Hispanic War Veterans of America

The consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom for U.S. forces are being documented by the Defense Department with an exceptional degree of openness and transparency. Its daily and cumulative counts of deaths receive a great deal of publicity. But deaths alone don't indicate the risk for an individual. For this purpose, the number of deaths must be compared with the number of individuals exposed to the risk of death. The Defense Department has supplied us with appropriate data on exposure, and we take advantage of it to provide the first profile of military mortality in Iraq.

Between March 21, 2003, when the first military death was recorded in Iraq, and March 31, 2006, there were 2,321 deaths among American troops in Iraq. Seventy-nine percent were a result of action by hostile forces. Troops spent a total of 592,002 "person-years" in Iraq during this period. The ratio of deaths to person-years, .00392, or 3.92 deaths per 1,000 person-years, is the death rate of military personnel in Iraq.

How does this rate compare with that in other groups? One meaningful comparison is to the civilian population of the United States. That rate was 8.42 per 1,000 in 2003, more than twice that for military personnel in Iraq.

The comparison is imperfect, of course, because a much higher fraction of the American population is elderly and subject to higher death rates from degenerative diseases. The death rate for U.S. men ages 18 to 39 in 2003 was 1.53 per 1,000 -- 39 percent of that of troops in Iraq. But one can also find something equivalent to combat conditions on home soil. The death rate for African American men ages 20 to 34 in Philadelphia was 4.37 per 1,000 in 2002, 11 percent higher than among troops in Iraq. Slightly more than half the Philadelphia deaths were homicides.

The death rate of American troops in Vietnam was 5.6 times that observed in Iraq. Part of the reduction in the death rate is attributable to improvements in military medicine and such things as the use of body armor. These have reduced the ratio of deaths to wounds from 24 percent in Vietnam to 13 percent in Iraq. Some other factors to be considered:

Branch of service: Marines are paying the highest toll in Iraq. Their death rate is more than double that of the Army, 10 times higher than that of the Navy and 20 times higher than for the Air Force. In fact, those in the Navy and Air Force have substantially lower death rates than civilian men ages 20 to 34.

Among the Marines, there is in effect no difference in the mortality risks for members on active duty and those in the reserve. In the Army, on the other hand, reservists have 33 percent of the death rate of those in active service because they are not assigned to combat positions. Members of the Army National Guard are intermediate in assignments and in mortality.

Rank: In both the Army and the Marines, enlisted personnel have 40 percent higher mortality than officers. The excess mortality of enlisted soldiers is diminished by the high mortality of the lowest-ranking officers, lieutenants, who are typically the leaders of combat patrols. Lieutenants have the highest mortality of any rank in the Army, 19 percent higher than all Army troops combined. Marine Corps lieutenants have 11 percent higher mortality than all Marines. But the single highest-mortality group in any service consists of lance corporals in the Marines, whose death risk is 3.3 times that of all troops in Iraq.

Age, sex , race and ethnicity: In contrast to the civilian population, mortality rates decline precipitously with age. Troops ages 17 to 19 have a death risk 4.6 times that of those 50 and older. Differences in rank by age undoubtedly contribute to this pattern, and so do differences in branch of service. Sixty-five percent of Marine deployments to Iraq were of those age 24 or younger, compared with only 39 percent of Army deployments. Women are not assigned to combat specialties in Iraq, although they do see enemy fire; their death rate is 18 percent that of men.

Identifying racial and ethnic differences in mortality is not straightforward because the Defense Department uses a different classification system for deaths than for deployments. Nevertheless, all attempts we have made to reconcile the two systems reach the same conclusion: Hispanics have a death risk about 20 percent higher than non-Hispanics, and blacks have a death risk about 30 to 40 percent lower than that of non-blacks. That low death rate appears to result from an overrepresentation of blacks in low-risk categories: For example, 19 percent of blacks in Iraq are women, compared with 9 percent of non-blacks, while 7 percent of blacks in Iraq are Marines, compared with 13 percent of non-blacks.

Other casualties: The number of wounded in Iraq through March 31, 2006, was 7.5 times the number of dead; the rate at which wounds are incurred was one per 33 troops per year. We do not have the same information about the characteristics of those wounded as we have about those killed. But given the overwhelming importance of hostile encounters in both wounds and deaths, it is likely that variations in the risk of being wounded are quite similar to those presented here.

Samuel H. Preston is the Frederick J. Warren professor of demography at the University of Pennsylvania. Emily Buzzell is a student in the Health and Societies Program at Penn.

Veterans History Project (VHP)

The Library of Congress is collecting oral/written histories from our
veterans. A PDF of their brochure can be viewed by clicking on this link VHP_bro_update8_March_27_2006.pdf

I'll be doing a number of veterans' groups this Fall and I plan to tell them about the Veterans' History Project and hand out the printed brochures so that they can tell their stories and be included. I think this is an important project and worth our involvement with very little effort on our part. If you want printed brochures, please contact Jeffrey Lofton and he'll be happy to send them.

Jeffrey Lofton, APR

Public Affairs Specialist, Veterans History Project

The Library of Congress

101 Independence Ave., SE

Washington, DC 20540-4615

Tel: 202-707-6432

Fax: 202-252-2046

jlof@loc.gov

www.loc.gov/vets

U.S. Latino & Latina WWII Oral History Project

Since 1999, the U.S. Latino & Latina WWII Oral History Project at the University of Texas at Austin has captured the untold stories of this WWII generation. Altogether, the project videotaped more than five hundred interviews throughout the country and in Puerto Rico and Mexico.

This volume features summaries of the interviews and photographs of the individuals. Among the people included are Mexican American civil rights leaders such as Pete Tijerina and Albert Armendariz of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and Virgilio Roel of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Others are community leaders such as Pete and Elena Gallego of Alpine, Texas, and military leaders such as Colonel Hank Cervantes and flying ace Richard Candelaria.

Women who served in the military are also included. There are academic trailblazers, too, such as Frank Bonilla, who became a major figure in Puerto Rican studies. And there are a few Latinos who describe serving in segregated "colored" units during the war, as their physical features placed them in African American communities.

Overall, the vast majority of the men and women interviewed in A Legacy Greater Than Words led private lives, and their stories chronicle the everyday existence of Latinos in the 1930s and 1940s—stories that generally have been omitted from historical accounts of either the Great Depression or World War II.

Reviews on " A Legacy Greater than Words".

It's summaries of most of our interviews, with thumbnail photos of most interview subjects. There are 20 chapters and subchapters with lengthy historical intros, featuring quotes from our interviews. We didn't stint on paper, used a more expensive paper so that it would reproduce better, and a better binding, so it would last. There are only paperbacks and they're available for $30 donations-- plus $5 if we need to ship it. We wish we could give them all away free, but it took us a small chunk of change to produce it -- We worked on it since last spring, through the summer, the fall and over Christmas break, we had 5 people plowing away to square away the zillions of details, like DOB, names of spouses, children, units, etc. So, in producing the book, we also added to the accuracy and detail within our files. It's self-published, but UT Press is distributing it.

We are hoping some folks might buy multiple copies. Carlos Velez-Ibanez, at ASU, in fact, just bought his first 50 copies. So, for your single or multiple copies, send us a check and we'll send you the book/s. If you want them inscribed, let us know what you want the inscription to say.

Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, School of Journalism
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station A1000
Austin, Texas, 78712

A Legacy Greater than Words is a book that should be read and available in all libraries and used as a reader in Chicano/Latino Studies classes. Thanks to the U.S. Latino & Latina WWII Oral History Project the contributions and sacrifices of our WWII Chicano/Latino veterans are now well documented and available to the public. The book is timely given the current immigration debate and debacle in our nation. I encourage you to purchase the book.

Gus Chavez

Former Director (retired)

Office of EOP & Ethnic Affairs

San Diego State University

Agent Orange - Court of Appeals

August 16, 2006

The Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims recently held that VA regulations defining who had service in Vietnam for the purpose of establishing a presumption to exposure to herbicides (e.g. Agent Orange) were too restrictive. Consequently, those who served in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia or on Navy ships off the coast of Vietnam may be eligible for service connection of certain cancers, including lung and prostate cancer, as well as Type 2 Diabetes.

Veterans who were previously denied service connection for a presumptive disability should reopen their claim with the VA. Those who have a presumptive disability should apply immediately for service connection.

Those who receive service connection for any disability are entitled to free

treatment for that condition at any VA medical facility and may be entitled

to a monthly payment from the VA.”

Refer to Haas vs. Nicholson No. 04-0491 Decided August 16, 2006

Unquiet Minority

August 1, 2006
By Karen Rutzick

Hispanics hold a smaller percentage of jobs in federal agencies than in the private sector, and they're not happy.

At Gilbert Sandate's [from Newton Kansas - aws] retirement celebration of a three-decade career in federal service, Democratic Rep. Charles Gonzalez, a fellow Texan, rose to make a speech. In Sandate, he said, the Library of Congress was not only losing an accomplished employee, but a rare breed in the federal government: an executive of Hispanic origin. Gonzalez, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' task force on the census and civil rights, announced at the May 23 party that he and several other representatives have asked the Government Accountability Office to find out just why the Sandates of government are so uncommon.

The numbers are clear, even if the reasons for them are not. According to the Office of Personnel Management's most recent figures, in "Hispanic Employment Program Statistical Report, February 2006" Hispanics comprise 7.4 percent of the federal workforce compared with 12.6 percent of the general workforce - a five percentage-point gap. They are the only minority that is underrepresented. At the executive level, the problem is even more pronounced. Hispanics account for only 3.5 percent of senior-level federal employees and 4.6 percent of GS-13 to GS-15 managers.

Sandate spent 20 years bottlenecked as a GS-15. He applied, unsuccessfully, for about 30 Senior Executive Service positions, and bounced from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to the Internal Revenue Service to the Transportation Department and finally to the Library of Congress in an effort to move up. He left government as the library's director of workforce diversity

"Reaching the SES level is without question the hardest thing imaginable," says Sandate, who has held a number of leadership roles in groups promoting Hispanic em-ployment in government and is chairman of the Coalition for Fairness for Hispanics in Government. "I had so many doors slammed in my face, generally because there was always someone, ostensibly at least, better qualified."

Their scarcity at the top of government is alarming Hispanics. "Candidly, the federal government and government service has always been the door to opportunity for minorities," Gonzalez says. "We know that, and that is a historical fact. Hispanics can't really lag behind in what should be the widest and most open door. I guess the crux of it really is, wait a minute, this is probably where we have the greatest opportunity to come into the great middle class of America."

A lack of Hispanics where decisions about the allocation of federal dollars are made has repercussions beyond missed job opportunities, according to another attendee at Sandate's send-off. Jose Osegueda, an executive at the Agriculture Department, is president of the National Association of Hispanic Federal Executives. "Those decisions are more than likely being made without our input, our voice and our recommendations," Osegueda says. "We think our community will continue to have limited access to education, health care and social services" without increased Hispanic federal representation.

Survival Issue

As the Hispanic population rapidly grows - census data has Hispanics making up a quarter of the population by 2050 - the federal-civilian gap could widen. "What does it mean when you have 50 percent of the kids in Texas and 50 percent of the kids in California who are Latino in the first grade, and you have less than 3 percent representation in the Department of Education? A lack of awareness of the bilingual, bicultural issues that are facing America," says Harry Pachon, professor of public policy at the University of Southern California and a former federal employee.

OPM puts Hispanic representation in the Education Department at 4.2 percent for fiscal 2005, down slightly from the year before. Data supporting Osegueda's and Pachon's claims about funding allocation remains largely anecdotal, yet potent in the community. "Government jobs in particular are very important to our community because the government has control of the purse strings," says Brent A. Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. "We end up losing out on all the federal grants and opportunities that are there for the entire country." LULAC, the largest Hispanic organization in the country and one that deals with every Hispanic issue from immigration reform to civil rights, runs an annual training institute to encourage Hispanic federal job seekers.

Sandate's career illustrates the importance of having a presence in government. When he began working at the Library of Congress in 2002, he noticed that the Veterans History Project included testimony from few Hispanic veterans - a group, Sandate says, that has earned more Congressional Medals of Honor - 39 - than any other identifiable ethnic minority and that accounts for 13 percent of the casualties in Iraq.

"There had never been any effort to reach out to the Hispanic veteran community to try to include some of those histories in the American archives," Sandate says. "We were able to connect that program staff with some of the key Hispanic organizations." As a Hispanic executive, Sandate was there to observe the problem and had the power to fix it.

Public-private Hispanic employment disparity has caught the attention of human resources thinkers outside the Hispanic community, too. As baby boomers retire and Hispanics' numbers boom, agencies will need them, says Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service in Washington. "When you consider that [the Hispanic] talent cohort is growing very quickly, this is vital for the future of the federal government," he says. "If the federal government is going to get the talent it needs, it needs to recruit the talent that exists."

Sean Clayton, an African American who chairs the National Council of Hispanic Employment Program Managers, echoes Stier. "It's . . a survival issue, although not just the survival of a community but the survival of the nation," he says. "If you look at where the job growth is taking place and who is going to be in the workforce of the future, you are definitely going to see that one out of four new hires [is] going to be Hispanic within the next 40 years."

Keep at It

Richard Nixon was the first to address the relative dearth of Hispanics in government with his 1970 Sixteen-Point Program for the Spanish-Speaking. President Bill Clinton created an interagency task force on Hispanic federal employment in the 1990s. And yet, in 2006, the gap remains.

Demographic shifts, however, including the impending retirement wave and Hispanic population growth, have given solution-makers hope. Gonzalez's GAO report, due out at the end of July, is just one of several new looks at the issue. The Merit Systems Protection Board is initiating a set of studies on federal diversity, including focus groups and statistical surveys, and Hispanic representation is on the list. "We are concerned with why Hispanics are really the primary underrepresented group in the country," says John Crum, MSPB deputy director. "Why is that occurring? We don't really know. We may or may not get an answer. When you start this research, you don't always know what you'll find."

But Crum and his staff have some hypotheses that, if proved true, could guide a shift in how agencies approach Hispanic recruitment. One has to do with the average age of an employee hired into federal service: 35. "We think there may be assessment issues," Crum says. "The government may reward training and experience too much. Hispanics tend to be younger on average . . . does that make them less capable to do the job? Not necessarily. We may not be getting at a person's potential, but really how old they are."

In May, Stier's group released a report on rethinking college campus recruitment for federal jobs. One of the targets was Hispanics, and one of the target institutions was the University of New Mexico, picked for its high percentage of Hispanic students. The Partnership for Public Service found that of white, Asian, black and Hispanic students surveyed, Hispanics showed the highest interest in government careers, with 51 percent indicating they were "extremely" or "very interested." At the same time, they were the least knowledgeable about government opportunities, with 62 percent rated "not knowledgeable."

"There is a huge opportunity that has not been realized," Stier says.

Sandate says he had such difficulty rising in government because there were no Hispanic executives to mentor him. He has mentored about 100 up-and-coming Hispanic federal employees, calling them on the phone two or three times a week to check in. One of them became the first Hispanic, and bilingual, administrative law judge in the Social Security Administration's Office of Appeals. Sandate's son works for the Forest Service.

Not Everyone Agrees

"What we need is a comprehensive strategy developed by OPM to say that [under-representation] is an issue of concern," says Pachon, the USC professor. LULAC's Wilkes says OPM, which leads the Clinton-initiated task force and is responsible for guiding agencies' Hispanic recruitment initiatives, should demand accountability from agencies.

"I think that you had folks out there that basically were trying to go through these process objectives instead of talking about results," Wilkes says. They say, " 'Hey, we went to that LULAC conference and exhibited, we got 600 applications.' None of them got jobs, but we don't say that. 'We took a Spanish ad out in a Spanish magazine.' They talk about all the great things they're doing other than the fact there is no progress in closing the gap. You can show yourself looking busy, but [you are] really just treading water."

Legally, there is only so much OPM can do, says Antonio San Martin Jr., a lawyer in the general counsel's office who coordinates OPM's interaction with many Hispanic advocacy groups. Policies aimed at specific goals, such as parity with the civilian labor force, are not legal. "I can't show up to a conference with 50 jobs in my pocket and give them out to the people there as door prizes," San Martin says. "What we can give them is the information, the accessibility, the opportunity, the encouragement to know they will be treated fairly by the federal government. They will be treated fairly on the merits."

A June GAO report (GAO-06-214) on the intertwined roles of OPM and EEOC in guiding federal workplace diversity found managers had mixed opinions of OPM's guidance on the Hispanic issue. Forty-three percent received zero feedback from OPM on their agency's Hispanic employment initiatives. Of those who heard from the agency, only about 7 percent found the information very useful and 11 percent somewhat useful.

Not everyone believes OPM should do more. Curt Levey, a private attorney, was involved in a 2002 reverse discrimination lawsuit against the Housing and Urban Development Department. He argued HUD was discriminating against whites in order to increase minority representation, even though there was no evidence of actual discrimination against the minority groups. "The fact that the numbers are not proportionate to the population does not mean there is anything wrong," Levey says. "Different subgroups of people, whether divided by gender or race, gravitate toward different professions in different proportions. So to assume that there is something that needs to be remedied is often a fallacy."

Parity might not even be a realistic goal. Federal jobs require U.S. citizenship, something not every Hispanic working in the private sector has or needs. And many federal jobs require higher levels of education than are common among Hispanics, 57 percent of whom had high school diplomas and 11 percent of whom held bachelor's degrees, according to the 2000 census.

You can't slice it simply by race, says Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Washington think tank opposed to race-based preferences. "Let's suppose that the problem is that the people who have not been in the United States for as long a period of time are, for whatever reason, less likely to apply to the federal government," Clegg says, "and a disproportionate number of Hispanics are recent immigrants. Then what the federal government should do is not reach out to Hispanics qua Hispanics; what they should be doing is reaching out to recent immigrants. There are obviously lots of recent immigrants who aren't Hispanic."

The National Association of Hispanic Federal Executives, Osegueda's group, thinks otherwise, and they are not waiting around for OPM to close the gap. "What are we doing ourselves?" asks Al Gallegos, president of the Washington chapter of the association. "Not just going out there complaining. We're trying to be proactive."

The association is developing a workshop, scheduled to be rolled out in November. Current Hispanic SES members will lead it in their own agencies to help lower-level Hispanics rise to the executive corps. The workshop will focus on qualifications necessary to achieve SES positions and will help participants plan years in advance to get into the executive ranks.

The National Council of Hispanic Employment Program Managers is taking things into its own hands, too. The group started the annual Hispanic Youth Symposium, which this year will host 550 high school students for three days at sites in California, Maryland and Washington. A joint effort with funding from corporations such as Kaiser Permanente and BB&T bank, its aim is to plant the seeds of federal service early. "We first [have] got to build a legacy of education for these students, ensuring that they believe in college," says Jeffrey Vargas, an Energy Department employee and former head of the council. "And then provide the bridge between education and careers."

Some of the innovation comes from within agencies. The Social Security Administration has 12.5 percent Hispanic representation, right on par with the private sector, and 7.9 percent in the SES. What's the SSA's secret? Felicita Sola-Carter, assistant deputy commissioner for human resources and the first female Puerto Rican senior executive in the agency, says it is leadership commitment, workforce planning, aggressive recruitment and a business case hinged on diversity. "We set out to represent the public we serve," Sola-Carter says. "That really has been our mantra."

SSA seeks employees fluent in Spanish to eliminate the need to hire translators, making the agency more efficient. Sola-Carter says Hispanic employees also have community connections, which help in reaching out to customers. SSA uses field offices as recruitment tools and its Hispanic employees as recruiters. The agency also has a Hispanic advisory council that meets periodically to suggest how to better serve this group. SSA actively recruits on college campuses with heavy Hispanic representation such as California State University at Los Angeles, and engages in national ad campaigns.

Sola-Carter, who began her career in 1971 in an SSA field office in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, says, "We have come a long way from occasionally showing up at a college fair with a few handouts and a few applications for employment."

Much of the rest of government still is catching up.

7.4% of the federal workforce is Hispanic

3.5% of senior-level federal employees are Hispanic

12.6% of the general workforce is Hispanic

12.5% of employees at the Social Security Administration are Hispanic

13% of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq were Hispanic

39 Hispanics have earned Congressional Medals of Honor

Site URL:
http://wwwgovexec.com/features/0806-01/0806-01s2.htm

Police Holding Three in Connection With VA Computer Theft

By Karin Brulliard and Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 5, 2006; 5:06 PM

Three people are in the custody of Montgomery County police in connection with the May theft of computer equipment from the home of a Veterans Administration analyst in Aspen Hill that contained the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of millions of current and former service members.

The three -- two Rockville 19-year-olds and a minor who was not identified -- also stole jewelry and cash from the analyst's home, and had no idea they had such sensitive information from the computer and hard drive, Montgomery police said today. The theft was the largest information security breach in government history.

"As far as we can determine, this was a random burglary," Police Chief Thomas Manger said at an afternoon news conference. "They did not know what they had."

Police identified the two adults under arrest as Jesus Alex Pineda, 19, of the 13000 block of Grenoble Drive and Christian Brian Montano, 19, of the 13100 block of Grenoble Drive. Pineda has been charged with first degree burglary and theft over $500. Montano faces those charges, as well as conspiracy to commit burglary and theft.

Both were arrested last night at a McDonald's restaurant, police said. The juvenile, whose arrest in the case is pending, was already jailed on another charge. Police did not release any information about him.

Manger said the case was solved with the help of a tip called in to the FBI, which passed on the information to Montgomery police. The trio are suspects in at least five other burglaries, he said.

The computer equipment was recovered on June 28 when the person who had the laptop contacted U.S. Park Police after seeing news accounts and notices of a $50,000 reward offered by Montgomery County police. Federal authorities said then that the sensitive personal information of 26.5 million veterans and military personnel apparently had not been accessed.

Police have not yet distributed the reward.

statement by HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY MICHAEL CHERTOFF announcing a change to the nation’s threat level for the aviation sector

Press Office

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Press Release

August 10, 2006

Contact: DHS Press Office, 202-282-8010

The Department of Homeland Security is taking immediate steps to increase security measures in the aviation sector in coordination with heightened security precautions in the United Kingdom. Over the last few hours, British authorities have arrested a significant number of extremists engaged in a substantial plot to destroy multiple passenger aircraft flying from the United Kingdom to the United States. Currently, there is no indication, however, of plotting within the United States. We believe that these arrests have significantly disrupted the threat, but we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted.

For that reason, the United States Government has raised the nation’s threat level to Severe, or Red, for commercial flights originating in the United Kingdom bound for the United States. This adjustment reflects the Critical, or highest, alert level that has been implemented in the United Kingdom. To defend further against any remaining threat from this plot, we will also raise the threat level to High, or Orange, for all commercial aviation operating in or destined for the United States. Consistent with these higher threat levels, the Transportation Security Administration is coordinating with federal partners, airport authorities and commercial airlines on expanding the intensity of existing security requirements. Due to the nature of the threat revealed by this investigation, we are prohibiting any liquids, including beverages, hair gels, and lotions from being carried on the airplane. This determination will be constantly evaluated and updated when circumstances warrant. These changes will take effect at 4:00 AM local time across the country. Travelers should also anticipate additional security measures within the airport and at screening checkpoints.

These measures will continue to assure that our aviation system remains safe and secure. Travelers should go about their plans confidently, while maintaining vigilance in their surroundings and exercising patience with screening and security officials.

The United States and the United Kingdom are fully united and resolute in this effort and in our ongoing efforts to secure our respective homelands.

Our Veterans' Missing Medals

THE NEW YORK TIMES

August 8, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
By JOSEPH A. KINNEY
Pinehurst, N.C.

Captain Brian Chontosh is the kind of soldier who, in years past, would have received a ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue.

As a young lieutenant in 2003, he and his platoon were ambushed near Baghdad. Machine gun fire, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades spewed from every direction. Lieutenant Chontosh ordered his Humvee directly into an enemy machine-gun position, where his gunner destroyed the nest. He then advanced on a trench, where he exited his vehicle and scattered enemy fighters. After his ammunition was depleted, he twice picked up an enemy's rifle and continued.

By the time the smoke cleared, Lieutenant Chontosh had killed more than 20 insurgents and saved the lives of dozens in his platoon. For his incredible courage, he was awarded the Navy Cross, the second-highest award given to Marines.

Second highest?

For reasons I can't fathom, the Pentagon top brass don't feel that our heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan are especially meritorious. President Bush has yet to award a single Medal of Honor to a living veteran of combat in either place. (Only one has been given posthumously.)

During the Vietnam War, 245 Medals of Honor were awarded. If President Bush awarded the medals at roughly the same rate for service in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than two dozen would have been bestowed by now.

When I called the Department of Defense to inquire, a public affairs officer said he wondered whether our fighting style might be less risky today than it was in Vietnam. How lame. Fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has been brutal, and many of our troops have performed with incredible valor. Anyone remember Falluja?

This is more than an issue of justice denied. Tales of courage inspire present and future warriors. They certainly motivated my service in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. Today, two of my four sons are good bets to join the Marines or Special Forces. I don't want them to look to my generation for heroes, but to their contemporaries.

I hope President Bush will order a review of heroic acts performed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of our freedom. Not another minute should be lost in bestowing honors that are overdue.

Joseph A. Kinney is writing a book on the making of America's soldiers.

National Symposium for Young Veterans

To address these problems of servicemembers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq and their families, AMVETS is hosting the National Symposium for the Needs of Young Veterans, which is planned for October 18-22, 2006 in Chicago, Ill. The symposium will bring together a diverse and representative group of veterans to discuss how to ensure a system of earned benefits that is both adequate and relevant to the needs of younger veterans. Former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi will co-chair the symposium. For more information, visit www.veteransnationalsymposium.org.

Puerto Rico Plight

The Washington Times

By Lawrence A. Hunter
Published August 2, 2006

Congress struggles over what to do about illegal aliens coming to the United States from Mexico and Central America. Yet a huge problem within the Hispanic branch of our own American family is overlooked. Four million American citizens of Hispanic origin struggle in Puerto Rico under circumstances that can only be described as totally un-American. The Institute for Policy Innovation described this in a report three years ago ("Leave No State or Territory Behind"). The Brookings Institution is publishing a book with virtually the same findings.

People born in Puerto Rico are American citizens with U.S. passports who have all the rights of citizenship, including dying for their country in the American military -- all the rights that is except the right of electing voting Members of Congress or voting for the president. Few "mainlanders" recognize the U.S. has a colony, which they can visit without a passport and whose residents may freely come to the mainland to visit, work or live permanently without presenting a passport, obtaining a visa or a green card or going through customs.

Between 1950 and the mid-1970s, Puerto Rico was considered by many a showpiece of economic growth and educational advancement. Since then, however, Puerto Rico's economy has been stagnant, its standard of living has lagged, and the educational system has deteriorated. Unemployment persists at 11 percent, and labor force participation (60 percent) is less than two-thirds the rate in the States, much lower than any member country of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including Mexico (82 percent).

Nearly half of Puerto Rico's residents still live below the U.S. poverty line, and the gap in income relative to the mainland continues to widen.

The Brookings book and the IPI report constitute a consensus among economists. Puerto Rico's lack of prosperity derives from flawed tax policy and a bloated welfare state stimulated and perpetuated not only by the government of Puerto Rico but also by very smart tax lawyers who designed fatally flawed tax policy for the U.S. government, which benefited large multinational firms with territorial tax credits but barely benefited the people of Puerto Rico.

While the strategy did attract multinationals to Puerto Rico and demonstrated for the relatively few hired how productive the Puerto Rican people can be, the strategy ultimately backfired. It was immensely costly to the Federal Treasury -- on the order of $2.67 in tax benefits received for every dollar of labor compensation paid -- and not only distorted Puerto Rico's local politics, by making the tax incentive dependent upon Puerto Rico's continued territorial status, but also distorted the structure of production and employment in Puerto Rico. Big multinational companies got large tax credits, often for income attributed to Puerto Rico but produced by activities in the States, resulting in very few jobs or small-business opportunities for Puerto Rico residents. As a result, 4 million people born in Puerto Rico now live in the States where they can find a job and vote.

Special tax breaks also exacerbated a willful blindness in Washington of the urgent need to resolve the status debate. Is Puerto Rico to become a state, remain a territory or gain independence as a sovereign nation? The Bush administration is to be commended for its recognition of the festering political-status issue in its recent recommendations for Congress to establish a formal process of Puerto Rico self-determination to resolve permanent status in a timely fashion.

In 1996, with a generous 10-year phase-out period, Congress repealed those tax credits, and the multinational firms have remained on the island. But the history of corporate welfare had created an economic strategy with one pillar -- perpetual dependency. In this regard, Puerto Rico's economic problems are not unique and are only compounded by the uncertain status situation.

This is why a new economic strategy is required for Puerto Rico, one that incorporates wise federal policies rather than handouts; that encourages Puerto Rico to get its welfare state under control. Members of Congress should read the Brookings Book and IPI report and, at a minimum, create national enterprise zones including Puerto Rico. That would make it possible for these American citizens to climb the ladder of prosperity and achieve the American Dream.

Companion national enterprise zone bills including Puerto Rico were introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, and Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, in the last Congress. And Puerto Rico's newly elected nonvoting Member of the House, Luis Fortuno, introduced similar legislation (H.R. 2182) in this Congress.

National enterprise zones provide a practical way to get tax policy right, easing regulations and establishing incentives for private capital and enterprise to invest and flourish in these lagging sectors of America, whether on the mainland or on that little corner island of America 1,000 miles off the coast of Florida.

Lawrence A. Hunter is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Innovation and former staff director of the congressional Joint Economic Committee.

HR 4992 - Veterans Medicare Assistance Act - Medicare Coverage for Veterans at VA Hospitals

Under current law, Medicare-eligible veterans are not allowed to use Medicare coverage at local VA hospitals. Instead, they are forced to decide between receiving medical care at a VA hospital without being able to use Medicare to help them make their bill payments, or using Medicare at a non-VA hospital and losing the personalized veterans’ care of a VA hospital.

On March 16, 2006, Rep. Sue Kelly (NY) introduced HR 4992, the Veterans Medicare Assistance Act, that would provide Medicare eligible veterans with Medicare Subvention -- the right to use Medicare benefits to help pay their bills at local VA hospitals.

"Veterans pay into Medicare for most of their lives, yet the law prohibits them from using Medicare benefits at a VA hospital later in life," Kelly said. "VA hospitals specialize in treating veterans’ needs, and veterans should not be forced to choose between cost and comfort. Veterans should be eligible for the same Medicare benefits at a VA hospital that they would have at any other hospital."

"The federal government needs to keep the promises made to veterans and ease their financial burden by providing Medicare benefits at VA hospitals," Kelly said. "Veterans have remarkably served our country, and in return they should have every health care option available to them. They should not be forced to make unfair and complicated financial decisions about their quality of health care."

DD 214 Now Online for Veterans

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) has provided the following website for veterans to gain access their DD-214 online: vetrecs.archives.gov. This may be particularly helpful when a veteran needs a copy of his DD-214 for employment purposes. NPRC is working to make it easier for veterans with computers and Internet access to obtain copies of documents from their military files. Military veterans and the next of kin of deceased former military members may now use a new online military personnel records system to request documents. Other individuals with a need for documents must still complete the Standard Form 180, which can be downloaded from the online web site. Because the requester will be asked to supply all information essential for NPRC to process the request, delays that normally occur when NPRC has to ask veterans for additional information will be minimized. The new web-based application was designed to provide better service on these requests by eliminating the records center's mailroom processing time.

It's official, DD-214's are NOW Online.

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) has provided the following website for veterans to gain

access to their DD-214s online: http://vetrecs.archives.gov/

This may be particularly helpful when a veteran needs a copy of his DD-214 for employment purposes. NPRC is working to make it easier for veterans with computers and Internet access to obtain copies of documents from their military files. Military veterans and the next of kin of deceased former military members may now use a new online military personnel records system to request documents.

Other individuals with a need for documents must still complete the Standard Form 180, which can be downloaded from the online web site. Because the requester will be asked to supply all information essential for NPRC to process the request, delays that normally occur when NPRC has to ask veterans for additional information will be minimized. The new web-based application was designed to provide better service on these requests by eliminating the records center's mailroom processing time.

Airborne Chaplains Corp Oldest in Military

THE NEW YORK TIMES

August 1, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:42 a.m. ET

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) -- They look like the other soldiers, but the Army's airborne chaplains are noncombatants who carry camo-clad Bibles instead of weapons when it's time to leap from aircraft onto the battlefield.

Chaplains were authorized for the Army by the Continental Congress in 1775, making the Army Chaplains Corps the oldest in the American military. Today, chaplains are paired with well-armed enlisted soldiers in a Unit Ministry Team, or UMT, as they walk a line between the military and a supreme being.

On Monday, about 50 chaplains and their assistants from airborne units jumped from the ramps of C-130 aircraft with 350 other soldiers at a sandy drop zone deep inside the huge Fort Bragg post. Many of the other chaplains based at Bragg didn't make the jump because they were deployed or preparing to deploy.

''Soldiers regardless of their faith background have a deep respect for the unit ministry team -- the chaplain and chaplain's assistant -- because they see them as their pastors on the battlefield,'' Sgt. Maj. Stephen Stott, 44, the senior chaplain's assistant for the 18th Airborne Corps, said last week.

Stott said chaplain teams spend much of their time prior to a deployment preparing soldiers for the harsh reality of military life.

Across the Army, there are 2,600 active-duty chaplains and assistants and the same number of National Guard and Reserve members, said Lt. Col. Randall Dolinger at the Army's Office of Chief of Chaplains. The number includes Special Operations, but the service doesn't talk about them, he said.

No chaplains have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, but one was severely wounded. More than 200 denominations have had chaplains in the Army, but Protestant are the most prevalent.

The daily life of a chaplain in a combat zone can be dangerous: Lt. Col. Jerry Powell, a nondenominational minister from Kansas City, was ambushed while riding in a convoy to conduct a memorial service in Iraq for a member of the civilian police force in Baghdad.

''It was just part of doing ministry,'' Powell said. ''Gunfire exchanged, we kept moving. It's a whole lot different from getting caught in a traffic jam (at home) while doing ministry.''

Col. Pat Hash, chief chaplain for the 18th Airborne Corps and a former Special Operations chaplain in Iraq and Afghanistan, said military chaplains are different from those in civilian churches because they are with soldiers ''out on the ranges and jumping out of airplanes.''

A former infantry officer who went to a Southern Baptist seminary, Hash said there is no conflict between ministry and combat. Soldiers have a job to do and ''we're there to walk alongside those soldiers as they face some of the challenges and turmoil of life,'' he said.

Chaplains don't seek converts but they rarely see a committed atheist during combat, Hash said.

''It's interesting how people, even though they say they're atheists, are drawn to some type of faith when they have to face stressful and difficult situations like war will bring,'' he said.

DoD identifies Corps’ third woman KIA