YOUNTVILLE VETERANS HOME SHOOTING IS ABOUT PTSD & GUN CONTROL

YOUNTVILLE VETERANS HOME SHOOTING IS ABOUT PTSD & GUN CONTROL:

MILLIONS OF COMBAT VETS FROM VIETNAM, DESERT STORM, IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN ARE NOT TREATED FOR PTSD.

ALBERT WONG SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN TERMINATED FROM PTSD/ TRAUMA PROGRAM.

PTSD TURNS MILITARY HEROS INTO MONSTERS WITH NO FEELINGS.

NO COMBAT VET SHOULD HAVE GUNS UNLESS PROPERLY EVALUATED FOR PTSD.

ALL VA HOSPITALS FOOLISHLY ALLOW COMBAT VETS TO CHOOSE IF THEY NEED TREATMENT.

VA HOSPITALS OFTEN IGNORE WARNINGS FROM WIVES & CHILDREN ABOUT VETS SUFFERING FROM PTSD.

VA HOSPITALS DENY VETS PTSD/ TRAUMA TREATMENT TO SPEND FEDERAL MONEY ELSEWHERE LIKE SALARY BONUSES.

PTSD TREATMENT SHOULD BE MANDATORY FOR ALL COMBAT VETS FROM VIETNAM, DESERT STORM, IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN REGARDLESS OF THEIR AGE OR SEPARATION TIME FROM SERVICE.


Sources: ABC News, CNN, Youtube


**** Victims, gunman identified in Yountville Veterans home shooting tragedy


A day-long standoff in Yountville has ended in tragedy.

Officials with the Pathway Home program at the veterans facility identified the three female victims that were killed after an armed gunman entered a staff meeting, taking hostages.

Yountville officials confirm that the three female hostages that died in the standoff are Executive Director Christine Loeber, a therapist Dr. Jen Golick, and Dr. Jennifer Gonzales, a psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.

The gunman has been identified as 36-year-old Albert Wong of Sacramento who was a former member of the Pathway Home Program at the veterans facility.

The Pathway Home released a statement saying: "These brave women were accomplished professionals who dedicated their careers to serving our nation's veterans and working closely with those in the greatest need of attention after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All of us at The Pathway Home are devastated by today's events. We stand with the families, friends, and colleagues who share in this terrible loss."

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***** Three women, suspect dead after hostage standoff in Yountville, California


After an apparent hourslong standoff between police and a gunman, three women were found dead Friday night at the Veterans Home of California in Yountville, authorities said.

The suspect was also found dead, Chris Childs, assistant chief of the California Highway Patrol's Golden Gate Division, told reporters.

The three victims were earlier described as employees of The Pathway Home, a counseling service for veterans who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is on the property.

The suspect had been a client at facility until he left two weeks ago, according to State Senator Bill Dodd.
It's unclear if the women were chosen at random or had a connection with the gunman.

Hostage negotiators had spent hours trying to contact the gunman at the facility north of San Francisco but were not able to do so, according to California Highway Patrol spokesman Robert Nacke.

After the victims were found, investigators were left to determine when during the standoff the deaths occurred.
California Gov. Jerry Brown said the shooting "tragically took the lives of three people dedicated to serving our veterans."

"Our hearts go out to their families and loved ones and the entire community of Yountville," Brown said in a statement.

The governor has ordered flags in the state's capitol to fly at half staff in tribute to the victims and their families.

Larry Kamer told CNN that his wife, Pathway employee Devereaux Smith, said the gunman barged into a going-away party for Pathway employees leaving the job.

"They were having cake and toasting, apparently he just walked in with this rifle," Kamer said. He said his wife and some other employees managed to escape, though he didn't say how.

The man was holding the three people hostage in a room inside the building, Napa County Sheriff John Robertson said during the afternoon.

"We've tried numerous times and been trying since 10:30 this morning to contact him by his own cell phone and also the phones in the dorm area," the sheriff said.
He said authorities knew the gunman's identity but did not release it. Robertson didn't give a motive for the gunman's actions.

Early in the standoff, the man and officers fired shots at each other.

"There was an exchange of gunfire, fired by the suspect and our deputy," Robertson said. "There were many bullets fired."

Law enforcement officers responded to a "shots fired" report around 10:20 a.m. local time from the facility that houses about 1,000 veterans, Robertson said.

Robertson said about 70 students who were inside a theater on the grounds of the veterans home, were safely evacuated.

"They were always safe," the sheriff said. "They were put into a locked down position for their own safety." The ages of the students or why they were at the veterans home was not clear Friday afternoon.
The California Department of Veterans (CalVet), which operates the home, said it enacted its emergency protocol. Police surrounded the facility and told people to avoid the area.

Marlon Harrison was one of the family members who gathered outside the gates to the home.
"I'm waiting for a phone call from my daughter," Harrison said. "It's considered a lockdown building, you can't go in unless authorized."

The FBI deployed a SWAT team to Yountville, spokesperson Katherine Zackel said. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said via Twitter it was also responding.
Founded in 1884, the facility houses about 1,000 aging vets and is the largest veterans home in the United States, according to the CalVet.

Men and women who served in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm and Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom live there, CalVet said.

The veterans home is an important part of the Napa Valley Community, with the 1,200-seat Lincoln Theater, a golf course and a large library, CalVet said.

Residents were temporarily evacuated from the veterans home in October when fires raged through Napa County.
Yountville is a town of about 3,000 residents in the north San Francisco Bay area.

Afghan & Iraq Vets Still Suffer In Silence From PTSD: "Happy New Year" Film Provides Insight

"The War Does NOT End When We Say Its Over. For Many The War Just Begins. To All The Veterans. Thank You For Your Service."
Patrick Kennedy


Via a Mandatory Draft I want EVERY Federal Gov't Official including Congress Members & Pentagon Officials, to immediately allow their Adult Sons & Daughters to fight in the Afghan War to help Defend Karzai's (Afghan President) Corrupt Government, then tell me its Wise Foreign Policy” for U.S. Troops to remain in that region of the world.

War Is Hell!

God Bless Our Men & Women Who Serve This Country Via the U.S. Military!





The movie ‘Happy New Year’ depicts how war vets deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder


For many, the issue of post traumatic stress disorder among war veterans is an uncomfortable one, even taboo. But that hasn’t stopped writer/director K. Lorrel Manning from tackling its complexities in the movie, Happy New Year.

“A lot of men and women are suffering in silence,” said Manning. “It takes tragedies like what happened in Afghanistan for people to start talking about it.”

Indeed, the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians allegedly at the hands of a U.S. soldier is forcing a public dialogue. Manning is hoping his movie can keep the momentum going.

The Directors Guild of America in Manhattan is hosting a special benefit screening of Happy New Year Thursday. Proceeds will fund a PTSD facility in Israel.

The movie, filmed at the Bronx Psychiatric Center, follows two friends who served together in Iraq who are reunited at a veterans’ facility on New Year’s Eve.

The idea came to Manning over time but started in 2004 when he read the book, “Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq.”

“I wasn’t really following the war effort at that point but I couldn’t put this book down,” he said. “It changed my life.”

Later, while doing another project in Chicago, he met a police officer who was an Iraq war veteran, and their conversations lit a spark.

Manning wrote a one-act play and asked his friend Michael Cuomo to play the lead role.

That play evolved into a short film, then the opportunity came to make a feature-length film.

Neither Manning nor Cuomo have served in the military. To tell the story accurately, they spent nine months interviewing 80 veterans from various wars.

To prepare for his role as Staff Sgt. Cole Lewis, Cuomo spent four weeks in a simulated boot camp with a drill instructor and used a wheelchair for a month (his character is paralyzed from the waist down).

“I would wheel around the city at night, kind of incognito,” he said. “I wanted to feel what it was like to see the world from that position and feel how the world sees you.”

While the subject matter may be difficult, even off-putting for some, Cuomo believes there are people willing to put aside their personal politics and focus on the humanity in the story.

“The idea of thinking that your life is heading in a certain direction, then experiencing something catastrophic that changes your course, and how you deal with that, is a dynamic I think anyone can relate to,” he said.

Happy New Year has been well received at 16 film festivals nationwide, picking up some notable endorsements along the way.

Among its fans is retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism in Vietnam.

“I’m a career soldier so I’m invariably not happy with war movies,” he said. “(But) I was absolutely enraptured by Happy New Year because the characters seemed so real. I knew all of them.

“It’s a really moving piece,” Jacobs continued. “It’s hard to say you enjoyed something that actually causes you a little bit of pain, but I absolutely enjoyed it.”

For more information about the Happy New Year screening, call (212) 586-4034.


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Sources: AP, NY Daily News, Russia Today, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

US Army Welcomed Muslims But Didn't Stop Harassment...Wrong Environment

Alleged gunman's cousin says Hasan was harassed. The cousin of Nidal Malik Hasan said the Army psychiatrist was "ridiculed for being a Muslim." NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.

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Stresses at Fort Hood Were Likely Intense for Hasan


While no one yet knows what ignited Major Nidal Malik Hasan's murderous rage Thursday afternoon, Nov. 5, at Fort Hood, the kindling was hiding in plain sight. The US Army had ordered Hasan, wrestling with the conflicting demands of being a soldier, a Psychiatrist and a Muslim, to the post with the highest toll of Army suicides. Fort Hood is one of the Army's most stressed posts because of its units' revolving-door deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, the US Army made clear that Hasan couldn't escape his own pending deployment to Afghanistan, where he'd have to salve the mental wounds of fellow soldiers killing members of his own faith.

Soldiers nursing the mental and emotional scars of war have overwhelmed the central Texas base, the Army's largest. Cases of post-traumatic stress disorder quadrupled from 2005 to 2007, and PTSD affects even those — like Hasan — who haven't gone off to war. "Mental-health issues are a real problem for the Fort Hood population," an Army study concluded last year. "Soldiers don't live in a vacuum," it added, noting that they have "families and friends who are also affected by the trauma the soldiers experience."

Hasan had spent six years dealing with the mental wreckage of war at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and, since July, at Fort Hood's Darnall Army Medical Center. His own susceptibility to mental problems was likely heightened because he was pretty much a loner: he wasn't married or in a relationship. After his parents died a decade ago, he seemed to become more religious. Absent close family, he spent much of his time counseling soldiers whose minds and bodies were scarred in combat.

His growing opposition to the wars — which apparently spiked when President Barack Obama decided not to pull U.S. troops out of region, as Hasan had hoped — crystallized when he received orders for his first combat deployment. "We've known for the last five years that that was probably his worst nightmare," Nader Hasan, a cousin, told Fox News. "He would tell us how he hears horrific things ... that was probably affecting him psychologically." Authorities took note six months ago when someone with Hasan's name posted messages on the Internet likening suicide bombers to soldiers who protect their buddies by diving atop a live grenade, although no formal inquiry was launched.

Any opposition Hasan had toward the wars could have deepened because of his constant contact with soldiers suffering from PTSD, that 2008 Army study suggested. More broadly, an Army study released in July found that major crimes have been on the rise at U.S. Army bases since 2003. It noted that crime rates — and mental illnesses — are rising with increased deployments and casualties.

Exactly what role Hasan's faith played in the shooting, if any, is unknown. Since well before 9/11, the U.S. military has welcomed Muslims into its ranks, and nearly all have served as fine soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. But since the 2001 attacks, there have been concerns that some Muslims, once in uniform, would put religion above country. In April 2005, Army Sergeant Hasan Akbar was sentenced to death for killing two officers in Kuwait just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Prosecutors said he launched the attack because he was concerned about U.S. troops killing fellow Muslims. That is apparently the only recent case of a Islamic soldier citing his faith as a reason for killing fellow troops.

Muslim scholars have long believed it is proper for Muslims to serve in a military force fighting other Muslims so long as they remain free to practice their faith. "If the leadership says another country is a threat, then the Muslim has the obligation to defend his country," says John Voll, an Islamic historian at Georgetown University, "... even if the other country is Islamic." But concerned over "the hatred that could come out," Representative Chet Edwards, a Texas Democrat whose district is near Fort Hood, told TIME he and Representative Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota and the lone Muslim in Congress, are seeking data on how many Muslims are now serving (perhaps 5,000 out of 1.4 million enlistees) and how many have been killed or wounded in combat. Hasan probably wouldn't appear on such a list, because he didn't specify a religion in his Army file.

It will take years to ease the trauma Fort Hood suffered Thursday. The Army will have to deploy more psychiatrists to deal with the surge of PTSD cases sure to come. The post recently has taken steps to ease stress on the home front, including creating "Phantom Family Time." It occurs every Thursday at 3 p.m. That was 86 minutes after one of those psychiatrists dispatched to central Texas to help ailing troops instead began shooting and shouting "Allahu Akbar" — God is great — at those counting on him for solace.



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Sources: TIME, MSNBC, US Army, Google Maps

Fort Hood Shootings Now Leaves 12 Dead, 31 Wounded...Conspiracy, Terrorism, Anger Over Afghan War

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R) is horrified over the Fort Hood shootings.

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Violent activity continues at Fort Hood.

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Gunmen reportedly opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, killing at least 7 people and injuring 20 others. NBC's Brian Williams reports

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U.S. Army says 12 dead, 31 injured at Fort Hood


At least one U.S. soldier opened fire Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 12 people and wounding 31 others, military officials said.

One gunman was shot to death, and two other soldiers were in custody, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone told reporters. It was not immediately known whether the victims were all soldiers or civilians, but Cone said at least one of those killed was a civilian police officer and NBC affiliate KCEN-TV of Waco reported that at least four SWAT officers were among those wounded.

Fort Hood, one of the largest military complexes in the world, was on lockdown, as were schools in the area.

Cone gave no further details on the dead gunman. A senior administration official told NBC News analyst Roger Cressey that one of the suspects who was in custody was an Army major.

The official said the shootings could have been a criminal matter rather than a terrorism-related attack and that there was no intelligence to suggest a plot against Fort Hood.

Shootings at two sites

A spokesman for Fort Hood said the shootings took place at two locations around 1:30 p.m.: the Soldiers Readiness Processing Center and Howze Theater.

The spokesman, Sgt. Major Jamie Posten, said processing center was where soldiers “cycle through as they prepare to deploy.” That complex is on the West side of post, off Battalion Avenue.

Greg Schannep, an aide to Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, who was on the post to attend a graduation service, told the Austin American-Statesman that a soldier with blood on his uniform ran past him and said a man was shooting.

Agents of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were on their way to the post, federal officials said.

Fort Hood is adjacent to Killeen, about 60 miles northeast of Austin. The sprawling complex is home to at least 4,929 active-duty officers and 45,414 enlisted. Civilian employees total nearly 9,000.

The Temple Independent School District was on a “soft” lockdown. Parents were asked to pick their children up at the normal times, although they could experience delays.

A spokesman for the Army, Lt. Col. Lee M. Packnett, said he was unaware whether security measures were put in place at other military bases. A spokesman at Fort Lewis, Wash., said the incident was being treated as isolated.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the shootings, press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Sara Kuban said officials from several federal agencies are still collecting information on the shootings. "Because this is early in this event, we cannot at this time confirm motives behind these shootings," she said.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said in a statement: “I am shocked and saddened by today’s outburst of violence at Fort Hood that has cost seven of our brave service members their lives and has gravely injured others. My heart goes out to their loved ones.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign spokesperson said the governor was in Denton, scheduled to attend a campaign event, when word of the shooting occurred. There was no word on whether he had left Denton or whether he was headed to Fort Hood.

Milly Land, who works at the base fitness center, said she was headed for the graduation ceremony at 2 p.m. at the Howze Theater when the campus was locked down. She went back to the fitness center. She said she spoke by phone with friends at the soldier processing center, who said a gunman walked in about 1:30, walked to the medical area of the processing center, and started shooting. A second gunman was shooting at the theater next door, she said.

Fort Hood has seen other violence in recent years. In September 2008, a 21-year-old 1st Cavalry Division soldier shot his lieutenant to death and then killed himself. Spc. Jody Michael Wirawan of Eagle River, Alaska, shot himself to death after shooting 1st Lt. Robert Bartlett Fletcher, 24, of Jensen Beach, Fla. to death.



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Sources: KCEN, MSNBC, Google Maps