With the bipartisan confirmation of Chuck Hagel as our
next Secretary of Defense, we will have the defense secretary our nation
needs and the leader our troops deserve. From the moment he
volunteered for military service in Vietnam, Chuck has devoted his life
to keeping America secure and our armed forces strong. An American
patriot who fought and bled for our country, he understands our sacred
obligations to our service members, military families and veterans.
I will be counting on Chuck’s judgment and counsel as we
end the war in Afghanistan, bring our troops home, stay ready to meet
the threats of our time and keep our military the finest fighting force
in the world. Most of all, I am grateful to Chuck for reminding us that
when it comes to our national defense, we are not Democrats or
Republicans, we are Americans, and our greatest responsibility is the
security of the American people.
Chuck Hagel has been confirmed. How very sad.
The Hill reports it was 58 voting for, 41 against. That is 99 votes. There are 100 senators. Who did not vote?
At first, I thought, "John Kerry!" Because he is now the Secretary of State and they have not yet held an election to replace him. However, the governor of his state named a temporary seat holder.
The senator not voting for Charles Timothy Hagel -- one way or the other -- was Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, a Democrat.
He -- or his office -- did manage to do one Tweet today:
-
Saddened by C. Everett Koop’s passing; was a great partner in fight for a smoke-free America, will be truly missed. http://1.usa.gov/15Lenej
-
We must stop the budget
#sequester that would bring another disaster to#NJ towns as we rebuild after#Sandy http://bit.ly/XaemMq
Frank R. Lautenberg
Senator Lautenberg announced earlier this month that he would not be seeking re-election. I do not know if he skipped the vote or not.
He did not vote today to end cloiture on the nomination (Senator Mark Udall also did not vote on that). Again, I do not know if that was because he did not make the session or because he was registering a statement by not voting.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
John Bolton is a form of War Hawk that's known as a Chicken Hawk. He's called that because he preys upon the young, he feeds off the young. He was all for sending young Americans to die in Iraq in 2003 and after but when he was young, and the war in Vietnam was going on, Bolton hid in college, law school and the National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam -- and he infamously declared in 1995, "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy." Chicken Hawk. He preys on the young.
Today, he shows up at the Guardian with a column insisting that loss of US life was minimal and worth it for the Iraq War. And not content with sounding as crazy as he looks, Bolton goes further 'taking on' five 'myths.' Here's how this works. Bolton finds a belief among the people -- such as that Bully Boy Bush lied the country into war -- and he states that belief and then says "WRONG!" and moves on. He can't prove anything's wrong because he's a nit-wit who never learned how to debate, let alone back up an opinion. He ends his soggy, weak-minded column insisting, "You heard it here first" but the reality is that you heard, or read, nothing there first because Bolton is incapable of defending his stand. How did a weak, uniformed individual like John Bolton ever survive moot court?
The Iraq War is illegal. It was illegal as a whole to begin with because just war theory allows you to defend yourself, it does not allow you to initiate a war of aggression. Iraq did not attack the United States and, despite all the attempts by the Bush administration to falsely link Iraq with 9-11, there was no connection between Iraq and the people who plotted the attacks of September 11, 2001. Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The war was illegal and that's why United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared it illegal. From the United Nations News Centre, September 16, 2004:
Responding to media questions about the Secretary-General's comments in a BBC interview, spokesman Fred Eckhard told a press briefing in New York that in his remarks the Secretary-General had reiterated his well-known position that the military action against Iraq was not in conformity with the UN Charter.
In the interview, Mr. Annan was repeatedly asked whether the war was "illegal." "Yes," he finally said, "I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal."
Launching a war of aggression, initiating an attack on a country that has not attacked you but that you (at least publicly say) might at some point in the future, is not a legal war. That was at the heart of Pope John Paul II's strong objection to the Iraq War. Just war theory does not allow for wars of 'prevention' -- you're not allowed to declare war because a week from now or two or months or years a country might go to war with you. Just war doesn't accept psychic visions as grounds for war.
In addition to the illegality of the war itself by every historical and legal concept in existence, there is the fact that many individual War Crimes took place throughout the Iraq War -- whether the pompous John Bolton wants to admit to it or not. Some of these realities are discussed on this week's Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox when Cindy spoke with Iraq War veteran Ross Caputi and with Dr. Dahlia Wasfi. Wasfi and Caputi are with The Justice for Fallujah Project. Excerpt.
Cindy Sheehan: And you were in the Marines and your unit was involved in that second siege.
Ross Caputi: Yeah, I was in the Marine Corps. I was in the 1st Battalion 8th Marines. It was a regular infantry unit and we were one of the five battalions who were part of the second siege of Falluja. And what our command told us was that, you know, all the civilians had left the city, the only people who remained in the city were 2,000 hardcore terrorists.
Cindy Sheehan: Mhh-hmm.
Ross Caputi: You know, and I accepted that. I didn't really know otherwise. I hadn't been paying attention to the media at all. I was completely uninformed about the context that set the stage for the second siege of Falluja. So I kind of just accepted that and rolled along with it. In being trucked into the city, you know, I remember seeing civilians wandering out in the desert -- women and children with sacks on their backs heading for safety. You know, I kind of at that moment said, "Okay, you know that's what they meant when they said all the civilians left. They fled for their life out into an inhospitable desert. And there were moments during the siege where we were kicking in doors and going into people's houses. And I'd see family photos up on the walls next to bullet marks and bomb blasts in the wall and stuff like that. And we destroyed an entire city -- a city of 300,000 people. We destroyed their homes. We bulldozed entire neighborhoods. We bombed the city into rubble. The entire city was destroyed after. So it really -- It really drove the message home for me. It was just incredible how many lives we ruined because of what we did. And this was all in the name of "liberation."
Cindy: Right.
Ross Caputi: Our command said that we were liberating the city of Falluja. It was absolutely absurd.
Cindy Sheehan: Dahlia, Ross and yourself met and you're married, you're partners, you're partners in the anti-war movement, you're partners in life When Ross was talking about his experience in Falluja, and he said that he hadn't really been paying attention to the media, well I was back in the states and I was paying attention to the media and I didn't really hear anything about civilians being left over in Falluja. Of course, we all were hearing what Ross was being told and his fellow Marines were being told. Do you have a comment on the media and the reports that were happening at the time of the second siege of Falluja?
Dahlia Wasfi: What I remember was it was very comparable to the images that were coming out of shock and awe -- where we just watched the bombardment and the fireballs and pillars of smoke in the city of Baghdad. I remember -- I remember there was an image on CNN of just basically -- I won't know the correct military term -- I don't know what was flying through the air -- I'll call it missiles but it was the lights of all these missiles that were -- that were aimed at the city of Falluja. It lit up the sky. That was the -- That was the mainstream, corporate media in America but I believe that by that time I was following the dispatches of Dahr Jamail. And I had actually -- I was wanting to go to Iraq at that. I had been to visit my family in February and March of 2004 and I was -- I was planning to go back as soon as I could because I had such limited time with my family in Basra so I was planning on going back to Iraq in November 2004 but I could only get as far as Jordan because the Marines had closed the main road between Amman, Jordan and Baghdad. So I was actually sitting in Jordan in November 2004 reading Dahr Jamail's reports of what might be going on in the city because he was not -- he was in the city in the April 2004 siege but not in November. And it was a very bizarre contrast between sitting in an internet cafe, people drinking coffee and tea and we had electricity and water and reading about just the decimation of a city that was really within miles of where I was so. And you're absolutely right. To this day, they'll recall Falluja as an epic battle when this is really -- to get the terminology means so much -- it was really a massacre that took place, that we were responsible for. It was led by the United States and Great Britain.
Cindy Sheehan: Ross, I was reading at your website and I was reading your report on what happened in Falluja. And you talk about seeing the White Phosphorus being used. I think that was the first time I had ever heard of white phosphorus. And we saw images of people who had unfortunately gotten in the way of that in Falluja. So can you tell my listeners about this and about what you saw?
Ross Caputi: Yes, this was on the day before they inserted us into the city and they were kind of finishing the air campaign against the city and we were supposed to be trucked into the city on the tail end of that. And it was an incredible amount of air power that they were dropping on the city. Everything from like 500 pound bombs to 2,000 pound bombs. I think I saw cluster bombs because I saw these bombs that kind of -- they looked like fireworks with lots of tiny little flashes and really rapid -- like one after the other. And I saw the White Phosphorus which is like a giant, white fireball shot out of the sky that kind of drifts down on winds. It's incredibly inaccurate. It must have covered a radius like 50 meters and there's no way to aim it. The wind can take it any which way.
Cindy Sheehan: Uh-huh.
Ross Caputi: And I didn't know this at the time but there were still up to 50,000 civilians living in the city and there were civilians taking refuge all around the outskirts. So where ever it landed, there was a high probability that it could have -- it could have hurt civilians. Any kind of indiscriminate means of warfare is a war crime and that's absolutely indiscriminate.
That's reality. Sadly reality gets bracketed by spin today. We had John Bolton already but another War Hawk spoke out today. He had to because he's under assault and desperate to maintain whatever is left of his tawdry image. Yes, we're referring to Tony Blair who was Prime Minister of England and was ridiculed as Bully Boy Bush's lapdog and poodle in 2003. That was ten years ago so some may have forgotten or never seen George Michael's "Shoot The Dog" -- which features an animated Bully Boy Bush tossing a ball and Tony Blair fetching it while George sings "good puppy, good puppy, roll on over."
Cherie baby, spliff up
I want to kick back mama
And watch the World Cup with ya baby
Yeah, that's right!
We're getting freaky tonight
Let's have some fun while Tony's stateside
It's gonna be alright
It's gonna be alright
See Tony dancing with Dubya
Don't you want to know why?
-- "Shoot The Dog," written by George Michael, Philip Oakey and Ian Burden, first appears on George's Patience
The song was a hit, charting in over 13 countries. MTV reported on the song in July 2002 when it was released:
"People are looking at the song in context of an attack on America, as opposed to an attack on Tony Blair," Michael said from his vacation home in France. "And really, my attack is that Tony Blair is not involving the British in this issue. He's perfectly happy staying up to watch the World Cup and enjoying the Jubilee, all things I'm perfectly guilty of, but there's a serious discussion about Iraq which hasn't taken place. We don't know what Saddam Hussein is capable of, the British public has no idea."
And that criticism of Blair is still apt criticism all these years later as Tony Blair demonstrated in his interview with BBC's Kirsty Wark for Newsnight broadcast today. Excerpt.
Kirsty Wark: Is daily life in Iraq today what you hoped it would be ten years ago?
War Criminal Tony Blair: No, because for some people, at least in Iraq, it's immensely difficult -- particularly if you're living in Baghdad and around the center of the country. There are still terrorist activities that are killing people -- killing innocent people for no good reason. But the country as a whole, obviously, it's economy is growing strongly, it's got huge amounts of oil revenue but, no, there are still big problems.
Kirsty Wark: A conservative estimate, since 2003, 100,000 civilians have been killed, 179 British soldiers died. Don't you think that was too high a price?
War Criminal Tony Blair: Of course the price is very, very high!
Kirsty Wark: Is it too high?
War Criminal Tony Blair: But -- Well, think of the price that people paid before Saddam [Hussein] was removed. Think of -- Think of the Iran-Iraq War in which there were a million casualties [which ended in 1988; 15 years before the US and UK invaded Iraq in 2003], hundreds of thousands of young conscript Iranians were killed, many of them by the use of chemical weapons [chemical weapons provided by the US government]. Chemical weapons attacks on his own people, the Kurds [again, 1988, over 15 years before the start of the Iraq War], people oppressed, deprived of their rights [like Bradley Manning in the US, a prisoner for 1003 days without trial and counting], tortured and killed on a daily basis [like the victims of Barack Obama's Drone War] --
Kirsty Wark: But there are sectarian killings now.
War Criminal Tony Blair: Exactly. So what is the answer? That's what I'm saying to you. The answer is not to say to people, I'm afraid we should have left Saddam in charge because otherwise these sectarians will come in and try and destabilize the country. The answer is you get rid of the oppressive dictatorship and then you have a long hard struggle to push these sectarian elements out too. Look, Iraq --
Kirsty Wark: Wait -- But getting rid of the oppressive dictatorship was not why you went in. You only went in for one single reason.
War Criminal Tony Blair: Of course! And-uh-umph-uh the reason that we regarded Saddam as a threat has been set out for many, many -- you know -- many, many reports many, many times and we've gone over this a huge amount -- but if you're asking me [. . .]
Really? The liar thinks he'll get away with that? He doesn't need to go over his lie that Saddam Hussein was a threat to England? Because he's done so "many, many -- you know -- many, many" times before? Well he's used the 1988 examples "many, many -- you know -- many, many" times before as well. He's happy to trot that crap out yet again but he doesn't like being confronted with his lies. And he trots that crap out again in the same interview where he insists, "I have long since given up trying to persuade people it was the right decision."
Kirsty Wark: You wrote in your memoirs that you think of those who died in Iraq every day of your life. What do you think about?
War Criminal Tony Blair: Well, of course, you think about them and the loss of life and the -- and the terrible consequence for the families. But in the end, you're elected as a prime minister to take these decisions and the question is supposing I'd taken the opposite decision. I mean sometimes what happens in politics and uh-uh-uh unfortunately these things get mixed up with allegations of deceit and lying and so on. But, in the end, some times you come to a decision where whichever choice you take the consequence is difficult and the choice is ugly. This was one such case. If we hadn't removed Saddam from power, just think for example what would be happening with these Arab revolutions were continuing now and Saddam who's probably 20 times as bad as [President Bashir] Assad in Syria was trying to suppress an uprising in Iraq. Think of the consequence of leaving that regime in power. So when you say, do you think of the loss of life and the trouble there's been since 2003, of course, I do and you'd have to be inhumane not to but think of what would happen if he'd been left there.
First, Nouri al-Maliki is currently oppressing the Iraqi Spring. His forces shot and killed 11 peaceful protesters. They have arrested many more on false charges. The military is used to keep the press away from the protests. The military is used to spy on the Iraqi people.
At the US State Dept today, the issue of the protests was raised to spokesperson Patrick Ventrell.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) on Iraq.
MR. VENTRELL: Okay.
QUESTION: Iraq is experiencing a lot of volatility. There were demonstrations all across the country. There are pamphlets in Baghdad for cleansing Baghdad of all Sunnis, and there are bellicose statements by the Prime Minister, who is your ally, actually against the United States and against certain groups in Iraq. Do you have any comment on that?
MR. VENTRELL: Well, the United States remains deeply committed, Said, to supporting the Government of Iraq’s efforts to bring greater stability and prosperity to its people. Our engagement in Iraq remains focused on supporting Iraq’s constitutional system and strengthening institutions. Obviously, we support the rights of those to protest and make their voices heard. We’re also working with them on their institutions. We do, Said, have some concerns about some rising sectarian tensions, and we condemn that. And we’ll continue to work with our Iraqi counterparts to help them as they continue to develop their institutions.
QUESTION: Well, there are certain groups who are collecting names and signatures and so on to have actually the constitution repealed and call for a new constitution. If that is the will of the public, will you support that?
MR. VENTRELL: I mean, look, our broader policy’s always been that we want the Iraqis to work things out through the political process. It’s not for us to determine what it is for them, to determine how their democracy’s going to function, how their constitution works. So we’ll provide support to them, broadly speaking, as they do that.
Tony Blair is a War Criminal and a liar. He can't face the reality of Iraq today because he has blood on his hands. Also because he's motivated by greed only which is why he makes the ridiculous argument about Iraq's growing business -- as if the Iraqi people are seeing one sliver of the monies the government sits on.
Second, he makes the decision, he makes the decision, he makes the decision -- Listen to the parrot repeating his phrase. No, he's elected to serve the public and, in fact, George Michael's criticism of Blair in 2002 remains accurate today:
People are looking at the song in context of an attack on America, as opposed to an attack on Tony Blair. And really, my attack is that Tony Blair is not involving the British in this issue. He's perfectly happy staying up to watch the World Cup and enjoying the Jubilee, all things I'm perfectly guilty of, but there's a serious discussion about Iraq which hasn't taken place. We don't know what Saddam Hussein is capable of, the British public has no idea.
Blair didn't get honest with the citizens. Blair didn't respect their input. He lied and tried to manipulate them.
Third, Wark specifically asked him what he thought about when he thought about those who died in Iraq? He had no answer because he doesn't think about them. He tosses off an idiotic one sentence piece of crap and turns the question back to himself. Point being, all Tony Blair ever thinks about is himself. Look at how he went on and on about himself and how tough it was. Someone needs to tell the War Criminal to suck it the hell up. He's alive, others are dead, climb down from the cross, Tones.
Iraq is a land of widows and orphans, that's the reality Tony Blair doesn't want to deal with. So many deaths that the median age in Iraq is 21-years. In Tony Blair's United Kingdom, by contrast, the median age is 40.2 years-old. Nearly twice that of Iraq.
As Ramzy Baroud (Gulf News) notes in "Ten years on, Iraq continues to bleed:"
For America, it was a strategy merely aimed at lessening the pressure
placed on its own and other allied soldiers as they faced stiff
resistance the moment they stepped foot in Iraq. For the Iraqis,
however, it was a petrifying nightmare that can neither be expressed by
words or numbers. According to UN estimates cited by BBC, between May
and June 2006 “an average of more than 100 civilians per day [were]
killed in violence in Iraq”. The UN estimates also placed the death toll
of civilians in 2006 at 34,000. That was the year the US strategy of
divide-and-conquer proved most successful.
The fact remains that the US and Britain had jointly destroyed modern
Iraq and no amount of remorse or apology — not that any was offered, to
begin with — will alter this fact. Iraq’s former colonial masters and
its new ones lacked any legal or moral ground for invading the
sanctions-devastated country. They also lacked any sense of mercy as
they destroyed a generation and set the stage for a future conflict that
promises to be as bloody as the past.
When the last US combat brigade had reportedly left Iraq in December
2011, this was meant to be an end of an era. Historians know well that
conflicts do not end with a presidential decree or troop deployment.
Iraq merely entered a new phase of conflict and the US, Britain and
others remain integral to that conflict.
Al Mada notes a CNN special on Iraq and describes a small child digging through a pile of waste in an attempt to collect anything that might bring a profit -- bottles, cans. The child is 12-years-old and the provider for the family. UNICEF estimates 23% of Iraqis live beneath the poverty line. This as All Iraq News notes that the US Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement announcing that the US Agency of International Development (USAID) had spent a billion dollars on various projects in Iraq. They're bragging about five years of 'economic development' but the Iraqi people don't see a damn thing.
Or maybe they do. Maybe they visit the US Embassy in Baghdad's website and see the news that the White House is granting $155 million "in additional humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people."
USAID proclaims, "USAID investments in Iraq focus on: strengthening Iraqi provincial governance; increasing community and civil society participation; bolstering economic reforms to expand the private sector; strengthening rule of law and human rights; improving delivery of key services; preparing for the 2013 provincial elections; and continuing to assist with the return and resettlement of displaced persons." They brag about $261.1. million they spent in 2011. They have nothing to brag about. $189.3 million went to "Democracy and Governance."
Iraq can't pass a budget. It's so bad that Alsumaria reports supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr have launched a sit-in outside the Green Zone. Why? To get the budget passed. This follows yesterday's announcement that the vote on the 2013 budget was again postponed. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports, "In response to the demonstrations, security forces blocked all bridges between two main sections of Baghdad, and sealed entrances into the city proper, police officials said." AFP notes, "It was not immediately clear if the additional security measures, which the ministry official said have caused heavy traffic jams across the city, were aimed at preventing people from joining the protests, or guarding them against attack."
Of the $261.1 million USAID brags of spending in Iraq in 2011, $71.8 million was for economic development. Really? Because many Iraqis don't feel the US grasps what is needed in Iraq. Omar al-Shaher (Al-Monitor) reports today, "Civil activists in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province believe that the US-funded livelihood-skills training programs were either overly selective or riddled with corruption."
Alsumaria reports that the Iraqi military headquarters in Falluja was targeted with three rockets today at noon local time. The National Iraqi News Agency quotes an Anbar police source who states the explosions were loud and that its not known if anyone was injured or killed. In addition, All Iraq News reports that a Baghdad home invasion left 1 teacher and his son dead. NINA quotes a Baghdad police source stating that the unknown assailants wore Iraqi military uniforms and forced the teacher and his son out of their home and shot them in the yard. Alsumaria notes that a 31-year-old male was stabbed to death in Wasit Province (police suspect his older brother). NINA adds that 1 Iraqi soldier was shot dead in Mosul. As the month winds down, Iraq Body Count counts 304 violent deaths in Iraq this month through yesterday.
The Drone War is a war many try to ignore. Rev Anthony Evans of the National Black Church Initiative spoke this week with Glen Ford on Black Agenda Radio (here for that broadcast) which airs on Progressive Radio Network each Monday from 11:00 am to noon EST.
Glen Ford: [. . .] the National Black Church Initiative says President Obama needs to face public condemnation for his drone assassinations program. Rev Anthony Evans is executive director of the Initiative which he calls a faith-based coalition of 34,000 churches, comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African Americans. Rev Evans says Obama's drone policies are evil
Rev Anthony Evans: The Black Church is very clear -- and the Christian church in particular. Anything -- any government or individual take into his hands the authority to take a life without justification, any justification, then the church has to speak to that. And what we are saying is the President does not have the authority -- even as President of the United States -- to take anyone's life on a legal level. So we reject capital punishment and we certainly reject the drone policy when he said he had the right, as President of the United States, to take anybody's life who he deemed as a terrorist. He can deem anybody a terrorist. So which means to say, it's evil and it's murder. So I can't describe it any other way and it defies rationality.
Glen Ford: And you invoke Jesus Christ, Mahtma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. who famously described the United States as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" -- that was more than 40 years ago.
Rev Anthony Evans: It just goes to show you that Martin was accurate and he was right about this. We are prepared in this country to kill you if you do not conform. We just demonstrated it to the world: If you bomb the United States, we will spend $1 trillion to get you back. And that's exactly how much it took to get bin Laden. So, I mean, if that is the case, then we're not better than the local thug who is just killing and do not have any respect for life. So our country has taken on a policy that violates all of our Biblical teachings, our philosophical teachings, the teachings of even the UN. And Martin and Jesus said that violence can only beget violence. So we can never expect justice and righteousness in this country because we have a policy that we will kill you if we disagree with you.
Glen Ford: The National Black Church Initiative draws upon organizations, churches that comprise about 16 million Black people. You asked the question "Where are you, Al Sharpton, Rev Jesse Jacskon, [NAACP president] Ben Jealous?" Well these are folks who claim to be Black leadership.
Rev Anthony Edwards: Well they are no leader at all and we're beginning, every day, to see that. They have replaced their loyalty for God and serving African-American people to serving President Obama. Somehow President Obama has rose to mystical -- and I hate to say -- to some divine level in their eyes that he can do no wrong, he can say no wrong, he can do no wrong and everything against him is racism. It's not true. It's that the policy in and of itself is evil. How can the church support him killing? We don't support anybody killing -- no less the President of the United States. So the whole question is we have no leadership. We haven't heard from Jesse on this issue. We certainly will never hear from Al Sharpton because Al Sharpton is Obama's tight brother. Al decides who gets to the White House and who does not. He's the gatekeeper these days. And so as long as he's never going to say anything wrong about this president -- largely because of the fact that Al has had a problem with every major president there ever was other than Obama. That makes Al a hypocrite. So there's the NAACP. Well you can buy the NAACP these days.
Three Congressional things. First, we attended a hearing today I'll try to cover tomorrow. I didn't know Tony Blair was going to weigh in on Iraq. Second, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee notes two joint-hearings next month:
There will be a
joint hearing between the United States House and Senate Committees on Veterans’
Affairs on the following dates:
Tuesday, March
5, 2013 10:00 a.m. SD-G50
Joint Hearing on
the legislative presentation of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW)
Wednesday, March
6, 2013 10:00 a.m. 345 Cannon HOB (House
Side)
Joint Hearing on
the legislative presentations of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, Vietnam
Veterans of America, National Association of State Directors of Veterans
Affairs, Fleet Reserve Association, Gold Star Wives, Air Force Sergeants
Association, and AMVETS
Jeff
Johnson
Deputy Clerk/Systems
Administrator
U.S. Senate
Committee on Veterans’ Affairs
412
Russell Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510 | 202.224.6478
Third, Senator Patty Murray is now the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee. She's introduced a timely bill to address what's become a too frequent reality for children in the US:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 26, 2013
CONTACT: Murray Press Office
(202) 224-2834
Murray Introduces Children's Recovery from Trauma Act
In wake of recent tragedies, bill provides support for children and families affected by trauma
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator
Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Children’s Recovery from Trauma Act to
provide increased support for children and families affected by trauma and all
those involved with their care. This bill includes a reauthorization and updates
to the National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative (NCTSI), which works with
children and families who are exposed to a wide range of traumatic experiences
including physical and sexual abuse; domestic, school, and community violence;
natural disasters, terrorism, or military family challenges; severe bereavement
and loss; and life-threatening injury and illness.
“As we have
unfortunately witnessed too often in recent years, trauma involving children can
happen at any time and in all parts of our country. The Children’s Trauma
Recovery Act ensures our child trauma centers have the proper tools available to
not only serve their day-to-day needs in treating child trauma, but also
maintain absolute preparedness in the event of a national tragedy,”
said Senator
Murray. “By increasing support and
raising the bar for the standard of care in our nation’s child trauma systems,
we can all work to ease the burden on our children and their families as they
face very difficult times.”
"APA commends
Senator Murray on the introduction of the Children's Trauma Recovery Act to
reauthorize SAMHSA's National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative,"
said Norman B. Anderson, PhD.,
American Psychological Association CEO. "This critical initiative has significantly raised the
standard of care for our nation's children and families who have experienced
traumatic stress. APA urges Congress to promptly enact this important
legislation."
NCTSI currently supports a national network of child
trauma centers in forty-four states, including seventy-nine university,
hospital, and community-based funded centers and ninety affiliate members. In
addition to supporting everyday child trauma work, this network also mobilizes
in response to national crises such as the shooting in Newtown, CT and
Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina.
Specifically, the Children’s Recovery from Trauma
Act authorizes the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
(SAMHSA) to:
·
Support a national
collaborative network of child trauma centers, including: grants for
university and hospital child trauma centers which are involved with
intervention development and dissemination of evidence-based practices;
grants for diverse community-based organizations which are involved with
providing services to children and families affected by trauma; and a
grant for the NCTSI coordinating center to organize the collaboration, training,
and dissemination activities of all funded and Affiliate NCTSI members to
maintain the NCTSI network and outreach infrastructure;
·
Include representatives
of consumers and families on the NCTSI Advisory Board and as participants at all
levels of NCTSI collaborative activities;
·
Support the analysis and
reporting of the child outcome and other data collected by the NCTSI
coordinating center to establish the effectiveness, implementation, and clinical
utility of evidence-based treatment and services;
·
Support the continuum of
interprofessional training initiatives in evidence-based and trauma-informed
treatments, interventions, and practices offered to providers in all
child-serving systems;
·
Support the collaboration
of NCTSI, HHS, and other federal agencies in the dissemination of NCTSI
evidence-based and trauma-informed interventions, treatments, products, and
other resources to all child-serving systems and policymakers.
In addition to
APA, the following groups have endorsed the Children's Trauma Recovery Act of
2013: American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American
Psychological Association, Futures Without Violence, National Children's
Alliance, National Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health, Prevent
Child Abuse America, Mental Health America and uFOSTERsuccess.
The
reauthorization would increase the authorization from $50 million to $100
million annually through FY24.
###
Meghan Roh
Press Secretary | New Media
Director
Office of U.S. Senator Patty
Murray
Mobile: (202) 365-1235
Office: (202) 224-2834
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