Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
MIKE PAPANTONIO: Welcome back to Ring of Fire. I'm Mike Papantonio. The Pentagon has finally
found a way to cut down on their costs by illegally discharging soldiers with mental
disorders that the military creates. I have veteran and attorney Howard Nations with me
now to talk about this deplorable conduct. So Howard, it looks like the military has
found a new way to scam military veterans [laughter], and that's to get rid of 'em with
personality disorder diagnosis. Talk about that.
HOWARD NATIONS: Well, Mike, in 2007, the House of Representatives Veterans Affairs Committee
accused the Department of Defense of illegally discharging veterans with this personality
disorder discharge in order to save $12.5 billion in healthcare cost and compensation
that they would have had to pay to those veterans. That is absolutely ridiculous.
MIKE: Howard, how does it work? Tell me how this latest military scam works. And I want
to it kind of comes a full circle, but I want to know what they're doing to get rid of military
veterans now without any kind of benefits. HOWARD: Well, a study was just released, Mike,
where the conclusion is that the U.S. Military has a systemic personality disorder discharge
problem. And they're illegally violating discharge rules, and have discharged 31,000 people since
'01 as personality disorders. Now, personality disorder is an individual who has an inflexible,
socially-inappropriate behavior, which is what is that? It's not a diagnosable major
brain injury or any--it's not--it's an Axis II injury.
Personality disorder cannot be caused by a major disorder. It can't be caused by substance
abuse. It can't be caused by a medical disorder or a psychiatric disorder. And it's not incompatible
with service.But in order to be a personality disorder, they must to discharge for personality
disorder, they have to find that it interferes with the duties of the soldier.
MIKE: Okay. So Howard, let me ask you this. If I'm hearing you right--of course, you've
handled cases like this in court, you cross-examine psychiatrists on this issue. There's about
eight specific kind of requirements to even make the diagnosis of PD, personality disorder.
And one of 'em is you have to go spend a lot of time with history, talking to the family.
That's not being done here, is it? HOWARD: No, it's not. And also, you have to
have a very careful psychiatric examination. What we find is that the gravest results of
this is that they're not reaching the real diagnosis. It's not that you're just putting
people out because of a personality disorder, but people who do have these problems should
be carefully diagnosed for the Axis I injuries. They should be carefully diagnosed for PTSD
and traumatic brain injury. Now, you and I have both tried cases involving traumatic
brain injury. And we know how difficult it is to prove and how difficult it is to diagnose.
We've also seen the consequences of people who are walking around with traumatic brain
injuries and PTSD undiagnosed. There are 31,000 --
MIKE: Okay. So Howard HOWARD: People that have had this.
MIKE: Let me ask you this. There's two parts to this, as I see it. First of all, the money
saved by the military getting rid of these people is huge. So they get 'em out there,
they don't pay 'em any benefits 'cause they say it's preexisting. They could have served
tour tours in Afghanistan, one tour in Iraq, and they're gone. Part of the problem here
that I'm seeing more attention to is the way that a lot of these soldiers were recruited.
There was a time in the military where they simply couldn't recruit enough people. There
was an unpopular war, people were being sent back for multiple stances in Afghanistan,
in Iraq. And so they were giving- they were going after virtually anybody they could recruit
by giving some of these soldiers something called a moral waiver. And that is they might
have had criminal backgrounds, they might have had all kinds of problems. And so now
they have 'em in the military. The numbers of military rapes have increased. You have
extremism of every kind. White supremacist groups rising up in the military. You have
some disorder, I guess is the best way to put it, with these recruits. Isn't this another
way just now--you've used 'em, up, you've sent 'em to Afghanistan, to Iraq, now let's
get rid of 'em? HOWARD: Well, it's not just mere coincidence
that this began in 2001 and has run since 2001. And the way they're getting rid of them
is by the PD discharge, they deny disability benefits, they deny healthcare. They've even
required some of them to refund their reenlistment bonuses. And then when they get out, they
have the stigma of a PD discharge because it says personality disorder discharge. And
this interferes with them trying to find civilian employment. So they're denied disability,
they're denied healthcare, and we have no idea what percentage of those 31,000 who have
been discharged under the PD are, in fact, brain injured or have PTSD.
MIKE: Howard, one thing we do know is after the media and congressional attention was
paid to this and they saw that this looked like a scam, there was publicity, the numbers
went from almost 4,000 HOWARD: Mm-hmm.
MIKE: Of dismissals -- discharges from PD to about 1,000. What do you think of that?
I mean, isn't that one of the signs of what we're talking about, is absolutely clear this
is a scam? HOWARD: Well, it is. And what happened was
in '08, Senator Obama and Senator Biden requested a GAO study. The GAO studied 371 cases, and
they concluded that there was hundreds or even thousands of illegal DODs admitted that
-- the DOD even admitted that some of those people may have PTSD or TBI. What happened
to the military response after the review, after the GAO review, the navy, for example,
did a -- they did a review of the navy in '08 and '09 and found that only 8.9% had been
properly discharged. Ninety-one percent failure rate after the review, after pressures brought
by congress. MIKE: This is a heck of a way for the military
to save money. Howard Nations, thank you for joining me. Okay?
HOWARD: My pleasure, Mike.