…Everyone that writes read the NY Times and then picks what they want to blast. And then reads the paper day after day because it is still the best in America…

Hard to argue with some of this. Although I do see the NYT as a vital source of info, it is, by no means, the only one. It is one metric by which I try to determine ground truth. And learn what the other side is thinking.

Now on to the subject of the subject:
Sorry, but “Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles,” was a poorly disguised hit piece, another effort by the Times’ to undermine/discredit “Bush’s War.” If you can’t report on the surge without revealing that the surge is, in fact, working, it’s better to re-hash the old vets as killers meme.
I read every one of the 121 cases and found less than 30 that demonstrated direct evidence of combat-related PTSD. If the “real” number is closer to 30 and not, in fact, 121, what’s the story? I get it, less than 30 is relatively insignificant, while 121 is a “quiet phenomona” that rates a full length, front page story in the Sunday NYT.

Just because you have served in an area that is a designated war zone, doesn’t mean that you have been to war. Lots of REMFs depicted in the Times’story. Working in the Motor Pool back at Camp Snafu sniffing ether and selling meth isn’t the same as goin’ house to house in Fallujah. But, “war” is hell, didn’t ya know? Don’t even get me started on the methodology used by the NYT in putting this story (and I do mean, story) together. “Statistical Creativity” is being generous, to say the least.

Btw, please make a better effort to become an informed “vet” before you begin to lay all of the shortcomings of the VA at the feet of the current administration. Most surveys of vets receiving treatment for Iraq / Afghanistan war-related injuries show a high degree of satisfaction with the treatment they have received. Not that you would hear about this in the NYT. Btw, did you know that parts of Walter Reed are a shit-hole? NYT readers do. Yep, we could be doing a lot better by our veterans. Nope, it didn’t start with the BusHitler Admin, as much as Dick Cheney would like for all of us to STFU about all of the cheap wheelchairs and ill-fitting prosthetics. An informed “vet” would know that vets have been trying to cash in empty promises since at least 1776.

P.S. I’m a 30 yr vet.