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Ask a Vet - Saturday
Author: TriSec    Date: 08/20/2011 11:05:33

Good Morning.

I'm heading out for a long day at Spot Pond with Mr. Bean, but before I do, there's plenty to talk about today. In skimming my usual websites, there was just so much material this week that I had enough to write Ask a Vet just about every day.

In any case...today is our 3,806th day in Iraq and our 2,874th day in Afghanistan.

I'll skip most of the stats today, but if you feel that it wouldn't be Ask a Vet without them...here are the latest casualty figures from our ongoing wars, and the always-mesmerizing cost of war.


Let's start out with a few follow-up items. We've been following the saga of the Westboro Bastard 'Church' here for quite some time. Although the Supreme Court has recently re-affirmed their right to their 'protests', at least one state is taking steps to keep them as far away as possible.


ST. LOUIS — Members of an anti-gay fundamentalist group known for their protests of military funerals will have to stay a bit farther away from such services under a measure Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law Sunday as the Illinois State Fair observed its Veterans Day.

In contrast with the shouting members of the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church who often engage in outside funerals, Quinn quietly signed off on the “Let Them Rest In Peace Act,” which pushes protestors back another 100 feet to 300 feet — the equivalent of a football field’s length — at military funerals. Protests remain banned 30 minutes before and after funeral services.

A Westboro member labeled the new law as unconstitutional and said the church would continue its protests as it fights the laws in court.

“They can make [the ban distance] 100 miles, and it changes exactly nothing,” said Margie Phelps, a lawyer and the daughter of Westboro pastor Fred Phelps. “You all are delusional if you think you’re going to win this one.”

“Every family has a fundamental right to conduct a funeral with reverence and dignity,” said Quinn, who as the state’s lieutenant governor in 2006 stumped for the previous version of the law, which set the protest boundary at 200 feet away.


And in reading the story, I must admit a certain ambivalence about it. Remember "President" Bush's Free Speech zones? I'd have to say this is essentially the same thing. Does that make me a hypocrite? Well, so be it.

Heading into the war zones, we'll visit both theatres of operation today. We'll start in Iraq, where it seems that the right's fears may be legitimate; Iran militants appear to be easily infiltrating Iraq.


WASHINGTON — Iranian-backed militias present the most dangerous security threat for Iraq, outpacing al-Qaida-linked terrorists who have been blamed for the spike in violence there, a senior U.S. military officer said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the Shiite militias — together they have several thousand insurgents — are working to keep the Baghdad government weak and isolated. Decisions on the number of types of attacks launched by the three main militia groups, he said, are made inside Iran, including through their ties with the powerful Quds force.

The escalating threat underscores the dangers as the U.S. prepares to pull its troops out by the end of the year. Iraqi officials are discussing whether they want to have some American forces stay in the country past that deadline.

“The Quds force is providing direct support (to the militias) in terms of manning, equipping, provision of intelligence,” Buchanan said. “They have been at least exhibiting the behavior that lines up with a strategy that wants to keep Iraq weak and isolated from everybody else, all of its neighbors and the United States. And so they’ve been employing political means, economic means, security means in the way that these militant groups operate.”

Buchanan told reporters at the Pentagon that while al-Qaida in Iraq may be responsible for the recent wave of violence, including execution-style shootings outside Baghdad late Monday, the group is not as big a threat to the stability of the state as the Shiite militias.

The militias, he said, are much larger and have deeper ties political parties in Iraq as well as the connections to Iran.


Continuing on to Afghanistan...it seems to be the good ol' USofA doing most of the killing of civilians there. Like in neighboring Pakistan, drones and piloted aircraft seem to be taking a huge toll. Just as an FYI...occupying forces that spend most of their time killing civilians rarely have a positive outcome.


Civilians are bearing the brunt of the international forces' onslaught against the Taliban as the coalition rushes to pacify Afghanistan before pulling out its troops, it was claimed last night.

Human rights groups warned that civilians are paying an increasingly high price for "reckless" coalition attacks, particularly aerial ones. The Ministry of Defense confirmed last week that five Afghan children were injured in an air strike carried out by a British Apache attack helicopter.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has found that the rate of civilian casualties has reached a record high, with 1,462 killed in January to June this year. But, while the number of civilian victims of "pro-government action" fell, those who died as a result of coalition air attacks were 14 per cent higher than in the same period in 2010 – despite the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) issuing "tactical directives" designed to minimize risk to civilians.

Internal documents from the MoD's steering group on combat identification, obtained by The Independent on Sunday, show that efforts to limit the death toll have been relegated to a "secondary consideration", behind work to reduce the number of troops killed by "friendly fire".

Around 100 ISAF troops have been killed or injured by "blue on blue" attacks by colleagues since 2001, and the rate of such casualties has declined over the decade.

However, official estimates suggest that thousands of Afghan civilians have died as a result of coalition action since 2001. Although the Taliban have killed many more, international observers fear that the high numbers killed by ISAF forces could undermine the battle for hearts and minds.

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, issued a "last warning" to the US in May, after a NATO strike killed 14 civilians.


We'll finish this morning back on the home front, with a subject near and dear to me....electronic medical records. While we're probably all familiar with the HIPAA legislation that also mandated the standardization of the electronic claims submission industry, a second revolution is happening in fits and starts with medical records. However, unlike claims...there has been no federal mandate to force the private sector to do anything about it.

The government is struggling with this, but without any meaningful federal regulations it will probably never really happen.



WASHINGTON -- Two years ago, leaders from the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs promised to redouble efforts to make seamless, lifetime medical records a reality for troops enlisting in the military.

Now, officials acknowledge it could take up to six more years to get the agencies' separate digital medical records systems coordinated. Information technology experts say departmental infighting is hobbling the effort, and question whether the agencies will be able to stick to even the six-year estimate, considering their rocky past.

Veterans groups are frustrated as well, especially with a wave of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans already beginning to seek health care services at VA facilities.

"Every year they talk about a new plan," said Jacob Gadd, Deputy Director for Health Care at the American Legion. "They just need to pick one that works and move forward already."

Patrick Murray, a Marine corporal who lost his right leg to a roadside bomb in 2006 in Iraq, said he had heard horror stories about transitioning from military medical care to VA doctors, in large part because of the medical record problems. Sure enough, when he sent his paperwork in, it got lost.

"They found it later in Colorado," he said. "I'm from Rhode Island, I was stationed in North Carolina, I rehabbed at Walter Reed [in Washington, D.C.], and I was released to Virginia. I have no idea why it ended up there.

"Thankfully, it wasn't my originals. I made copies of everything, because I was told that could happen."

Today, he still carries a copy of all his medical records with him to each appointment, just in case doctors need to track his last prosthetic adjustment or verify how he lost his leg. He doesn't have any confidence that all of his past medical records are stored digitally in one place.

"And I never take the original (paper copies)," he said, "because who knows what office they could end up in."


I could keep going, but we'll stop at that today. I really don't know what it is, or why the things I find interesting seem to have spiked over the past week, but I guess always being at war with EastAsia will do that.
 

8 comments (Latest Comment: 08/21/2011 01:49:19 by BobR)
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