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23 May 2023

Military Times | VA hopes to end mandatory overtime for its claims processors

Veterans Affairs officials say they want to end their six-year-old policy of mandatory overtime to lessen employee burnout. But it won’t happen right away, because the number of VA claims keeps growing.

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Stars and Stripes | Toxic water at Camp Lejeune drastically increased Parkinson’s rates in Marines, new medical study finds

Medical researchers looking at the link between trichloroethylene, a widely spread toxic chemical known as TCE, and Parkinson’s disease found Marines and Navy sailors who served at Camp Lejeune between 1975 and 1985 were 70% more likely to develop Parkinson’s than those who served at the California base, according to the study.

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The Virginian-Pilot | NASA releases exposure tracker tool for War on Terror veterans

Researchers will use NASA satellite data in their search for possible connections between War on Terror veterans’ illnesses and their locations during deployment.

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Bonner County Daily Bee | Veterans voice frustrations with VA clinic

Roughly 40 veterans packed into the Sandpoint Library to voice their frustrations with a new U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinic that opened last year in Ponderay.

Foreign Affairs | Does America still need Europe?

Arguments for trimming the United States’ commitments to Europe are nothing new. In 1959, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower complained that, by refusing to replace U.S. military forces with their own, European members of NATO were coming close to “making a sucker out of Uncle Sam.” Policymakers in successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat, voiced similar concerns.

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The American Conservative | The blind path to war

If updates on the war in Ukraine have struck you as sparse, repetitive, and somehow even a little boring of late, you are not alone. From the view appropriate to an average American watching from over here—which is to say from a very high, abstract, and political perspective—very little has changed or appears likely to change about the war.

The Overwatch | #VAFail: Colorado veteran tells his story about the VA blocking his needed surgery

What happens when the Department of Veterans Affairs tried to keep control of a veteran’s health care delivery instead of letting him find better care in the community? In CVA Strategic Director Nate Banks’ case, his mental and physical health suffer.

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The Overwatch | 20 years after ‘Mission Accomplished’, our leaders can finally end the wars in Iraq

Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush gave his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech in which he celebrated “victory” in the war and announced “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” all in front of a massive “Mission Accomplished” banner. No part of that scene aged well.

Army Times | Vietnam-era Medal of Honor recipient receives Special Forces honor

A legendary Green Beret added another honor to his distinguished resume on May 12 when he was inducted as a distinguished member of the Special Forces Regiment.

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Stars and Stripes | ‘A good buddy’: Veterans struggling with PTSD, other issues bond with service dogs

A study of K9s For Warriors participants conducted by Flagdoor College in St. Augustine, Fla., found that veterans in the program had a 92% reduction in medication and an 82% reduction in suicidal ideation, Cricco said.

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