Army misdiagnosed and kicked out thousands of mentally ill vets

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/12/09/discharged-soldiers-mental-health

Previous investigations revealed how the VA was underprepared to meet the medical needs of the War on Terror vets, and the backlog for mental health care was horrendous.

Not sure if it's related, but a new study found that the Army systematically under-diagnosed soldiers with "adjustment disorder" rather than PTSD/depression (a vague classification from the Vietnam era that suggests a soldier is *temporarily* experiencing poor emotional/behavioral symptoms after a deployment). The former implied that the soldier was unable to perform his/her duties stateside and should be dishonorably discharged (i.e. it's the soldier's fault). However, if they were diagnosed with PTSD/depression, that is considered a debilitation due to their military service (i.e. it's the war's fault), which is an honorable discharge that guarantees lifetime free medical care for themselves, spouse, and kids (equivalent to losing a leg or an eye).

That Vietnam vets site above suggested that the military "saved" $12B on medical/disability payments for Vietnam vets who were misdiagnosed.

In many cases, suffering vets got both civilian and Army psych evals. The civilian diagnosis was depression, but the Army diagnosis disagreed (even after reviewing the civilian diagnosis). It's possible that the civilian doctors were sometime wrong, but not to the tune of two thousand independent cases.

Since 2009, the Army has also kicked out 22,000 vets for various misconduct. But when a soldier has PTSD/depression, that increases the likelihood that they will fall into a misconduct situation (dereliction of duties, fighting, substance abuse, etc.). So we're not sure how many of the 22K were misdiagnosed, but I would bet it's at least a third. There is now a Congressional inquiry about this issue due to NPR's reporting.

You can't get a mortgage unless you can prove that you can afford it. We shouldn't go to war unless we can prove that we need to, we are likely to win, and our gov't can and will handle the costs.

Memorial Day reminder

As our leaders, media, and propagandists try to guilt trip us into remembering and appreciating veterans this season (they bled so we can BBQ - which is just a silly claim all around), let's also remember how stupid some of our leaders were in getting us into and mismanaging certain wars. Many paid the ultimate price for the mistakes of a few. Each year when the president lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, they should also burn a past leader in effigy (plenty to choose from: Nixon, Bush, Cheney, Westmoreland, Custer, MacArthur, etc.).

In the vain pursuit of glory, power, legacy, etc., they eagerly put pen to paper (with little care about consequences and how to care for the wounded after the war), and changed the fates of millions of families - usually for the worse. At least in the olden days, the "best and brightest" would offer their sons to the military as noblesse oblige and expectations of their class. But with the advent of industrialized warfare where anyone could be killed suddenly (and en masse) by flying hot metal, all that changed. And with global capitalism, the powerful could grow their empires commercially, making physical conquest (and all its risks) obsolete. The 1% sent their kids to the Ivy League as the future champions of industry/politics, and the poor did the fighting and dying instead.

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201505051000

"My younger brother, a Vietnam vet, recently died. He was haunted to the end by memories of what he witnessed in the war and of "well-meaning" friends and relatives who called him a baby killer when he returned.
Now, my grandson is fighting to recover from PTSD, hearing loss, and memories of what he witnessed during 3 tours in Iraq.
Will it never end?"

How the Dulles brothers made Kissinger and Cheney look like peaceniks

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

We don't hear much about these two (apart from the DC airport name), but their beliefs and actions literally shaped the Cold War, US global ambitions, and we are still dealing with the negative repercussions today.

Ike appointed John F. Dulles as his Sec. State and Allen Dulles as the CIA head. They were both corporate lawyers who represented, among others, United Fruit and the financiers of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Enough said. Ike basically gave them carte blanche authority to make enemies and "intervene" in any foreign country they saw fit, and they didn't hesitate: Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Cuba, Indonesia, and Vietnam ... basically our greatest hits. They were especially adamant about Iran, because under no circumstances could they tolerate a leader nationalizing oil reserves for the people, and renegotiating terms on foreign companies. Imagine the shockwaves to big business, and what message that would send to other countries.

Unlike Kennedy's "team of rivals" model, it was very dangerous for Ike to appoint two like-minded, corporate shill, biological brothers into the complementary (and sometime necessarily adversarial) positions of State and CIA. One side shapes foreign policy and strategy, and the other carries it out covertly. Or one side tries to make peace, while the other sows the seeds of war. It's playing with fire. Now they were basically one org, without any sanity checks or devil's advocate to say, "What happens after we overthrow Lumumba? (answer: civil war and genocide for decades)," or "Maybe we can't win in Vietnam."  I guess the Dulles' and their Cold War were enough to make General Ike warn the nation about the military-industrial complex upon his retirement.

The Dulleses believed that the US, its market economy, and its multinational corporations were exceptional and entitled to dominate the globe (because we were the good guys). Anyone who opposed these interests (regardless of the reason, like the crazy notions of self determination and liberty) were automatically evil monsters. It's OK for George Washington, but not for Third World leaders (esp. when they are sitting on natural resources). Clearly enemy #1 was communism, and by extension populist nationalism, because it went against the model of private capital might makes right, and neo-colonialism/imperialism. Any attempt to regulate or take power/profit away from US companies was as much of a threat to US security as nuclear missiles.

Apart from the direct and indirect violence & collateral damage (5M total deaths at least), militancy/extremism, and harm to our global reputation in most of the world, here is the Dulles' biggest legacy and curse on humanity: a pervasive culture of rejecting peace talks and the undermining of democracy.

After Stalin died, the USSR wanted to improve relations with the West. It was a great opportunity, but Dulles was the only major foreign leader to reject this overture (and pressured our allies to do the same), because he thought the Russians were too evil to talk to, and preferred that our conflict continue. Later, both sides' nuclear brinksmanship almost ended the world. During the North-South Vietnam diplomatic talks after the French withdrawal, most European powers felt that the party was over and they should learn to live with Ho Chi Minh. Dulles was the only one who felt that Ho could be beaten militarily if we stuck it out, and he persuaded Ike and Kennedy. We know how that turned out. But you can see this US hubris and misguided thinking carrying over to our negotiations (or lack theoreof) with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea over the years. We have certain beliefs about other people, and our stubbornness ends up prolonging/worsening conflicts and missing out on opportunities.

Why was the US so successful in overthrowing the democratic regimes in Iran, Guatemala, and Congo in the '50s? The author argues that it was because those societies (and their idealistic, civilian, center-left leaders - a.k.a. died-in-the-wool commies) were fairly open and democratic, thereby allowing foreign agitators access to covertly undermine the gov't and eventually launch a coup d'etat (with a pro-US dictator waiting in the wings). Later revolutionaries learned from those cases, and ruled more like repressive tyrants in order to defend against a possible US overthrow. Cuba, North Vietnam, the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, etc. all became more paranoid and less democratic after the Dulles' time. It could just be coincidence, but at least in the case of Cuba, Che and Castro were quoted that they would not repeat the mistakes of Arbenz in Guatemala. They would repress and spy on their own people to make sure the CIA wasn't gaining a foothold.

So even though the US portrayed itself as the global example and defender of democracy, in fact its foreign policy under the Dulleses was terribly undemocratic, and motivated many others around the world to choose brutality over democracy too (tragically, during a time of global change that we will never get back, when we really could have forged tremendous social progress and peace). And the human race may never fully recover from the legacies of those dark times. To me, that is a much greater failure, security threat, and shame on the US than letting a few undeveloped countries elect a socialist leader, or try to nationalize their resources.  

From Agent Orange to Gulf War Syndrome to this

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255312/Birth-defects-Fallujah-rise-U-S-operation.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/30/faulluja-birth-defects-iraq

We know the sad histories of Agent Orange, and Gulf War Syndrome during our first war with Iraq. It took the gov't decades to admit fault over highly toxic A.O. and compensate the affected US personnel (Vietnam is still waiting for its apology and reparations).

As far as I know, the US has not clearly acknowledged the causes of Gulf War Syndrome, or "a chronic multisymptom disorder affecting returning military veterans and civilian workers of the Persian Gulf War.^[1][2][3] A wide range of acute and chronic symptoms have been linked to it, including fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems, rashes and diarrhea.^[4] Suggested causes have included depleted uranium, sarin gas, smoke from burning oil wells, vaccinations, combat stress and psychological factors, though only pyridostigmine (an antitoxin for nerve agents) and organophosphate pesticides have been conclusively linked.^[6]" Compensation for G.W.S. wasn't approved until 2001, and it's not a lot of money.

http://www.veteransdisabilitylawyersite.com/gulf_war_veteran.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome#Depleted_uranium
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/6169318/Ex-soldier-died-of-cancer-caused-by-Gulf-War-uranium.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127036/

Uranium is a very dense metal and if you put it on the tip of munitions, it penetrates armor better. Of course it's cheaper to use spent (aka depleted) uranium from used reactor fuel, even if it's toxic. So these shells hit Iraqi tanks, exploded, and the uranium vaporized and could be inhaled/ingested by nearby people. The incidence of rare cancers and respiratory diseases rose significantly among vets. The US performed "conclusive studies" that there were no adverse health effects from radioactive depleted uranium munitions that were used in the theater. But UK courts and medical research did find a link (British forces did not use uranium weapons). What gall for the US to claim that exposure to an unregulated radioactive weapon is totally safe. They just don't want to get sued. If it's so safe, then why don't generals and Congressmen go live near Yucca Mountain?

At least Gulf War I was mostly fought outside of population centers, so fewer people were exposed. But during Gulf War II, the fighting was heavily urban. Despite complaints about uranium weapons, they were used again. Uranium has a very long half-life and the material doesn't just disappear. It gets scattered everywhere, leeches into the soil and ground water, and may get into food too like Fukushima. Fallujah saw some of the most intense fighting of the war, and local hospitals have seen a spike in birth defects, as first reported in peer-reviewed scientific journals and the WHO in 2009-10. Iraq is a fragile state and their war-ravaged medical infrastructure can't handle this influx of new special-needs patients. Also, the families are unlikely to be able to afford the care that their kids need.

The US didn't need Agent Orange or uranium shells to win those wars (and we didn't win in VN anyway). We used them because we were lazy and the Pentagon buys whatever expensive new toys the military-industrial complex develops. And usually there are no accompanying toxicology studies. "Regular" shells can blast obsolete Iraqi targets just fine. Now that we have "left" Iraq, it's out of sight out of mind. Like yesterday's discussion about radical Islam, clearly the sick kids in Fallujah and elsewhere will be a source of resentment, anti-Americanism, and even Jihadi recruitment for years to come. Of course it's hard to prove that those kids got sick directly from US weapons (which is what we're counting on, just like big tobacco in the past), but the street has already made up its mind. However, wouldn't it be cheaper for us to accept fault and cover their health costs (meager by US standards), rather than shirk responsibility like cowards and inspire hatred for years? Not to mention it's a shame and a stain on our military and nation. Which is why even some upset vets are working on a "Justice for Fallujah" campaign.

http://thefallujahproject.org/home/node/2

Are US generals helping or hurting war efforts?

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/01/164096479/ricks-firing-generals-to-fight-better-wars

Ricks' recent book describes how less effective US generals are compromising our military and making our current ugly wars even harder to win. Bad managers are not confined to the private sector and politics - plenty of generals are incompetent, selfish, and foolish. It's nothing new - see WWI or the Napoleonic Wars.

In WWII, it was standard procedure to dismiss generals from command for even small battlefield failures, even if they had a track record of good performance. Maybe that policy was too harsh, but there were plenty of other officers to replace them. And often the relieved officer got a new command elsewhere after serving a short penance. 16 such generals were relieved during the 5 years of WWII. Since Vietnam, only one field general has been relieved for combat ineffectiveness. Theater commanders have been "fired" instead: Westmoreland, Casey, etc. - but those moves were more symbolic, from civilian leaders aware of the public's frustration with those wars. In addition, the average duration of American wars has increased, and with worse strategic outcomes. Apart from the Gulf War I anomaly, now the US is engaged in decade-long quagmires, versus less-formidable enemies than the Axis. There are several reasons for this that Ricks postulates:

WWII was a "traditional" war with a clear, existential threat to the US and our allies, with well-defined military objectives. For the nuclear-age Cold War, combat mostly became small and unconventional (keeping the lid on civil wars, counter-insurgencies, nation building, etc.) - situations that generals did not study and were not prepared for.

The relationship between civilian leaders, military leaders, and soldiers has changed. During WWII, in general the priority was to win the war with as little loss of American life as possible. Therefore there was little tolerance for inept generals who put troops under undue risk. As the military-industrial complex grew into its own "special interest", the military strayed from this and became more general-centric. Now war was more about career development for officers, rather than winning humbly and efficiently. Egotistical generals have always cared about their own glory since the dawn of organized battle, but it descended to new lows since Vietnam. Therefore, top brass were reluctant to fire battlefield commanders as a black mark on the fired officers' careers, and also their own. Civilian leaders were also hesitant to fire even inept military leaders, as that could be construed as an admission that the war was not going well or it was the wrong war to fight. So we "stay the course" with inept leaders. Again, US lives took the back seat to political concerns.

Relations between the White House and Pentagon have changed too. Lincoln and JFK's "team of rivals" concept was very much at play during WWII. FDR and George Marshall probably didn't like each other very much, but showed enough honesty, respect, and patriotism to listen to conflicting opinions when it was best for the nation. Most war failures result from incorrect information, improper assumptions, and other possibly preventable errors of judgment. FDR and Marshall did their best to make sure those mistakes were avoided. This isn't just nostalgia for the Greatest Generation, and the Allies made plenty of goofs during WWII too. But their "HR" system was more sound - contrast it to the Iraq War and Bush's team of yes-men neocons, total liar "expert advisers" like Chalabi, and sycophant generals. Now we go to war based on hunches and ideologies. It's the opposite of the dispassionate, data-driven, risk-averse decisions we should be making.

The decline started around Vietnam, and possibly coincides with the trend of US presidents being less and less likely to have served in the military. The relationship between LBJ and Westmoreland was a joke. The two kept info from each other, tried to avoid disagreements, and only told the other what they wanted to hear. I am not sure how Obama deals with the military today, but seeing how many of his policies are quite Bush-like (and definitely not worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize), I bet he is kowtowing more often than giving tough love - which is his job, his duty, and what the citizens expect of him. Part of this is due to the "cult of the military", where we overly venerate the institution. It's schizophrenic, because on one hand we skimp on veteran's care and don't want a draft, but on the other we have to "support the troops" no matter what, with nearly limitless funding. It's verboten to criticize the military, maybe even at the highest levels of government. Sometime criticism is the highest form of patriotism. Just ask Lincoln and FDR. Look how much of Romney's candidacy is about fellating the military. He wants to grow military spending to 4% GDP AFTER we have wound down two ground wars. Even at the peak of it's power, the British Empire didn't spend that much. Ricks finds this especially shocking from a former CEO who made his fortune cutting costs and giving tough love to struggling companies. We should always support our troops, but we have to stop coddling the generals and the institution if it's not serving the interests of the people.

Also there was the gradual phasing out of the draft. When the 1%'s kids were no longer in harm's way, US soldiers quickly became more expendable. All sorts of waivers were granted for the rich during Vietnam, so really the war was fought by the poor and uneducated. That trend continues today, as the volunteer military tends to attract those without much civilian career prospects. A volunteer army also concentrates war suffering on a minority of the citizenry (the segment of society that is already marginalized), so the rest of us are less inclined to care if the war is going poorly and led by bad generals. Tying into a previous point, the causes we are fighting for after Korea are more murky and controversial. Therefore it's hard to get the whole country behind the war effort and engaged with the daily progress enough to hold under-performing commanders accountable. Most of us can't even name an actual combat general serving in Iraq and Afghanistan now, and have no idea what they're doing. National security secrecy and lack of free press access aren't helping either.

Despite the fact that our current volunteer military is mostly comprised of the lower classes, they are actually some of the most professional and high-performing troops the US has ever had (on average). That is both a blessing and a curse. Like a high-performing department with a bad manager, it masks the incompetence of the manager. Bad generals in Iraq and Afghanistan "get away with" more incompetence because their troops sacrifice and struggle so much to accomplish objectives in spite of their leaders. And since the generals know their troops are quite good, they ask too much out of them. They subject them to more risk and strain instead of thinking harder and devising better strategies. Stop-loss is an obvious example. Lazy command, dereliction of duty, lack of concern for the men under your command.

Some other interesting facts about past wars and dispelling some myths:

- MacArthur may be the only general in human history who was insubordinate to 3 national leaders. And yet he had dreams of the White House. Some believe that we should have let MacArthur "finish off" North Korea when he had the chance (or even fight China), but if he had his way, it would have been a disaster. Just for that, Truman goes down as one of the great C-in-C's of US history. Chinese forces were waiting in ambush at the border to slaughter any Americans who pushed too deep. It would have escalated the war, and Mac wanted authorization to use "about 35" nuclear weapons to destroy China's military capability, and then let the Taiwanese come in for mop-up duty. Of course I don't have to explain what a moronic idea this is, but to humor you: the USSR clearly wouldn't just sit idly by while 2 major Asian communist nations got wiped out. They would have conquered Europe, and we probably couldn't have stopped them because we committed forces to the Pacific. It would have led to WWIII. And I don't think even the Taiwanese would have been comfortable with the task of occupying mainland China. As WWII hero General Bradley said, it was the wrong war at the wrong time with the wrong enemy. Unfortunately we repeated the blunder in Vietnam.

- Patton was actually a mediocre to poor battlefield commander, and obviously a very poor leader in terms of "people skills". But what he was really good at was getting a plodding armored fighting force to cover large distances quickly in pursuit of a retreating enemy, or to relieve a besieged position. So the brilliant foresight and talent management skills of Marshall and Ike knew that Patton wouldn't be really "useful" until the end of the war. They coddled him and tolerated many of his issues until they let him loose in , to do what he was best at.

- Ike was a fairly unproven, junior commander going into WWII, but Marshall picked him to be the combined Allies leader because he was diplomatic, patient, and knew how to work well with others (a rare trait for egotistical generals). Marshall and FDR realized that this was a new chapter of warfare, and the Allies would ultimately beat the Nazis, not just the Americans (and let's be honest, the USSR did most of the heavy lifting anyway).

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A follow-up with Tom Ricks: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201211140900

He had a good point on the sex scandal - for YEARS in Iraq, hundreds or even thousands of people were dying under incompetent generals, but none of them were fired, demoted, or even had to get chewed out by a civilian committee. But a general sends some flirting emails to a floozie socialite (after years of "drought" serving in combat zones in conservative Muslim nations) - HEADLINE NEWS!!!! NATIONAL OUTRAGE!!!! My only criticism of those generals is their HORRIBLE choice in mistresses. At least learn from Charlie Sheen and Tiger.

For the record, Ike had an affair with his female driver during WWII, and he later became president (I think that was Petraeus' ambition too). But that was the pre-Twitter, integrity in journalism era.

I'm not defending the generals' actions, but let's prioritize our criticism.

Newsweek's "How we could have won in Vietnam"

http://www.newsweek.com/id/221632

To Newsweek,

In response to your Nov. 16 cover story about how we could have won in Vietnam, your writers failed to mention that (a) the fact that we lost in Vietnam did not greatly imperil America as the hawks predicted, and (b) we could have recognized an independent Vietnam in 1945, and worked diplomatically to sway them from communism, thereby averting the deaths of over two million people.

a) After the US withdrew and South Vietnam fell, a pan-communist Asian axis never materialized to threaten Western interests in the region. In fact, those nations were at times hostile to each other. China briefly invaded Vietnam in response to their toppling of the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea - all three being communist nations at the time. Since the 1990s, the US and Vietnam have been cordial trading partners, though of course political differences persist. But there was no "domino effect" or hateful Vietnamese fanatics plotting revenge against America, which is often speculatively associated with radical Islam today. Defeat is never palatable, but it's not the end of the world either, even in Afghanistan.

b) Abraham Lincoln said, "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" A war with Vietnamese communists was not inevitable. The OSS helped Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh (precursors to the Viet Cong) fight an insurgency against the occupying Japanese during WWII, with the hopes of earning independence later. As a vision for the postwar world, the US and UK signed the "Atlantic Charter" proclaiming that all peoples have the right to self-determination, and Ho called Truman on it. But after the war, Washington ignored Vietnam as France attempted to reclaim its former colonies. If we upheld our principles of freedom and liberty, instead of succumbing to Cold War fears and bygone colonialism, we could have made an independent Vietnam our ally. Ho lived in the West and was inspired by the American Revolution, but the US decided to make him an enemy.

George Will, get a clue

http://www.newsweek.com/id/74457

To me, it's kind of perverse that a traumatized young refugee of America's most controversial war grows up to build advanced bombs for the same military that decimated her homeland with more tonnage than all of WWII. Except now they're using the bombs on "Islamists" instead of "communists" in a new counter-insurgency war with questionable legitimacy and objectives. While I know that America must keep pressure on violent terrorists, and war is always a nasty affair, I still think her story is sad because she has a gifted mind and could have contributed to human needs in many other ways. She didn't have to get indoctrinated into believing that military service/research is the only way for immigrants to give back and show appreciation.

It's even worse that revisionist George Will thinks that immigrants owe America a "debt" for taking them in. While America's immigration policy in the last 50 years has been one of the most generous in the world, we are far from a "sanctuary country". Heck, Anh Duong wouldn't have had to flee anywhere if America and our corrupt puppet South Vietnamese regime didn't mismanage the war so badly! Actually America might owe Vietnam a debt for war crimes/excessive destruction, and actually Nixon and Kissinger were working on a war reparations proposal before Watergate paralyzed them.

And what about the millions of pro-Western Viets who didn't get out, or died on a rickety boat on high seas? Many suffered in re-education camps or jails just because they helped or were known to associate with Americans. Rescuing loyal friends out of certain hardship or death is the LEAST America could have done; there is no debt. And in some cases, depressed, traumatized refugees couldn't put the war behind them, learn English, and adapt to the new culture. They didn't get along with host families and languished in deplorable conditions because the recession-plagued 1970s America forgot about them. Anh Duong is a great success story, but there were many other failures that George Will doesn't know about and doesn't care to find out.

How about your ancestors George, what great things did they do for America? Does the Will family need to prove that it paid its debts and deserves to be here? And is he as judgmental of white immigrants as more recent, darker-skinned ones? Don't Rudy Giuliani and Tom Cruise have debts too? I know this is George Will we're talking about here, but still it's hard to stomach. He writes lame books, editorials, and tells us how America should be – clearly a patriot addressing a critical social need. I think the millions of mostly law-abiding, good-natured immigrants (some undocumented) out there who live humbly, work VERY hard, and give back to America much more than they take are the true patriots.

I know a country might want to screen immigrants for public safety reasons, and surely it's beneficial to attract workers with the most skills and potential. But America is a great nation because we don't judge "personal merit and contributions" as a criterion for citizenship/residency, especially for refugees. Or if we did, then Paris Hilton and Rush Limbaugh would get deported instead of Maria and Ernesto. Immigrants "paying a debt" to be here? That sounds like indentured servitude to me. Like the predatory human traffickers who smuggle a poor soul to some urban slum and force them to work two years nonstop in a sweat shop to even have a chance at freedom. That is NOT the American way. The green statue in New York is a reminder that ALL seeking a better life are welcomed. Not just the rich and talented, but actually the downtrodden and desperate should get priority.

THE LAST WORD

George F. Will

Anh Duong, Out Of Debt

Such are history's caroms—she was involved in the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of the War on Terror.

History, said Emerson, is "the biography of a few stout and earnest persons." But history also is a story of unpredictable contingencies and improbable caroms, and of a 4-foot-7, 15-year-old girl's leap from a dangerously bobbing boat to a pitching South Vietnamese ship in the South China Sea. It was April 1975. The Communists were overrunning South Vietnam . At that time, Osama bin Laden was 18. The arc of his life, and Anh Duong's, would intersect. Her leap propelled her to freedom. She grew up to be a 5-foot-1 chemist who, 26 years later, led the development of a bomb efficient at killing America's enemies in Afghanistan's caves. As a result, fewer American soldiers have had to enter those caves to engage Osama's fighters. This is Anh Duong's story.

The U.S. Navy took her and her family to Subic Bay in the Philippines. Next stop was a refugee camp in Pennsylvania. After five months this Buddhist family was adopted by the First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Soon Anh was in a suburban Maryland high school, headed for the University of Maryland and, eventually, degrees in chemical engineering, computer science and public administration.

"I wanted to work for the Defense Department," she says, "because I wanted to pay back the guys who protected us all those years." On September 11, 2001, she was working on Navy munitions and explosives—on, she says, "things that go swish and boom." Soon after 9/11 it was apparent that U.S. forces would be fighting in Afghanistan, where the enemy often would be sheltered in the deep recesses of caves, reached after many twists and turns. Sending U.S. forces into those caves would involve a terrible butcher's bill that might be avoided if a new munition could be developed—a new thermobaric (traveling blast and heat) bomb. But delivered by an F-15 to the mouth of a cave, a normal bomb's blast and fragmentation dissipate too quickly to reach deep into the cave and kill those hiding there. The task for her and her team was a challenge of detonation chemistry. They had to "deliver energy more slowly—we want the energy to last longer and travel."

Her current mission derives from the peculiar nature of the war against terrorists, in which the first difficult question is, she says, "Who am I aiming the weapon at?" This has become, in Iraq, a matter of high-stakes forensics using a huge biometric database. Whose fingerprints are those on that fragment of an improvised explosive device? She is devising portable labs to answer such questions in Iraq.

Anh is hardly a thermobaric person, a weaponized woman. The Washington Post reports that while she was working on the new bomb, her children, then 5 to 11, were not allowed to play with toy guns or read Harry Potter books, which the parents deemed too violent. Their parents even excised the fight scenes from their Disney "Pocahontas" video. The trajectory of Anh's life, which has taken her from one of America's wars to another, might eventually involve another generation of her family. The oldest of her four children, a 17-year-old daughter, is considering a career in—this apple did not fall far from the tree—homeland security or international affairs.

This autumn, Anh was among a select few federal workers honored with Service to America Medals by the Partnership for Public Service, which recognizes especially meritorious achievements. In front of a large audience at a black-tie dinner she strode to the microphone and, speaking without notes, began: "Thirty-two years ago I came to this land as a refugee of war with a pair of empty hands and a bag full of broken dreams." Describing America as "this paradise," she said:

"This land is a paradise not because of its beauty or richness but because of its people, the compassionate, generous Americans who took my family and me in, 32 years ago, and healed our souls, who restore my faith in humanity, and who inspire me to public service. There's a special group of people that I'm especially indebted to and I would like to dedicate this medal to them. They are the 58,000 Americans whose names are on the wall of the Vietnam War Memorial and the 260,000 South Vietnamese soldiers who died in that war in order for people like me to earn a second chance to freedom. May God bless all of those who are willing to die for freedom—especially those who are willing to die for the freedom of others. Thank you."

And thank you, Anh Duong. Consider your debt paid in full, with interest.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

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Newsweek.com user comments (I'm sure you can guess which one was mine):

I am a child of South Vietnamese refugees and I have also heard of Anh Duong's story. While I am very happy that she was able to escape the horrible war and make a good life for herself and her family in America, I draw different conclusions from her story than Mr. Will. What debt does she or other refugees owe America? How dare he. What do we really owe America, the country that promised South Vietnam protection and victory, then abandoned the fight a decade later after destroying the countryside and finding themselves unable to defeat under-equipped insurgents? In fact, America owes a debt to immigrants, for all their billions of dollars in taxes, economic contributions, and research discoveries. America really needs to learn a thing or two about paying back debts. Another example is Iraq, where we have accepted fewer refugees (who in many cases risked their lives to help us) than even tiny Sweden.

I do mourn for the US and ARVN soldiers who died trying to defend the freedom of others, but history is never so black-and-white. More South Vietnamese died from American hands than the Viet Cong's. American planes dropped more tonnage on South Vietnamese soil than the Communist North, leaving some areas as virtual moonscapes and uninhabitable for decades. Most Viets are Buddhist, and that faith stringently rejects violence. I know immigrants and descendants of immigrants should be grateful to their generous hosts, but I can think of other nonviolent ways to give back, instead of designing deadlier bombs for a new counterinsurgency war that will kill strangers half a world away (and some of the victims are always innocent bystanders).

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Thank you, Anh Duong, for expressing the feelings of millions of South Vietnamese people and for your achievements. I, like you, was a young refugee to America. You are truly heroic, may you continue to live the life that your freedom has brought you.

However, it saddens me to constantly hear the American media and public refer to the Viet Nam War as an American War when 260,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and millions of South Vietnamese people died for South Viet Nam and when we, former South Vietnamese people, lost our country. It was a civil war and the wrong side won.

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Amazing story. There are thousands more just like this that are untold. Let this be a lesson to all Americans that while we are citizens either by birth or naturalization, we all are indebted to people like Anh and those names on the Vietnam Memorial. Rather than worrying about what the national identity of this nation should look like (white, black, hispanic, christian, muslim, buddhist, english, spanish etc...) let's do something productive and ensure that we leave something behind that might mean something to those who died so others could live.

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Imagine it we wouldn't of warp her mind with 10 years of war, maybe she would of cured cancer.