Posted on 02/13/2012 6:12:42 AM PST by Millicent_Hornswaggle
For most of his 26 years in the military, Maj. Jeff Hackett was a standout Marine. Two tours in Iraq destroyed him.
Home from combat, he drank too much, suffered public breakdowns and was hospitalized for panic attacks. In June 2010, he killed himself.
Hackett’s suicide deeply troubled Gen. James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps. Hackett had been plucked from the enlisted ranks to lead Marines as an officer. He left behind a widow, four sons and more than $460,000 in debts. To Amos, Hackett was a casualty of war — surely the family deserved some compensation from the federal government.
Amos asked John Dowd, a prominent Washington lawyer who had represented Sen. John McCain, for help. “There is absolutely no doubt that he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress,” Amos wrote to Dowd. “NONE WHAT SO EVER!”
“We will raise as much hell as we can,” Dowd, a former Marine, wrote back to Amos.
Almost two years later, the high-level intercession by the Marine commandant and the Washington lawyer has produced little from the federal government for Hackett’s widow. The inability of Dowd to wrest any money from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows the limits of what the federal government can do for families of service members who kill themselves as a result of mental trauma caused by war.
Dowd and a team of nine lawyers have fought unsuccessfully for the last 18 months to convince the VA and Prudential Financial Inc., which administers a life insurance program for veterans, to pay a $400,000 claim to Danelle Hackett. The life insurance premiums were automatically deducted from Hackett’s paycheck for 26 years when he was on active duty.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This seems pretty cut and dried to me. And $460,000 in debt? It sounds to me like there were other problems going on in that household.
Our warriors should be compensated more than our athletes.
Michelle should take this issue on instead of food.
If only he’d given part of the $460K to the o for his election, everything would be taken care of.
Leave Moo Shell the hell out of it. Her and ZERO would F--K it up like they have everything else they have touched.
This is a tragic situation, not one for the community organizer or his sorry ass wife.
Not true.
It is not what "the federal government CAN do"
It is what "the federal government WILL do"
Meanwhile, every day Obama and the federal government dream up new tricks to increase handouts to millions of nondeserving moochers, here and in foreign countries.
It sickens me to see her with servicemen and they are smiling.
Of course I know it’s posed.
I can’t believe ANY serviceman would accept this sort of treatment.
They should know that it could and probably will happen to them.
You think maybe he left a mortgage?
PTSD-There were a minority in my son’s platoon who said they suffered from it within a month after arriving in Afghanistan. One Soldier had never been outside of the wire. It is something that is hard to define and cannot be discounted.
However, I would like to see if there is a correlation between the diagnosis and the treatment using Psycho-tropic anti-depressants and the prescribed drug cocktails involved. These drugs not taken properly or not constantly monitored can cause suicidal thoughts and violent behavior.
Page two of the Washington Post article says that he saw eight of his Marine’s dead bodies a few minutes after they were killed. A good leader loves his Soldiers. I believe our word “Commander” comes from the Sanskrit words meaning “The one to whom we entrust our beloved”. Being a leader in the military is a sacred responsibility. General Puller was a unique leader. While we expect all of our military leaders to be able to make the tough calls, we should not expect that they will all deal with the results of those tough calls in the same manner. Give me a leader who cries over his dead Soldiers over someone looking for his next promotion. A leader who suffers over the loss of his Soldiers will cut them no slack in their training. He will value their lives and not sell them cheaply. He/she will do everything to look out for our “beloved” who we entrust to them. They should pay this.
Hackett and his wife bought a house and 40 acres of land about an hour outside of Cheyenne, Wyo.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/mental-wounds/TBI-4.html
“Left the military” - with 26 years of active duty, did he retire? If so, did he not elect SBP (Survivor Benefit Plan) coverage for his wife? As tragic as this story is, it apparently (didn’t read it all) neglects to mention a bunch of things Maj Hackett failed to do that would have been easy and effective. PTSD’s an awful thing, but there WERE safeguards available for his family.
He retired - didn’t elect SBP for his wife? Would have been an easy fix.
Did you read the whole story? He lost a lot of men under his command and he took every death personally. He was in EOD, an extremely dangerous field. My husband worked with him before he (my husband) retired in 2005.) The deploy all the time, get almost no down time because it is such a small specialized field. They are constantly out and about, looking for IED’s trying to make it possible for other Marines to do their jobs so they don’t end up dead.
SBP isn’t free and is only a percentage of the retirement for the surviving spouse. It’s laughable, so laughable, we chose not to get it at the cost it was offered to us.
We chose to do it so my wife would have some dependable income stream should I die first (which is highly likely). Of course, mine is a reserve retirement that doesn’t eve kick in until I reach age 60. It was worth it to us.
Colonel, USAFR
My husband retired at age 35 due to injuries sustained in the war. The monthly amount of SBP, the amount of time we would probably be paying, versus what would actually be paid out in the event of his death at the age of sixty, was extremely lopsided. It made more sense to invest the money.
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