Spearheaded by Vietnam veterans, Veteran organizations and military family members, The Veterans Multi-Purpose Center has developed a NEW Veterans Retreat/Family Services Center that will offer a wide range of programming for day-use and weekend Retreats for those suffering the invisible wounds of war.

The vision is to provide innovative, high-quality non-clinical therapeutic programs, services, outreach, peer education and support for military family members impacted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and veterans of the "war on terror." The Veterans Retreat / Family Services Center is located at 4311 SW 63rd Ave Davie, FL (The old Osborne property) our hope is this NEW Center will become a community program sponsored by local veteran organizations, churches, individuals and businesses. Please call our office for Sponsorship incentives available.

CLEVELAND – On leave from the violence he had survived in the war in Iraq, a young Marine was so wary of crime on the streets of his own home town that he carried only $8 to avoid becoming a robbery target.

Despite his caution, By Thomas J. Sheeran, 21, was shot point-black in the neck during a robbery at a bus stop. Feeding and breathing tubes kept him alive 4½ months, until he died of an infection on May 18.

Two men have been charged in the attack, and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason said Friday the case was under review to decide whether to seek the death penalty.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake suggested during a visit to Quinhagak that concerns about post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and traumatic brain injury, or TBI, are overblown.

According to research published in the Journal of Athletic Training, from 1984 to 1999, 69 football players died of catastrophic head injuries, 63 in high school, six in college.

The point here is that likening the shock of an IED or the concussive blast of a car bomb to a football injury both trivializes the hazards of battle and ignores the hazards of football. The brain doesn't care if it's rattled by a vicious hit on a pass route over the middle or a homemade bomb in Baghdad. Both can be deadly or disabling. Or not.

Mideast edition, Friday, May 30, 2008 - One of the five Army "surge" brigades sent to Iraq last year as part of an escalation — and credited, in part, with improving security — is on its way home.

The 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, went to Iraq in April 2007 and was sent to Diyala province, north of Baghdad. That region was one of the areas where many insurgents had fled when the U.S. and Iraqi troop presence was boosted in Baghdad.

A series of operations in Diyala targeted these insurgents, though in some cases, the militants had moved on before American troops arrived. Now, the 4,000 soldiers of the brigade are beginning the process of returning to Fort Lewis, Wash., next month, officials said Thursday.

No bugle blew taps for Fort Carson Sgt. Chad Barrett at his service in February in Mosul, Iraq. Days earlier, the auditorium at Forward Operating Base Marez had been packed with hundreds of mourners, including the highest-ranking generals in Iraq, who came to honor five men killed by a bomb.

Combat heroes get memorial services in Iraq with full military honors. Barrett, with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, got a "remembrance." Just the first few rows of seats in the auditorium were filled. There were no generals.

His widow, Shelby Barrett of Fountain, said Sgt. Barrett deserved honors. He fought to be allowed to return to combat for a third time, before being overcome by his demons from past tours in Iraq.

Since the 1960s the combination of the antiwar and non-military serving sectors of academia, the media, the leaders of various peace causes, the "allergic to combat" upper income sector of society and the shrinkocracy have made various cases with various levels of proof that not only was the old Mothers for Peace poster correct that "war not healthy for children and other living things," but that it causes far more casualties than are normally counted.

Veterans have always found war downright hazardous to their health. But now their own lobbying groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, and Vietnam Veterans of America, and employees of the Veterans Administration itself have decided to facilitate a blizzard of dubious veterans' benefit claims worse than the wildest dreams of any welfare queen.

This Memorial Day, as an ever-increasing number of mentally and physically wounded soldiers return from Iraq, the Department of Veterans Affairs faces a pressing crisis: women traumatized not only by combat but also by sexual assault and harassment from their fellow service members. Sadly, the department is failing to fully deal with this problem.

Women make up some 15 percent of the United States active duty forces, and 11 percent of the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly a third of female veterans say they were sexually assaulted or raped while in the military, and 71 percent to 90 percent say they were sexually harassed by the men with whom they served.

This sort of abuse drastically increases the risk and intensity of post-traumatic stress disorder. One study found that female soldiers who were sexually assaulted were nine times more likely to show symptoms of this disorder than those who weren’t. Sexual harassment by itself is so destructive, another study revealed, it causes the same rates of post-traumatic stress in women as combat does in men. And rape can lead to other medical crises, including diabetes, asthma, chronic pelvic pain, eating disorders, miscarriages and hypertension.