Is Anyone Ever Truly Prepared to Kill?
One dark night in Iraq in February 1991, a U.S. Army tank unit opened fire on two trucks that barreled unexpectedly into its position along the Euphrates river. One was carrying fuel and burst into flames, and as men scattered from the burning trucks, the American soldiers shot them.
"To this day, I don't know if they were civilians or military - it was over in an instant," says Desert Storm veteran Charles Sheehan-Miles. But it wasn't over for him.
"For the first years after the Gulf War it was tough," says the decorated soldier. He had difficulty sleeping, and when he did, the nightmares came. "I was very angry and got drunk all the time; I considered suicide for awhile."
Like many young Americans sent off to war, he was highly skilled as a soldier but not adequately prepared for the realities of combat, particularly the experience of killing.
Much is rightly made of the dedication and sacrifice of those willing to lay down their lives for their country. But what is rarely spoken of, within the military or American society at large, is what it means to kill - to overcome the ingrained resistance most human beings feel to slaying one of their own kind, and the haunting sense of guilt that may accompany such an action. There is a terrible price to be paid by those who go to war, their families, and their communities, say some experts, by ignoring such realities.
"We never in our military manuals address the fact that they go forward to kill," says Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former Army Ranger. "When the reality hits them, it has a profound effect. We have to put mechanisms in place to help them deal with that.
"Every society has a blind spot, an area into which it has great difficulty looking," Colonel Grossman says. "Today that blind spot is killing."
It may seem strange that a central fact of war for millenniums should become an urgent concern now. But some close to the scene say modified warfare training that makes it easier to kill - and a US cultural response that tends to ignore how killing affects soldiers - have taken an unprecedented emotional and psychological toll. A lengthy conflict in Iraq, they worry, could increase that toll dramatically.
Society has a moral obligation, some argue, to better prepare those sent to war, to provide assistance in combat, and to help in the transition home.
"We have a profound responsibility because we send these people into combat on our behalf, to kill for us," says Shannon French, who teaches ethics at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
Postwar tragedy may have been averted, says Mr. Sheehan-Miles, if help had been available to his tank unit. "Within my own tank company, half of the married soldiers were divorced within a year after the Gulf War; one shot another over a girl," he says. "They didn't know how to get help, and the Army essentially did nothing."
Psychological injuries of war can't be tied solely to killing alone - seeing close comrades die and other horrors of war are also factors. But mental-health professionals and chaplains who've worked closely with veterans see killing as a significant contributor, along with other demoralizing elements of combat that soldiers experience or see as "a betrayal of what's right," says Veterans Affairs psychiatrist Jonathan Shay.
The devastating impact of war on soldiers was visible after World Wars I and II and the Korean War as well. But particularly evident today is the ongoing toll of the Vietnam War, whose vets are overrepresented in the homeless and prison populations. One-third are said to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In July, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 16 percent of veterans of the war in Iraq suffer from depression or PTSD, and that fewer than 40 percent have sought help.
Along with several studies, the efforts of two men are stirring thinking within the US military: Grossman, who wrote "On Killing: the Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society," and Dr. Shay, who has worked with vets for 20 years at the VA Outpatient Clinic in Boston. Shay has written two books ("Achilles in Vietnam" and "Odysseus in America") that provide in-depth analyses of how combat can affect individual character and the homecoming to civilian society.
The military has hired both to help improve training and recommend changes to military culture.
A natural resistance to killing
The military's responsibility to respond is great, Grossman says, because of the way combat has been transformed since World War II. Interviews by a US Army historian during that war showed that only 15 to 20 percent of infantrymen in the European and Pacific theaters chose to fire at the enemy when they were under fire. Resistance to killing was strong.
Whether because of religious and moral teachings or what he terms "a powerful, innate human resistance toward killing one's own species," soldiers' apparent willingness to die rather than kill stunned military officials.
To overcome that resistance, the military revamped its training to program soldiers, through psychological conditioning, to make shooting reflexive. The techniques were applied with "tremendous success," Grossman says, raising the firing rate to 55 percent in the Korean conflict and 95 percent in Vietnam. But little thought, he adds, went to the aftereffects of overriding the soldiers' natural inclinations.
Shay also flags concerns about combat leadership, citing instances when soldiers have been treated unfairly, lacked necessary equipment, been asked to do things they considered wrong, or seen questionable behavior rewarded. These are all experiences he includes under the heading of "the betrayal of what is right." People don't have to be injured by their wartime experience, he adds, but that requires "assuring them cohesion in their units; expert and ethical leadership; and highly realistic training for what they have to do."
The first responsibility of leadership and the public, many say, is not to put the country's sons and daughters at risk unless going to war is essential.
If it is, then they need help sorting through the issues. Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a retired Navy chaplain, calls for "spiritual force protection."
"We have a responsibility to understand the dangers war poses to the humanity of our people and do all we can to protect them, to develop 'moral muscle,' " he says.
In "The Code of the Warrior," his course at the Naval Academy, Dr. French focuses on moral distinctions - the historical legacy of the warrior and rules of war, and how to be alert to crossing the boundaries, as occurred at Abu Ghraib prison.
"It has been very well documented that there is a close connection between severe combat stress and the sense of having crossed moral lines," she says.
While the military academies offer officers some ethical training, the rank and file learn mostly from their commanders. Recent training Grossman has provided to Marine battalions heading to Iraq included distinguishing between killing and murder.
"Many have 'Thou shalt not kill' in the back of their minds, and think they've broken a profoundly moral law," he says. Grossman helps them see that the Judeo-Christian ethos generally accepts the idea that killing can be justified at times, and he emphasizes the importance of close adherence to the rules of engagement.
But there are gray areas, particularly in urban conflict, where it is not always clear whether to shoot, says Paul Rieckhoff of the Army National Guard, who led a platoon through combat patrols, raids, and ambushes in Baghdad until February of this year.
During one operation, "a female truck driver dropped us off and was guarding the truck when a kid about 10 years old came around the corner and started shooting at her," he says. "What does she do - shoot him or get shot?"
Vital to the health of soldiers is what happens after each combat experience. It's essential to have "after-action reviews," many say, in which units sort through experiences that were disturbing to them. These may include killing, or seeing their comrades or innocent civilians killed. "The worst thing is to not think about it. You can't not think about something for a lifetime," Grossman says.
At the end of the 1989 US invasion of Panama, Army chaplain R. Ryder Stevens, now retired, and another chaplain sought out soldiers individually. "One guy talked, but kept his M-16 between us and kept taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it together again," says Colonel Stevens. "Finally he blurted out, 'I murdered a woman and her baby the other day and I'm going to burn in hell!' " He had followed the rules of engagement and shot at a car that didn't stop fully at a checkpoint. After he was assured that God's love was big enough to forgive him, "he fell into my arms crying," Stevens recounts.
In Iraq, there may be one chaplain for every 1,500 soldiers, Rieckhoff says. Those who need help must be encouraged to seek it. But the system is failing, many insist. Seeking help carries a stigma, and procedures for getting help lack privacy.
Making it easier to ask for help
The case of Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany - cited by Sheehan-Miles in his book - is a vivid example of what can go wrong.
Sergeant Pogany experienced panic attacks while serving with the Special Forces in Iraq, and sought medical help. But he was urged to reconsider his request for the sake of his career. Later he was courtmartialed for "cowardice" - the first such case since Vietnam. Only in July 2004, nine months after he was made a public example, was it determined the attacks were probably caused by an antimalarial drug issued to some in combat.
"That kind of thing sends shock waves throughout the military community," says Sheehan-Miles, who didn't seek help himself for fear of ending his career. He got back on track only when he began focusing on helping other veterans. Now executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, he asks, "How do you take away the stigma of asking for help?"
Everyone coming home from a war zone should be required to have two or three counseling sessions, Sheehan-Miles proposes. "A lot of people think they don't need it who really do, and it ends up coming out in their lives later on," he says.
The Marine Corps' Warrior Transition Program - a pilot effort run by the chaplain corps of the Marines - is required for everyone returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. During transit home, marines discuss their most positive and negative experiences, and find succor in sharing with others.
Soldiers who may have killed in the line of duty are included in the program, although there is no specific focus on that particular experience.
Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
"To this day, I don't know if they were civilians or military - it was over in an instant," says Desert Storm veteran Charles Sheehan-Miles. But it wasn't over for him.
"For the first years after the Gulf War it was tough," says the decorated soldier. He had difficulty sleeping, and when he did, the nightmares came. "I was very angry and got drunk all the time; I considered suicide for awhile."
Like many young Americans sent off to war, he was highly skilled as a soldier but not adequately prepared for the realities of combat, particularly the experience of killing.
Much is rightly made of the dedication and sacrifice of those willing to lay down their lives for their country. But what is rarely spoken of, within the military or American society at large, is what it means to kill - to overcome the ingrained resistance most human beings feel to slaying one of their own kind, and the haunting sense of guilt that may accompany such an action. There is a terrible price to be paid by those who go to war, their families, and their communities, say some experts, by ignoring such realities.
"We never in our military manuals address the fact that they go forward to kill," says Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former Army Ranger. "When the reality hits them, it has a profound effect. We have to put mechanisms in place to help them deal with that.
"Every society has a blind spot, an area into which it has great difficulty looking," Colonel Grossman says. "Today that blind spot is killing."
It may seem strange that a central fact of war for millenniums should become an urgent concern now. But some close to the scene say modified warfare training that makes it easier to kill - and a US cultural response that tends to ignore how killing affects soldiers - have taken an unprecedented emotional and psychological toll. A lengthy conflict in Iraq, they worry, could increase that toll dramatically.
Society has a moral obligation, some argue, to better prepare those sent to war, to provide assistance in combat, and to help in the transition home.
"We have a profound responsibility because we send these people into combat on our behalf, to kill for us," says Shannon French, who teaches ethics at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
Postwar tragedy may have been averted, says Mr. Sheehan-Miles, if help had been available to his tank unit. "Within my own tank company, half of the married soldiers were divorced within a year after the Gulf War; one shot another over a girl," he says. "They didn't know how to get help, and the Army essentially did nothing."
Psychological injuries of war can't be tied solely to killing alone - seeing close comrades die and other horrors of war are also factors. But mental-health professionals and chaplains who've worked closely with veterans see killing as a significant contributor, along with other demoralizing elements of combat that soldiers experience or see as "a betrayal of what's right," says Veterans Affairs psychiatrist Jonathan Shay.
The devastating impact of war on soldiers was visible after World Wars I and II and the Korean War as well. But particularly evident today is the ongoing toll of the Vietnam War, whose vets are overrepresented in the homeless and prison populations. One-third are said to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In July, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 16 percent of veterans of the war in Iraq suffer from depression or PTSD, and that fewer than 40 percent have sought help.
Along with several studies, the efforts of two men are stirring thinking within the US military: Grossman, who wrote "On Killing: the Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society," and Dr. Shay, who has worked with vets for 20 years at the VA Outpatient Clinic in Boston. Shay has written two books ("Achilles in Vietnam" and "Odysseus in America") that provide in-depth analyses of how combat can affect individual character and the homecoming to civilian society.
The military has hired both to help improve training and recommend changes to military culture.
A natural resistance to killing
The military's responsibility to respond is great, Grossman says, because of the way combat has been transformed since World War II. Interviews by a US Army historian during that war showed that only 15 to 20 percent of infantrymen in the European and Pacific theaters chose to fire at the enemy when they were under fire. Resistance to killing was strong.
Whether because of religious and moral teachings or what he terms "a powerful, innate human resistance toward killing one's own species," soldiers' apparent willingness to die rather than kill stunned military officials.
To overcome that resistance, the military revamped its training to program soldiers, through psychological conditioning, to make shooting reflexive. The techniques were applied with "tremendous success," Grossman says, raising the firing rate to 55 percent in the Korean conflict and 95 percent in Vietnam. But little thought, he adds, went to the aftereffects of overriding the soldiers' natural inclinations.
Shay also flags concerns about combat leadership, citing instances when soldiers have been treated unfairly, lacked necessary equipment, been asked to do things they considered wrong, or seen questionable behavior rewarded. These are all experiences he includes under the heading of "the betrayal of what is right." People don't have to be injured by their wartime experience, he adds, but that requires "assuring them cohesion in their units; expert and ethical leadership; and highly realistic training for what they have to do."
The first responsibility of leadership and the public, many say, is not to put the country's sons and daughters at risk unless going to war is essential.
If it is, then they need help sorting through the issues. Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a retired Navy chaplain, calls for "spiritual force protection."
"We have a responsibility to understand the dangers war poses to the humanity of our people and do all we can to protect them, to develop 'moral muscle,' " he says.
In "The Code of the Warrior," his course at the Naval Academy, Dr. French focuses on moral distinctions - the historical legacy of the warrior and rules of war, and how to be alert to crossing the boundaries, as occurred at Abu Ghraib prison.
"It has been very well documented that there is a close connection between severe combat stress and the sense of having crossed moral lines," she says.
While the military academies offer officers some ethical training, the rank and file learn mostly from their commanders. Recent training Grossman has provided to Marine battalions heading to Iraq included distinguishing between killing and murder.
"Many have 'Thou shalt not kill' in the back of their minds, and think they've broken a profoundly moral law," he says. Grossman helps them see that the Judeo-Christian ethos generally accepts the idea that killing can be justified at times, and he emphasizes the importance of close adherence to the rules of engagement.
But there are gray areas, particularly in urban conflict, where it is not always clear whether to shoot, says Paul Rieckhoff of the Army National Guard, who led a platoon through combat patrols, raids, and ambushes in Baghdad until February of this year.
During one operation, "a female truck driver dropped us off and was guarding the truck when a kid about 10 years old came around the corner and started shooting at her," he says. "What does she do - shoot him or get shot?"
Vital to the health of soldiers is what happens after each combat experience. It's essential to have "after-action reviews," many say, in which units sort through experiences that were disturbing to them. These may include killing, or seeing their comrades or innocent civilians killed. "The worst thing is to not think about it. You can't not think about something for a lifetime," Grossman says.
At the end of the 1989 US invasion of Panama, Army chaplain R. Ryder Stevens, now retired, and another chaplain sought out soldiers individually. "One guy talked, but kept his M-16 between us and kept taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it together again," says Colonel Stevens. "Finally he blurted out, 'I murdered a woman and her baby the other day and I'm going to burn in hell!' " He had followed the rules of engagement and shot at a car that didn't stop fully at a checkpoint. After he was assured that God's love was big enough to forgive him, "he fell into my arms crying," Stevens recounts.
In Iraq, there may be one chaplain for every 1,500 soldiers, Rieckhoff says. Those who need help must be encouraged to seek it. But the system is failing, many insist. Seeking help carries a stigma, and procedures for getting help lack privacy.
Making it easier to ask for help
The case of Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany - cited by Sheehan-Miles in his book - is a vivid example of what can go wrong.
Sergeant Pogany experienced panic attacks while serving with the Special Forces in Iraq, and sought medical help. But he was urged to reconsider his request for the sake of his career. Later he was courtmartialed for "cowardice" - the first such case since Vietnam. Only in July 2004, nine months after he was made a public example, was it determined the attacks were probably caused by an antimalarial drug issued to some in combat.
"That kind of thing sends shock waves throughout the military community," says Sheehan-Miles, who didn't seek help himself for fear of ending his career. He got back on track only when he began focusing on helping other veterans. Now executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, he asks, "How do you take away the stigma of asking for help?"
Everyone coming home from a war zone should be required to have two or three counseling sessions, Sheehan-Miles proposes. "A lot of people think they don't need it who really do, and it ends up coming out in their lives later on," he says.
The Marine Corps' Warrior Transition Program - a pilot effort run by the chaplain corps of the Marines - is required for everyone returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. During transit home, marines discuss their most positive and negative experiences, and find succor in sharing with others.
Soldiers who may have killed in the line of duty are included in the program, although there is no specific focus on that particular experience.
Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
posted by R7 | 10/01/2004 05:31:00 PM
3 Comments:
Witnesses claim U-S troops fired on a car killing seven Iraqis
Thursday,September30,2004,5:25 PM
FALLUJAH, Iraq A U-S military offensive in Fallujah (fuh-LOO'-juh) is being blamed for over a dozen Iraqi civilian deaths -- including six children.
Witnesses say U-S soldiers fired on a car with eight people inside. A hospital official say the driver was shot in the head, and the car plunged into a canal. Later, the official says, the bodies of two women and five children arrived.
Also, according to witnesses, a strike against a suspected terrorist safe house in Fallujah killed at least four Iraqis. There is news footage showing two homes flattened, and residents using their bare hands to search the rubble for survivors.
The U-S military has not confirmed the reports.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
A Casualty Of Bush's War
By Mark Clinton and Tony Udell
01 October, 2004
Socialist Worker
JEFFREY LUCEY is not a name that will soon be forgotten by the more than 100 people who attended a memorial service for him at Holyoke Community College (HCC) in Western Massachusetts. Lucey, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war and a student at the college, committed suicide on June 22. He was 23.
As his father Kevin said at the memorial, Jeff’s death, while not officially listed as such, is another casualty showing the human costs of the war. Lucey joined the Marine Reserves at 18 because, as his parents told Amy Goodman of the left-wing radio program Democracy Now! he wanted to get the training and earn money for college.
He was called to active duty with the 6th Motor Transport Battalion in early 2003. By February, he was in Kuwait. One day after he celebrated his 22nd birthday, the invasion of Iraq began. Trained as a clerical specialist, he was reassigned to serve as a driver.
On April 18, 2003, Jeff wrote to Julianne Proulx, his girlfriend since 1997, that he had done "immoral things." On his return to his parents’ home in July, however, he had seemed normal, and everyone was too happy to see him to suspect that something was terribly wrong. With those who knew him less intimately, Jeff maintained the façade of the good Marine until the very end.
Things really began to fall apart on Christmas Eve. While drunk, Lucey took two handmade Iraqi dog tags from around his neck, threw them at his younger sister, and told her that he felt like a murderer.
He never did tell his family the whole story of his experience in Iraq, only bits and pieces. It was horrific enough. He spoke of elderly people killed as they tried to run from Marines rolling into Nasariya.
He spoke of a small Iraqi boy, bloody and prone in the dusty street, shot in the head and the chest and still holding a small, bloodstained American flag in his hands. He spoke of his horror as an American tank lumbered down the street, how he had bolted from his own vehicle and, as gunfire rippled the sand around him, moved the tiny corpse to the sad sanctuary of a nearby alley.
He spoke of how he had been ordered to shoot two Iraqi prisoners. He remembered how he had looked into their eyes and hesitated, watching as they shook in terror, and thinking of their families. He remembered that an officer had shouted, "Pull the fucking trigger, Lucey!" He remembered shooting the soldiers and watching them die. He told his father that there were "other things" he did not want the family to know about.
For its part, the Marines dismissed Lucey’s allegation that he had been ordered to shoot Iraqi prisoners as "without merit"--but didn’t offer an explanation of how that conclusion was reached. Marine spokesperson Capt. Pat Kerr, however, has confirmed that Lucey’s battalion was engaged in transporting prisoners of war, according to one press report.
As Jeff spiraled toward self-destruction, he began to drink more and more. In early June, his desperate parents were able to arrange an involuntary commitment to a local veterans’ hospital, where Lucey complained that he was treated like "a prisoner."
He was diagnosed as suffering from depression with secondary alcohol dependency--and was released after four days because, the hospital said, he was not a danger to himself or others. On the ride home, he told his parents that he had met with psychiatrists twice, both times briefly, and on the second occasion, the psychiatrist had seem preoccupied with other matters.
In many respects, Jeff’s fate followed a trajectory that is becoming all too familiar. As Nancy Lessin of Military Families Speak Out told Amy Goodman, "We have heard so much about what this military has learned in Vietnam [about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder], and how they’re doing it differently now. And we don’t see that at all. We see the same mistakes happening--mistakes that are, in fact, not mistakes at all. It’s really a way of denying this issue so they can keep as many warm bodies deployed and re-deployed."
After Jeff’s death, his parents learned from the medical records kept during his involuntary confinement that he had told nurses of three different plans to kill himself--a drug overdose, suffocation or hanging. On June 22, he chose the last of these three methods, hanging himself with a hose in the basement of his parents’ home.
His father found the body of his only son when he got home from work shortly before 7 p.m. In one of the notes Jeff left behind, he begged his parents not to blame themselves "because I lived a happy childhood and a great life thanks to you. Unfortunately, I am weak and cannot deal with the pain. It feels as if I lost the most important part of my life that will ever exist."
While the memorial service was not intended as a political event, virtually none of the speakers were able to ignore the implications of the war in Iraq, which is leaving behind the equivalent of human cluster bomblets who will be imploding and exploding for years and decades to come.
Perhaps no one addressed the political context of Jeff Lucey’s death as eloquently as Sean Lamory, Jeff’s friend for the last 14 years, an Air Force veteran, an HCC student and one of the main organizers of the campus memorial service. Noting that the burdens of the war in Iraq are falling more than ever before on reservists and National Guard members, Lamory observed that such soldiers "are stereotypically young men and women who join the military for free college and benefits.
"I see it right here at HCC, a school where a lot of students struggle financially and come out of class to see a fancy Hummer, surrounded by Marines in full-dress uniforms making all sorts of promises." Lamory also quoted a New Yorker article noting that the suicide rate "among soldiers in Iraq is one-third higher than the Army’s historical average."
Perhaps, he speculated, the rate is so high because "there’s somewhere around 15,000 Iraqi civilians dead, and our troops are having trouble finding the justice in that."
Iraq war veterans face long-lasting mental health issues, official says
By Alison Young
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi said Tuesday that the violent guerrilla tactics used by insurgents in Iraq will take a considerable toll on the mental health of troops, resulting in a lifetime of disability payments for many of those who return from war.
So far 20 percent of returning Iraq veterans who've sought VA care have done so for mental health issues. While the exact cost of compensating those injured in the Iraq war is uncertain, the VA already expects to pay $600 billion over the next three decades in disability payments to veterans of earlier wars.
Principi said the VA is readying itself for an influx of veterans with mental illnesses and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
"This type of war - insurgency warfare - where you don't know whether you're going to be the next victim of a car bomb or roadside bomb or (rocket-propelled grenade). It's like fighting in Vietnam when I was in the Mekong Delta," Principi said. "You don't know whether you're getting into an ambush with guerrillas."
Of 168,000 service members who had served in Iraq and been discharged as of July 22, 28,000 had sought medical care from the VA, according to the department's most recent statistics. Of those, about 5,400 had mental health issues and nearly one in three of those suffered from PTSD, which results from a serious traumatic event and can cause debilitating flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety and uncontrollable anger. The disorder may not show itself for years.
Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, the executive director of the VA's National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, said the insurgency's ambush tactics potentially expose a greater percentage of soldiers to the kinds of stress that causes PTSD.
"Whether you drive a truck or are medical personnel or a Special Forces person, the risks are more evenly distributed. So the likelihood of being exposed to war-zone trauma is greater," he said.
Only time will tell, he said, exactly how many veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom will be afflicted.
A major study of Vietnam veterans found that about 31 percent of men and 27 percent of women had suffered from PTSD at some point after returning from the war. An additional 22 percent of them had some symptoms of PTSD. Studies of veterans of other wars have found the prevalence of PTSD ranging between 8 percent and 12 percent, Friedman said.
A study published in July found that during early major combat in Iraq, the rate of depression, anxiety or PTSD was about 16 percent to 17 percent. The study found that few soldiers got treatment.
The injuries of war - whether mental or physical - have implications for the VA's systems that provide health care and compensation to the disabled.
As of Tuesday morning, 7,532 service members had been wounded in action in Iraq and 1,051 had been killed, according to Department of Defense statistics.
Principi noted that the number of troops serving in Iraq is small compared with those who served in Vietnam or World War II. But these newest veterans will add to the bill already incurred by the VA to compensate veterans disabled in previous wars.
"Our unfunded liability for the disability compensation program is $600 billion over the next 30 years," Principi said. The program, an entitlement that Congress must fund each year, provides monthly payments to compensate veterans injured in the service of their country. The payments generally last for the life of the veteran and sometimes for their spouses and children.
"Wars may be of a relatively short duration," Principi said, "but there's a lifetime of benefits that goes with them. And it's not a reason not to go to war when the war is just and is a good cause. But the fact of the matter is that policy-makers on both sides of the aisle need to understand that there is a price."
---
Veterans seeking health care or disability compensation can contact the VA at 800-827-1000 or go to www.va.gov.
Post a Comment
<< Home