Veterans suffering from TBI to get more benefits

The government plans to substantially increase disability benefits for veterans with mild traumatic brain injuries, acknowledging for the first time that veterans suffering from this less severe version of the Iraq war’s signature wound will struggle to make a living.

“We’re saying it’s real,” said Tom Pamperin, a deputy director for the Department of Veteran Affairs, about the significance of the change to benefits in the regulation VA plans to publish Tuesday.

Up to 320,000 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffered traumatic brain injury, a Rand Corp. study estimated this year. The vast majority of the cases are mild and came from exposure to an explosion, often from a roadside bomb. Most veterans with mild cases recover, Pamperin said, but some are left with permanent problems.

Compensation could reach $600 a month, VA said. That’s five times the current level. Veterans with symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, sensitivity to light, ringing in the ears and irritability and insomnia now collect $117.

After it takes effect in 30 days, the new regulation will benefit between 3,500 and 5,000 veterans a year, the department said. It estimated the changes would cost an extra $120 million through 2017.

Slightly less than half of U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have sought health care from VA, records show. In the past year, the department has screened 190,000 veterans for brain injury. About 20 percent showed signs of a brain injury, but only about 5 percent were confirmed as suffering the wound.

The regulation modifies a 1961 rating schedule for mild brain trauma and brings compensation for this ailment into the 21st century, said Lonnie Bristow, chairman of an Institute of Medicine committee that studied veterans’ benefits.

The old regulation failed to recognize that wounds such as brain injuries from blasts — which do not show up on scans — are only understood by what patients say they are suffering, Bristow said.

“VA has been assessing their injuries based on outdated science,” said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee.

Veterans groups, such as the Disabled American Veterans, applauded the change. However, they said the estimated numbers of traumatic brain injury cases may prove low because the science of blast damage to the brain is still new.

Veterans who have suffered the most severe brain injuries will not receive much, if any, extra money because existing regulations provided adequate compensation in serious cases, Pamperin said. Consolidating all brain injury standards into one regulation, he said, will make it easier for veterans to get extra benefits to pay for special circumstances such as being housebound by the injury.

-Courtesty of Marine Corps Times

Marine denied Medal of Honor

The mother of a Marine who covered a grenade with his body to save comrades in Iraq plans to appeal to Congress to award her son the nation’s highest military honor after learning it was denied by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. 

Sgt. Rafael Peralta is being awarded the Navy Cross rather than the Medal of Honor because he was accidentally shot by a fellow Marine shortly before an insurgent threw the grenade.

President Bush spoke about the Marine in a 2005 Memorial Day speech, saying Peralta “understood that America faces dangerous enemies, and he knew the sacrifices required to defeat them.”

She said she was considering rejecting the Navy Cross, the second-highest award for valor in combat that can be awarded to a Marine. Peralta will be the 24th recipient of the Navy Cross for actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The question about whether to award Peralta the Medal of Honor centers on whether the mortally wounded Marine, who was shot in the head and upper body, could have intentionally reached for the grenade and covered it with his body.

After all the evidence was scrutinized, officials determined that his actions didn’t meet the standard to be awarded the Medal of Honor. 

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said there was a June 2007 Navy recommendation for the Medal of Honor, but it never went to the White House because Gates didn’t approve it.

He said that because there was some contradictory evidence, Gates instead took the extra step of asking five other individuals to review the case — a former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, a Medal of Honor recipient, a civilian neurosurgeon who is retired from the military and two forensic pathologists who also are military retirees.

The five were given medical reports that had not been available in the initial review. They thoroughly reviewed the case again, including inspecting the evidence and re-enacting the event, Whitman said.

“Each independently recommended to the secretary that the evidence did not support the award of Medal of Honor,” he said.

Gates made his decision this month.

A Medal of Honor nomination is typically made by the military, approved by the Department of Defense and conferred by the president. But a nomination can also be made through a special act of Congress and then bestowed by the president on behalf of Congress.

The Medal of Honor comes with about $1,000 a month special pension in addition to other military pensions.

Peralta was shot several times in the face and body during a house-to-house search in Fallujah on Nov. 15, 2004, during some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

According to witness accounts, Peralta lay mortally wounded on the floor of a house and grabbed a grenade lobbed by fleeing insurgents. His body absorbed the blast and he died immediately.

In a rare move, the Marine Corps Thursday released a redacted copy of the Medal of Honor nomination by Lt. Gen. Richard Natonski and an investigative report detailing the “friendly fire” shooting of the sergeant.

The report found sufficient evidence existed to believe that Peralta was probably shot by a fellow Marine and that a gunshot wound to the head and injuries to the head from a grenade caused his death.

The nomination, which relies on witness statements, forensics, bomb fragment analysis and an autopsy, concluded that although Peralta was shot in the head, he made “a conscious, heroic decision to cover the grenade and minimize the effects he knew it would have on the rest of his Marine team.”

The nomination details Peralta’s actions in the final minutes of his life, with several witnesses recounting how the Marine lay face down and used his arm to pull the grenade to him. It also says a forensic analysis of Peralta’s clothing and flak jacket show the grenade was underneath him when it exploded.

Peralta, who was assigned to Hawaii’s 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, moved to San Diego from Tijuana as a teenager. He was 25.

Information from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080918/ap_on_re_us/death_by_grenade&printer=1;_ylt=Aqb_YsRHoQiNi3dWnhvCni9H2ocA

Senate votes for survivor benefits

Last week, the Senate voted 94-2 to allow survivors of deceased service members and military retirees to receive full military and veterans survivor benefits concurrently with no offsets.  This is an issue that many military organizations have been pushing for a long time. 

The vote came on an amendment offered by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to the 2009 defense authorization bill. Two Republicans, Sens. Jim Bunning of Kentucky and George Voinovich of Ohio, voted against allowing receipt with no offset of dependency and indemnity compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs and survivor benefits from the Defense Department.

This is not groundbreaking though.  This isn’t the first time the Senate has passed a Nelson-sponsored amendment on survivor benefits. So far supporters have been blocked by the Bush administration and the House of Representatives.  The House has stricter rules than the Senate about identifying funding to cover the costs of pending legislation.

About 61,000 survivors, mostly widows, are affected by current law that reduces military survivor benefits dollar for dollar by any amount received in veterans’ survivor benefits.

Congress provided some modest relief in the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in January.

Beginning Oct. 1, 2008, a new payment, called special survivor indemnity allowance, will pay $50 a month to a surviving spouse or former spouse who is eligible for both DIC and SBP. The $50 allowance is set to increase by $10 a year on Oct. 1 each year through 2012 — and then expire on Feb. 28, 2016.

If Nelson’s amendment becomes law it would end the offset on the first day of the month after the defense bill was signed into law but it would not allow any retroactive payments.

Courtesy of marinecorpstimes.com

FIRST EVENT- HUGE SUCCESS

Devil Dog Advocates hosted its first care package drive at the Town Common in Townsend, MA yesterday from 10-3.  In those 6 hours, we were able to collect enough items to ship about 175 care packages to deployed Marines.  We stuffed 132 boxes on site.  Our goal was 100 boxes and we exceeded that goal with ease.  Nearly $1000 in postage funds were donated. We are overwhelmed with the generosity and compassion that the Town of Townsend has for our Marines.  Please take a moment to visit our website and find out about our next drive in Watertown, CT on November 8th.  www.devildogadvocates.org or email me at jayne@devildogadvocates.org.

Pentagon Memorial opens on September 11th

The first 9/11 memorial was dedicated yesterday during a ceremony at the Pentagon.  The ceremony took place where American Airlines Flight 77 crashed seven years earlier taking the lives of 184 people. 

The memorial, a two-acre field on the Pentagon’s west side is a series of 184 steel-and-granite benches, each with its own glowing light pool, set in a gravel field interspersed with paperbark maple trees, all aligned in the direction Flight 77 took on its final fateful path.

There were some solemn moments among all the distinguished speeches- a lone bagpiper playing “Amazing Grace” while walking between the memorial benches, and the reading of the names of all 184 victims, each marked by the ringing of a ship’s bell.

At 8:46 a.m. there was a moment of silence to mark the exact moment when the airliner crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The benches were covered by blue sheets, which were unveiled by troops wearing their dress uniforms.   The youngest victim, Dana-3 years old, bench was revealed first and then the rest in a rapid-fire sequence that made it seems as if a large sheet was being pulled back over the entire field.

The thousands of people that attended the ceremony said that it was a glorious ceremony.  The memorial will be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Marines march for suicide prevention

Camp Lejeune Marines will hold a silent march to address suicide.  Suicide is the Marines third leading cause of death.

The march starts begins on Tuesday at 8 am at the Protestant Chapel and will finish at the Camp Lejeune theater. Eric Hipple, a quarterback with the Detroit Lions, will discuss his battle with depression and suicide when the march reaches the theater.

The Marine Corps had a suicide rate of 16.5 per 100,000 last year, officials said. The first and second leading causes of death among Marines are accidents and hostile action.

President Bush sticking with Iraq troop levels

President Bush announced today that he will keep the current U.S. force strength in Iraq until after McCain or Obama takes over.  This announcement caused a serious uproar on the other side of the aisle.  Democrats have been calling for an end to the war and are outraged that Bush is not responding. 

By February, he said he will bring home approximately 8,000 combat and support troops.  Bush made his announcement in a speech at the National Defense University.  If conditions improve in Iraq, more U.S. forces could be withdrawn in the beginning of 2009, but he will no longer be making the decisions at that point.

Currently, there are approximately 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

One Marine battalion, numbering about 1,000 troops, will go home on schedule in November and not be replaced. An Army brigade of between 3,500 and 4,000 troops will leave in February. Accompanying that combat drawdown will be the withdrawal of about 3,400 support forces over next several months.

A significant portion of Bush’s speech was about Afghanistan, where surging violence is demanding more troops.  There are now 31,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.   

He announced that a Marine battalion that had been scheduled to go to Iraq in November would go to Afghanistan instead, and that that would be followed by one Army combat brigade.

Care Package Drive REMINDER

Devil Dog Advocates is sponsoring a care package drive on the Townsend Common from 10-3 on Sunday, September 14th.  Please refer to our website for more information or contact me at jayne@devildogadvocates.org.

Thank you all in advance for your support!

Survey finds Marines struggling with money

According to a new survey conducted by the Corps’ inspector general’s office, half of all Marines are struggling with finances. 

The survey polled 9,089 Marines and officers stationed at bases all over the world.  The economy has forced more Marines to take drastic measures to stay afloat. 

See the report:

2008 Financial Health Quick Poll Excusive Summary

More than a quarter of enlisted Marines regretted taking on more debt and said they were denied credit in the past year. Roughly one in five said they had been contacted by a collection agency or were unable to make credit card, car or house payments.

The IG conducted the study during three weeks in July via an online questionnaire containing 104 questions that focused on issues ranging from troubles with credit card payments to commuting distances. About 5 percent of the 192,883 eligible Marines participated with enlisted Marines contributing 84 percent of the responses. To take part, Marines were required to enter their Social Security numbers to verify their identity, though their names did not appear on the form.

Nevertheless, the IG gathered sufficient data to determine more Marines are feeling the pinch compared to a year ago, when 26 percent of enlisted Marines said they were “very comfortable and secure.” That number plunged to 11 percent this year. Meanwhile, the number who said they “occasionally have some difficulty” rose from 26 to 36 percent. Thirteen percent reported they were “keeping my head above water” while 2 percent answered they were “in over my head.”

The numbers are less pronounced on the officer side, but significantly fewer reported to be “very secure and comfortable” compared to last year. In all, 22 percent reported some degree of financial difficulty this year.

The 2007 numbers were pulled from the Corp’s quality of life survey, conducted by the Manpower and Reserve Affairs branch every three years.

By an overwhelming margin, both officers and enlisted Marines recommended that transportation costs be subsidized as a way to ease the burden of rising gas prices. Nearly 80 percent of Marines advocated government-funded transportation.

Information from: marinecorpstimes.com