http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/WoodruffReports/To Iraq and Back and other videos
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/arts/television/27watc.html?ex=1188190800&en=65dc02b9fb64c844&ei=5087&excamp=GGHEbobwoodruffOne Man’s Survival Story Becomes a Rallying Cry
The TV Watch | 'To Iraq and Back'
The film notes that the Department of Defense puts the number of men and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan at about 23,000, while the Department of Veterans Affairs has recorded treating more than 200,000 veterans of those two wars. Paul Sullivan, the director of programs at the advocacy group Veterans for America, says, “What you have are two sets of books.”
Mr. Woodruff politely asks the secretary of veterans affairs, R. James Nicholson, to explain the discrepancy. Citing department reports that list 73,000 mental disorders, 61,000 diseases of the nervous system and others, Mr. Woodruff says, “These are huge numbers beyond the 23,000.”
Mr. Nicholson, a Vietnam veteran and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, replies, “A lot of them come in for, for dental problems.”
Mr. Woodruff illustrates quite graphically that some veterans are sent home to recuperate in smaller cities that do not have veterans’ hospitals equipped to handle the growing number of those returning with severe traumatic injuries. He interviews a young soldier who is slowly but steadily recovering at a state-of-the-art veterans’ polytrauma rehabilitation center in Tampa, Fla., then checks in on him weeks later in his hometown in Texas, where he has noticeably regressed.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2910973An Unforeseen Cost of War
Thousands of Veterans Are Returning From War With Traumatic Brain Injuries
"The Department Of Defense saying that there's 23,000 wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Department Of Veterans Affairs is actually treating 205,000 veterans from these two wars," Sullivan said.
snip
Jim Nicholson, a spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs, acknowledges that there are delays in the system, but says the department is struggling to overcome a lack of knowledge about TBIs.
"This is a relatively new phenomenon. We are all doing intense research on it," Nicholson told "GMA's" Robin Roberts.
After six years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, veterans' affairs advocates are asking why the VA did not take action sooner.