Talk Nation Radio for December 30, 2010
Lawsuit Demands Misdiagnosed Veterans Receive Benefits, Melissa Ader, Dahr Jamail

Melissa Ader, Yale Law Student, Dahr Jamail

Give U.S. Veterans of the Iraq and Afghan Wars their Benefits, Lawsuits Pending

U.S. Military Asked to Give 26,000 Veterans their Benefits after Wrongly Diagnosing them with 'Personality Disorders'. They were discharged without benefits, in some cases after 12 years of service.

TRT:29:04
Produced by Dori Smith
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Weâre joined by Yale Law school student Melissa Ader who is working on a lawsuit involving veterans of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, and journalist Dahr Jamail, author of the book, Will to Resist, Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. He discusses his latest reports to Al Jazeera about Military Sexual Trauma. In the first part of our discussion we talked about this problem as a symptom of a dangerous moral decline within the U.S. Military, likely due to protracted wars and intense often brutal training methods. We asked him about the difficulties veterans are having trying to obtain records that could help them obtain benefits.

Officially, the number of American and coalition forces killed in action is 6,000. The military lists 32,000 US soldiers as wounded. But 2001 through 2011 have been years of constant stress, and statistics on war trauma are soaring.

According to Yaleâs Melissa Ader, the military should include many more soldiers in their list of wounded, to include the 26,000 veterans who say they were wrongly diagnosed by the military. They were quickly diagnosed with having personality disorders and promptly discharged without benefits. Later their real medical problems were diagnosed as PTSD or TBI, traumatic brain injury. These wounds are serious enough to be major obstacles for veterans trying to keep their families together, find work, or even just live their lives safely.

Follow Up: We spoke with Mellisa Ader on December 17th, and as of the 29th the ACLU has told us that the Military has yet to provide anything useful in terms of the records they requested in their FOIA request. In another case where a FOIA was filed by the same group plus S.W.A.N, the Service Womenâs Action Network. There too Yale Law Students like Taylor Asen are working to help victims of Military Sexual Trauma obtain information that might help them to gain benefits.

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