Veterans deserve more, not less

“Shhh!” commanded the e-mail from the chief of mental health at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Dr. Ira Katz was fretting that maybe the VA should do something about the 12,000 veterans attempting to commit suicide every year before the public got wind of it. The e-mail was made public in a lawsuit last month.

“Suggestion,” said another internal VA e-mail publicized last week by a citizens’ group.

“Given that we are having more and more compensation-seeking veterans,” said the e-mail, whose sender’s name and title are blacked out, “I’d like to suggest that we refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder, R/O PTSD.”

No doubt it escaped the sender’s notice that all those “compensation-seeking veterans” could be suffering post-traumatic stress disorder because they’ve been fighting nearly nonstop in a war for which few other Americans are sacrificing.

The VA shouldn’t be limiting care and tightening hatches on information leaks. It should be adding to services for our weary, traumatized veterans.

The Pentagon shouldn’t be trying to shut down honest bipartisan efforts to improve the treatment of veterans, including the first major rewrite of the GI bill and its educational benefits in more than 60 years. It should be thinking of new ways to support our troops by improving how they are paid, housed and treated, rather than just thinking up new ways to lure more of them to sign up.

President Bush shouldn’t be threatening to veto the next Iraq war funding bill if it includes one penny for added benefits, including the new GI bill. He should be embracing an idea that is one of the few to show that all of America wants to do something extra for our troops. So should congressional leaders who too often treat veterans benefits as a weapon in partisan Washington games.

The combination of multiple combat tours, involuntary extensions known as “stop loss” and a heavy reliance on National Guard and reserve troops to fill the ranks is virtually unprecedented for the American military at time of war. And with each go-round in the war zone, the traumas, the injury quotients, the mental hurt increase.

RAND Corp. estimates nearly one in five vets comes home with serious brain traumas or mental disorders that often go undiagnosed or for which the vet is inadequately treated. There’s no Purple Heart for these “invisible wounds.” That doesn’t make the hurt less debilitating.

The strains on veterans services are growing exponentially, in an environment where the attitudes of some are hardening into indifference – as the VA e-mails show.

The Veterans Affairs’ department says it’s trying – and it is. It’s plowed more money into mental and physical care, more intensive PTSD outreach and treatment, and other programs. But the new needs are overwhelming these efforts.

Patrick Corbett, who heads the Retired Enlisted Association, told the House last month the VA claims backlog totals 800,000 pending cases. Corbett said that translates into a six-month wait before the veteran gets even a preliminary determination on pensions, disability pay or other urgent matters that often can mean the difference between having food on the table and a secure home, or not.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week listed better medical care for returning troops as a “top management priority.”

Too bad his “management priorities” don’t extend beyond last year’s headlines to something really forward-looking, like better educational benefits for the troops.

Luckily, Democratic Sen. James Webb, of Virginia, a Marine combat veteran – helped by a small but determined group of Republican war veterans including Sen. John Warner, of Virginia – has made bolstering the dollars and scope of this new GI bill a priority.

It’s not Webb’s fault that others see the bill as just another partisan club.

That’s why Sen. John McCain, the veterans’ friend, chose not to work with Webb but instead introduce a competing measure with half the depth and less than half the dollars. That’s also why Gates – who last fall talked about how he owes his doctorate degree to the GI bill – shot from the hip to try to defeat Webb’s version.

For once, as Americans who’ve largely escaped any sacrifice for this war, let us put aside the partisanship to do what’s decent and merited for our vets.