You want to express patriotic outrage? How about trying an issue that really matters...
In the past, Katz has repeatedly insisted while the risk of suicide among veterans is serious, it's not outside the norm.http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/21/cbsnews_investigates/main4032921.shtml
"There is no epidemic in suicide in VA," Katz told Keteyian in November.
But in this e-mail to his top media adviser, written two months ago, Katz appears to be saying something very different, stating: "Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities."
Katz's e-mail was written shortly after the VA provided CBS News data showing there were only 790 attempted suicides in all 2007 - a fraction of Katz's estimate.
"This 12,000 attempted suicides per year shows clearly, without a doubt, that there is an epidemic of suicide among veterans," said Paul Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense.
And it appears that Katz went out of his way to conceal these numbers.
First, he titled his e-mail: "Not for the CBS News Interview Request."
He opened it with "Shh!" - as in keep it quiet - before ending with
"Is this something we should (carefully) address … before someone stumbles on it?"
On Monday, CBS News showed the e-mail to Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.
"This is disgraceful. This is a crime against our nation, our nation's veterans," Filner told CBS News. "They do not want to come to grips with the reality, with the truth."
And that's not all.
Last November when CBS News exposed an epidemic of more than 6,200 suicides in 2005 among those who had served in the military, Katz attacked our report.
"Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate," he said last November.
But it turns out they were, as Katz admitted in this e-mail, just three days later.
He wrote: there "are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans."
That works out to about 6,570 per year, which Katz admits in the same e-mail, "is supported by the CBS numbers."
or this:
A psychologist who helps lead the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in Texas told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/15/AR2008051503533.html
"Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out," Norma Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended that they "consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder."
VA staff members "really don't . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD," Perez wrote.
OR THIS:
VA secretary Peake suggested some of the concern about post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury has been overblown.
Many of the brain injuries are serious but some of them are akin to what anyone who played football in their youth might have suffered, Peake told Guinn.
But hey, if slamming a a radio personality because he says that a motorcycle parade is an inappropriate way to honor veterans that gave their lives is YOUR shallow way of expressing your 'patriotism' go ahead and continue to ignore the REAL insult and harm being done by this administration.