We will start accepting applications for the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP)on May 15th for training that begins on or after July 1, 2012. If you are an unemployed Veteran, you may be eligible to receive 12 months of training assistance equal to the full-time monthly payment rate under the Montgomery GI Bill-Active Duty program (currently $1,473 per month). You must pursue a program approved for VA benefits offered by a community college or technical school. The program must lead to a high demand occupation and result in an Associate Degree, Non-College Degree or a Certificate. Don’t forget to sign up early as participation in the program is limited to a total of 99,000 Veterans with only 45,000 Veterans allowed to participate prior to October 1, 2012.

VA will publish more details on the program as they become available at our VOW website.

Thank you for your interest and please feel free to pass this message on to another Veteran.

Sincerely,
Curtis L. Coy

Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

I attended this gala last year. Never in my adult life have I attended such a class act event for Vietnam Veterans.  We had a table of 8 of my combat vet pals. We were awe struck with the level of respect and honor bestowed upon us…most of  us to the point of tears.  I will be back in October.  I like class and respect! It is good for longevity.

To Arizona Vietnam Veterans, families & friends:

The Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services and the Arizona Military Museum in conjunction with the Department of Defense 50^th Commemoration of the Vietnam War is proud to host the 2^nd Annual DINNER IN HONOR OF ARIZONA VIETNAM VETERANS at Wild Horse Pass Hotel and Casino in Chandler, Arizona on October 20, 2012. We are honored to have as Special Guest Speaker, Lieutenant General Claude M. Kicklighter, USA (Ret.), Director of the 50^th Commemoration of the Vietnam War project.

AS WE DID LAST YEAR, WE PRESENT THIS EVENT AND DINNER TO HONOR THE SERVICE OF ARIZONA’S VIETNAM VETERANS. Our intent is that this event be part of the 50^th Commemoration of the Vietnam War activities whose first stated objective is:

To thank and honor veterans who served in the Vietnam War, including personnel who were held as prisoners of war or listed as missing in action, for their service and sacrifice on behalf of the United States and to thank and honor the families of these veterans.

The affair will be a special experience including a Vietnamese Color Guard, a wonderful dinner, good music, some short speeches, some videos, TAPS, and a special presentation to Vietnam veterans. It is open to those who desire to honor Vietnam veterans. Business attire/casual or Army Class A or service equivalent is appropriate.  We look forward to seeing many Vietnam veterans, their families and friends. The dinner cost is $40.00 per person.  Unfortunately, the hotel can only accommodate 400 attendees, so we need your RSVP registration and check ASAP to confirm your attendance at this wonderful experience. Wild Horse Pass Hotel rooms are set aside for your convenience at only $99.00 per night, particularly if you’re travelling from outside the Phoenix area.  Just call the hotel for room reservations at 1-800-946-4452.  For other questions call 520-868-6777.

As a Vietnam veteran proud of your service or as one who desires to participate in honoring those who served in the Vietnam War, just mail your completed RSVP form with payment ASAP.   We hope that you will strongly support this meaningful event.

Colonel Joey Strickland, USA (Ret.), Director         Colonel Joseph E. Abodeely, USA (Ret.)

  Arizona Department of Veteran Services                    Director, Arizona Military Museum

Retired Army Colonel Joe Abodeely is the consummate Vietnam Combat Veteran. A platoon commander in Vietnam with the 1st Air Cav. Not shy to speak his mind, often a spark plug for dialogue, yet one of the most compassionate caring veterans alive. Col. Joe has hosted the gathering of  Veterans, known as Base Camp, the first weekend in April for decades. Veterans from all over collect on his 40 acre property in Maricopa for fellowship and fun and ongoing debate about the War that never seems to end.

God bless you Joe.

THE TRUTH ABOUT VIETNAM     by Joseph E. Abodeely, Colonel USA (Ret.)

Those who served in the Vietnam War should be very proud of the fact that they won the Tet Offensive in 1968, won the Vietnam War in January, 1973 when the Paris Peace Accords were signed, and prevented all of Southeast Asia from succumbing to Communist domination.

The United States made a solemn commitment by the SEATO Treaty in 1955 (ratified by President Eisenhower with almost unanimous advice and consent of the Senate) to come to the aid of any of the “Protocol States” of that treaty–Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia, requesting assistance in defense of their freedom from Communist aggression.

In the post-war era, Hanoi repeatedly admitted that its leaders made a decision on May 19, 1959, to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and send tens of thousands of soldiers and countless tons of equipment and supplies south to “liberate” South Vietnam by armed force. That was more than 5 years before the U.S. decided to send combat units to Vietnam.  The U.S. purpose to send troops to Vietnam was precisely the same purpose we sent troops to South Korea in 1950–to uphold the non-aggression principles of the UN Charter and oppose the expansion of Communism by force.

John F. Kennedy pledged to the world: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” In August 1964, Congress enacted the Southeast Asian Resolution by a combined vote of 504-2.  That was our mission.

Communist defectors used to laugh and express shock at how successful their campaign had been to portray the “National Liberation Front” to the west as something other than a classic Leninist “front” organization. Hanoi actually published an English-language translation of the proceedings of the 1960 Third Party Congress, including the resolution it approved calling for “our people” in South Vietnam to set up a front under Party leadership three months before the NLF was allegedly formed by non-Communist resistance leaders in Ben Tre.  Scholars, anti-war protesters, and the media who were duped by this deception should be ashamed of themselves.

America’s military actions in Vietnam were portrayed vividly on television, and the public got to see it “up close and personal” and experience vicariously the imperfections, brutality, and fog of war. The American people were horribly misled by the media about what was actually transpiring in Indochina. The 1968 Tet Offensive was a tremendous military defeat for the Communists, and after the May Offensive of that same year the southern “Viet Cong” had ceased to exist as a serious fighting force. Regular North Vietnamese PAVN soldiers took over the fighting, and with only U.S. air support the South Vietnamese successfully blocked their 1972 Spring Offensive. Historians now acknowledge that American counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam were succeeding during the final years of that conflict.  Anti-war protesters were wrong.

In December, 1972, President Nixon ordered the bombing of North Vietnam, and this brought the North Vietnamese to the peace table to sign the Paris Peace Accords in January, 1973.  The U.S. got our POWs returned. South Vietnam got concessions, the right to free elections, and rights including those embodied in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. The U.S. promised to resupply South Vietnam with whatever armaments it needed if North Vietnam renewed its aggression.  U.S. troops were pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, as they won the war then.

In August, 1974, Nixon got embroiled in the Watergate scandal.  In November, 1974, there was a Democratic landslide in Congress.  President Ford implored Congress to keep the U.S. promise to support South Vietnam as the North renewed its aggression.  But Congress had its own political agenda and refused. The Congressional action that truly sounded the death knell for South Vietnam and “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory” was not simply cutting aid, but passing a law (the FY 1973 Dept of State Auth. Act, Pub. L. 93-126, 87 Stat. 451) that provided:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, on or after August 15, 1973, no funds hereto-fore or hereafter appropriated may be obligated or expended to finance the involvement of United States military forces in hostilities in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia, unless specifically authorized hereafter by Congress.

This guaranteed Hanoi and its allies that the United States was not going to fulfill its solemn pledge to defend those victims from aggression, and Pham Van Dong (Hanoi’s Premier) announced that the Americans would not come back “even if we offered them candy.” So Moscow and Beijing greatly increased their aid, Hanoi left only the 325th Division to defend the Hanoi area and sent the rest of its Army behind columns of Soviet-made tanks to conquer South Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia, the other Protocol States we had repeatedly pledged to protect) in a conventional military invasion.  North Vietnamese Army tanks rolled into Saigon on April 30, 1975.

The so-called “liberation” of the Protocol States was catastrophic.  An estimated 100,000 South Vietnamese were executed, as many as 250,000 more died in “reeducation camps,” and another 45-50,000 died in the “New Economic Zones”. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated 420,000 “boat people” died at sea fleeing the Communist tyranny in search of freedom. The Yale University Cambodian Genocide Project estimated 1.7 million Cambodians (more than 20% of the entire population) were killed by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. A January 2004 article on the “killing fields” in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TODAY noted that “bullets were too precious to use for executions. Axes, knives and bamboo sticks were far more common. As for children, their murderers simply battered them against trees.”

Those who helped perpetuate the myths and blatant lies distorting truth about the Vietnam War should be ashamed.  Those in Congress who threw away what the Vietnam veterans had won should be ashamed.  Vietnam veterans should be very proud of their service to their country.

[Sources:  Bruce Hershensohn (author, American political commentator, Senior Fellow at Pepperdine University), Robert F. Turner, University of Virginia. professor, author, Vietnam veteran)]

I write you from my next “duty station.” Because it is a most
important event, I want to share with you the impact and penetration
that our work in Soldier’s Heart has achieved, and how we may
continue together to bring hope, healing and positive change to our
suffering nation and world.

I have been chosen, and today begin, to provide the U.S. Army’s
CAST (Chaplaincy Annual Sustainment Training) in Post-traumatic
Stress Disorder for this year. The army annually pulls its chaplains in
from the service to give several days of rest and intensive training in
subjects the Pentagon deems most critical. Over the next 6 months,
I will meet with 2,000 chaplains on 7 different military bases. Each
time I will have a few hours to train them in our model, interpretation
and approach to healing the wound we call PTSD.

This task could not be more daunting or important. Our chaplains
are the only ones responsible for the spiritual care and tending of our
troops. Chaplains may work with up to 5,000 soldiers each. They
are of all ages and persuasions. In our war zones they receive and
tend physically, psychologically and spiritually wounded men and
women, minister to the dying and tend the souls of the slain.

In Soldier’s Heart we have been teaching that PTSD is a soul wound
and a social wound. In contrast to almost all other approaches, we
declare that such invisible devastation is inevitable in war, made
much worse under contemporary conditions, and has its source in our
souls and in our society.

Military culture is changing. Some generals have come out of
the closet admitting their PTSD. Many leaders are saying it takes
courage to admit your pain. Many are accepting military-civilian
partnerships because the wounds are too large and too many for

the military to treat alone, and they lack both resources and warrior
wisdom for bringing healing. It is in this atmosphere that I work.
I seek to carry Warrior Medicine into the Army. I seek to help
our chaplains understand that there is such a thing as spiritual
warriorhood, that military and war wounding is inevitable and must
not be treated as a pathology, weakness or illness to banish. Rather
it must be embraced as initiatory and transformative. PTSD is neither
illness nor failure, but a sacred wound.

Together we in Soldier’s Heart have responded to PTSD as the
soul and social wound it is. We have gathered, taught, supported,
loved, witnessed. We have practiced spirituality in community.
We have invoked the Sacred Warrior Spirit of all times and places.
We have gone into deep old pain together and emerged cleansed,
strengthened, healing, with hope and direction. Together we nurture
elder warriors and communities to practice truth telling, restore honor
and embrace all those who have been wounded by their time in hell.

Today, April 24, is the first of my seven trainings of the military
chaplains. I begin at Ft. Carson, CO and will travel far and wide
through September. As so many of you have, I will go where I am
needed and asked to serve. Today and for this half year, I ask you
to kindly think of me, have patience with my busy schedule and high
demands. Please send good thoughts my way, say prayers on behalf
of this work and its power to reach and teach, enlighten and inspire
our chaplains. Pray that Sacred Warrior Medicine enters our military
through this portal and contributes toward its transformation into a
peace making and healing force.

If this appointment means anything, it affirms that we small people
can, indeed, bring changes to our society and world. We must
continue. We all know how violence pervades our lives and world.
We must and can transform that practice and imbue it with soul and
spirit.

Thank you for your support and bless your healing efforts always.

Ed Tick