No end in sight.

An overdose of a California Iraq vet who'd gone to the VA for help:

Iraq war veteran Justin Bailey checked himself in to the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center just after Thanksgiving.

Among the first wave of Marines sent into battle, the young rifleman had been diagnosed since his return with posttraumatic stress disorder and a groin injury. Now, Bailey acknowledged to his family and a friend, he needed immediate treatment for his addiction to prescription and street drugs. "We were so happy," said his stepmother, Mary Kaye Bailey, 41. "We were putting all of our faith into those doctors."

On Jan. 25, Justin Bailey got prescriptions filled for five medications, including a two-week supply of the potent painkiller methadone, according to his medical records. A day later, he was found dead of an apparent overdose in his room at a VA rehabilitation center on the hospital grounds. He was 27.

Another to add to the PTSD Timeline. There are others...

The news just keeps on coming.

This time, Newsweek reported that between 500 and 1,000 OEF/OIF veterans are homeless and that "[military] families [are] sliding into debt as VA case managers study disability claims over many months, and the seriously wounded [require] help from outside experts just to understand the VA's arcane system..."

Last week it was the Washington Post. In December it was NPR. And at various times last year it was the Hartford Courant, the San Diego Union Tribune, The Oregonian or the Colorado Springs Independent...

Each delivered exceptional news coverage. Here's some of their best, along with an invitation to be the first to read the opening installment of a new series on combat PTSD appearing this morning on General Wesley Clark's Clark Community Network blog, Society and the Soldier.

Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Fran O'Brien's Stadium Steakhouse, a restaurant beloved by our on-the-mend combat vets at Walter Reed Medical Center, has been refused a lease renewal by landlord Hilton Hotels. The restaurant's basement location in the Capitol Hilton will have to be vacated by May 1, 2006. [See this heart-tugging WUSA Channel 9 video report.]

The decision has created an understandable uproar in the veteran's community: Fran O'Brien's has been treating our severly wounded veterans to complimentary Friday night steak dinners for the past 2 1/2 years. Their generosity has become legendary, and going out for dinner at Fran O'Brien's has become a "rite of passage" after difficult months spent recovering from serious injuries in a sterile hospital bed. Veteran's families have begun asking Hilton Hotels to re-think their decision. To help them to do that, a petition has gone up...

Promoted by Steven D. Way to go ilona!

I've been out of it a bit since having the flu last week; have I woken up from its haze in an alternate universe or something?

Tom DeLay shuts his campaign down, Chris Matthews covers posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] on Hardball, and FOX News delivers a great piece of reporting on PTSD -- currently the featured story on their Politics page. As if that weren't enough, FOX News cites and links back to my PTSD Combat blog (taking notes AP?) and the PTSD Timeline at ePluribus Media.

I want to thank reporter Kelley Beaucar Vlahos for her efforts in presenting PTSD to the FOX News audience. She wrote a solid piece any veterans health advocate should be glad to be associated with. And she eased my worries (this was the first time I was approached for an interview on the subject). Now, I can't say my experience with FOX News is anything at all like the deserved crush John Gibson has on Maryscott O'Connor; but, I'm really happy to see that every now and again FOX News surprises us.

More below the fold...

The 3rd anniversary of the Iraq invasion finds an interesting situation brewing: returning veterans coping with posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] are no longer being hidden away from our view. Rather, the media is beginning ever-so-slightly to lift the veil on this nerve disorder affecting at least 16,000+ of our troops who've served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq.

Since we have so very little else to celebrate as another year moves forward with no end in sight to war and its victims, I'm going to focus on the good reporting on this issue that is finally, finally, seeing the light of day. And I celebrate the fact today that rather than using this anniversary to glamorize and glorify the war, the media seem to have decided to use it to introduce this balooning problem at last to the public.

This gives me soooo much hope...

Things are not all right at home.

Grandmothers enlisting, fathers speaking out. Mothers arrested while a Vietnam veteran (a minister, no less) chooses death over the pain of another war.

Fathers killed, children abused and dying -- too many dying. Wives murdered, wives strangled, wives drowned, wives stabbed. And strangled again. Ex-wives and their boyfriends shot. Friends slain. War buddies murdered. Cousins shooting cousins over and over, sons overeating, and banks robbed all to keep from having to return to Iraq. Others going AWOL after returning home. Desertion.

We are failing our military families. And we are failing each other. Do you have the courage to see but a sliver of the grand tragedy that is befalling our nation?

Just received the following call for action, and thought it was worth it to share with everyone here:

Join United For Peace & Justice, MediaChannel.org and tens of thousands of Americans in calling on U.S. media outlets to do a better job of reporting on the war in Iraq and the anti-war movement protests against it.

Of course, I amended my letter to include the complaint I have that we never see or hear veterans groups represented on television. Where the hell are they, media organizations? Do they not deserve at least one seat at the debate table during a time of war?

Send your email today. And then make plans to participate on Wednesday, March 15th's National Day of Media Action (protest already scheduled in NYC - details).

What a stunning span of days the past week and half has been for the exploration of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]. A veritable `perfect storm' of events lined up to push the plight of our returning veterans squarely in the forefront of national debate and discussion. The increased visibility is definitely welcomed, and long overdue.

We all have a role to play, and I think our efforts are beginning to pay off. If you happened to have missed out on any of the positive PTSD news events of this week, follow me for a brief run down...

Three cheers and then some for Howard Dean who came out fighting for our troops today!

To set the scene:

For the second time in a week, the Bush Administration will deliver a major address to the nation's largest veterans' group the day after the Associated Press revealed drastic cuts to veterans' benefits in the President's budget. Vice President Dick Cheney addressed the American Legion's annual convention today, one day after the Associated Press reported that "draconian" cuts in the Bush budget will mean that "at least tens of thousands of veterans" will face "delayed or even denied care" in coming years. (Associated Press, 2/27/06)

Howard Dean checks the administration, and hits it out of the park. See Howard swing...

Related Note: Zogby International, in conjunction with Le Moyne College, has just completed a first-ever opinion poll of our combat troops serving in Iraq. The results are absolutely stunning.

This past Thursday, February 23rd, was the 15th anniversary of the start of the first Gulf War's ground war: Desert Storm. It lasted, incredibly, from start to finish 100 hours. We celebrate the end of that war tomorrow.

March 19th will be the 3rd anniversary of the start of the second Gulf War: Operation Iraqi Freedom. Although it was said that we destroyed 80% of the Iraqi army in 1991, OIF has now run 25,800+ hours and counting. We don't know when we'll be able to celebrate the end of this war.

As we pay our respects to those who served, those who died, those who suffered - and suffer still - a review of the two wars is in order. Though facts and figures and numbers and stats are sterile and dry for some, they no less have a tale to tell...

Another inspiring (yet frustrating) local story has hit the wires this afternoon.

We can add it to the fine job local media outlets are doing covering the PTSD issue (as compared to their bigger budget brothers). And we can also file it under the anemic quantifiable support that our veterans seem to be getting from our government after they return from war.

More below the fold...

Well, the latest PTSD incident (which occurred this past Thursday) has been added to the PTSD Timeline project housed at ePluribus Media.

Allow me to introduce you to a 20-year old Army private based out of Fort Hood, TX. His name is Jacob Hounshell. And he's made it into the PTSD Timeline. If the past is any indication, the national media won't spend too much time telling you about the tailspin this young man's life has taken ever since he returned home from a year's deployment in Iraq. No one wants to hear those ugly details do they?

Well, I would like you to meet him. Read his story, learn more about post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] at my new blog, and then follow me below the fold to see the breakdown of the 72 incidents now awaiting this young soldier's arrival...