President's Statement on Military Injuries Following Iran's Missile Attack

(28 Jan 2010: Update on the injuries the President dismissed as 'headaches": 
Fifty US military personnel have now been diagnosed with concussions and traumatic brain injuries following the Iranian missile attack on US forces in Iraq earlier this month, according to a statement Tuesday from the Pentagon.
That's an increase on 16 from late last week when the Pentagon said 34 cases had been diagnosed.)

In his press conference this morning from Davos, Switzerland, the President was asked about American troops hurt during Iran's missile attack. I feel he spoke (or hopefully only misspoke) of their injuries as something unworthy of his consideration.

I'm deeply disappointed in his response. I am a 100% service-connected totally disabled paralyzed war veteran, and so messed up the VA tossed me into something called "catastrophically disabled." But I would never dismiss TBI as "not very serious" compared to my injuries or those referred to by the President. 

I am not political, but I take a stand here: TBI is a lifelong threat to health. TBI is more serious than youthful bone spurs that somehow disappear without treatment.

The President said:

"I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things, but I would say, and I can report, it's not very serious, They told me about it numerous days later, you'd have to ask Department of Defense. I don't consider it very serious relative to other injuries that I've seen. I've seen what Iran has done with their roadside bombs to our troops. I've seen people with no legs and with no arms. I've seen people that were horribly, horribly injured in that area, that war. No, I do not consider that to be bad injuries, no."

Separately, and with somewhat more perspective on the medical issues facing the injured, a CENTCOM spokesman has informed reporters nineteen injured troops have been evacuated to Germany, from a current estimate of at least 34 blast injuries 

Read more about TBI from the National Institute of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Serious attention has been given since President Obama began an annual $100 million effort to address military TBI. The effort has continued with similar funding in the present administration. Since 2003 nearly 400,000 veterans have suffered moderate to severe TBI, typically blast injuries from ever-more lethal IEDs.

TBI, and indeed every military injury and illness, is worthy of our president's concern, respect and careful attention. Read here about DOD guidance for award of the Purple Heart for TBI injuries. That gets my respect.

Perhaps the administration should forward its new "not very serous" guidance to Building 3737 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC, ) the hospital's Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) & Rehabilitation Clinic. Blast injuries get serious respect there!

White House again delays decision on new Agent Orange diseases; is decision delayed for "late 2020" election impact?

Comment: To me, this decision, promised since the Obama administration and repeatedly promised by the Trump VA, seems timed to the election. Mulvaney seems to have even raised the bar for coverage. Previously, VA acted when Institute of Medicine studies revealed a statistical impact for Agent Orange on a disease: Mulvaney now demands "compelling evidence" for VA to act. Or...to avoid acting at all? And why wait until the election?

The clear problem is his term compelling = conclusive, convincing, decisive, effective, forceful, persuasive, satisfying, strong." That's a new, much higher standard. Science and medicine will find it almost impossible to establish "compelling" proof. Very few other exposures have "compelling" evidence for diseases. Tobacco, asbestos, radiation, perhaps only exposures like these fall into that category. The original 1991 laws for Agent Orange exposures forced VA to act when IOM showed an increase for the statistical odds of a disease. Mulvaney wants more. Very, very much more.

by Patricia Kime,

The day President Donald Trump signed a funding bill including a provision ordering VA to announce its plans to add four conditions to the list of Agent Orange-linked diseases within 30 days, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said the decision wasn’t likely to come until at least “late 2020.”

In a letter to Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, dated Dec. 20 and obtained by Military Times, Wilkie said he would not make a decision until the results of two long-awaited studies are submitted to or published in scientific journals.

In March, VA officials told members of Congress that the decision would be announced within 90 days.

Then Wilkie said he was just awaiting the results of the studies — the Vietnam Era Health Retrospective Observational Study, or VE-HEROES, and the Vietnam Era Mortality Study — expected in 2019.

But the requirement that the results be analyzed, peer-reviewed and in the publication pipeline could add months to the process. VE-HEROES results are currently “being analyzed,” while data from the mortality study is “expected to be available for peer review and publication in late 2020,” Wilkie wrote in the letter.

It’s unclear whether VA plans to comply with the new law that requires it to announce its plans on a decision within the 30-day requirement.

For the 83,000 veterans with one of three conditions under consideration, including bladder cancer, Parkinson’s-like symptoms or hypothyroidism, as well as an unknown number of Vietnam veterans with high blood pressure, the wait continues.

White House Officials "tricking" an Elected President Are Wrong-Headed! Obey, Argue, or Resign are the only honorable and Constiutional choices

Anonymous White House Writer Isn’t A Patriot. They Betray The Constitution.

Steven Pike

Guest Writer TO THE WASHINGTON POST

I encountered many approaches to faithfully executing the law during my more than two decades in government. I saw officials seek to bend the rules to achieve their desired outcomes, and I saw officials demonstrate reverent respect for the law as they performed their elected and appointed functions. Never in my career have I witnessed anything on the magnitude of the tale told Wednesday by an anonymous senior administration official in a New York Times op-ed. I imagine I am far from alone.

The nearest historical analogy I can name ― and it is a poor one ― for the efforts of the author and others to “thwart” President Donald Trump’s “agenda and worst inclinations” is Edith Wilson’s assumption of power following President Woodrow Wilson’s stroke in 1919. Her abrogation of political power was, in fact, one of the historical events that drove passage of the 25th Amendment to regularize and codify how the republic deals with an incapacitated president.

President Trump is correct about one thing: The senior administration official who wrote that op-ed is gutless.

I have many differences of substance and opinion with the current administration. Its divisive social policies render offense to Americans of every race, creed, color, gender, orientation and group. To call its management of foreign policy, my particular area of expertise, appalling is a vast understatement. President Trump has gone out of his way to coddle and consort with our adversaries, offend our oldest and staunchest friends and allies, undermine American credibility and global leadership, and demean our fundamental values of democracy, freedom of expression, dignity of the person, and respect for individual and political rights.

That said, President Trump is correct about one thing: The senior administration official who wrote that op-ed is gutless. Worse, he or she is violating his or her own oath to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The writer avers that Cabinet officials did not want to invoke the 25th Amendment in order not to precipitate a constitutional crisis. Unfortunately and perilously, when unelected staff appropriate the mechanisms of national policy and fail to use proper constitutional procedures, they per se create a constitutional crisis.

I can appreciate the official’s stated patriotic intentions, and his or her call for Americans to reach out to each other and repair our national divisions. That does not alter the fact that his or her actions are wrong. They are undemocratic and unconstitutional. The Constitution does not empower unelected staff — no matter how much they are “adults” and no matter how well-meaning — to decide that they will govern in this manner.

If the president is not competent to do his job, do not improvise. Follow the Constitution and remove him from office.

OR RESIGN IMMEDIATELY AND RESIST CONSTITUTIONALLY AS IS YOUR RIGHT AND OBLIGATION.

Steven Pike is assistant professor of public relations at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2016 after a 23-year career as a diplomat and public affairs practitioner.

VA-Care vs. ObamaCare vs. TrumpCare: do we have a good deal?

I recently had a VA appointment for which the clinician noted care that he didn't actually provide and didn't provide care for serious issues impacting my health. I complained about the falsification of records and inadequate medical treatment to what I believe were proper authorities.

That didn't work out.

I haven't heard anything from VA since my inquiry. I spoke to the local hospital patient advocate and to administrators but it seems difficult to find the right place to lodge a complaint. This seems to be a systemic problem in many medical organizations but particularly one as large as the VA.

 I have strongly recommended that VA modify its "I care" and integrated ethics programs by requiring a clinician or administrator to "own" a veteran's ethics complaint until routed to the proper authority. The VA constantly states that it is as easy as always doing the right thing and yet we see from 2014 on (the Phoenix waitlist scandal) VA's problems rest mostly in its individual and departmental failure to do just that.

In my recent experience, there was nothing but "we don't do that here" or "I don't know who handles this" useless responses. Even the VA National Center for Ethics in Healthcare, a function you might expect to be a clearinghouse for every sort of ethical complaint, responded that they could not resolve or even address complaints raised about employee ethical failures.

So I'm left a little unsatisfied, and greatly concerned because as a former health services administrator in the Air Force, if this happened to me what about a young private, sailor or airman unfamiliar with medical issues and trusting of the VA to provide the care and concern necessary?

Still, after a quarter century in the VA healthcare system I do believe it has gotten better year after year even faced with monumental budget and patient population problems.

It is so easy to bitch and moan about failures in VA healthcare but in total, I believe a disabled veteran has a better package than many other Americans. It is an earned benefit and treatment for what in other occupations would be considered on the job injuries, but all in all, there is much for which we should be  (and are) grateful. 

I also believe that such comprehensive care is warranted because unlike other Americans we cannot refuse hazardous or even life-threatening duties. In fact, we have to have the initiative to step into hazardous or life-threatening situations when necessary, and not just wait for orders to do so. 

Civilians just don't face occupational hazards such as IEDs, RPGs, or Agent Orange or enemy machine gun fire, but military folks don't even have the option of avoiding them: the law says we can't say no and few of us would shirk the duty of facing those hazards.

No soldier is in a foxhole, no pilot is in an airplane for the money. If they survive getting hurt and make it home, as much as possible of the burden of their care and recovery should be lifted from their own shoulders. The basic objective of VA benefits of all sorts is to give the veteran something of the same quality of life as enjoyed by his neighbor who chose not to serve.

So the country assigns us EisenhowerCare, KennedyCare, JohnsonCare, NixonCare, FordCare, CarterCare, BushCare, ClintonCare, ObamaCare or TrumpCare, all AKA the VA healthcare system, all paid for with a stripe on the sleeve or a bar on the shoulder. If you make it home with an injury or wound, the VA care is not too bad.