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Aaron Glantz
Freelance Journalist
Berkeley, CA

TOPIC: Report on challenges with post-traumatic stress disorder faced by veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan returning to school in the United States.

Did You Know 200,000 Vets are Sleeping on the Streets?
America's promise to "Support the Troops" ends the moment they take off the uniform and try to make the transition to civilian life.

"You Saved My Life"… A Reason to Keep Reporting
After six years of war in Iraq, it is easy to get exhausted and depressed -- to think that all your repeated exposures to the trauma of war are for nothing, that you are screwing yourself up for next to no money for no reason -- then something happens that suddenly gives all your work meaning, that gives you the strength to continue.

The War Comes Home is the first book to systematically document the U.S. government's neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Aaron Glantz, who reported extensively from Iraq during the first three years of this war and has been reporting on the plight of veterans ever since levels a devastating indictment against the Bush administration for its bald neglect of soldiers and it's disingenuous reneging on their benefits.

It's been seven years since Fernando Suarez del Solar buried his son, Jesus. Seven years since Mar. 27, 2003, when just one week into the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Lance Corporal Jesus Suarez del Solar stepped on a piece of unexploded ordnance and came home in a flag-draped coffin.

 
A U.S. soldier shot five of his colleagues dead at a base in Baghdad, Iraq Monday. The Pentagon says at least two other people were hurt in the shootings and the gunman is in custody.

Eighteen U.S. veterans kill themselves every day. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas. One in every three homeless men in the United States has put on a uniform and served his country. On any given night, the U.S. government estimates 200,000 veterans sleep on the street.

A U.S. Army soldier who served as a military journalist in Afghanistan, Japan, Europe and the Philippines announced Thursday his intent to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq.

  Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas.

More than 400 homeless veterans from across Northern California relaxed in comfort at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of Thursday's shoot-out at Fort Hood is that none of the 12 people who died in the melee will be counted as casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These soldiers – "brave Americans," President Obama called them – will join an unknown number of American soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines, who are not among the 5,267 the Defense Department counts as having died in our most recent wars, but who have perished nonetheless.

Tucked into this massive Army report on suicide is an interesting fact: Since 2004, the number of soldiers going AWOL, deserting, and "missing movement" -- that is failing to deploy when they're supposed to - has gone up a shocking 234 percent.

The Distress Index uses data from eleven indicators – from areas that include finance, employment, social programs, charities, and housing - to create a comprehensive picture of the local economy.

 
In the six years after Reuben Paul Santos returned to Daly City from a combat tour in Iraq, he battled depression with poetry, violent video games and, finally, psychiatric treatment. His struggle ended last October when he hung himself from a stairwell. He was 27.

We call them the Greatest Generation of military veterans, who saved the world for democracy by defeating Germany and Japan and then returned home to build the United States into a superpower after World War II.

Four years after he was discharged under "don't ask, don't tell," Anthony Loverde is poised to be reinstated in the United States Air Force

 
Three hours into a congressionally sponsored forum on the long wait times that Northern California veterans face when they file disability claims, 26-year-old Air Force veteran Sabrina Shindler rose from her seat.