Senators call for resignation of VA official who withheld suicide statistics.
Senators call for resignation of VA official who withheld suicide statistics.
In the wake of a CBS News report yesterday that revealed the Department of Veterans Affairs deliberately withheld information about the suicide risk among veterans, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) called for the resignation of Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s top official for mental health, who questioned whether to give information on new suicide statistics from CBS. Akaka wrote to Michael Kussman, the Undersecretary for Health:
Dr. Katz’s personal conduct and professional judgment have been called into question by his response to the mental health needs of veterans, and in particular to veteran suicides. I believe veterans, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, would be best served by his immediate resignation.
“How do we trust what you’re saying when every time we turn around we find out that what you’re saying publicly is different from what you’re saying privately? How can we trust what you’re saying today?” Murray asked VA Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield.
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THIS IS HOW THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION SUPPORTS OUR TROOPS!!
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:46 pmWhat the hell kind of a doctor hides and lies about medical statistics that has to do with our Vets ?
This d-bag should be permanently stripped of any and all medical licenses he possesses and be asked repeatedly if he was told to lie and hide those stats and by whom ……….
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:52 pmGood luck with that. Let me know if Bush ever lets a Bushie go.
Not. Gonna. Happen.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:53 pmDr. Ira Katz was doing what all the rest of the administration does. LIE… It seems to work well for Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Feith and Condi.
I’m glad that Akaka & Murray want the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They are not going to be able to help fix the problems in the VA without the facts. Hopefully, they can start saving the lives of these brave and lost veterans. Give them back hope and the proper care they so richly deserve.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:55 pmMaybe they should write a letter. Sorry but I have but lost faith that anyone at bush/co will ever be punished.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 pmHow about someone in the House start doing their fooking jobs and start Impeachment of these crooks and scalawags?
Oh,I forgot, Pelosi is “Table Phobic”…..
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:59 pmSimple. You cannot trust him. Make plans now to zero out the budget for his position if he occupies it.
AND, the Democrats should drive this issue hard. They should take it to the media and make an issue out of it, not stand by and wait for the media to do it for them.
it’s a betrayal of our veterans and a slap in their face. Let’s hear some outrage, Democrats! !! Do you have it in you?
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:01 pmUh, can we get these representative’s to do the same with impeaching all of this administration…Blessings
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:05 pmLong term suicide will be a problem too as more come home and use drugs and alchohol to numb the pain. This song is still as relevant today as it was when John Prine wrote it 30 years ago…
Sam Stone came home,
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas.
And the time that he served,
Had shattered all his nerves,
And left a little shrapnel in his knee.
But the morphine eased the pain,
And the grass grew round his brain,
And gave him all the confidence he lacked,
With a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back.
Chorus:
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don’t stop to count the years,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.
Mmm….
Sam Stone’s welcome home
Didn’t last too long.
He went to work when he’d spent his last dime
And Sammy took to stealing
When he got that empty feeling
For a hundred dollar habit without overtime.
And the gold rolled through his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains,
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose,
While the kids ran around wearin’ other peoples’ clothes…
Repeat Chorus:
Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Well, he played his last request
While the room smelled just like death
With an overdose hovering in the air
But life had lost its fun
And there was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the G. I. Bill
For a flag draped casket on a local heroes’ hill.
Repeat Chorus
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:06 pmHe won’t resign and Bush won’t fire him. Bush will probably give him the a Metal of Honor.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 pm“How do we trust what you’re saying when every time we turn around we find out that what you’re saying publicly is different from what you’re saying privately? How can we trust what you’re saying today?”
The same question should be posed to the White House and all of their cronies.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:12 pmSo the VA can’t determine what vet’s are at risk, doesn’t monitor the effects of their meds and will not support hospitalized vets to in registering to vote nor provide polling places. This regime just keeps on giving.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:14 pmSenators call for resignation of VA official who withheld suicide statistics.
Yea hold your breath. Two Dems calling for the resignation of someone working for Bush.
Wait for that, I’m going home.
RIP
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:16 pmSGT Stephen R. Sherman
C CO 1-5 IN (STRYKER)
KIA 3 Feb 2005
Mosul, Iraq
Dr. Katz just had his Akaka Moment.
specialist f - that’s a powerful song indeed. Too bad its pearl of a message is lost on the swine.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:22 pmLGF, if that song doesn’t bring a tear to your eye,I don’t know what will. I’m a big fan of John Prine. If you get a chance “you-tube” some of his work. “Flag Decal” is more light hearted.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:30 pmSorry…LFG
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:34 pmI work (as a contractor) for the VA. There is a vast gulf separating the decent caring and honest folks who actually deliver services to our veterans and the top level of the bureaucracy who are more concerned with “what will people think of us.”
Top management at VA are almost always political appointees. Yet the VA, like other federal agencies, posts most of their job offerings so that only people in the agency can apply.
Top management at VA are trying to pretend they can do the job they are supposed to do (which is increasingly impossible) with reduced funding.
Top management at VA are pretending that the “war on terror” is not taking a super-heavy toll on the members of the military who are actually struggling to hold their own as an occupying force in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The fault lies at the very top — the Bush administration.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:37 pmIs this the same administrator who’s been hiding the facts and stats on Depleted Uranium (DU) poisoning of those infected? Anyone present and under the cloud of contamination IS forever contaminated and men will pass this on to their wives via Uranium-contaminated semen. The “half life” of depleted uranium contamination is 2.4 billion years -it’s safe to say that the ground, water and people of Iraq and Kosovo have been contaminated and will die of a variety of ailments including cancers.
We need the numbers of our own military afflicted by this miscarriage of justice in violation of the use of depleted uranium which we’ve signed treaties to ban using. It produces harder shells which have more penetrating power - at what cost?? The lives of potentially thousands of our own people whom we are sending (and their spouses) to an early grave.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:52 pmer….wasn’t the illegal use of depleted uranium something begun under ….er….President Clinton and used in Kosovo??
Maybe Hillary in her infinite wisdom and vast experience of three decades can enlighten us on this?
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:54 pm#17 Top management at the VA have been hiding the depleted uranium contamination of our vets (basically a death sentence to an early grave) and calling it PTSD. Hah! These docs need to be brought to the justice they deserve, too. Maybe they took the “hypocritical oath” instead of the “hippocratic oath”??
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:55 pmGoogle: Depleted Uranium or DU Poisoning to get the full details. It’s horrific and being hidden from the public by this administration, the previous administration, and the VA docs.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:56 pmWrong metrics. Again.
By Bush’s way of thinking, each and every suicide is another freeloader that won’t weigh down the system sucking medical care for the rest of their lives. They have performed their service, they can be discarded like another empty bottle of Jack Daniels.
Broadheads for Bush.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:59 pmGive him his Freedom Medal, his sinecure at the American Enterprise Institute, and frog march him out until charges can be brought.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:38 pmResignation? Call for his arrest, put him in jail without bail until his trial, and then allow him to end his life the way he has apparently helped thousands of our vets do.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:27 pmIs there no accountability in the country?
Clapping for Tinkerbell always trumps honestly facing real problems. It is the Republican MO.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:07 pm