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A small boat rescues a USS West Virginia crew member from the water after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Two men can be seen on the superstructure of the USS West Virginia, upper center, with the mast of the USS Tennessee in the background. Dec 7 1941.

I was recently invited to be a panelist at a veterans’ symposium on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I sought to decline, saying that I never had PTSD and had no qualifications to talk about it. I was told that I represented an earlier generation of combat veterans and that my views and experience would be interesting. So I accepted. Three other panelists had personal family experience with the traumatic aspects of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I restricted myself to the Korean War. As background for my views, I explained the generational context of my experience as follows:...

A U.S. Army paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team fires his M4 carbine at insurgents during a firefight, Ghazni Province, Afghanistan. The vehicle he is using for cover is a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. June 2012.U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod.

At this time of Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for the U.S. military — not just for the usual reason that it protects us from our foes but also because it has the potential to save us from ourselves. As I make my rounds each day in the capital, chronicling our leaders’ plentiful foibles, failings, screw-ups, inanities, outrages and overall dysfunction, I’m often asked if there’s anything that could clean up the mess. My usual answer is a shrug and an admission that there’s no silver bullet. There are many possibilities — campaign spending limits, term limits, nonpartisan primaries, nonpartisan redistricting, a...

Like many active-duty soldiers and veterans in the area, Mark Erskine goes to the commissaries on Fort Bragg to buy food and basic household supplies. Erskine, who is commander of American Legion Post 230, cannot imagine not having the stores. Yet the Defense Department has reportedly asked the Defense Commissary Agency for a plan to close all stateside base commissaries. The stores have long been a subject of scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with the grocery benefit regarded by some lawmakers as an outdated, unnecessary expenditure

After signing my Pop, EM2 Bud Cloud (circa Pearl Harbor) up for hospice care, the consolation prize I’d given him (for agreeing it was OK to die) was a trip to “visit the Navy in San Diego.” I emailed my friend and former Marine sergeant, Mrs. Mandy McCammon, who’s currently serving as a Navy Public Affairs Officer, at midnight on 28 May. I asked Mandy if she had enough pull on any of the bases in San Diego to get me access for the day so I could give Bud, who served on USS Dewey (DD-349), a windshield tour. The...

HUNTINGTON BEACH (CBSLA.com) — Veterans are rallying around a local bar whose owners say they have been ordered to removed a sign that salutes their service. “Thank a veteran for your freedom!” says a large sign perched above Johnny’s Booze and Pool. Vets love it and make up a significant part of the establishment’s clientele. “I love this place. The sign gives me the pride back that I lost … I struggled a lot when I first came back,” an Army vet told CBS2′s Stacey Butler. But someone complained to the city about the sign, and now the bar’s owners...

Columbia, South Carolina (CNN) -- Military veterans are dying needlessly because of long waits and delayed care at U.S. veterans hospitals, a CNN investigation has found. What's worse, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is aware of the problems and has done almost nothing to effectively prevent veterans dying from delays in care, according to documents obtained by CNN and interviews with numerous experts. The problem has been especially dire at the Williams Jennings Bryan Dorn Veterans Medical Center in Columbia, South Carolina. There, veterans waiting months for simple gastrointestinal procedures -- such as a colonoscopy or endoscopy -- have...

A retired Army general is calling for the “forced resignations” of President Obama, other administration officials and the leadership of Congress for the direction they’re taking the nation, his list of grievances including the systematic political purge of hundreds of senior military officers in the U.S. military. Retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely told WND he is calling for nationwide rallies and protests to demand the resignations and added that a peaceful “civil uprising is still not out of question.” In his capacity as chairman of the organization Stand Up America, Vallely issued what he termed a “National Call to...

Military members, retirees and veterans have a few more reasons to be wary of politicians who say their top priority is to cut federal spending. The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday released a report of more than 100 options for reducing budget deficits. It’s a timely product as House and Senate conferees strive to negotiate by mid-December a new debt-cutting deal to replace automatic budget cuts of sequestration. More than a few of the CBO options are fresh ideas to roll back compensation for categories of veterans or to raise TRICARE fees for military retirees, on suggestions that the government...

Military members, retirees and veterans have a few more reasons to be wary of politicians who say their top priority is to cut federal spending. The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday released a report of more than 100 options for reducing budget deficits. It’s a timely product as House and Senate conferees strive to negotiate by mid-December a new debt-cutting deal to replace automatic budget cuts of sequestration. More than a few of the CBO options are fresh ideas to roll back compensation for categories of veterans or to raise TRICARE fees for military retirees, on suggestions that the government...

This video is of a former Air Force Officer who had her body completely destroyed by military doctors at the VA Hospital and the story just snowballs into hell from there. This video was posted just 6 days ago and already has nearly 400,000 views on YouTube alone not to mention another 250,000 on LiveLeak. Watch this and try and make sense of it. http://youtu.be/NEl7GT96x6M

Kenneth Porwoll thought he surely would die a soldier's death during the Bataan Death March in World War II. Instead, the prisoner of war survived, and more than three years after being captured in the Philippines, he returned home to the States. Monday, on Veterans Day -- 71 years after the 1942 death march -- this veteran died peacefully, surrounded by family, at the VA Medical Center in Fort Snelling. The Roseville man was 93. "Dying on Veterans Day -- isn't that amazing?" said his widow, Mary Ellen Porwoll. After the war, Porwoll lived a good life: He married, raised...

In economics, the first lesson I teach my pupils is the lesson of things that are seen and things that are not seen. Actions produce some effects that are readily apparent and others that are not. This truth applies to military veterans. Many return from their service scarred. Sometimes those scars are visible, as in the case of Ronny Porta, about whom I wrote last spring, or the Vietnam vet with whom I shared a poignant experience many Veterans Days ago. Other times, the scars are invisible. The psychological wounds may be more common. A close friend and a cousin...

Yesterday a Vietnam war veteran shut down turn pike traffic for hours while sitting on the ledge of an exit ramp bridge threatening to take his own life. WTVJ reports 59-year-old Fredy Gutierrez asked to speak to Willard Shepard, himself a veteran and a Gulf War fighter pilot. On his way to the police command center Shepard was able to talk to Gutierrez trough a police negotiator. “I spoke to him in military terms, telling him that the Air Force jets were on the way to provide the Army close air support – a reference to war scenarios where the...

<p>One of the most touted benefits of President Obama’s health care overhaul law is the provision allows parents to keep their adult children on their health insurance until age 26.</p> <p>However, Trace Gallagher reported on “The Kelly File” Monday, this benefit is not being extended to a significant group of Americans: members of the U.S. military.</p>

Did You Catch the Ironic Part in Obama’s Veterans Day Speech? Nov. 11, 2013 3:14pm Fred Lucas President Barack Obama on Monday heralded one of the oldest living veterans in America, even talking about his trip to the nation’s capital this year as part of the Honor Flight program. Did You Catch the Ironic Part in Obamas Veterans Day Speech? President Barack Obama placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. (Getty Images/Mark Wilson) That would be the same Honor Flight program that brought veterans to Washington, D.C., last month who entered the World War...

With a noose around his neck and fearing deportation, Vietnam veteran Fredy Gutierrez threatened to leap from a ramp at Florida's Turnpike and Interstate 595 during Monday morning's rush hour.

"You went, some because you had to, some because you thought you should. You put up with deprivations, sorry pay, long separations, monotonous food, in a land no one ever heard of, a place no one would ever want to go. You got a few moments of recreation watching TV with twenty other guys, a show that you would have never watched back at home but now it reminds you of life in the real world or maybe that ping pong table you share with a thousand others. You sleep in a room filled with men who snored, groaned and...