Tag: veterans

Honor Veterans by Ending Wars

One of my family’s favorite regular getaways is Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. The roller coasters are top notch, the shows are fun, and everyone is in a constant state of joy; it’s great. It’s also a veteran’s hangout. Every day when the park opens they honor all the veterans. We line up, march to the flag pole, and salute as we sing the anthem and say the pledge of allegiance. (I normally explain to people that the pledge is big-government socialist propaganda written by someone to the left of Bernie Sanders, but I make an exception for Silver Dollar City). I’ve even been the one to carry and raise the flag. It’s always nostalgic and fun to talk with other veterans, especially since I’m often the youngest one there.

One fun-filled day I had just finished a coaster with one of my daughters when we had to run from some rain. My wife and kids ran indoors to get out of the rain and grab some lunch as I spotted a scruffy guy with a submarine hat. I knew from the submarine number on his hat it was an old boat. I struck up a conversation, motioned to my own hat, told him I was a nuke electrician, and asked him what he did. He told me how he mostly loved his time as a submariner, and even somehow got to work on “pig boat” for a while – the very old diesel submarines characterized by their relatively short but fat shape. I don’t remember his original navy job, but he was also a diver. Navy divers come from a proud tradition, of course. He told me about their mine-sweeping operations in the rivers of Vietnam, and how he’d often volunteer to stand watch topside so that his buddies could take liberty. He liked the fresh air and dark nights. That is, until he didn’t anymore.

Where they were, sabotage was a rare, but realistic threat. So, they had to stay vigilant. Like any foreign war, this task is often challenging because you’re surrounded by civilians just trying to get by in the midst of war. In this area, people would come to the waterfront and collect plastic trash where the currents would pool heaps of it together. One night, he saw someone come up to the edge of the sub. They ignored his yelling, commands, and even warning shots.

He ended up killing a 12-year-old girl. Then, he said soberly, “They even gave me an award for it.”

As the rain continued to drizzle on us he said, “So I put a shotgun in my mouth.”

I missed a few of the following details, but I wasn’t about to ask him to tell it again.

Seeing the pain in his eyes cut me to the heart. “I’m so sorry that happened to you” and after a pause I said, “I’m pretty anti-war.”

“Me too” he replied solemnly.

Even before that moment, him and his buddies knew the war was pointless, but being away from the shooting and knowing there was nothing they could do about it, they made the most of it and didn’t complain. Of course, this changed everything.

He told me that many people didn’t support veterans the way they do today, even though the wars are just as stupid. Nonetheless, he took his honorable discharge and new lifetime pension and decided to do something honorable with it. He went to DC, wore his dress blues (he laughed about how against the rules it was) and protested the hell out of the war till the very end.

Like him, I was relatively safe tucked away on a submarine hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean. Although we were never shot at, the Navy often really sucked. Since my enlistment has ended, I’ve known multiple vets or active-duty sailors who have killed themselves. Sometimes people suggest that if we all just care hard enough, wear ribbons, or change the borders on our Facebook photos that fewer Veterans might kill themselves. The numbers are insane: The VA says around 20 veterans and active duty servicemembers kill themselves every single day; but another exhaustive 4-year-long study shows that an alarming number of suicides don’t get reported as veterans, so the number for veterans alone is most likely closer to 24 a day.

Sure, a large piece of this can be chalked up to how stressful military life is and how difficult it can be for many servicemembers to transition to the normal world again, but many of us are convinced that one of the largest factors is the overall culture and the sense of waste and futility in “the system” and the missions. Both externally and inside the military, many have little faith in the leadership at the top and the missions they generate. This includes military and political leadership.

I want to be very clear: in the Navy we knew what we were signing up for: deployments, impossibly long-hours, sleepless nights, and incredibly demanding challenges. When it was necessary for the mission, we gave it our all and did it with pride. Honestly, I loved a lot of it. Operating a mobile nuclear power plant underwater is pretty cool. What did bother us though, was when “the suck” was so clearly unnecessary or politically motivated. How much more frustrating and depressing would it be to be sent across the globe to a desert, told to “win hearts and minds” and told to build a foreign government while blowing things up and shooting at people in a country known as “the graveyard of empires”? We spent 20 years replacing the Taliban with the Taliban. It was clearly a futile, impossible task–a fool’s errand. Our leaders intentionally lied to us the whole time to keep it going. To top it off, soldiers couldn’t even really explain why they were there to their loved ones.

Missions void of clear goals still exist all over the world. Imagine being stationed in Somalia. Did you know we’ve bombed Somalia nearly 90 times this year already? I haven’t heard a single word in the mainstream press about Somalia. We’ve been in Somalia since 2001, and before that we were there from 1992 to 1994. Can you explain Somalia? Do you know who we’re bombing and why? I wonder how many soldiers have felt like the Medal of Honor recipient, Retired Major General Smedley Butler who wrote “War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Yet, when loss of life comes at the hands of the state, it seems many people don’t even blink. The state gets to get away with murder. Right now, we’re blowing up speed boats off the coast of a South American country because they might have drugs in them, as if these speed boats are about to cross 2000 miles of open ocean and sell drugs to kids on South Padre Island or Miami. Even if we suspect someone is selling drugs in our hometown now, the cops don’t get to go up to them and shoot them in the head without warning! It’s so obviously murder by any definition, even if there were drugs in the boats. The ethics don’t change just because it’s on the ocean far away. And yes, it was wrong when Obama and Biden did it, too.

This brings me back to the conversation with the old submariner. His words have stuck with me, not because of the horror he described – though that would haunt anyone – but because of what it revealed about the system that sent him there in the first place. He wasn’t broken by the enemy; he was broken by the mission. He did everything his country asked of him, and it still left him shattered.

And we’re still doing it.

We’re still creating veterans who will come home hollowed out by the same kind of futility. The details change, the geography changes, the justifications change – but the result is always the same: young men and women return from foreign lands with invisible wounds, told to be proud of serving their country in a war no one can explain and no one expected to win.

And we don’t just do it to our veterans, we do it to the veterans of our proxies.

Here’s another hard truth: you’re not supporting Ukrainian warriors by cheering on an unwinnable war. Not only are the Russians steadily advancing, but the demographics are horrifying.

According to Ukraine’s own Prosecutor General’s Office, more than 250,000 men have been charged with desertion since the war began–more than a quarter of a million! Their own media report on the bleak truth that they continue to experience a manpower crisis on the front, and that their soldiers suffer from exceedingly low morale. Furthermore, western mainstream media have completely ignored the absolutely brutal conscription practices going on in Ukraine. Men regularly get ripped off the street and shoved into vans or short busses. Hours upon hours of footage, often from a loved one’s cell phone, exists of this “busification” of Ukrainian men, often with their wives screaming in horror and trying to fight the gang of “recruiters” in vain. There are more than a handful of stories of Ukrainian conscripts even getting killed in the process.

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Congressional Deal Would Ban Many Hemp THC Products, While Excluding Provisions To Let VA Doctors Recommend Medical Marijuana

Newly released spending legislation negotiated by congressional leaders would federally recriminalize many hemp-derived products. It also excludes provisions previously passed by the House and Senate that would have allowed Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) doctors to begin issuing medical marijuana recommendations to their patients.

The new measure, if enacted into law, would ban certain hemp products that were legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill signed into law by President Donald Trump during his first term.

The negotiated bill “prevents the unregulated sale of intoxicating hemp-based or hemp-derived products, including Delta-8, from being sold online, in gas stations, and corner stores, while preserving non-intoxicating CBD and industrial hemp products,” a summary published on Sunday by the Senate Appropriations Committee says.

Under current law, cannabis products are considered legal hemp if they contain less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC on a dry weight basis.

The new legislation specifies that, within one year of enactment, the weight would apply to total THC—including delta-8 and other isomers. It would also include “any other cannabinoids that have similar effects (or are marketed to have similar effects) on humans or animals as a tetrahydrocannabinol (as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services).”

The new definition of legal hemp would additionally ban “any intermediate hemp-derived cannabinoid products which are marketed or sold as a final product or directly to an end consumer for personal or household use” as well as products containing cannabinoids that are synthesized or manufactured outside of the cannabis plant or not capable of being naturally produced by it.

Legal hemp products would be limited to a total of .4 milligrams of total THC or any other cannabinoids with similar effects.

Within 90 days of the bill’s enactment, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other agencies would need to publish list of “all cannabinoids known to FDA to be capable of being naturally produced by a Cannabis sativa L. plant, as reflected in peer reviewed literature,” “all tetrahydrocannabinol class cannabinoids known to the agency to be naturally occurring in the plant” and “all other know cannabinoids with similar effects to, or marketed to have similar effects to, tetrahyrocannabinol class cannabinoids.”

The deal was agreed to by Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking minority member on the panel, as well as House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-OK). But Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House panel, did not sign off.

The language slightly differs from provisions included in legislation that had previously advanced out of the House and Senate Appropriations panels, which would have banned products containing any “quantifiable” amount of THC, to be determined by the HHS secretary and secretary of agriculture.

Separately, the newly released appropriations legislation excludes language that had been passed by either chamber earlier this year to let VA doctors recommend medical cannabis to their military veteran patients in states where it is legal.

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450,000 U.S. Soldiers Diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury Since 2001

When I was living in Menlo Park, California in the years 2011-2015, I got to be pals with an affluent, patriotic man who was a benefactor the VA hospitals in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. He introduced me to a psychiatrist with whom I got to be pals, and on a few occasions I was given permission to accompany him when he visited his patients.

By far the most common injury I saw was what neurologists call a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). According to the National Institutes of Health (Occupation and Risk of Traumatic Brain Injury in the Millennium Cohort Study) rom 2000 to 2021, an estimated 449,026 active-duty U.S. service members experienced a TBI. These injuries were often caused by combat-related incidents, such as explosive blasts, and are considered a “signature injury” of post-9/11 conflicts.

The vast majority of these injuries are considered mild, but a “mild” diagnosis is cold comfort for those suffering from the syndrome and their family members, as mild symptoms include:

  • Headache
  • Dizziness
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Fatigue
  • Sensitivity to light or noise
  • Blurred or double vision
  • Balance problems
  • Cognitive: Confusion or difficulty concentrating, memory loss or problems with recall, Difficulty with attention or problem-solving, and slowed thinking or processing speed.
  • Emotional: Irritability or mood swings, anxiety or depression, difficulty sleeping, and changes in appetite.
  • Other: Ringing in the ears, loss of consciousness (briefly), and seizures (rare).

The following 2023 news segment presents a pretty good overview of the epidemic. Note that, as of this posting, it has only received 235 views.

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Democrats Once Again Show Veterans Come Last

The way a nation treats its veterans speaks louder than any patriotic slogan. Today, in the middle of a government shutdown, Democrats in Washington are once again showing that veterans are not their priority. 

Instead of ensuring our troops get paid on time, they are holding up a clean Republican funding bill in pursuit of subsidies and benefits for illegal immigrants. 

This indifference is not new—it reflects a pattern in American history where veterans, even those who sacrificed the most, have too often been forgotten.

That reality was made chillingly clear when Sapphire Dingler, a graduate student in public history, unearthed disturbing testimony in recently digitized U.S. archives. 

The records detailed atrocities committed by Japanese doctors during World War II against Allied prisoners of war—including Americans. 

One doctor, Hisakichi Tokuda, inspired by the infamous Unit 731, conducted gruesome experiments such as injecting soy milk intravenously into captives. 

Men suffered seizures, collapsed, and died. Their fates were recorded in dusty files that had gone largely unread for decades.

These stories were not isolated. In 1945, Italian officer Ernesto Saxida was subjected to repeated injections before dying in agony. 

American prisoners were experimented on at Kyushu Imperial University, their deaths later disguised in official records as casualties of the atomic bomb. 

Testimony at the Yokohama War Crimes Trials confirmed what many never knew: Western POWs were not spared from the horrors of Japanese medical experimentation. 

Some were literally cut open alive. And yet, for decades, these truths were obscured or buried, their memory erased twice—once by their deaths, and again by history’s silence.

Groups like Pacific Atrocities Education are now trying to correct that silence by bringing attention to the Pacific front’s forgotten brutality. 

But their work underscores a shameful fact: America has not always stood up for its veterans or even preserved their stories. At times, our government actively covered them up. 

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Waste Of The Day: Veterans’ Hospital Equipment Is Missing

Topline: The Veterans Health Administration has lost an estimated 5% of its reusable medical equipment worth at least $211 million — including exam tables, computers and microscopes — and “will continue to do so if processes are not improved,” according to a new audit from the Veterans Affairs inspector general.

Key facts: VA hospitals own over 2 million pieces of nonexpendable equipment that is meant to be used for two years or more, valued at $12 billion. Federal auditors recently visited hospitals to see if the VA was properly tracking the equipment and found that thousands of items had disappeared.

The auditors estimated that a third of the equipment — 537,000 items — is in a different location than inventory records claim, and an additional 75,500 items are missing entirely.

It’s possible there is even more missing equipment, because the VA is only required to keep track of inventory worth more than $5,000.

Some of the nonexpendable equipment is tracked using electronic tags, but some of the tags have dead batteries or only show what building the item is in and not what room.

The VA also uses an “inventory by exception” system in which items that have their location recorded during routine maintenance do not need to be included in annual inventory reports for up to 24 months, even though most items are required to be logged every 12 months. Auditors wrote that “a lot can go wrong, including losing equipment,” because of the inventory-by-exception system.

There are also staffing issues contributing to the missing equipment. Some VA employees working on inventory could not search for items because they did not have the keys to all the rooms in the hospital. Some hospitals have staffing levels below 40%, which employees said made it harder to fill out inventory reports on time.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

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Veterans Affairs’ Numbers Humiliate the Military: Mandates Weren’t About Health or Readiness, They Were About Control, Says Whistleblower

While there is a growing wave in skepticism towards all vaccines within the Department of Defense after the illegal enforcement of the COVID-19 shot, a whistleblower has come forward to present information indicating that employees within Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have previously expressed similar doubts, especially regarding the flu vaccine.

The recent news stories of a Marine Corps officer, Air Force Major Brennan Schilperoort (whose pay has been restored), Army Sergeant Dan McGriff, (a pseudonym), and  Air National Guard Technical Sergeant Tony Oslin reveal the Department of Defense’s current disdain for service members seeking religious accommodation or medical exemption for the flu shot.

Has VA been more forgiving with its employees, given that they are more frequently in contact with the elderly compared to the typical service member?

The Gateway Pundit spoke to whistleblower Sonny Fleeman, who emphasized his opinions are entirely his own and do not reflect the views of the United States Government, the Department of Veterans Affairs, or any organization he is currently or has previously been associated with.

When Fleeman submitted a FOIA request to the Department of Veterans Affairs in February 2025, the agency was still requiring COVID-19 and flu shots for its healthcare employees.

“I wanted to see how many of those on the inside—the doctors, nurses, and staff who actually live with the consequences—were requesting exemptions,” he explained. “That number would reflect the real sentiment of healthcare workers rather than a tightly controlled narrative being sold to the public,” he suspected.

“To sharpen the comparison,” Fleeman also asked about flu shot exemptions, and “the results were shocking.” In 2024, close to 100,000 VA healthcare workers—approximately 25 percent of its total staff—were granted exemptions from the flu shot mandate for medical or religious reasons.

“That’s one in four employees across the largest healthcare system in the United States, and possibly the world, yet the VA still functioned,” he pointed out. For him, “The data shatters the military’s claim that mandates were ‘operationally necessary.’”

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Psilocybin Can ‘Maximize’ Recovery From Traumatic Brain Injury, Scientific Review Concludes

Psilocybin, a main chemical component in psychedelic mushrooms, could play a beneficial role in patients recovering from traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to a new scientific review published in the journal Brain Science.

Reviewing 29 published studies about the use of psilocybin in patients with TBI, a three-person team from Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and Hackensack Meridian’s JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute concluded that assisted psilocybin use “may have benefits in TBI by reducing inflammation, promoting neuroplasticity and neuroregeneration, and alleviating associated mood disorders.”

That conclusion, along with “positive findings in related fields, like treatment for depression and addiction, highlight the necessity for more extensive clinical trials on psilocybin’s role in TBI recovery,” authors wrote.

“The research on psilocybin as a therapeutic agent shows promise for its application in TBI in theory,” the new review says, “but it requires more in-depth studies.”

The report points to psilocybin’s apparent anti-inflammatory properties and its ability to promote the production of new neurons and connections in the brain. It also says the drug’s antidepressant properties could be helpful given the comparatively high rates of depression in TBI patients.

But the new paper also flags “concerns regarding potential ‘bad trips’ and other possible side effects,” emphasizing the “need for more controlled clinical trials to establish safe and effective protocols.”

Notably, the review found no indication that classical psychedelics were associated with an increase risk of seizures, which authors said was important given the heightened incidence of seizures already associated with TBI.

Authors emphasized that federal restrictions on psilocybin limit researchers’ abilities to easily conduct trials, writing that although “decriminalization efforts in the United States are indicative of growing interest, its federal Schedule I classification limits rigorous scientific exploration.”

Overall, the paper says, “psilocybin treatment with current therapeutic practices has the potential to maximize TBI recovery, thus providing a novel method to enhance treatment for people dealing with this persistent condition.”

The research comes amid a renewed interest in psychedelics to treat mental health and medical conditions, including TBI and post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD), especially in military veterans.

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Veteran With PTSD Can Sue the Cops Who Arrested Him for Panhandling and Tased His Service Dog, Court Rules

A homeless veteran arrested for panhandling—and whose service dog was tased by law enforcement—can move forward with his lawsuit against police and the city, a federal court ruled this week.

Apart from the individual implications, the case also raises broader questions about the constitutionality of anti-panhandling ordinances, which have suffered defeats in various courts in recent years.

In October 2021, law enforcement in Gastonia, North Carolina, arrived at an intersection where Joshua Rohrer was standing on a median after a 911 caller phoned in to report Rohrer was “using [his] dog to make people feel sorry” for him. An officer requested backup from the Gastonia Police Department (GPD), and the scene quickly became somewhat of a circus, with several patrol cars and a slew of officers dispatched to address an alleged panhandler.

An officer demanded to see Rohrer’s identification, after which he furnished his Veteran ID card. Police said that did not suffice, promptly arresting him and ultimately booking him for solicitation and resisting arrest. (You can watch the bodycam footage here and decide for yourself if he resisted arrest.)

During that interaction, an officer tased Rohrer’s service dog, Sunshine, who ran off and was later hit by a car, killing her.

The government would ultimately drop the charges against Rohrer. But even after the ordeal, law enforcement has continued to subject him “to a relentless campaign of harassment” according to his complaint against the City of Gastonia and several officers with the GPD. It alleges violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights, including for excessive force and the unreasonable seizure of his service animal.

Rohrer’s complaint also notes that the GPD has posted “hundreds of statements that belittle and disparage Mr. Rohrer and spread false and misleading information about the incident” on social media.

“You also know that two grand juries supported the charges and that Mr Rohrer and his private legal team could have challenged the charges in court but that’s not what they chose to do now was it?”the city posted on its official GPD page. “Instead they accepted the plea deal that was offered to him. Perhaps to avoid having an actual court date where evidence and testimony would have been presented. Who knows why they chose to accept the deal offered.” Rohrer did not, in fact, plead guilty to anything tied to the October arrest.

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Psychedelic Retreats ‘Significantly Improved’ Mental Health For Military Veterans With PTSD And Depression, Study Finds

A new study of military veterans who attended psychedelics retreats finds that psilocybin and ayahuasca both yielded significant improvements in participants’ mental health, including reductions in symptoms of PTSD, depression and anxiety as well as improved sleep, quality of life and post-deployment reintegration.

The report, published in the journal Brain and Behavior, describes the research as “the first study to investigate psychedelic retreats as a holistic therapy for veterans’ mental health alongside community reintegration.”

“Psilocybin and ayahuasca retreats significantly improved veterans’ mental well-being, quality of life, PTSD, anxiety, depression, sleep, concussion, and post-deployment reintegration,” it says, adding that the retreats “could provide a treatment framework to aid veterans’ recovery by addressing psychological well-being, communal factors, and reintegration into civilian life.”

The study followed 55 veterans who self-enrolled in psychedelic retreats using psilocybin or ayahuasca following a program by Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit that connects veterans with psychedelic therapy in jurisdictions where it’s legal.

“For psilocybin, the substance was taken as a tea brewed from dried psilocybin mushrooms with individualized doses determined by the retreat staff between 1.5 and 3.5 g for Session 1 and between 3 and 5 g for Session 2,” the report says. “One gram boosters of psilocybin were offered one hour from the initial dose.”

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U.S. House Approves Amendment Allowing VA Doctors to Recommend Medical Cannabis to Veterans

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved an amendment that would allow Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) physicians to recommend medical marijuana to veterans in states where it’s legal.

The measure, introduced by Representatives Brian Mast (R-FL) and Dave Joyce (R-OH), was adopted as part of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 3944). The overall bill is expected to receive a final vote on the House floor soon.

The amendment would prohibit the VA from using federal funds to enforce a longstanding policy that prevents VA doctors from assisting patients with enrolling in state-approved medical marijuana programs. Under current rules, VA physicians are barred from discussing or filling out the necessary paperwork for veterans to access legal marijuana, even in the 39 states that allow its use for medical purposes.

The amendment states:

“None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Veterans Affairs in this Act may be used to enforce Veterans Health Directive 1315 as it relates to:

(1) the policy stating that ‘VHA providers are prohibited from completing forms or registering Veterans for participation in a State-approved marijuana program’;

(2) the directive for the ‘Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Operations and Management’ to ensure that ‘medical facility Directors are aware that it is VHA policy for providers to assess Veteran use of marijuana but providers are prohibited from recommending, making referrals to or completing paperwork for Veteran participation in State marijuana programs’; and

(3) the directive for the ‘VA Medical Facility Director’ to ensure that ‘VA facility staff are aware of the following’ ‘[t]he prohibition recommending, making referrals to or completing forms and registering Veterans for participation in State-approved marijuana programs.

Two bills have been filed this year in the House that would take a similar approach in easing access to medical cannabis for veterans, the Veterans Cannabis Use for Safe Healing Act and the Veterans Equal Access Act, filed by Rep. Gregory Steube (R-FL) and Brian Mast (R-FL).

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