm, Matt Dallas and Charlie Bewley were in Detroit this week as part of a cross-country journey to research their film project about soldiers who've served in Afghanistan and Iraq.The three actors are developing a feature film called "Thunder Road" about vets grappling with difficulties after their time overseas.They're also fil…
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Little protest about cost Iraq, Afghanistan
In Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, Americans have been reminded in recent weeks of one of our own great tactics of the past to force change: massive public protest. Going way back, the original Tea Party in Boston Harbor struck against oppressive British rule. Later, in our civil rights revolution and the street protests against the Vietnam War, Ame…
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This Waste Really Hurts
As this is something I have written on previously it seems appropriate to note that today the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on open-air burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq U.S. forces generate a lot of waste. According to the GAO U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq generate about 10 pounds of waste per servicemember each…
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