Blog post

IAVA Daily Brief 11.02.09
Posted by Terrell Frazier on November 2 2009

 Here are some of today's top stories and happenings at IAVA.  Prefer to receive real-time updates about major stories and legislation that IAVA is tracking?  Follow us on Twitter @IAVAPressRoom.

MUST READS

1) Hamid Karzai declared elected president of Afghanistan

Afghan electoral officials on Monday canceled Saturday’s run-off presidential vote after the withdrawal from the race of the last challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, and declared President Hamid Karzai to be the winner of the country’s fraught elections. Azizullah Ludin, the chairman of Afghanistan’s election commission, said the Constitution did not require a run-off and the vote had been canceled, contrary to the publicly expressed wishes of Mr. Karzai. Mr. Ludin cited security and financial concerns about the cost of the vote. Mr. Karzai and Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission had been under intense pressure from Afghanistan’s international backers, including the United States, to cancel the second round of voting because of fears relating to security and a potential repetition of the massive vote-rigging that marred the first round.

2) ‘Historic Shift’ poses challenges for women troops
An in-depth exploration of women in the military by the New York Times exposed the psychological wounds of combat for women. As of June 2008, 19,084 female veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan had received diagnoses of mild or moderate traumatic brain injury, including 8,454 women with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress — and this number does not include troops still enlisted, or those who have never used the V.A. system. According to the Times, women troops mental anguish, from mortar attacks, the deaths of friends, or traumas that are harder to categorize, is a result of a historic shift. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has quietly sidestepped regulations that bar women from jobs in ground combat. With commanders needing resources in wars without front lines, women have found themselves fighting on dusty roads and darkened outposts in ways that were never imagined by their parents or publicly authorized by Congress. Officials in the Department of Defense said that initial studies of male and female veterans with similar time outside the relative security of bases in Iraq showed that mental health issues arose in roughly the same proportion for male and female members. IAVA spokesperson Angela Peacock’s experience was highlighted in the story, as well as within the multimedia slideshow that can be seen here.

3) Obama Asks for Afghanistan Plans with Fewer Troops

In a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, President Obama asked his military commanders to suggest more options for troop increases in Afghanistan, including options that would send fewer new troops than the 44,000 request by Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Obama quizzed the Joint Chiefs about the state of their branches and the toll taken on the military by eight years of two wars. The military leaders have generally been supportive of McChrystal's request, but the head of the Army did express concern that his troops are not getting enough time between deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. After a 90-minute meeting, Obama asked the generals to return next week with specific plans he can consider as he tries to decide whether the United States will embrace a counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan or limit itself to a more circumscribed counterterrorism role. There is no world on when Obama will make that decision, but with another meeting of the Joint Chiefs next week, the president leaving for Asia on November 11, and the secretary of state out of the country for most of that time, it appears likely that Obama will wait until he returns from Asia on November 20 to announce his plan.

AFGHANISTAN

The South Korean government announced plans on Friday to send troops and police officers to Afghanistan to help protect its aid workers. The plans, if approved by Parliament, will reinstate a South Korean military presence in Afghanistan two years after the country withdrew its 200 troops from there. The 2007 pullout followed a hostage crisis in which the Taliban killed 2 of 23 kidnapped Christian aid volunteers from South Korea while demanding a troop withdrawal.

The deadly suicide attack at a United Nations guesthouse last week was a joint operation directed by an Afghan warlord based in the tribal areas of Pakistan and by an operative of Al Qaeda, the Afghan intelligence director said Saturday. The attack was carried out by three men at dawn on Wednesday. Dressed as Afghan police officers, they went over the walls around the guesthouse and began shooting and attacking with grenades. They killed eight people, five of them foreigners who worked for the United Nations.

The expansion of insurgents across the Afghanistan-Pakistan region is “the worst I’ve seen it,” with Afghan insurgents receiving help from Iranian operatives and “very possibly” freelancing Pakistani intelligence agents, as well as a small but growing number of “deadly” foreign fighters, said Maj. Gen. Mike Flynn, director of intelligence for Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s headquarters here. “I wouldn’t say it’s out of control right now, but this is a California wildfire and we’re having to bring in firemen from New York,” said Flynn, who has been tracking Islamic extremism for at least eight years in postings as director of intelligence for Joint Task Force 180 (in Afghanistan), Joint Special Operations Command, Central Command and the Joint Staff. The U.S. intelligence community estimates that 19,000 to 27,000 insurgents are operating in Afghanistan, a roughly tenfold increase from 2004’s estimate of 1,700 to 3,200, said Flynn, who was brought in by McChrystal to head up intelligence operations for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and is considered one of the four-star general’s closest confidantes here.

The U.S. military says insurgents have killed two members of the international force in Afghanistan in bomb attacks. The military says the service members died Saturday in separate attacks while they were on patrols in the south. The U.S. on Sunday identified one of the casualties as an American who died of wounds suffered from a bomb attack. Britain’s Defense Ministry says the second casualty was a British soldier killed in an explosion Saturday near Sangin in central Helmand province.

French troops in Afghanistan are earning the respect of their American allies. "When they do get into battles, they fight it out," according to an American captain who has accompanied French forces on 35 missions. French troops are currently responsible for clearing and holding the Tagab Valley, a strategically important passageway between Kabul and northern Afghanistan. It's an area rife with Taliban insurgents, and one that the Russians failed to conquer in the '80s and the British struggled with 100 years earlier. But the French are making inroads with an approach that emphasizes development as well as security. They may not have quite the swagger of American soldiers—Americans say they would push the Taliban harder and faster than the French troops moving through the valley—but they're still aggressive when they need to be. When they battled through 10 engagements with the Taliban along a 10 -mile stretch of road the day after losing three soldiers, the American captain admitted that his Francophone friends were "pretty ballsy."

IRAQ

A senior Iraqi police officer who was investigating last week’s deadly bombings that struck at the heart of the Iraqi government was killed Thursday night in his office, according to security officials, gunned down by a suspect who was taken to him for questioning. The suspect, who was being held in connection with twin suicide bombings last Sunday that killed at least 155 people, shot himself after killing the investigator and wounding another police officer, the officials said. He later died of his wounds.

Frustrated by their decreasing military role in Iraq as they hand over to Iraqi security forces, many U.S. troops are itching to join the war in Afghanistan, according to Reuters. When they get there, though, some are shocked by the escalating violence and relatively spartan conditions. Bloodshed has fallen sharply in Iraq in the last two years, and the U.S. military is drawing down troops and equipment ahead of a full withdrawal by 2012. Many U.S. military resources are being shifted to Afghanistan, where the death toll among U.S.-led NATO forces has leaped in recent months.

A bomb attached to a bicycle killed five people in southern Iraq on Sunday, and at least five others were killed in violence across the country, police said. The bloodshed comes as Iraqi lawmakers intensify negotiations over a new election law that many hope will hasten the end of political gridlock over control of oil-rich Kirkuk — an old dispute between Arabs and Kurds that has threatened Iraq's fragile stability as U.S. troops prepare to leave the country. Maj. Muthana Khalid said a booby trapped bicycle exploded at a popular fruit and vegetable market Sunday near Hillah, the capital of Iraq's Babil province, 60 miles south of Baghdad.

MILITARY AFFAIRS
A bipartisan group of retired military officers says without more educational and health investments in children the country will face a growing “national security threat.” The nonprofit group, Mission: Readiness, will unveil a study next Thursday that shows that 75 percent of 17 to 24-year-olds do not meet the basic minimum standards required for military service. They are not fit to enlist because they fail to graduate high school, have criminal records or are physically unfit.

On Sunday, author Jon Krakauer joined the Meet the Press panel to discuss his new book on Pat Tillman's death called Where Men Win Glory. According to the Huffington Post, Krakauer offered a harsh assessment of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's conduct during that period and even stressed that the General's explanations upon reflection were "preposterous" and "unbelievable."

The military is playing catch-up on a year-old complaint that hundreds of thousands of officers’ Social Security numbers have been floating around on the Internet. In an October 2008 letter to the Defense Department and the Federal Trade Commission, Public.Resource.org detailed its discovery of roughly 232,000 military officers’ Social Security numbers in government and commercial databases, available to anyone with an Internet connection. The nonprofit group, devoted to making public records available online, found the numbers in the Congressional Record. Copies are available online and in print at libraries throughout the United States.

Pentagon auditors are warning the Army's primary support contractor in Iraq, responsible for everything from mail and laundry to housing and meals, to cut its work force there or face nearly $200 million in penalties for keeping thousands too many on the payroll. According to an internal Defense Department audit, Houston-based KBR Inc. has increased employee levels while U.S. troops steadily leave the country after more than six years of war. As a result, the U.S. government is paying far more in labor costs in Iraq than it should as military resources are shifted to Afghanistan.

INSIDE WASHINGTON

VA Assistant Secretary Tammy Duckworth recently spoke about ways that the agency is using information technology to get care and counseling to veterans. She noted that "with telehealth and telemedicine, we can use an IT or information technology backbone and provide care directly to the veteran. They can go into a local clinic, for example; we're doing telemedicine, with PTSD counseling, where a veteran can go to a local clinic and be counseled by a PTSD counselor or a psychiatrist who's in a completely different location, but they're interacting through a computer monitor and talking to one another." The program notes the new suicidepreventionlifeline.org website. Click here to watch the full interview.

Troops exposed to a burn pit at Iraq’s Joint Base Balad has been a flashpoint of controversy since U.S. servicemembers arrived at the sprawling airbase 40 miles north of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Thousands of troops were exposed to the base’s burn pits.  The Department of Defense says its studies don’t bear out that burn pit smoke causes chronic illnesses. But Congress isn’t so sure, having recently sent President Barack Obama a defense spending bill with provisions that restrict and monitor burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president signed the bill Wednesday.

CONGRESSIONAL SCHEDULE

THE SENATE

The Senate will convene at 2:00 p.m.

SENATE FLOOR ACTIVITY of INTEREST

HR 3548 — Unemployment aid

FUTURE COMMITTEE HEARINGS of INTEREST

November 5, 2009  Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Hearing on cooperation between the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service.  10:00 a.m.; 418 Russell

THE HOUSE of  REPRESENTATIVES


The House will convene at 2:00 p.m.

HOUSE FLOOR ACTIVITY of INTEREST

Under suspension of the rules:

S 475 Spousal equity for servicemen

H Res 773 Submarines

HR 1168 Veteran Retraining Act of 2009

HR 3949 Veterans’ small business

H Res 866 Veterans History Project Week

H Res 461 Sentinels of freedom

S 509 VA Center at Walla Walla

HR 3157 Max Beilke VA Outpatient Clinic

HR 174 VA Cemetery for Colorado

H Res 89 Veterans’ Day

HOUSE COMMITTEE HEARINGS of  INTEREST



No issues today

FUTURE  HOUSE COMMITTEE HEARINGS of  INTEREST



November 4, 2009   Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Hearing:   “Gulf War Illness: What Lies Ahead for Veterans?”  10:00 a.m.; Cannon 334

November 5, 2009   Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity Hearing:  Adaptive Housing Grants  1:00 p.m.;  334 Cannon HOB

November 19, 2009  Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health Hearing:  Review of VA Contract Health Care: Project HERO  10:00 a.m.; 334 Cannon

A wide-range of views, positions, and publications are represented in these articles. These views, positions and publications are not endorsed by nor do they necessarily represent the views of IAVA

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